Category Archives: Salary

Salary increase for 2010 in India is the highest in Asia Pacific

Posted on by
Reply

Silicon India reports that India has the highest increase in salary for 2010 in the Asia Pacific region. It was 6.6% in 2009 and now it increased to 10.6%. These kind of hikes are unheard of in the USA where 4-5% are considered good hikes and the normal range is 2-3%. And I don’t think many people got any hike at all in 2009 (except maybe those got a promotion). In fact many people might have got a salary reduction or maybe lost their job.

When reading the comments to the Silicon India article, it becomes clear that people are not satisfied with the 10% hike. I am getting the feeling that salaries in India will increase to a level where the competitive advantage in terms of cost will be lost and the outsourcing might move on to greener pastures.

Infosys directors get 81% hike

Posted on by
3

As I wrote recently, Infosys is very concerned about the increasing salaries of its mid-level employees. But an article in IndiaTimes reports that:

The directors of the country’s second largest IT company, Infosys, saw an 81 per cent jump in their cash compensation in the fiscal year 2007-08.

According to the company’s annual report, the cash compensation to Infosys directors went up to Rs 10.45 crore during the year ended March 31, 2008 compared with Rs 5.76 crore a year ago.

At Infosys, the compensation includes basic salary, allowances and taxable value of perquisites.

The Bangalore-based IT major paid Rs 4.19 crore as commission to its non-executive directors, which was a 135 per cent increase over the previous year’s Rs 1.78 crore, according to the company’s 2007-08 annual report.

The increase in commission was high despite the rupee appreciation against the dollar. The non-executive/independent directors at Infosys include Deepak M Satwalekar, Prof Marti G Subramanyam, Sridar Iyengar, Claude Smadja, David L Boyles and Dr Omkar Goswami.

Anothing interesting fact is that even though the dollar has gained against the rupee, no company is adjusting the paycuts (or no hikes) for employees that they made recently citing the reason of rupee appreciation. Now they are focusing on the recession in US although it has been reported from multiple sources that the recession has not affected the IT industry.

Employee wage rise a business risk, says Wipro and Infosys

Posted on by
2

From an Economic Times article,

Country’s two largest software exporters, Infosys Technologies and Wipro Technologies, anticipate wage pressures might not only slash their margins but also prevent them from maintaining their competitive advantage.

…

“Wages in India are increasing at a faster rate than in the United States, which could result in increased costs for companies seeking to employ technology professionals in India, particularly project managers and other mid-level professionals,” Infosys said in its recent annual filing to American market regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

…

Wipro has also cited wage pressure as a business risk in its latest annual filing to the SEC.

You will find these statements ironic if you read another article that came in the Times of India:

IT giant Infosys’s human resources head T V Mohandas Pai takes home the highest salary and bonus among all the board of directors of the company, including chairperson Nandan M Nilekani and chief executive officer S Gopalakrishnan.

According to Infosys’s recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Pai receives a salary of $82,033 and a bonus of $3,08,625 in a year, the highest among the 15 members of the board, the firm’s The Board is chaired by the firm’s chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy while one of the co-founders and director Nandan M Nilekani is the co-chairperson.

While Nilekani receives $51,414 salary and $1,22,841 as bonus, Narayana Murthy does not take home any of them but $1,25,000 in annual compensation.

I think it is debatable whether it is actually the low and mid level employee salaries or the executive level salaries (and huge bonuses) that is the real “business risk”.

Salary of Freshers in Indian IT Industry

Posted on by
5

Freshers Home provides a list of salaries for freshers working for major IT companies in India. According to the list, Google pays the highest for freshers (INR 12,00,000/annum) followed by T-Mobile (INR 8,00,000/annum) and Microsoft (INR 7,80,000/annum). Amazon and Trilogy shares the fourth place at INR 7,50,00.

A notable thing is that the biggies of Indian IT industry like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Patni etc are the lowest payers.

No More Big Salary Hikes for IT Professionals in India

Posted on by
Reply

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.