An article on IBN Live says that “fat salary hikes in the IT industry may soon be a thing of the past”. The article quotes S Padmanabhan, ED and Head-HR,

“What we are experiencing this year is a stability in wages. Last year, we had a 12 per cent –15 per cent increase in wages and my own expectation is that this year the wages will increase 10 per cent –12 per cent,”

You can read the complete article here but there are a couple of things which one should keep in mind.

The title of the article “Party over, IT sector in for big pay cut” is actually misleading because it implies that IT Professionals are going to have a pay cut, which is not true (as of now). Instead there is going to be a lower % in the hikes that employees will receive.

Another point is that the article speaks mainly of TCS, Wipro and Infosys who anyway dont give big hikes. They focus on giving lower pay and try to send as many people onsite as they can so that people wont complain much. TCS and Wipro are notorious for treating the employees badly when they are sent onsite (with comparatively lower salaries and long working hours) . Infosys seems to be a little better in this aspect (but not much). These companies charge exorbitant rates to the clients but pay below average wages to the employees abuse the H1B and L1 system (which is starting to work against them now). These companies are also making big noise about the rise in Rupee value cutting into their profits. Actually these companies are still making huge profit in spite of the rising Rupee. A moron executive in Wipro was quoted as saying that making Saturdays working days (to fight against the decrease in profits caused by rise in Rupee value) seems to be an attractive option.

It seems it is pathetic time ahead for Indian IT Professionals.