[NiInJa]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Dear Readers,

I have a question for those who are so very upset with the industry and their employer - why have you continued in the industry? It is a free country - change track.

I will attempt to answer this question, it may or may not resonate with others

Before I start, I'll quickly tell about my experience. In 13 years of my career, I have changed 8 companies. I have exposure of working in a Mid-Tier Indian Software company, one of the big fours, one of the WITCHA, a small specialized services company, a start-up and currently working in a small to mid-sized US based company which is trying to set up shop in India and Middle-East. Not just companies, I have switched a lot between different technologies within the product suite that we primarily work on. My appetite for taking such risks is huge and it has cost me a lot in terms of money (and prospective employers) but the experience and connections I've made are something I am proud of.

Since 2019, I have been on the 'other' side of things like hiring, mentoring, managing etc, and the recent attrition and people not joining a company like ours is frustrating. We have let go potential projects and are about to hold off our expansion simply because we are unable to grow our team. I am at this point doing technical delivery, interviewing resources and managing a small team in which two of the members are already serving notice period. I will talk about long term impact this great attrition phase that is happening in India later. What I can say now is clients/businesses are no longer looking at India as a 'cost effective' service provider and may start looking at other nations like in South America, Mexico, East Europe who have the time zone advantage. (Hint: We have given up in India for now and hired few people in Mexico)

As I mentioned earlier, it is the "supply and demand" game that is driving the attrition. If companies are willing to pay 2x or 2.5x the current salary, people are going to jump ships without thinking about what lies ahead. But why is the sudden urge to earn more?

My answer will have lot of digressions and little details that might seem unwanted, but are needed as this is not just about earning money but the emotions behind it.

It has to do a lot with what an employee earns in India compared to the one sitting in US/UK earns doing the exact same job. I am talking strictly from an IT/Software professional perspective.

Back in the day, when use of VPN was not widespread, people used to go to US/on-shore for short or long term assignments and earn additional money. The trend usually was making lot of money in US/UK/Europe (in our IT parlance we call it 'printing') and come back to India after 10-15 years to take care of elders etc. Primary, Secondary, Higher seconday schools in India are good so that was never a challenge for their kids, and by then you would have made enough money to send your kids abroad for higher education anyway. The Indian IT companies like Infosys, Wipro and others like CTS etc have uplifted a lot of individuals from relative poverty and secured the well being of their future generations. And that is the exact reason I have utmost respect for all the people who started it and refrain from bad-mouthing these companies, even if I dont agree with some of their HR or work related policies.

Things started to change in the last decade and with fast internet and secure VPN connections and a gradual shift to cloud applications, work could be done from home as well. The need to travel has dropped drastically, and so, the competition to get an opportunity to work outside India (and in turn, earn in USD and a relatively better way of life) increased. Now, the people who work from India who get paid in INR obviously compare their lifestyle with the ones who work from abroad. I don't see anything wrong in it. Just to give an example: If an average Indian IT guy with 10 years of experience earns about 1.3 lakh INR per month after the usual tax deductions etc (excluding savings), the same person in US may 'save' around 1.5 to 2 Lakh INR after accounting the usual expenses of living. In case of UK or Europe, it is even more. The quality of life is usually better, although I would be cautious in saying that today as India too is much better place to live. Even then, there are subtle differences which make foreign countries lucrative: For example, my brother is in UK for last 7 years, he has not paid a single penny for his kid's usual seasonal illness, medicines included. In India, every time I visit the doctor for my kid, the initial fees is 500 Rs, subsequent fees are 200 Rs, not to mention the fact that he is not available on phone whereas my brother has visited the NHS only twice, everything is done on phone or the doctor visits his house. Primary education is taken care of by the council/municipality, and the schools are usually the same everywhere, he did not have to run around getting his kid enrolled in a particular school. Here in India, I missed the 'application window' due to a Covid-19 wave that we were caught up in last year and are now getting some political contacts to see if I can enroll my kid in the good school near my house. I have earmarked a couple of lakh Rupees as 'donation' or 'bribe', whichever suits. Not to mention the usual hassle of lack of good transport that makes me spend thousands of rupees on car fuel, or risking my life by taking the two-wheeler everyday to office. I am already worried about my kid's transport to and from the school which is 11 km away from my house.

What was that rant all about? Let me explain, just last week, my project was stuck with a major issue, a show-stopper. My boss said: we are not getting paid if this is not resolved. Somehow, the code which was running perfectly fine on old servers since 2014, failed to run when we switched to new servers, which meant new OS, new version of Python and Java libraries etc. None of the guys and girls from on-shore were able to figure it out and were dilly-dallying around who takes it up.I am not a Python expert, but since I like jumping around tech learning things, I had learnt some basics back in 2018 so it was obvious that everyone would look at me to solve it. No problem. I cancelled every other meeting, cancelled my daily exercise schedule and personal time with my kid and spent three days understanding the whole code. Due to some security policies, IDE was not allowed to be installed on the servers, so I was putting breaks at certain lines and running them manually to find the line which is failing. This kind of ancient debugging process is extremely time consuming. (* An IDE- Integrated Development Environment makes it easier to write and debug a code). But I finally found it, that one particular statement which was causing it to fail, and things were back to normal again.

Many Indian IT folks will be able to relate to the story above. We are equal or sometimes even better than our counterparts working abroad, and yet we get paid less, compared to 'them' and have to deal with the daily hassles, again compared to 'them'. The IT employees in US or on-shore have more exposure to clients/business as they can meet them face-to-face. This in itself is a big deal in IT industry and is considered as the 'real work'. Majority of the times, the work from US is delegated to India and many employees from India yearn to have that kind of exposure of sitting in the front seat. Some get it, many others don't. There are various reasons behind it, might be the employee's skills, or office politics, or simply a number's game: It is like cricket team, the batsman coming at 6th position may not always get chance to bat, even if he is a good batsman.

So what is the net outcome of this? With diminishing opportunities in the same profile, the least one can expect is to have a pay that will match the lifestyle of that employee of same calibre residing in US/UK. Note that I did not use the word 'Salary'. Also, as mentioned above, people now want to make 'better' provisions for their future knowing well that they may not get the opportunity to travel or earn in USD/EUR/GBP as IT folks did 2 decades back. Now, some may argue that they should simply try and go abroad if they want such lifestyle and yes, many people join IT with the sole aim of going abroad, it still cannot be generalized. Many IT folks come from middle or lower middle class who have their own set of issues, family constraints etc. which makes it impossible for them to move abroad. Some even have farming to take care of, here. And again, the comparison is simply of the people who live abroad doing the exact same work as the ones living in India. If we start comparing India's IT workforce with other industries, then the whole discussion takes a different turn.

In my opinion, which might be wrong, this attrition will continue till the point Indian folks percieve their worth is somewhat comparable to their counterparts abroad. I am not sure if we can call that 'greed'. What many be might be missing in this process is, as salary increases, responsibility increases so does expectations. Performance, going forward will be scrutinized in detail. India is not having that culture of 'hire and fire' yet, but it soon might happen if labor costs start impacting margins significantly. There is no dearth of Computer Engineers in India, if one person is getting 30 lakhs but not doing a good job, there are two 'techies' half his age ready to work at 15 lakhs, and the company will gladly hire them if needed to get the required results.

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by amol4184

Don't want to dampen the mood of any aspiring experienced candidates or freshers thinking they will all get free ticket to work abroad by joining Infosys, TCS, Wipro after reading above comment - sorry.
This is simply not true. Might have happened in early 2000s but not any more.

Other thing. If you get sent to USA after passing through many filters, they will make zero effort to make you stay there permanently (green card filing). Most of the H1B folks will be sent back after the end of tenure.
Please do your own research on this before making the jump to IT.

Source: my wife and I. And many of my close friends across different companies.

I can vouch for this as well. My wife used to work in Infosys for 9 long years, before we left India. She got through the lottery, interview and was granted a H1B visa. However, internal politics ensured she never travelled. When she came to Australia, the visa officer was shocked to see she had a valid US visa, but had never travelled on it.

[V.Narayan]

IT firm offers free matchmaking services to retain employees, salary hike if they marry

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/tr...y-8460581.html

A Madurai-based IT company has gone to extra lengths to retain its employees. It's offering them free match making services and a hike if they get married.

With around 750 employees, Mookambika Infosolutions has kept its attrition rate below 10 per cent for several years now, the Times of India reported.
The company also gives its employees a fixed 6-8 per cent increment twice a year. But, when it comes to hikes on getting hitched, Mookambika Infosolutions in 2006 started with providing special increments when an employee gets married.

Soon, the Tamil Nadu firm began offering matchmaking services for free. Nearly 40 per cent of Mookambika Infosolutions's employees have been with the company for more than five years.

"There are several long-term employees," MP Selvaganesh told the Times of India. "We cannot take them for granted thinking they will not go anywhere. We give them their due even before any such thought comes to them."

He added that employees reach out to him directly when they face problems.

TCS, Wipro etc might have to think of this.

[ashis89]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

[b]
TCS, Wipro etc might have to think of this.

Afaik TCS already has a similar offer. They gave a one time bonus if two employees married each other. But alas, that was meagre too.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

IT firm offers free matchmaking services to retain employees, salary hike if they marry

TCS, Wipro etc might have to think of this.

IIRC Infosys did something on this aspect (a bonus/gift etc. I believe) long ago in early 2000s. In fact a friends couple (and ex-colleagues) were pretty bummed that though their entire courtship period was while they started their careers together in Infosys, they got married after she jumped ship to another firm and missed out on whatever that was offered by Infosys

[am1m]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

IT firm offers free matchmaking services to retain employees, salary hike if they marry
...
TCS, Wipro etc might have to think of this.

Haha! Now that's thinking out of the box!

But on a serious note, this is a great point- more often than not, something else, with a human touch and done preemptively can go a long way to retaining employees and will be worth more than just a salary hike to several employees.

Not helping with matchmaking of course , but training managers to be more proactive, be people managers rather than project/numbers drivers, just reaching out and making employees feel wanted rather than scrambling to match salaries when the employee puts down their papers, providing some flexibility when needed, rather than blanket company offsites, all go a long way I think. There will always be mercenary employees who are thinking about the next jump even before joining the company, but I think the majority of employees don't want the hassle of going through interviews, negotiating exits and jumping every few years, especially as they get older. It's only when something negative happens at the workplace that they begin the search. And 90% of the time it's related to the immediate manager.

Because of the trend of promoting the best programmer to being the manager, and the fact that the skills that make a good programmer are often diametrically opposite to what make a good people manager, some investment in training first line managers, especially new ones to being people managers would help. And I think it will go a long way to reducing attrition.

[raksrules]

Originally Posted by benbsb29

I can vouch for this as well. My wife used to work in Infosys for 9 long years, before we left India. She got through the lottery, interview and was granted a H1B visa. However, internal politics ensured she never travelled. When she came to Australia, the visa officer was shocked to see she had a valid US visa, but had never travelled on it.

I have worked 14 years in Infosys. I am definitely thankful to Infosys for giving me opportunity to stay, work and earn in US. But sometimes, the managers there just cannot think in commonsense.

There was a point wherein I had come back from US after only spending a year and my US Visa got expired. This meant that in future, I was eligible for Out of Cap (OOC) which means no lottery for me and sureshot (in most cases) H1B for the remainder of period (5 years). My manager raises my L1B (more difficult to get than L1A) even after me telling him it will be rejected and I am eligible for OOC. They didn't listen.

In Infosys, there is internal vetting process before L1A Visa initiation due to very high rejection rate. The person who internally was interviewing me knew I was OOC eligible and told me just on those grounds, he cannot let me L1A to be initiated. I thanked him and told him to write this in email and give which I forwarded to my manager and he then initiated my OOC H1B.

Btw about your wife not travelling, not sure if you / your wife know, but since last 10 years or so, Infosys will not allow you to go for Visa stamping even with an approved petition unless you have been shortlisted for a project for which you will 100% go. This is because before 2010 and so, as soon as lottery results would come in Oct of the year, they would let everyone go for stamping and then those people would wait for their turn to travel and management would make sure they did asap as they didn't want resources with stamped visa sitting at offshore. This has changed in last decade.

[adisan]

The very basis on which the Indian IT industry (especially the service-based companies) works is that it is more cost-effective. A bit surprised to see posts which mention that pay should be equal between other countries and India for the same piece of work. If the same work would not cost lesser in India, then they would have no reason to outsource or to have an offshore office here.

[poloman]

As expected tides have turned. Huge layoffs happening in tech sector specially in startups. Fundings have dried up as well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...-reality-check
https://www.newindianexpress.com/bus...e-2455881.html
https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/...010-2022-05-18

Most tech companies valuation have halved. FAANG companies are bleeding market cap on daily basis.

Companies like Netflix, Nvidia etc have frozen hiring or resorted to layoffs.
This is the level of uncertainty you can expect in IT sector. Things can north or south in a matter of days.

[SoumenD]

Originally Posted by poloman

As expected tides have turned. Huge layoffs happening in tech sector specially in startups. Fundings have dried up as well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...-reality-check

https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/...010-2022-05-18

Netflix situation was expected. There’s a good case study about Netflix on YT. They have been loosing subscribers since a year(or more) for various reasons while other OTT platforms have gained subscribers during the same period (pandemic).

https://youtu.be/bUFVJKwZYP4

Startup valuations were indeed over the roof and anybody expecting those to be sustainable was doing a mistake. Things should rationalise now that market is hitting a plateau. Performance monitoring will be stringent. It’s pointless paying top bucks if you don’t get results. No company here is setup for charity. Similarly deserving employees should get their due.

[poloman]

There has been a bloodbath in tech stocks in last few months. Since this was gradual not many discussions have happened around it. Performance of few major tech stocks in last 6 months.
Amazon: -40%
FB: -43%
Netflix:-72%
Apple: -25%
Nvidia:-50%
Google:-26%
Tesla: -42%
Many IT guys who got astronomical packages will soon feel the pinch, unless some sort of recovery happens. Rationalization will hit such people the first.

I am not even talking about startups which did all sorts of gimmicks to poach talent. These are not sustainable practices they will learn soon.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by poloman

There has been a bloodbath in tech stocks in last few months. Since this was gradual not many discussions have happened around it. Performance of few major tech stocks in last 6 months.
Amazon: -40%
FB: -43%
Netflix:-72%
Apple: -25%
Nvidia:-50%
Google:-26%
Tesla: -42%
Many IT guys who got astronomical packages will soon feel the pinch, unless some sort of recovery happens. Rationalization will hit such people the first.

I am not even talking about startups which did all sorts of gimmicks to poach talent. These are not sustainable practices they will learn soon.

I would really be interested in seeing what these companies that paid 100-200% more to poach talent ( without any longterm plan ) will do now.

I was discussing with a friend who is a CxO in a US startup last week. The VC funding has fully dried up and investors have suddenly started asking for revenue model.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by poloman

Many IT guys who got astronomical packages will soon feel the pinch, unless some sort of recovery happens. Rationalization will hit such people the first.

Will it though? Every time salary numbers go crazy, people have the tendency to think that they are finally getting the salary they truly deserve. That high watermark is considered the true worth. People do that with the prices of their home. If the market falls, most stick to the high watermark and keep waiting for ever.

Now if the salaries start falling, won't people keep thinking about the high watermark and stay unhappy for ever? Just a thought...

[poloman]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Now if the salaries start falling, won't people keep thinking about the high watermark and stay unhappy for ever? Just a thought...

They can feel that way. But does that make any difference? No one is indispensable in the industry. I had learnt this hard way some time back. It is finally the market and a bit of luck, that decide your worth and your salary.

The rigidity on WFH is slowly fading. This itself is a sign of shifting power center back to employers from employees. The empire will strike back sooner or later. Sample this..
If You Don't Like Our Content, You Can Quit: Netflix To Employees
https://www.news18.com/news/tech/if-...s-5186359.html

[Samurai]

If employees remain permanently unhappy, it is not for the employer too. The morale will suffer, efficiency will suffer.

Originally Posted by poloman

If You Don't Like Our Content, You Can Quit: Netflix To Employees
https://www.news18.com/news/tech/if-...s-5186359.html

This has more to do with the culture war thing than job situation. This has to do with the Dave Chappelle show, and how Netflix employees (not customers) wanted to de-platform it.