Friday, 20 August 2021

Are we chopping off our own leg? Is India losing Cost Arbitrage Advantage in IT Sector? 60 Lakh for 10 yr. exp? Is it sustainable for companies? Read this interesting perspective!

Dear Friends and Students

“Neighbor's Envy , Owner's Pride” Do you remember this slogan esp. who born before 1980?

Yes, this was the tagline used for Onida TV ad in 1980s in India. Today students Campus selection & package they are aiming is almost synonym to Onida TV Ad.

Campus season started across India. Students are going through hustle and bustle of Campus selection streets.

5 Years back, students were happy if they get placement in traditional IT service companies with 3 lakhs package. Today scenario has completely changed. Students are still unhappy with regular packages! Aspirations rose. Everyone looks for power packages, leading to vicious cycle, both personal front as well as country economic perspective.

I am not saying it is right or wrong. But we all need to understand something we are chopping our own seat in the IT market.

30 years back, India won software heart because of Talent (esp. Programming Skills), English Speaking Ability and Cost Arbitrage. Thanks to competitive coding platforms, talent is now available everywhere. Programming is proved even at lower degree level (+2 students and diploma students). Startups / MNCs are accessible to Tier 3 colleges as well.

This scenario shifted the placement paradigm. Tier 3 students (most) started grabbing basic jobs. Tier 1 and 2 started aiming for high end automation and demanding premium packages. Sometimes they are going up 20 lakhs, 30 lakhs. It looks impressive to grab a Campus Placement with 6 / 10 / 15 Lakhs package. However, remember, we are slowly losing our competitive advantage. We are almost closing to US salaries! Why should someone outsource if there is no margin in the business? On top of it, there is huge attrition in Indian IT jobs!!

Now companies are looking for Eastern Europe, Vietnam, Philippines for hiring! Slowly we will be lose the grip!! Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Brazil, Mexico and Columbia, etc. are picking up their pace!

Campus placements has also became social stigma. Parents are deciding where to join, which package job, etc. This is another complexity. In the society today, a bride groom is vetted against the package he is getting. The lower package bridegrooms are not considered at all. It is leading to frustration and skill loss among youth. They keep hopping between various companies till the age of 27 to get “Acceptable” package. What is that they are losing? They are not building an organization culture. They are learning few online courses and jumping between a few companies. They are managing to convince interviewer with their parrot speaking skills. This leaves frustration among committed talent who stayed back in the organization as their peers get better salaries outside and invite lower experienced people with better salaries as their co-workers, most of the times as juniors.

This culture is leading to mid-life crisis among many employees as they cannot survive or cannot sustain staying in one organization for long time!! Finally, we happily handover this beautiful pie to some other country, which is developed over a period of 40 years!!

Look at Infosys Founding Team- They all retired in the same company. You might argue they are founders. Look at few other founding members like Dr.A.L.Rao former COO of Wipro, joined as founding team in 1979 and retired as COO. Mr. Pravin Rao, COO and Member of Board at Infosys Ltd (2002 to till date), Mr. Bhanumurthy Ballapuram, 1992-2021 in Wipro, retired as COO and now VP, Google Cloud, JAPAC. Dr. Baru Rao (2007-till date), EVP Capgemini. These industry veterans lead by example. Money is by-product!!

Students, please don’t get into this package trap. Ultimately every role is equally important. If we develop great machine learning algorithm and don’t develop any UI using React or Angular JS! Will that be useful? We need machine learning coders as well as UX designers. If someone don’t create build and host it in production AWS, can your beautiful deep learning algorithm used by anyone? Every role is equally important with short skill variations. People are becoming mad rush towards one particular skill. Finally, demand supply works! The most popular skill becomes cheap if there is mad rush!!

Parents, please don’t get biased with package when you are selecting bride for your boy or bridegroom for your girl. Please check how long he/she stayed in an organization, how much happy he/she, what is the home culture, how sensitive to the society and nature. These are the parameters you should count in your selection. This obviously reduces the marriage cost, cost of living, opportunity cost and overall lifestyle costs and increases the Family Happiness Index (FHI).

If I hurt any sentiments, my sincere apologies. The idea is to make Indian IT industry competitive in a global market and reduce the artificial pressure succumbed by our students in this package mania.

Pack-Up Package, Pay for Performance!

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

Source Inspiration: https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/industry/article/100-hikes-rs-60-lakh-for-10-year-experience-indias-it-talent-getting-expensive-for-mncs/799534

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