[SoumenD]

Yeah packages are going over the roof but 10 years getting 50LPA is more to do with RSUs than actual base pay. I know a certain kid who bagged some 30LPA in a startup and has 5 years of experience. He suddenly became talk-of-the-town(in our parents’ circle). While I know its a startup and 50% of his pkg is in RSUs, the incident sounded similar to these news articles. Take these with a pinch of salt

Originally Posted by vredesbyrd

I just lost 3 years of my life and they keep offering even higher packages to Tier-1 college graduates. Yes, the world is unfair and I hate it.

This. Never ever do this. Salary comparison with peers is one of the biggest disservice you can do to yourself. Its all about 1-2 jumps and you can make up for all those numbers. You should rather concentrate on what’s in demand around your domain and upgrade skillset making yourself employable. It doesn’t take too long to increase packages. 1-2 jumps will see you earning 100% more in matter of 2-3 years(saying this from 1st hand experience)

[am1m]

What do you guys think about industry-wide, voluntary salary surveys?

The role I work at has a professional association that has been conducting salary surveys for about 10 years now. It didn't have much participation the first couple of years, but of late it's become a very good benchmark. The stats are very good, they provide a snapshot of salaries compared across Indian metros, salary per year of experience, compared to US salaries across the years, mean salaries, median, percentile figures.

I think it's a great idea. When I complain about my salary, I can check and see what percentile I fall in to. Similarly, I would think it's a great resource for people from staffing too to see if demands are reasonable or not.

I never understood why salaries need to be shrouded in so much secrecy. Not saying each person needs to know what the rest of the team makes (though that is pretty much an open secret!), but standard salary data for each role should be made available.

Admittedly, this is from my limited point of view. Would be great to hear from more HR folk and IT business owners on why the industry themselves don't conduct or encourage more salary surveys and publish that data. (Anyway this thread could use more input from a HR/staffing point of view, it's mostly employees like me complaining!)

[kpkeerthi]

Thanks to Mr. Narayana Moorthy and his friends who projected us as "cheap labourers" and built a business model worth billions of dollars where slaves are forced to perform absolutely non-creative and non-innovative "mundane" jobs.

I'm glad that this image is beginning to change. Recent proliferation of startups, indigenous as well as foreign investments, with truly innovative "product" ideas that change lives have proved that Indian talents are more than "IT slaves". This opened up a lot of opportunities for the talented and the companies are more than willing to pay for the talent. This is a good sign as it encourages innovation in its truest sense. Slowly the talent pool started to move from where they were made to work their a** off to where they are respected. This cycle is perpetual and has raised the bar of a Software Engineer that has in turn set up a raise in his worth (his pay).

Another excellent side-effect of this shift is that the industry is slowly beginning to disregard and eliminate managerial positions. The industry just needs "productive" technical roles and not all-talk-no-productivity kind of roles. Sorry managers.

I see all of these as good sign as it drives us (Indian talent) towards contributing constructively towards innovation and real productivity.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by am1m

I never understood why salaries need to be shrouded in so much secrecy. Not saying each person needs to know what the rest of the team makes (though that is pretty much an open secret!), but standard salary data for each role should be made available.

Disclosing salary data often leads to overall increase in compensation (as was seen at executive level). In many places where workers have rights, you can freely disclose your salary without retaliation from the company (eg california). In India you are warned by HR not to disclose your salary.

Imagine you and person X join a team. X comes from a western MNC where they were getting 30LPA, and you come from a consultancy where you were paid 15L.

Now the joining offer for you will be probably 20L, and 35L for the MNC sourced employee. Imagine after a year you are top ranked and you see that you get 15L less than the other person.

This is what scares companies. With public salary data there will be a huge churn with people demanding a raise, and then leaving when they do not get it.

Everybody loves a higher salary, except the people paying you. So whether increasing salaries are good or bad? It depends upon the person being asked the question.


For example, in the USA if you ask a business owner they will say paying a salary which allows someone to have human dignity like a roof on their head and raise a family good, they will say "no" its not sustainable. Living homeless on the streets is perfectly good life.

After covid, alot of these entry level employees just said screw it, and are not working, so the entire service industry is under staffed. I guess after years of neglect and abuse, the employees have an upper hand.
But it will not last, so make hay while the sun shines

[warrioraks]

Originally Posted by neil.jericho

Trust me, at the end of the day, it is all about the money but dont make your career only about your CTC (Cost to a company). Money is not equal to happiness. There is something to be said for career growth and stability within an organization, even if it means losing out on big pay hikes in the open market. That said, too much loyalty can also backfire on you monetarily. All the appreciation emails from senior leaders and LinkedIn testimonials dont mean anything, when you are retired. There is no right or wrong answer on how long you should stay loyal to a company or when you should start looking out.

True words of wisdom

Originally Posted by neil.jericho

So in the next annual hike cycle, when all the other architects in that band are getting a 10% hike, thereby moving the salary range for that band up by 10%, do you think XYZ will also get a 10% hike? No. He will have to wait for the others to catch up to his salary and for his CTC to get normalized for his experience level. So after 3 to 4 years of measly hikes, he is likely to get frustrated and will move to the next organization. Where the same cycle will likely repeat again or XYZ has to find a company where the CTCs were high enough to begin with, that he fits right in to the salary levels of that company.

In my experience, it doesn’t work this way. These so called high CTC grabbers continue to get a nominal hike even if they are on the upper side of the band.

Worst case scenario, if that does not happen - earning 45 lac for 3 years with zero hike is way better than being at 30 lacs and gradually reaching 45 lacs with 10% year on year hikes. Also remember the bonus in most companies is based on fixed salary. So employees having higher fixed salary get bigger bonus cheques (all other things being same).

[kavensri]

Though this is slightly off-topic as this thread is about salary in IT industry, I still thought of posting this message here.
Whether it is 10 LPA or 60 LPA for a 10+ years of experienced IT person, I always wonder why my sister with 25+ years of experience is paid less than 10 LPA. She has been managing a whole branch of a private home loan company in a tier-2 city. Her working hours are worse than mine (I am having 23+ years of experience working for a product MNC) and her responsibilities are also much more (and worse) than mine. Are we going to see any revolution in the salaries of non-IT sector in India?

[am1m]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Imagine after a year you are top ranked and you see that you get 15L less than the other person.

The kind of salary data I was referring to was from a broad, anonymous survey, so you wouldn't necessarily know what person x is getting but broadly what a person with x years of experience is getting for this role in this city. And what percentile/range you fall in to.

[nks81]

I am in engineering and am responsible for growing our team here in India. I completely agree that salaries and offers have gone through the roof. There are many instances I have personally seen where people with 3-4 years experience are getting money thrown at. Close to 35 Lpa + stocks. One thing you have to understand that Indian IT is not just about outsourcing anymore. There are plenty of product companies here and currently we are witnessing a funding boom like never before. And the only mandate with this companies rich with cash is - get talent at any cost. Time will tell whether it is sustainable or not, but the funding boom, the stock market bull run, pandemic costs saving, talent shortage are all linked in this.

[Raghu M]

I'll share my two cents. I belong to the equity research industry but my teams have quite a few tech people for DB support, tool build and overall enhancements. What I have been seeing in the last 6 to 8 months is not very impressive in terms of the industry.

We were supposed to expand for this particular client who was very happy with our work. Tech expansion is directly proportional to research expansion. So, we made offers to 5 SQL experts who had notice periods varying between 60 to 90 days. We look at the market and the average hike we paid to these resources was close to 45% which is pretty good. 2 were supposed to join in the first week of July and the other 3 during the mid of Aug 2021. Joining dates arrive, we have no clue of the candidates. They do not take calls and instead switch off their phones. We try to reach out to them desperately but to no avail. The client pings me in the evening to see if he can speak to the newly joined resources. I had to break the news that we had 'no shows' and are in the process of bringing someone as quickly as we can. As the business has a good relationship, the client agreed. We are looking in the market for these 2 resources and come mid of Aug, the 3 resources (all of them) do not turn up for joining. This hit us really hard. Client drew a blank face and was visibly upset.

They had some expansion and thought it would be smooth with these resources joining and starting work. We try hard to investigate and then find out that all of them took the offer from us and used that offer to bargain higher salaries in the market. While what we offered was pretty good in the market, the candidates still wanted a higher raise. We informed the client of the ground reality, as expected they were not happy. Result - all positions move to Mexico. I look at their pay, and it is lower than what they pay in India. I was shocked. I had a call later to understand what went into their planning.

1. Latin America and Eastern Europe have equally good talent as India
2. Their pay is equal and in most cases less by at least 25%
3. You get good talent and greater experience when compared to India (for experienced roles)
4. Their notice is 2 weeks giving the clients ample time to swap resources in case someone doesn't show up
5. (Shocking point that the client made) They do not keep the client in the dark about another offer and not show up on the joining dates. They are open, speak out and are frank to tell that they will not be able to join in case they do not want to

The India IT industry is facing a tough time right now. While the brighter side looks to be higher salaries, the near future (in under a decade), you will see roles moving to countries like Mexico, Philippines, Europe and even Bangladesh. People need to understand that just taking a high CTC won't work out. They need to be affordable by companies in the long run. I have a friend's sister who is drawing 21 lakhs for just 5 years of experience. While she is good at what she does, the insane hikes she has been able to negotiate with her employer are not going to stand in the long run. Companies are going to see increased running costs and clients will be in no position to consume these costs.

Employees need to be at least truthful when it comes to agreeing to join a company on a particular date. If you do not wish to join and have another offer, you need to at least give a heads up. A company losing one spot (to global competitors) is an IT professional losing a prospective job in the future.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by am1m

The kind of salary data I was referring to was from a broad, anonymous survey, so you wouldn't necessarily know what person x is getting but broadly what a person with x years of experience is getting for this role in this city. And what percentile/range you fall in to.

While a common public salary band ( if you can call it that )looks good on paper, there are too many variables to quantify it. Unless it is standardized, will not serve any purpose.

The same title has different meaning in different companies ( compare the VP in a MNC bank to VP in a software product company ), the technologies and demands at workplace differ a lot ( Sr. software engineer at Infy vs Google?). And irrespective of anything, everyone is a ML Engineer or Data Scientist.

The biggest problem in this is the individual performance. No point in asking in the questionnaire if you are below average/average/above average/Excellent. You know what everyone's answer will be. Then they will demand the same pay as the top performer showing this band.

[AZT]

Originally Posted by kavensri

Are we going to see any revolution in the salaries of non-IT sector in India?

Short answer is unless we have client chargability in USD and paying employees in INR that wont happen. A lotta people have pointed out that base salaries have remained the same since years, this is purely a supply demand gap. We have so many students that a company has no incentive to pay more.

[SnS_12]

IT industry has come a full circle thanks to Covid.

A few months back you would read bhpians quoting having a stable job/pay with 15 - 20 years of experience in the IT industry is challenging and now guys with 10+ years of experience are getting offered 50 to 100% hikes, which is just insane.

100% increase in salary is not a new phenomena and have seen people been paid in other industries for the talent and potential that individual possesses. But, for an industry to see this as a benchmark across the spectrum is definitely new.

Sadly, for smaller setups this would be a big headache as they would have a small core team who would be highly productive and would be the first to be poached by the bigger firms at these high packages and ultimately they will have to pay more to have good talent on board or close shop completely.

But with such high packages most would have a highly altered lifestyle as well and this could turn out to be a debt trap.

In the long run a happy person is who has zero or minimal debt and not the one wo has a high salary.

[hothatchaway]

Originally Posted by am1m

What do you guys think about industry-wide, voluntary salary surve

I never understood why salaries need to be shrouded in so much secrecy. Not saying each person needs to know what the rest of the team makes (though that is pretty much an open secret!), but standard salary data for each role should be made available.

like me complaining!)

While this is an excellent thought and can promote transparency, it is precisely why companies, at least in India, will never allow it. Information is power and controlling access to it and manipulating it is how many managers get their job done.
You don't have to put every employee's pay, down to the last rupee on the intranet, but publishing one's percentile in the same peer group, ie job code is an excellent method of removing the shroud of secrecy around pay. It also communicates very clearly whether that employer pays competitively or not and in fact, will make the line managers job easier as many 1:1 discussions become crib sessions on pay or the lack of it.

Unfortunately, I doubt the very function which claims to advocate employee rights and be the custodian of values etc etc will ever let this see the light of day

[jalsa777]

I would say some fault lies with the hiring managers as well. Too much focus is made on the college from which the degree is got, specific skills, etc. However, there are many out here who have the right learning abilities, who could be star performers, but these are left out in the hunt. Hence the recruiters are chasing a minority and end up paying a lot because of the demand supply gap. While others who narrowly miss the bus for whatever reason are left standing at the bus stop ignored by these recruiters. There are pockets of value out there which are totally untapped.

And for those who work in other fields and have practical IT skills in addition to other skills which could be useful, but are not part of the "IT" bandwagon; I just feel sad for them (it includes me ). They cannot join the IT bandwagon because they don't have 'relevant' experience but have equivalent if not more skill in many cases.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

This is what scares companies. With public salary data there will be a huge churn with people demanding a raise, and then leaving when they do not get it.

What really scares the companies is that people always overestimate their worth. The pareto principle very much works in any core technical team, less so in services I suppose. You often encounter engineers who are 10 times productive than their team mates. Still those don't get 10 times the salary, instead they may get 50% more than the rest. By making less, those 10x engineers are subsidizing the salary of the rest of the team, who are very much required, but are worth 10 times less. If you make the salary figures public, every one of the team mate would want parity with the 10x engineer. They will even quit, there by crippling the team.

How to solve this? Give titles based on ability? Engineers in India are too used to linking salary with years of experience than ability. Also, who is going to measure ability while hiring?