observing at close quarters, some things are outright amazing about salary packages in india. hopefully other r2i brotheren could get some clues.
- IT jobs pay 2x or 3x when compared to non-it companies., regardless of whether the job is a technical job or not.
- mid-level managers make at par with the lower-quartile of their pay scales in the US. after straight up dollar-to-rupee conversion at Rs.40/$.
- rule of thumb for entry-level positions: the offer you expect to get is about 1.5x(number of years of experience), give or take a bit. yuvajobs has a nice table of what various companies are paying for entry-level positions (freshers).
- fresh grads get anywhere between 4-8 lakhs. 12 lakhs isn’t that uncommon for top institutions. in comparison, your truly was offered a generous Rs.7,000 per month in 1994 from IIT Madras.
and finally - government jobs are pretty much in the toilet. there was a time 15 years ago, when IAS, and other similar jobs were the most sought after. now with IT paying easily 4x, why bother? some mid/low level government officer jobs even pay less than a receptionist at an IT company.
UPDATE: check out reports of pay hikes starting to slow down. here’s the full report from the economic times. this partly could be due to the exchange rates and/or sub-prime financial crises, but my guess is that we’re probably at a point where the salary levels would be fluctuating more organically with the overall world markets.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Vijay // Apr 29, 2008 at 1:48 pm
1985… Rs. 850 stipend as a trainee from a large (now Multi Billion dollar) company… post training salary was Rs. 1050. Went to grad school instead…
2 spandana // Apr 29, 2008 at 4:13 pm
good choice! my driver makes Rs.240/day
3 Vijay // Apr 30, 2008 at 2:54 am
By the way.. thanks to you got on to Twitter
Copy cat that I am
4 spandana // Apr 30, 2008 at 4:52 am
its a fun tool., i think it has more potential than people realize. more on that for a later post.
5 anish // Apr 30, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I am concerned about this being like the housing market. I mean, how much of this is driven by (value) creation? If ti is services-based, there will be a point when the buyer reevaluates the cost of doing business against the yield increase per year. Is the service provided by, say, infosys, resulting in increased product to the tune of 20% each year? Where will it level off?
One one had the cost of living in Bangalore gets so high that you need this much income to afford what’s increasingly becoming a reasonable life (it’s all debatable I know, but let’s assume a house/flat, some mode of transportation, and some savings left over given that medical insurance is not yet all popular). I recall that maybe 4 years back Prestige villas were 45 lakhs each and a 3 bed condo could be had for 15. The salaries were in the 5-6 lakhs range for an experienced professional. These days the salaries are int he range of maybe 15-25, but housing market has gone into the 2 crore range.
I am not going to call any of this an ‘irrational exuberance’ as there is clearly some substance behind all this. The question is, is there enough substance? IT is still only a small percentage of the GDP, that’s in a way comforting.
Anyway - Anil, thanks for providing us all with a good view of the bangalore life. Keep it all up, it is the hands-on information we have been looking for and seeking among all the blogs
6 spandana // Apr 30, 2008 at 5:15 pm
infy and co drive their business by paying their employees substantially below market. i guess you could think of them as bulk buyers of talent., and hence can afford to pay a discount against market. plus, their main cost structure is optimized to take freshers off colleges and grooming them until they grow out of their pay scales.
may be you can factor in this fact: the services (and hence salaries) are no longer driven by a value based pricing model. i.e., companies no longer come to bangalore because we are cheap. they now come to bangalore because people have expertise (both domain and technology) here. so the companies can command a pricing power on par (or even at a premium) with international outfits.
so my guess is that the living stands, prices, pays and, to an extent, cultural values will get on par with silicon valley, and then we are looking at a stop to the bubble. i.e., Rs.2 crore apartments and 50-lakh pay scales. until then, it’s an upward ride.
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