[GTO]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

I personally wouldn't be very trustful of the Ken's Nutgraf as a proper data source.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

In todays world where even the on-line and TV press cannot be trusted I prefer working with verifiable facts.

Guys, The-Ken's source was Money Control, while Mohandas Pai himself admitted to the practice.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by GTO

Guys, The-Ken's source was Money Control, while Mohandas Pai himself admitted to the practice.

Thanks GTO. This is helpful.

All,

Is the salary of Rs 3.6L today too low or was the same number paid 20 years ago too high is a moot question. If tens of thousands are willing to accept the job offer at Rs 3.6L who are we or any journalist to say it is incorrect. Any company, including IT companies have to serve the needs of several stakeholders - investors, customers , Govt's, suppliers, society and employees. The needs and financial payback to each has to be balanced in a manner that is fair to all. Some on this thread are assuming that the Industry exists only for the employee.

Mr Pai, in my opinion, is the Subramaniam Swamy of the IT industry. He likes to shoot off every now and then to stay in the news. And if cartelization indeed occured then he as an ex CFO and later HR Head of Infosys has a lot to answer for. In senior echelons of the IT industry Pai's sell by date expired a long while ago.

[androdev]

IT services companies lowered the bar for entry level hiring. Paying 3L for an IIT engineer ten years ago vs the same salary for Give-and-Take engineering college graduate certainly means the salaries have increased in step with the economy/inflation.

[Akshay6988]

Originally Posted by vigsom

. This might sound like a fairy tale but at least I'm happy that actions yielded results, and that people remember them even ten years later.

Any chance you're hiring now, kind Sir ? I'd love to work for you ! Coming to the topic, yes attrition is bad. People leaving at the first chance they're getting, also this 90 days notice period is ridiculous ! For some it is dreadful, while others use this period to grab more competitive offers. I've known folks who managed to grab 10+ offers ! The job market is hot, you gotta pay top dollar to retain talent, otherwise some other organization might grab that talent.

[vredesbyrd]

Yes please. Give me negligible hike and hire new people for 2x salary (who are going to leave within a year anyway) while some tier-1 college fellows keep getting significant raises and bonuses for contributing very little to the firm.
All these big IT firms need to realise that reputation will not put food on the table but money will. Attrition? Well, they asked for it!

I am the last man standing in my team but that didn't make a difference to anybody

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by GTO

Guys, The-Ken's source was Money Control, while Mohandas Pai himself admitted to the practice.

Thank you for sharing this.
My point was not disputing if The-Ken has sources for their data. It's the lack of investigation that is missing in the Nutgraf series.

Case in point when I was starting out in core Tech services at Infosys, we had Software Engineer as starting role for freshers, then 'Team Lead' and then Manager and so on. Now they have 'System Engineer', 'Senior System Engineer', 'Tech Analyst', 'Team Lead', 'Project Manager' and so on.

Similarly Cognizant currently has 'Programmer Analyst Trainee', 'Programmer Analyst', 'Associate', 'Senior Associate', 'Manager' and so on. More than a decade ago, Cognizant started out with 'Associate' as the starting point (as per my friends who started their career there).

The salaries you (by virtue of quoting The-KEN) are quoting of 2010 would be of engineers who would fit into the 'Tech Analyst'/'Associate' roles. Currently these firms look at non-engineer profiles to fit into the lower roles (PAT/PA for Cognizant, SE, SSE for Infosys and so on).

So you see it's not an apple to apple comparison.

No, I'm not saying the salaries are appropriate (of course not!). No, I'm not debating there's cartelization (there definitely is one). I'm just pointing out the inefficient journalism piece that is being used as a base topic starter here. It's like picking up Page 3 of Times of India and discussing what's happening in Bollywood circles and using those articles as 'sources'.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I dashed off an email last night to the HR heads of two of the 4 companies I'm associated with - so that's covering about 20,000 to 25,000 employees most in India. replies were in just now. Their starting salaries for Indian engineering graduates is in the Rs 6.0 to 6.5 lakhs per annum range. Not saying there is no one out there not paying Rs 3.6 lakhs but just adding a data point here.

I would bet my money that the 6L - 6.5L are for engineers exclusively; and there's probably a lower range for non-engineers. That has been a norm for several years now and it's common across all top IT firms. I'm aware of it for the firms I have worked in the past (Infosys, Cognizant), can't say for the rest for sure.

Ref to these newslinks back from mid-2010s: it-firms-hire-non-engineering-graduates-to-cut-cost, Indian-it-firms-step-up-hiring-of-non-engineers-to-bridge-talent-shortfall

Question to ponder - what does a BSc or BCA graduate who chooses to get into these tech firms get in the market in 2022? Is it way more than the 3.5L - 4.5L range we are discussing here?

Originally Posted by androdev

IT services companies lowered the bar for entry level hiring. Paying 3L for an IIT engineer ten years ago vs the same salary for Give-and-Take engineering college graduate certainly means the salaries have increased in step with the economy/inflation.

+1
Excellent point. Also hence the need for the first full year of training for freshers (engineers & non-engineers) that is required now. Back then, freshers would get into projects within a month (upto 3 max).

[FiatDiesel]

Salary and fresher are the two most prominent topics discussed through entire Indian IT industry. While it is major source of employment for vast swathes of young crowd in our country however over the years these companies have turned into large labour intensive organizations (similar to 70’s or 80’s factories but polished) with little regard to employee welfare and customer focus but only fat margins.

I have seen it very closely, experienced it and saved myself and few other I could.

There is one more category (salary slab) which is hired below 3-3.5 bracket, between 1.5 to 2.5, normal degree college graduates. They make the major force to keep the fat margins intact and at the same time there career growth path(read increments) is even slower then an engineering graduate.

Why I refer these organisations as factories? Here the labour is Inducted, trained on technology as per the pipeline projection’s or order-book and deployed. Note that this training is basic and freshers learn on the job, basically on customer environment.
So an engineering or normal graduate irrespective of his choices or knowing the good or bad w.r.t particular technology gets onto the journey of career building or I should say shaping his future life. Most likely he will realise it after couple of years what he or she is into. (Many times regret)

Salary hikes:-

Ranging from lower spectrum of 2-4 % to 10-15%. While major population gets 5-6% there are few at both extremes. However given the slabs we are talking about, how much difference it makes to their lives?

For initial few years it works as the person is also learning on the job, mostly remains bachelor during that phase of life.

Attrition & Impact:-

Attrition starts triggering around 3rd year of service of fresher again dependent on technology and the individuals skill set. I have seen complete teams (specific batches of freshers) getting wiped out within months which are again replaced by freshers. Primary reason of attrition is salary with 100% hikes being offered outside. Here at the receiving end is the client, not the IT service provider. Quality of delivery takes dip, client suffers while billing remains fat. Mostly contracts are built to take into account any penalties due to quality dips so risk is already accounted for financially.

While this phenomenon is recurring, IT service providers don’t have central process to retain knowledge and mostly it is left to the project / operations managers to devise ways to retain knowledge which seldom happens.

If the individual continues to be in same IT company for many years which he joined as fresher, mostly the reasons are following:-
1. He gets on-site either long term or regularly which supplements his Indian income and also gives him other countries (mostly west) experience personally and professionally.
2. Low performance or knowledge so continues without any fuss. Managers also don’t disturb much as they take happiness from whatever knowledge individual retains.
3. Loyalty?: Though rare but few stick around despite low income thinking Gods (read managers) will smile on them and will bless with good hike or on-site, only to be frustrated and leaving later.

You can take clue from the fact how government took on one of the IT major publicly in failure to deliver the new portal as per the requirements on time. And this happened twice GST and IT. Here it was government hence they can go public, private entities don’t complain to media, they just escalate through defined channels in contracts.

However all said and done, these companies are major source of employment in our country and play vital role for economy.

Change needs to come from our young generation, to think, learn, grow and choose what’s right for them.

[Abhikumar629]

I know that many will bash me for the statement that I am going to make and also my statement is not applicable to all companies and employees, but for once, I see this as a good move. All these years, all of these companies were grossly taking advantage of their employees (the list will be too long if I start jotting them). Looks like Karma is back to rip these greedy employers. Let them loosen up their pockets and let employees recover for what they lost in these years.

[rakesh_r]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

But where do all these people go to, is everybody switching within the industry?

I recently shifted to a new organisation. After spending more than a decade in the mechanical Industry (Machine building and Oil and Gas) shifted to IT. This switch has been a major step for me Mechanical->Software, especially for a guy who belongs to the Analogue era.
As per the market, IT is the fad because they pay you more. I worked in one of the best Oil and Gas companies but yet i had to switch as they failed to compensate me fairly. Gone are those days when I used to convince myself with the "I am getting to learn more, money will come later" statement. As someone mentioned, play your cards right, at the right time and you can make hay when the sun shines.

[columbus]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Thanks GTO. This is helpful.

All,

Is the salary of Rs 3.6L today too low or was the same number paid 20 years ago too high is a moot question. If tens of thousands are willing to accept the job offer at Rs 3.6L who are we or any journalist to say it is incorrect.

Thankyou Sir for bringing a perspective which i was looking for. I come from manufacturing sector and after working for 25 years in a PSU switched jobs in a private manufacturing company a year back. Here are my experiences, for all to ponder on whether the starting salaries of 3.6L is okay in todays IT environment.

Did my Mechanical engineering from Govt College from a Tier 3 city in 1996.
Got campus selected in good private product manufacturing company. Out of a batch of 75 only 4 of us got selected. CTC 36K

Year 1997 joined a Navratna PSU. CTC 48K

Year 2002-2003 when fresh engineering graduates in the IT industry started getting 3.6L, my CTC was 1L.

Year 2022 when I left the PSU my CTC was 36L. As someone righty said below Manufacturing : No. of years x 1.5 is considered a pretty decent salary.

And trust me the work pressures are same everywhere. You have same management, same bosses and same 12 hour days non stop 6 days a week.

The new job gave a pretty good hike cause I had some very niche skills.

Now comes the fun part. We were looking to higher couple of guys with 2-5 year experience in CAD/CAM. Most of the candidates did not had the skillsets we were looking. But still we hired 2 guys who had done their engineering from Tier 3 college and were working as contract in a very reputed MNC manufacturing company. They were paid a measly amount of 15K a month for working 8-10 hrs a day six days a week. We offered them a CTC of 3.6L.
Both had tears in their eyes and joined us next day

So my take is that the 3.6L starting salary offered in IT industry 20 years back was way more than what most of the graduates got at that time. Also 20 year back there were only IITs, RECs and GECs so definitely the supply was short.
Today there are lacs of engineering graduates joining the job market every year and most of them have very poor employability skills. And the tens of thousands from Tier 2, 3 colleges joining these IT firms at starting salary of
3.6L have actually no where else to go. Try finding jobs in the core manufacturing sectors from these colleges and see what they get and then compare what you get in the IT sector. Compare the working conditions in a manufacturing unit with what one gets in IT. Its a no brainer to grab that white collared job in reputed IT firm.

I am also sure that IITs and top NITs have moved way up in starting salary structure. I know a kid who just did Product Design course from IIT Guwahati. Mind you she did not clear JEE. This was some other entrance. She got a CTC of 20L from a Fintech startup company who is literally burning VC money to attract talent. The girl is a niece of my friend who is India head of an MNC IT firm. He clearly told me " such salaries are just not sustainable. The bubble will burst."

So the starting salaries in IT might not have changed for Tier 2 , 3 institutions. But compare it to core manufacturing sectors and you may see an altogether different picture.

I am sorry if i have stepped on some peoples toes here.

[racer_sk]

The big firms are playing with the Law of Averages, Hire in sufficient number and you are bound to end up with some good candidates who will drive productivity for you. As stated earlier there is enough supply at the bottom to justify those numbers.

Mid-size firms and start-ups are willing to pay higher as long as the candidates show potential.

People tend to stay longer in these firms due to various reasons like:

• Chances of Onsite posting
• Job Stability - Unless you do a major screw up generally you wont get fired.
• Social Status - Not till long ago working in these major firms was considered a privilege.

But with now growth of mid-sized firms and start-ups things are changing and people are seeing plenty of opportunities outside these big firms. This is adding to attrition.

[Black_Star]

Originally Posted by Jaguar

IMO that is a wrong assumption. Even the best of minds with the best training would take time to ramp up to the same level of productivity as an average (for lack of a better term) experienced developer. But many in the top management fail to acknowledge this fact.

I think the top management with all their Management degrees know this, but they dont want to acknowledge this because if they do, they think they might lose face in front of the employees and have to bow down to their demands.

In MBA we are taught the whole process of recruiting and on-boarding employees, and on average it takes 2-3 months just to get an employee familiar with the work environment. Further it takes about 5-8 months just to get the productivity level back to the old level. In some cases you might even be looking at 1-2 years if the particular job has a unique skillset or the old clients may not be comfortable with dealing with new employees.

So yeah, as a HR major I will do everything to keep old guys, rather than get new ones.

[amol4184]

Originally Posted by vredesbyrd

Yes please. Give me negligible hike and hire new people for 2x salary (who are going to leave within a year anyway)

I am the last man standing in my team but that didn't make a difference to anybody

In the last 1.5-2 years I remember at least 3 people who came in, got trained and left in 6 months. We added them because the work increased multi-folds in last 2 years (think its common across all IT now), they were not exactly replacements but rather part of expansion. All in 3-5 year experience bracket.

Since they left along with few old timers, and crunch is so terrible, they were replaced by complete freshers - who unfortunately, are already aspiring of getting a business degree or MS from abroad and studying for it! We are ready to take people with even slightest of relevant experience and yet no dice. Never had this insane resource shortage.

So the productivity of 17-18 count team is borne by about 6-7 people. The management knows that, they are not blind.
And yet these folks get nothing in return, sad excuses for salary hikes continue as usual. The last men standing are the men taken for a ride by companies everywhere.
Switch or jump to a stream where you will work across teams in short durations, like a consultant/architect and reduce the frustration.

[Simha.k]

Those of you questioning if the salary is still around 3.5 lacs range, see this

https://fivelemon.blogspot.com/2021/...cture.html?m=1

One guy has even posted a picture of his salary slip.

The below link shares the salaries of entry level grads of most of these companies

https://www.google.com/amp/s/content...w/88516531.cms

Just last week, HCL raised the salaries of fresh grads to 4.25lacs but other companies are unwilling to follow suit. This shows how they still are very much part of the cartel even in the year 2022.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/wap.bus...2500021_1.html


I'm not sure if Mr Pai wants to stay in the news or not. But, for once, he spoke the truth and admitted that his company was willingly part of the cartel he was referring to. 3.0lacs around 20 years ago was really decent salary for a fresh grad. Not in the year 2022. If someone can make a comparison chart of the prices of commodities in 2002 & 2022, it'd be really nice. It'll show a mirror to these companies how they're paying less salary when adjusted to inflation!

Lately, I'm seeing a lot of posts on LinkedIn from recruiters how candidates are shopping for multiple job offers and they are ghosting them. All I can say is, karma is a bitch. What goes around, comes around.

Earlier, recruiters ghosted candidates. Now, candidates are ghosting recruiters. Serves them right.

If companies have the right to choose the lowest bidder and hire the cheapest labor to get a job done, why can't candidates choose the best company and join the one who pays the highest? Fair and square. Right? Or am I missing something?

Let's not forget the double standards of these companies again when it comes to notice period. Most recruiters want a candidate to join them in less than 15 days! While their own company won't let an employee go in nothing less than 90 days! This gives a candidate a lot of time to shop for other job offers when he/she ends up getting nearly 100-150% hike while serving notice period. And all these recruiters do is rant on LinkedIn not realizing that it's their own company's fault to begin with.

Pls tell me how much time do you really need to do a complete knowledge transfer of your job? Even the most complex task can be transferred in not more than 2 weeks. Why do companies want to hold on to employees for 90 L-O-N-G days? What's this love affair of 90 days notice period? Time to think and ponder.

My comments are not aimed at anyone personally. I do not hold grudge or I have anything personal against anyone in the corporate sector. I'm simply holding a mirror to expose the hypocrisy and double standards of the companies.

[SoumenD]

While I agree with most of the comments here about questionable practices of WITCH firms, there’s one important point we miss. It is one of the biggest employment generating machinery in a country plagued with unemployment. Lets not forget most of us started our careers with one of these. I will always remain thankful to the murtys and premjis for giving this platform to mediocre folks like me to make a career. With the truckload of engineers coming out every year, if not for these firms, I can’t imagine where people can find a job at this large a scale. And since supply(of engineers) is so high, obviously salaries won’t increase. They aren’t here for charity, Period!!! Till we have other sectors generating such high number of job opportunities these practices would continue.

About attrition they won’t bother much because ultimately majority of the resources get shuffled among them. So 1 guy leaves Infosys to join HCL, while another leaves wipro to join Infy and the circle continues. End result they get similar work done at higher cost(increased salaries) for both the firms. Yes if they gave internal hikes attrition could have been reduced but probably its not hurting them, so this shuffling continues.

Originally Posted by denzdm

To arrest this attrition, Infosys came up with a weird discriminatory clause which bans it's employees from working for the competitors for six months after they quit the company.

Non-compete clause has always been there. Just that more people are jumping now, hence the fuss. Rest it’s nothing new.

Originally Posted by Simha.k

Flashback to the year 2003 when a cousin of mine graduated from a bachelor degree in telecom engg. She was invited for a pool campus interview with Infosys and the salary offered was around 3.0lacs.

Which college was she from? IIT/NIT? 2007 the standard starting salary in infy was 2.7LPA and before that (2005/06) it was 2.2LPA pan India.