[am1m]

Originally Posted by m8002?

But people need to be fully aware of the macro environment they are in.

Very true. It's unfortunate that recruitment has devolved into this, but it's been that way for a long time now.

Quite a few companies and employees don't seem to realize the importance of showing professional behavior during the process. The only good thing about this state of affairs is that it can make you stand out when you exhibit the bare minimum professional courtesy.

There is no downside to keeping people informed. And it hardly takes any time. I've been remembered by a recruiter once he shifted jobs and had another opening for my profile at his new company, just for politely following up while I was interacting with him at his previous role. Similarly, I've remembered a very professional recruiter and referred someone I knew for a role that I didn't take up (work location didn't suit me), and that I knew she was desperate to fill. Basic courtesy pays off, both ways.

[Yieldway17]

Originally Posted by m8002?

Is the company's current action right or not? I think its not but I guess its about as right or wrong as employees ghosting the employers.

Ghosting was extremely bad last year, better this year but still happens. Just 2 weeks back had to go through cancelling all the pre-onboarding work done for an employee who didn't turn up on the day of joining. We even had laptop configured and ready to use. The person simply switched off the phone and didn't reply to texts or emails on the day. And the TA and hiring team was keeping them warm over the 60 days by checking in with them every alternate week.

Plain unprofessional behavior by some people.

[harishpr]

What goes up must come down, and vice-versa!! It’s a cycle and this cycle has no fixed duration. It might sound philosophical and I’ve been at the both end of spectrum.
As a junior engineer, I switched jobs at short intervals for small hikes, and as I matured, I have stayed in my job for many years. I got fired for no reason of mine and stayed jobless for few months, and I blamed everyone including the almighty.
The reality is that almighty has better plans for everyone and we must stay humble.
During 2008 meltdown, it was employers market and soon after , it turned to employees market with fat hikes.
During covid, it was employees market with multiple offers with 4x jump in salaries. With Ukraine war and western inflation, the tide has turned.
It’s a matter of time (maybe 2024 or 2025), the cycle will reverse.

My ultimate submission is ,
Those starting your career or so called juniors, invest more than you want to spend.
Those in midlife crisis, be the petrolhead with not committing more than 30% of your income to cars and EMIs, and save the rest.

Don’t blame anyone for what happens including the almighty or your employer. In corporate life, you and me are like end of the cigarette bud (once juice is over, rest gets thrown out )

[AirbusCapt]

I would call the type of thinking on this thread the great Indian middle class cross.

Allow me to explain. For generations now the middle class has chosen to accept the cross of morality on its shoulders. The rich are never at fault, the poor are blameless and the middle class alone is responsible to bear all the ills and carry on with protecting the truth, honour and be civilized.

Hence, cheating companies are never wrong. Instead please blame the ghosting employees and job hoppers. These folks have made the otherwise Ram avatar companies into unethical crooks. Instead, the employee must feel grateful for a job, accept his fate if he is thrown out and feel like the useless butt of a cigarette?

Just consider this, if your housemaid job hops, and ghosts you, you must be a bad employer. If you make her an offer and then retract it, you are a bad employer. However, when this applies to an IT company, please start blaming the employee.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

Just consider this, if your housemaid job hops, ghosts you, you must be a bad employeer, if you make her and offer and then redract, you are a bad employer. However when this applies to a IT company, please start blaming the employee.

Nopes. Nobody blames the tenant / owner (unless you are referring to the gossip between maids). Instead the maid is badmouthed by us. A maid that has been working for years is always praised (if she's doing her job well). Another very common relatable case is with nannies - they jump ship for greener pastures with very short notice. No one questions if the baby being managed was tough or the parents weren't paying well, etc.

[JediKnight]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

A maid that has been working for years is always praised (if she's doing her job well).

We have a long standing maid. My wife is sponsoring her two kids school tuition in addition to her already good salary. Plus she keeps showering her with gifts now and then.

In contrast I diligently worked 7 years in my first company. Freshly scrubbed middle class Indian kid who knew nothing other than working hard and "respecting" elders. At the end of the the 7th year I was 50% behind in salary than the market. My managers must have laughed during the appraisal cycle - "This Jedi kid is a good worker. But no need to pay him. He is too 'seedha saadha'. Just give him lots of work so he remains busy."

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

Hence the cheating companies are never wrong, instead please blame the ghoster enployees and job hoppers. These folks have made the otherwise ram avatar companies into unethical crooks. Instead, the employee must feel grateful for a job, accept his fate if he is thrown out and feel like the useless butt of a ciggarate?

Where do you see this sentiment, surely not in this forum?

We have an entire thread dedicated to discussing the shenanigans of startup companies. We excoriate anyone who deserves it in a given circumstance.

Recently, a relative told me an Indian company is offering 24L for freshers in college placement. This is at a tier-3 college. After getting back on my chair, I googled their losses. Their losses crossed a billion dollar last year itself. No wonder... Only a company that could afford to piss away that much money can offer that kind of salary to freshers. They obviously don't understand that input cost must be lower than their revenues. I am sure they are a great company in the eyes of employees, but they are not really running a business. It is basically Iski Topi Uske Sarr. Such employers are admired these days.

But outside the mad mad world of funded companies, why do businesses hire and fire? Sometimes for survival, sometimes for profits. But companies can fail if they don't hire when they have paying customers, and don't fire when they have no customers. If you do expect the company to not fire when there is no customers, then you have to accept if the company retains the profit for the winter days. A company that pays very high salaries can't ensure job security at the same time.

In India, IT is one rare industry where employees chose high pay over job security. The trend of low pay with full job security will not be acceptable to almost everyone. This is the reality of the industry. High reward comes with high risk.

[Ranabegins]

I work in the US staffing industry for the last 8+ years and I can confidently say that this is the worse job market I have seen. I see endless posts on LinkedIn daily from people who have been laid off and apart from this most of my client's requirement flow has decreased by 90%. This has led to mass layoffs in my industry as well as all the connected industries in India. A lot of people are sitting on bench without any work as a result of the above phenomena.
One more point to mention is that the number of remote jobs in the US has fallen considerably and most clients want candidates who can come onsite.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by JediKnight

We have a long standing maid. My wife is sponsoring her two kids school tuition in addition to her already good salary. Plus she keeps showering her with gifts now and then.

Can you still do it if you had 100 maids or 10000 maids to pay?

All these comparisons to maids are not accurate.

How many of you pay more than 5% of your income to maids? Most IT companies pay over 50% of their revenue as salaries. If anyone here is paying more than 50% of income to your maid, then I would like to know what your HR policy will be when you lose a job. Will you still keep the maid at that salary?

I know nobody pays so much to maids. Take it as a hypothetical exercise. Then you can probably understand why companies act the way they do.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Samurai

How many of you pay more than 5% of your income to maids? Most IT companies pay over 50% of their revenue as salaries. If anyone here is paying more than 50% of income to your maid, then I would like to know what your HR policy will be when you lose a job. Will you still keep the maid at that salary?

A most sensible explanation. Thank you Samurai San. This is understood by employers but rarely if never by employees. You have put it in simple terms. In IT the cost per employee is so high in both absolute terms and as a function of revenues that when orders are lost cutting employees & senior management pay is one major way to save the company from sinking. In manufacturing under cost of production {i.e. above the gross profit margin line} you have cost of employee + facilities/factories + raw materials + inventory + depreciation on machinery. In IT you have cost employee + facilities and a relatively smaller amount on depreciation

On a different tangent these last few months my sympathies are with employees given the continuing mayhem in the IT industry world wide. Sadly, rather very sadly some leaders and Boards in the industry have been most unstatesmanlike by giving CEOs large bonuses while laying off juniors. The sheer insensitivity of both the action and the timing indicates a hollowness that is deplorable.

[Acharya]

My Niece is joining one of the top investment banks in Bangalore, in the Tech team, fresh out of her college with Salary of 36 LPA.
Another known graduate is joining top software firm for 50L+.

These kind of fresher salaries are becoming more and more common, not constricting only to the campuses of IITs. Kids in NITs, Pilani, RV colleges (& many more institutes) are grabbing such offers. Btw, the companies which are offering such packages are not startups or loss making entities but leading firms in their respective business domains. This puts pressure on top Indian firms as well, who want to hire top talent.

Evidently, there are firms that put high weightage to intelligence, caliber and hard working abilities of these blokes and try to offer them salaries similar to global standards. Nothing wrong in it, in fact, I'm quite pleased to see this progress.

On the other hand there are companies which continue to pay what they used to pay to freshers 20 years ago.
Well, what can be said about them, reminds me of an old joke about one of the WITCH companies - "Lalji has not changed his underlying business of making oil, instead of vegetables, he now uses people"


Talking about household help's salaries - if I am running a business of providing household help as a service (HHAS ), I would expect my salary outflow to be in the range of 50-60% of business income.

Originally Posted by Samurai

Recently, a relative told me an Indian company is offering 24L for freshers in college placement. This is at a tier-3 college. After getting back on my chair, I googled their losses. Their losses crossed a billion dollar last year itself. No wonder... Only a company that could afford to piss away that much money can offer that kind of salary to freshers. They obviously don't understand that input cost must be lower than their revenues.

How many of you pay more than 5% of your income to maids?

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Acharya

Btw, the companies which are offering such packages are not startups or loss making entities but leading firms in their respective business domains.

Evidently, there are firms that put high weightage to intelligence, caliber and hard working abilities of these blokes and try to offer them salaries similar to global standards. Nothing wrong in it, in fact, I'm quite pleased to see this progress.

I am curious to know a few things:
1) You said freshers, what kind of work are they doing that allows these companies to make so much money from their intelligence, creativity and hard-work to dole out those kinds of monies?
2) Salaries everywhere are based on the cost of living, 36 lakhs per annum in Bangalore translates to how much in San Francisco / New York; and are freshers being equivalent there?
3) What percent of that package is incentives against some kind of quota or performance?

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Acharya

These kind of fresher salaries are becoming more and more common, not constricting only to the campuses of IITs. Kids in NITs, Pilani, RV colleges (& many more institutes) are grabbing such offers. Btw, the companies which are offering such packages are not startups or loss making entities but leading firms in their respective business domains.

Evidently, there are firms that put high weightage to intelligence, caliber and hard working abilities of these blokes and try to offer them salaries similar to global standards. Nothing wrong in it, in fact, I'm quite pleased to see this progress.

All you just told me is that even profitable companies are ignoring economics when it comes to hiring freshers. Strangely enough, this one can be explained. They are competing for talent with funded companies who are ignoring economics. So they are forced to play the game they don't want to play, but they can at least afford it.

I am not at all pleased with this situation. This is destroying domestic software services more than ever. And we need domestic software services to grow, but it won't happen because the IT wages are dictated by what US customers can pay for similar services.

If a fresher is making 50L+, what he/she is expected to do after 5 years or 10 years later? How many jobs will be available for a person who started the career with 50L? What kind of expensive lifestyle will this person develop in the 20s?

Also, this creates extremely unstable job situation. High salaries will mean companies carry very high risk of shutting down at slightly negative market condition. It will be like "Oops, we lost a contract, and that means we can't pay salary next month".

TCS recently deferred all lateral hires for 3 months fully knowing the reputation damage it will inflict. But that is clearly an economics based decision they were forced to take. Just imagine how it will affect medium to smaller companies.

Originally Posted by Acharya

Talking about household help's salaries - if I am running a business of providing household help as a service (HHAS ), I would expect my salary outflow to be in the range of 50-60% of business income.

And if you lose 25% of your customers, will you keep paying the salaries of all your employees?

[Acharya]

Offer was given after 3 months of internship, during which she was supposed to create complex financial compliance reports using proprietary coding language (similar to python). Towards the end of the internship, each intern had to present their work to group head and the feedback in her case was - how could one person do this work in 8-10 weeks, it would require a full fledge project team to create this!!

My rule of thumb calculation, 36 LPA would mean somewhere around $110 - 120k.

Package is pretty much standard with 75% fixed and 25% variable / ESOPs.

Originally Posted by alpha1

I am curious to know a few things:
1) You said freshers, what kind of work are they doing that allows these companies to make so much money from their intelligence, creativity and hard-work to dole out those kinds of monies?
2) Salaries everywhere are based on the cost of living, 36 lakhs per annum in Bangalore translates to how much in San Francisco / New York; and are freshers being equivalent there?
3) What percent of that package is incentives against some kind of quota or performance?

[sdp1975]

I was reading a social media post where a MTech from NIIT had bagged a 35L offer from campus but the offer was later rescinded citing the market conditions. He was then having a hard time finding even a 10L offer.

Offers of 30/50 lacs are exceptions and not the norm. How many folks land such offers ? A far better way to see is the median salary of campus hires.

From https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...w/97699635.cms :

Not all IIT graduates are lucky to grab lucrative salaries as a new report on Tuesday revealed that students obtaining jobs with a higher CTC (Rs 50 lakh and above per annum) constitute only 5.5 per cent of the total pool, translating into just 960 students.

The analysis revealed that nearly 54 per cent of total students in the top tier of IITs (7,020) and 50 per cent of students in the next tier of IITs (2,250) receive job offers with salary packages in the range of Rs 10 to 16 lakh per annum.