[KL01toKA03]

Originally Posted by m8002?

You want to have your cake and eat it too!! Why would they setup the whole infra in Trivandrum if they have to pay the Bangalore salaries? And if another competitor moves to Trivandrum with a higher package, will you remain loyal to your company?

You could also look at the same thing from another perspective. If a new company sets up an office, why should they spend considerably more to set up an office in the costliest part of a costly city. When you look at the problem from the perspective of cost, smaller cities make sense. My loyalty would be higher closer to home since there would be a lower chance that some other company would exceed the salary I currently get.

Originally Posted by m8002?

Ultimately, what matters is what the city offers as a package. Walk into any engineering college and check, given the same starting salary, which city do the grads prefer.

Agree with the sentiment. However, the answer may change depending on who answers the question. Even in my case, I preferred to work in a big metro when I was in college. After working in Gurgaon for a few years, I never wanted to leave that city. Still, I did not refuse a good opportunity in Bengaluru. I've been in this city for 10+ years, and I love the city. Having 2 houses in the city means that I wouldn't consider a move to any other city. However, after a few years, when my parents get older and may require my presence I do not rule out a move to Trivandrum if the right opportunity presents itself.

Originally Posted by m8002?

And its the same in all parts of the world. Why are people flocking to Bay Area/Seattle or London? why doesnt MSFT or Apple open a dev center in North Dakota or Wyoming?

I think people are flocking to places because the opportunities are there. If high paying jobs move to any tier 2 city, that city would also get the "package" which that crowd wants. You can even see that in action in the metros. When I bought a house in Bangalore, it was in a place where there weren't to many shops around. After people started moving to the place, and more apartments started getting built, there isn't anything you wouldn't find in this locality. My point is that cities or localities evolve to suit its inhabitants.

Originally Posted by hothatchaway

I think the people in charge of staffing, ie HR is either just looking to do enough to keep their own jobs by playing the bidding war and hiring replacements at market cost or don't have the authority to start the debate that you mentioned.

I agree. Not many are prepared to think outside what has been done for a long time.

[Latheesh]

Originally Posted by jalsa777

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.

I know few key people in my company and other companies (IT) and know their background. Most of them are not from computer science stream. They are from core engineering field (Mechanical, Electrical, EC etc.) and worked in industries few years before moving to IT companies. They don't even talk like stereotypical IT managers and most of them excel in their IT company career. They not only know what and how to do work but also know why they do it. Domain knowledge play key role in the long run and this come from actual industry/hands-on experience. They know what their client expect, what to ask their client, and understands when client talk/explain something.

Some of my friends/colleagues are very good at their work in IT companies and are from Civil, Pharma, and business management streams.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by KL01toKA03

You could also look at the same thing from another perspective. If a new company sets up an office, why should they spend considerably more to set up an office in the costliest part of a costly city. When you look at the problem from the perspective of cost, smaller cities make sense. My loyalty would be higher closer to home since there would be a lower chance that some other company would exceed the salary I currently get.

Agree with the sentiment. However, the answer may change depending on who answers the question. Even in my case, I preferred to work in a big metro when I was in college. After working in Gurgaon for a few years, I never wanted to leave that city. Still, I did not refuse a good opportunity in Bengaluru. I've been in this city for 10+ years, and I love the city. Having 2 houses in the city means that I wouldn't consider a move to any other city. However, after a few years, when my parents get older and may require my presence I do not rule out a move to Trivandrum if the right opportunity presents itself.

I totally get where you are coming from. What I dont agree with you is your need to get paid the same salary you get in Bangalore at Trivandrum. Also, you are talking about a very specific profile of folks who want to relocate back. Problem is, I cannot setup a 300 or 500 employee office with just this profile.

As someone wanting to setup a 300 employee branch, where do you think I have better chances of quickly getting people at different levels and operationalize the office? I would pay the higher rentals and set it up in Bangalore ( since you want the same pay for Trivandrum).

We know that many IT services companies have tried the satellite office approach with cities like Mysore, Coimbatore, Trivandrum, Mangalore, etc. I dont think they are successful in developing those.

Our admin Samurai is one who actually walked the talk on this. He can better explain the challenges he faced and how he overcame them. But not all companies will be willing to spare time and resources for such things.

Originally Posted by KL01toKA03

I think people are flocking to places because the opportunities are there. If high paying jobs move to any tier 2 city, that city would also get the "package" which that crowd wants. You can even see that in action in the metros. When I bought a house in Bangalore, it was in a place where there weren't to many shops around. After people started moving to the place, and more apartments started getting built, there isn't anything you wouldn't find in this locality. My point is that cities or localities evolve to suit its inhabitants.

In your real estate case, did you pay the same amount for your house as the prevailing rate in Indira Nagar/Koramangala or a much lower price? There is a cost/premium to a place already established with opportunities.

Most of the cities started out on an even level 30 years back and its only natural that some clusters get formed. No one forced companies to choose Bangalore to setup their offices.

I guess we are going off topic with this discussion. Nevertheless, a good one!

[texens]

As a Software Engineer with over 10 years of experience in the industry, and having worked at various Product companies - MNCs as well as startups in India and US, let me share my learnings/observations over the years. These are based on my personal conversations as well as information publicly available on anonymous crowdsourcing websites.

A. Salaries

Salaries are at an all time high right now, but this is not a new trend - it has been gradually happening over the years without much of a slowdown. The more value a company generates, the more it can afford to pay to it's engineers who generate this value.
If you take a look at stock price of any of the top MNCs - Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. they're growing at anywhere between 30% - 50% per annum. ADBE grew 500% in last 5 years. GOOG has grown 75% in the last 1 year. Check out the below link to get crowd sourced numbers. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Soft...ngineer/India/
At the top tier, people with 10-20 years of experience are making anywhere b/w 1 Cr to 3+ Cr per year.
And this trend will keep moving north as long as there is a wide gap between what a company pays in US and what it pays in India. India provides talent at par with what one can get in the US - so, it makes sense for companies to move more and more positions from US to India.

B. Salary Composition

The following are the major components in IT salary at top MNCs today:

1. Base salary
2. Bonus (the more senior you are, the higher your bonus range goes).
3. New-hire Equity grant (RSU) - usually vests over a 4 year period. But the beauty of RSUs is that the number of RSUs is fixed right when you join. And by the time these vest in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th year - they would have already grown.
4. Annual Equity Refresher: This is similar to performance bonus (#2 above) but is given in the form of RSUs - these usually vest over a 4 year period. Again the same compounding happens here as well.
5. Joining Bonus: This is usually a one-time joining bonus that you get when you join the company. It is usually provided so that the new employer can compensate for any losses you might have due to leaving the current company (such as you're expecting to get your annual bonus in 3 months, etc.)

C. Interviewing

In product companies, a typical interview process with a company looks like this:

1. Recruiter reaches out to you and shares the job role, etc.
2. Technical Screening (Phone screen) of about 1 hour: An engineer from the company would ask you 1 or 2 technical questions - related to problem solving and algorithms, and you have to come up with an optimal solution to the problem and write code for it, etc. The idea behind this phone screen is to decide whether the company wants to invest the time and money in interviewing you.
3. If you clear the phone screen, you'll have a full on-site. This can consist of anything b/w 4 to 6 technical/behavioral/Hiring Manager rounds of 1 hour each spread over 1 or more days.
4. The company will have a debrief to decide whether to hire you or not. And will share their decision with you over the next couple weeks.

All in all, one has to go through at least 10 hours of discussion/interviews for every single company one has to apply at. This does not include the typical preparation time - it usually takes 1-3 months of preparation before one starts the interview cycle.

IMHO, compared to other sectors - this is a lot of time and effort for interviewing. My wife is a doctor, and people literally put their lives in her hands. I've seen her landing jobs over a 15 minute phone call! Obviously my sample size is extremely small, so please don't get offended if you're in a sector where interviews are far more demanding. My only intention here is to rant

D. Salary Negotiation

The way salary negotiations are happening off late - companies want to pay you the minimum possible to hire you (makes sense from their point of view to maximize profit). So, unless you have a competing offer, they will just give you a 20-30% increment on top of your current salary. They know that the candidate will take it.
Hence, I always advise my friends to apply to at least 4 or more companies - so that they have multiple offers and can use them as competing offers to maximize their earnings (lookup BATNA). It's a business transaction - the candidate has skills that the companies need and are willing to pay a premium for it - and they will try to buy it at the least possible cost to them.

[Satish Pari]

A friend of mine recently quit his job with an Indian IT major and when I asked him why, his answer was "I have offers ranging from 70% to 100% of my current CTC". Well I did not know what to say as there are other friends from Non IT industries who have lost their jobs and are struggling for survival.

As a senior freelance Learning & Development consultant, the pandemic has taken a toll on me. And frankly I do not know how long this is going to last - and as a few members had mentioned people like my friend in IT are making hay while the sun shines.

[Gansan]

Originally Posted by Latheesh

Some of my friends/colleagues are very good technical people in their IT companies and are from Civil, Pharma, and business management stream.

I am reminded of my late uncle who passed away more than a decade ago. He was a BA Mathematics (not B.Sc - mathematics was an art then!) graduate from a prestigious college of Chennai, with typewriting and shorthand as additional qualifications, during the late 50's. He worked as a stenographer in a couple of companies before eventually moving to Britannia Industries, where also he was working as PA to the GM (Fin).
Sometime in the early 70's Britannia planned to computerize their accounts and a few other functions. Those were the Punch card & Huge spools of tape days for computers. IBM was the chosen company. IBM wanted to conduct an exam for whoever from Britannia wanted to attend it, to select a handful of people whom they will train and eventually hand over the job, with hand holding support from them for a while. And then these guys will be on their own.

His boss decided only people from Finance department, in Finance function will write the exam. My uncle was excluded because he was a PA. The exam day neared, when the IBM people caught wind of what was going on. They clearly told Britannia whoever wanted to write the exam should be allowed, irrespective of whatever function they worked in, provided they had the basic minimum qualification required.

My uncle topped the exam and was chosen as the leader of the fledgling team. Three more people from some other functions qualified, and none qualified from Finance! My uncle eventually retired as Manager (IT) of the company in the mid 90's, after quite a few extensions of service.

[StepUP!]

While I am happy for some who are bagging unbelievable salaries, I am sure the same organizations will fire them at a drop of a hat when tide turns stating rationalization or getting lean or what not.

I have zero sympathy for IT industry. These are the same jerks who

1. Underpay major chunk of employees while making shareholders and top bosses happy - financing their fat pay cheques, vacations, ESPOs, business class travels
2. Downright ignore concerns until he/she resigns
3. Rarely pay 100% of variable component even when company is doing good. For junior / mid-level folks’ salaries, market is always bad to take the hit on their salary.
4. Pay scarcity is unbelievable, at what rate a resource (as they call) is billed to client and what he/she is paid viz a viz how much top management draw. Where do the billion dollars won on new clients/contract go?
5. Hire people and deny them basic desk and a system because they are yet to be assigned on a project. So meanwhile who will bear this cost? Imagine being in an IT company and don't have a system, place and still you are required to be in office.
6. Cram 2x people in the available space, wherein even when you breathe out, it hits someone, all the time you hear someone talking over phone in your ear. If your workplace catches fire, you will have to stomp upon people to make a way
7. Fired people at their will with no accountability
8. Come up with 9-10 hrs in office rules which made employees' lives miserable. Especially the ones who had to travel a lot and get stuck in traffic for hours
9. Denied WFH flexibility even once a week or month in the name of discipline, client contract, your face is precious, blah blah
10. 3/4 months notice period

My experience - Indian management lack spine. They don't stand up for what is right and instead just choose to please their bosses or always say YES to client. Sycophantic.

I work in a TOP US MNC whose major chunk of employees are Indians. What I see, to name a few,

• Europeans can take off at the drop off a hat. Xmas, Summer, ad-hoc, hobby holidays; no matter the criticality of the project. They are "entitled". How much? at least 2-3 weeks every time. When we ask for Diwali holidays, we are asked to celebrate Diwali during Xmas!
• A Poland employee with 3-4 yrs of experience when travels to India, flies business class, staying in 5* hotel, hotel to office drop in a car, getting x euros amount of per diem every day with no questions asked VIZ A VIZ 10 yrs of experience brown employee, we get 0.5x per diem, that too we have to gather bills for, share accommodation in a service apartment, travel by public transport, fly by cheapest airline
• This inbuilt racism is obnoxious. So called MNCs have different rules based on color of your skin or your nationality. Indian managers always advise our people to adjust and behave as if you being at onsite, is a gigantic favor bestowed upon by the company

No one in market is ready to wait for a quarter to hire you. I was trying for more than year and finally in this tide, I bagged 3 offers.
So yes, my advise, act in your best interest, everything else about this crony capitalist industry is passé.

[ashking101]

Originally Posted by Latheesh

I know few key people in my company and other companies (IT) and know their background. Most of them are not from computer science stream. They are from core engineering field (Mechanical, Electrical, EC etc.) and worked in industries few years before moving to IT companies. They don't even talk like stereotypical IT managers and most of them excel in their IT company career. They not only know what and how to do work but also know why they do it. Domain knowledge play key role in the long run and this come from actual industry/hands-on experience. They know what their client expect, what to ask their client, and understands when client talk/explain something.

Some of my friends/colleagues are very good at their work in IT companies and are from Civil, Pharma, and business management streams.

Agree with you 100%. I work in one of the top Indian IT services company and have more than 15 years experience in the IT field. I would say only 15-18% of my company's workforce is from computer science background (MCA, B.E. /B.Tech. IT, MS IT, etc.). Rest of the employees are engineering/science graduates from other streams.

As long as an employee has the commitment to perform and willingness to learn the IT and soft skills necessary to excel in the project area they are working on, management doesn't care which stream they are from. And there is no constraint with respect to the salary. Since everyone is paid on par irrespective of the streams they are from, the attrition rate is also very low.

By the way, my qualification is B.Tech. in Aeronautical Engineering and I switched over to the IT field in 2006. Still keeps going, by God's grace. And I am happy with my IT career.

[NDK286]

Two things (possibly naïve observations)-

1. Maybe its not just people getting offered a hike of 50%+ , but maybe people were being underpaid by 50%+ ? And the whole corona thing is just forcing companies to adjust ?

2. I never understood why CTC is used as a primary figure in salary negotiations. Yes, its super relevant to the company but to me, as an employee, I would be more interested in Take home . Or even Gross salary. When I last worked in India, I told HR that I wanted to negotiate on Take Home alone.

[sunilch]

Originally Posted by StepUP!

I work in a TOP US MNC whose major chunk of employees are Indians. What I see, to name a few,

• Europeans can take off at the drop off a hat. Xmas, Summer, ad-hoc, hobby holidays; no matter the criticality of the project. They are "entitled". How much? at least 2-3 weeks every time. When we ask for Diwali holidays, we are asked to celebrate Diwali during Xmas!
• A Poland employee with 3-4 yrs of experience when travels to India, flies business class, staying in 5* hotel, hotel to office drop in a car, getting x euros amount of per diem every day with no questions asked VIZ A VIZ 10 yrs of experience brown employee, we get 0.5x per diem, that too we have to gather bills for, share accommodation in a service apartment, travel by public transport, fly by cheapest airline
• This inbuilt racism is obnoxious. So called MNCs have different rules based on color of your skin or your nationality. Indian managers always advise our people to adjust and behave as if you being at onsite, is a gigantic favor bestowed upon by the company

All such policies/rules are defined, approved and adjusted by India Management. The same management will enjoy your above stated benefits on their own and also as regular employees when they shift to another location (international). But they ask everyone to adjust so that they can show that they managed to run the operations at X% lower cost of what was budgeted.

I have personal experience in this regard. Despite having desired approvals and policies in place, my local managers would ask me (sometimes directly) to adjust and make compromises on accommodation, food, taxi, etc. wherever possible. This was at a large captive setup of a Fortune 10 US based company. I blame this on the background of the management. They were mostly from Services background where counting number of coffee breaks was also very important function for them.

Originally Posted by sunilch

Having said this, not every company in India is capable of paying this much to all such developers. Simply because of two reasons:

1) Their business model won't support them
2) Not everyone deserves this pay

Further to add, Indian IT Industry is a very broad term used by our media to group every sort of technology company into one umbrella. Below are some of the groups where working dynamics are different from others:

1) IT Services companies (Infy, TCS, Wipro, MindTree, etc)
2) Captive Setup of a Tech Company (Any IT Product Company from US, EU
3) Captive Setup of a Financial Giant (JPMorgan, MS, GS, etc)
4) So called FAANG block
5) Captive Setup of a non-IT Giant/MNC (Nokia, Samsung, Emerson, Eaton, etc)
6) Non programming IT work
7) and more.

Each groups demand/supply equation is different. But what you read in headlines is only what easily catches eyeballs.

[rajeshsundaram]

Crazy times. Here is an experience I wish to share. Not mine's by my school buddy's.

One of my school buddy is a freelance developer. He left CTS and started freelancing 6-7 years ago. He ventured into Online food magazine which performed decently. But soon Instagram took the whole chunk. He then returned to freelance development again.

Now, he tried to setup a team of devs (college freshers) as he was getting good amount of contract orders. But unfortunately, the demands from freshers were unbelievable as per his experience. The 4LPA is the base norm, and one of the fresher even demanded 6LPA as he already has a 4.5LPA offer at his hand. Now, the catch is, these freshers were from a Tier 2 city in north west part of TN.

My friend says he did not even picked the resumes of freshers from Tier 1 cities citing the salary demand.

He tried to hire few 2-3 year experienced developers (React / JS) and got his fingers burned. 15LPA was the demanded salary by one candidate. And the candidate was not even demonstrating credible prowess in React.

Now he has tied up with a body staffing firm in Chennai and negotiating to hire freshers through them.

My friend says that the Bangalore market is totally crazy now. Startups and Entrepreneurs with good funding are part of the reason for such hiring mess. He says, if this goes on - only startups/businesses with deep pockets can sustain.

[CarJunki]

Originally Posted by Samurai

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.

This holds true only in places where hiring and retention is based on size of ego rather than capabilities. If the hiring people are themselves incompetent in evaluating, the company will end up with deadwood getting valued highly.

What stops any company from paying 10x to a 10x capable engineer?
The issues may be structural to certain type of business models. If the revenue stream of the company is X number of people working for Y number of hours and getting billed, everyone will be paid the lowest possible. There is simply no other way of making a profit with such a business model.
Indian IT service companies are inherently on this model alone.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by CarJunki

What stops any company from paying 10x to a 10x capable engineer?

Nothing, many companies are paying 10x to 10x engineers. However, they are also paying 6x to 8x to 1x - 2x engineers.

[Latheesh]

I checked with few of my friends and crazy offers are not far and few. There are many cases of 60-100% hikes in the recent past and all these offers are in Bangalore. Some of these people were happily working and settled in cities like Chennai/Kolkata and now or ready to move because of awesome offers.

[texens]

Originally Posted by rajeshsundaram

My friend says that the Bangalore market is totally crazy now. Startups and Entrepreneurs with good funding are part of the reason for such hiring mess. He says, if this goes on - only startups/businesses with deep pockets can sustain.

IMHO, hiring mess may not be the most appropriate term to describe the current scenario. If a company is willing to pay 2x compared to what another company is paying, it basically means that the first company is able to generate more value from the same resource, compared to the second company. The second company needs to innovate and explore how it can cut down it's costs elsewhere so that it can match the market pay for it's employees or potential new-hires. If the company can't innovate, it will simply perish - and this is not something new - it has been happening since the beginning of trade and commerce - there are lots of examples of this from our recent past.