Rising Salary Levels

Fresher Salaries are slowly nearing the 3 lakh barrier and that means a lot of activity would happen in the Industry as I know a lot of folks with 2-3 years experience drawing between 2.5 and 3.5 lakhs. It is sometimes this pressure that makes employees in the experienced category, switch jobs as sometimes, it looks odd, when a fresher earns 95% of your salary, and your experience fetches only a 5 % premium, in case the place where you work does not see the need for increasing your salary.

Infy, CTS and TCS are more or less the same with fresher offers at 2.6-2.7 Lakhs. Infy was to give an across the board 30% hike in April, while Satyam did a rejig of the compensation sometime last year. Cognizant had also hiked its salary levels just a month back and folks drawing 2.7 lakhs were immideately upgraded to 3.5 lakhs pern annum. The hike does look steep, but going by reactions of some of my friends, they said it came a little too late, but were happy that it came.

Satyam Computers was looked at as a bad pay master a few months back, but after the raise given and another huge raise on the anvil( news from close sources), Satyam could wrest the initiative from most of the top companies in the 2-4 years Software engineer segment.

I have some sources at s Engineering college where some 07 batch engineering batch passouts were offered jobs a Satyam Computers at 3.8 Lakhs. In case that happens I foresee major attrition from Indian companies, as the HR folks would have to be on their toes in matching the 15-20% growth rate across the board.

The highest paid guy in my engineering batch was a guy from Oracle with a pay of 6 Lakhs, which seems to be the highest one can get with about 3 years of work ex. Not that higher salaries are not possible, but these salaries are for ordinary software engineers with no great coding skills. There is always the Microsoft/Juniper job that pays 7 and above ( for a work ex of around 2 years plus) for specialised knowledge in a product oriented environmnent.

But at the end of the day, it's the job satisfaction, role offered and office work environment that majorly decides the retention of the employee,than compensation alone.

News Source- The Hindu Business Line- Dated 21st May - Link here