[Samurai]

Originally Posted by DCEite

Slightly OT but these voice bots are not very good at interpreting human voice inputs, atleast as of now.

I am familiar with the Maruti bot, it is indeed bad. However, I am a vendor for many Voice AI companies, and some are very good.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by JediKnight

Forget 50, even people above 40 are having a hard time at least in IT.

From personal experience, job hunting at 40 was certainly much harder than I remember it being when I was in my late 20s or early 30s. Not impossible, but the 'hot' experience bracket for a lot of (non-managerial) IT roles seems to be 5-7 years. So that would be people in their late 20s-early 30s at most.

Originally Posted by m8002?

Now, it is the time of the "Great Return" where people who joined startups are coming back to the larger establishes companies.

Can understand. Have worked at a couple of larger established companies and also at a couple of startups (am at one right now, after a long tenure at a larger org). While the learning is certainly a lot more at the startups, as I get older, I find I miss the predictability of work at a more established org. And I'll be frank, I miss having more mature colleagues around- sometimes I think I'm babysitting during meetings. After a couple of years here, I wouldn't be averse to going back to a bigger org. But for sure the work at the startups have enhanced my resume a lot more in a year than it would have been over 3-5 years at a larger org!

Originally Posted by Samurai

I am still very technical at 54, but I rarely meet others like me. It is little more common in USA, but not in India.

Yep, for my function, it's more common to have (non-managerial) US colleagues who are in their 50s at a (supposedly) junior designation. But they are masters at their game, the title is misleading, even VPs listen to their opinion. In India, these days, I'm quite often among the the oldest in the team. The past couple of times, I've been older than my managers. It's changing, but overall in Indian IT, becoming a manager is still considered the only form of career progression.

Originally Posted by DCEite

Slightly OT but these voice bots are not very good at interpreting human voice inputs, atleast as of now.

Things have certainly changed in the AI voice space. We use voice generation to create marketing content, and the tools have come a long way from what I remember a decade ago. I guess the same advances will happen in voice recognition as well.

[SoumenD]

Following Amazon’s footsteps, Meta too going for 2nd round of layoffs. Around 10k are expected to be affecting this time around. And mostly they will be more tech workers this time around.

Source

[speedmiester]

As I said before, the bad news keep on coming.

Koo has laid off 30% of their workforce. Simpl has let go 25% of their employees.

Even the larger Big 4 have pushed their 2023 batch joining to 2024.

No end to tech layoffs! Now, Twitter rival Koo fires 30 workforce

Layoffs Intensify! Another Indian startup announces job cuts, says ‘re-looking headcount to prepare for new economic reality’ – Details

McKinsey, Bain Delay Some M.B.A. Start Dates to 2024

[UD17]

Originally Posted by condor

During a discussion at office, a team mate mentioned that there's a surplus of skilled resources in the market, making it tough to find openings amidst the current layoff situation.

While searching for an application developer position in Pune, My colleague informed that its very difficult to find the candidate with 25-30LPA budget (for 3-4 years of experience). Few candidates attended the interview and they ask for:

- WFH
-50 to 70% hike wrt current CTC
- Off-sore opportunities
-60 to90 days Notice period

May be my colleague need to adopt some better methods to search for candidates.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by UD17

While searching for an application developer position in Pune, My colleague informed that its very difficult to find the candidate with 25-30LPA budget (for 3-4 years of experience).

May be my colleague need to adopt some better methods to search for candidates.

No, he just needs to wait until he finds candidates who don't suffer from delusions. These folks think it is still FY 2021-2022. Your colleague already has too big a budget.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by Samurai

No, he just needs to wait until he finds candidates who don't suffer from delusions. These folks think it is still FY 2021-2022. Your colleague already has too big a budget.

CEOs getting 200 million, well they deserve it. Canditates asking for more money..? Delusions.
What a world we live in.

CEO to software developer pay is currently 2000X ratio, yet its the developers who are somehow demanding too much money.

[androdev]

It's 2000X harder (at least improbable) to become a CEO. I am not justifying the pay differences but we have to accept capitalism in it's totality.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

CEOs getting 200 million, well they deserve it. Canditates asking for more money..? Delusions.
What a world we live in.

Wait, I am making $200 million? I need to check my bank balance. I have never even made quarter million, not even once. Just because some Big Tech CEO makes 200 million doesn't mean every developer in every other IT company can demand crazy salary. What kind of justification is this?

Originally Posted by tsk1979

CEO to software developer pay is currently 2000X ratio, yet its the developers who are somehow demanding too much money.

I have always been against high CEO pay ratio. And that is not because companies can't afford it, but because of the unfairness of it, and how it affects the morale of the employees.

That doesn't mean I accept unreasonable demands from employees. There is only one CEO, but there are thousands of employees. The CEO pay is never connected to input costs, unless it is a very small company. If you increase employee pay, it directly affects the input cost of the product/service. When input costs increase, it moves the supply curve to the right. It directly hits the bottomline of the company and push it into losses.

Yes. When people don't understand company economics, it does lead to delusions.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by UD17

...My colleague informed that its very difficult to find the candidate with 25-30LPA budget (for 3-4 years of experience). Few candidates attended the interview and they ask...

If it's not a very well-known brand-name company, or a high-growth startup, a lot of the better candidates deliberately quote salary expectations that even they know are outrageous. They have no intention of even attending the interview, but are just seeing if the company is desperate enough to consider making such an offer.

At one job, HR had a really tough time filling positions even though we were willing to match high salary demands. The better candidates just didn't want to work for an 'unknown' IT brand in India, even though we were a solid brand in our domain in the US and paid very well. We started filling in the gaps with internships and a lot of those worked out quite well, it even became a full-fledged program. We never would have tried that if we had not been forced to. We also started giving a lot more importance to employee referrals and stopped relying on recruiting agencies. Referrals turn out to be more serious and a better bet. It takes more time and effort, but time better spent than on recruiting agency resumes and interviews.

Not all candidates are delusional. After interacting with a lot of younger colleagues, I've found that they are just a lot more ruthlessly practical than most of my generation was (or at least I was), at their age.

But the good thing about the Indian labour market (and with the way IT companies recruit en mass, and without any real long-term resource/retention strategy, I think IT now comes under that definition) is there are always candidates. Might have to make some process changes, get creative with total compensation, look beyond big cities for candidates, offer remote work, look at internships to fill gaps, but there are options.



About the long notice periods bit- if a company that's recruiting people themselves have a notice period policy that's more than a month (and I'm not saying the company referred to the the quoted post is one of them- this is more of a general comment), I don't see how they can complain about long notice periods that prevent candidates from joining them sooner! I've seen too many companies like this- have a strict notice period of 2 or 3 months and then ask candidates why they can't join them in a couple of weeks! What a joke.

[WhiteKnight]

In general, age and number of years of experience should not have any relevance to how much one get paid. Unfortunately, very few people and companies understand this.

As an individual, it is important to stay relevant. I have many friends who have been with the top IT services companies for 20 years plus, many of them in one company. Most of them are at some managerial cadre. But, once you dig into their day to day job, it is easy to see they have not been "growing" in what they do. Many jobs there, such as estimating and preparing the right quote for a project, could get automated soon.

Second issue with HR function, which is by far the slowest on the evolution cycle, and are just about learning how to make fire with stones. There are still companies where fresher salary is multi-slab based on the tier of institute one comes from. Unless there is a difference in the job they do, I do not see the logic. Another long running stupidity is raising new-hire salaries every year, without correcting the same for those who joined earlier.

Third is organisations inability to invest in finding the right talent. There is no lack of talent in India, provided one is ready to invest time and energy to unearth and coach.

All the above, create a situation where some people feel that they deserve to be paid high, irrespective of what they can do. As I mentioned, many feed these people too.

Originally Posted by Samurai

If you increase employee pay, it directly affects the input cost of the product/service. When input costs increase, it moves the supply curve to the right. It directly hits the bottomline of the company and push it into losses.

Yes. When people don't understand company economics, it does lead to delusions.

Thank you. Beats me why people don't see these as part of operating costs.

[d.w.w.]

Originally Posted by am1m

The better candidates just didn't want to work for an 'unknown' IT brand in India, even though we were a solid brand in our domain in the US and paid very well.

The problem is with the society mostly. To give a personal example, few years back I switched to a not so famous company because the job description was very interesting. Few months down the line, a neighbor asked me where I am working. I said I work at XYZ and his next question was "Is that a call center?". I said no and then came the next question- "Are you in to support?". Again said no, I'm a developer and he was not convinced, I could see it in his face. After that incident when someone asks me where I work, I say I work at XYZ, its a smaller company and you might not have hears about it.

Anyone who doesn't want to go through such pain about work introduction will choose a known IT brand.

[msdivy]

Apple enters retail in India - https://www.dnaindia.com/business/re...-to-be-3038038

Organised retail jobs in India pay between Rs 25000-Rs 30000. Apple, however, is paying its employees way over Rs 1 lakh per month. In other electronic stores, the same people will receive way less salaries.

Apple is paying its salespeople and managers hefty pays to manage their two flagship stores in Mumbai and Delhi. Those working in these stores are highly educated -- MSC IT, MBA, engineers, BCA, MCA graduates.

The opulence these stores project and the hiring of professionally educated sales people show the company wants its customers to have a premium experience.

[car_is_matic]

I am currently employed at a Japanese telecom company, and unfortunately, the situation here has been deteriorating day by day and month by month. The telecom industry has become increasingly challenging to navigate, and despite our company's recent frenzy of hiring people and startups post-COVID, we have been failing to replicate the success of JIO in India. This has resulted in investors expressing concerns about profitability, leading to the cancellation of significant projects and a freeze on hiring. As a consequence, we are unable to retain senior and vital talents, and I find myself waking up every day with a sense of fear about losing my job.

This fear stems from my career history, which has exposed me to various technologies without allowing me to gain full expertise in any particular domain. My skills are highly specialized and may not be in demand by many other companies, except for a handful. As someone in my 30s, it is concerning not to have a clear domain expertise, making it challenging to decide which domain to pursue if I were to lose my job.

I hope that the current situation improves, and we don't encounter another crisis like Ukraine or COVID, which could further exacerbate the situation.

[ketan007]

Slightly off-topic on salary expectations,

A few years ago, I was interviewed by a product manager at a decently big company in Finland. And he asked me about my salary expectations in Euros. I quoted my figure, to which he calmly told me that the MD of the company makes slightly more than this, so it's impossible to offer such an amount. He explained the concept of pay parity, which was new to me then. Maybe it was my fault for not researching enough about the location/country before quoting my expectations and demanding a salary that might be fair in larger cities in Germany or the Netherlands.