Bangalore: Traditional IT companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, Accenture and IBM, are no longer attractive to fresher’s who are confident of their coding abilities and innovative in their problem solving methodologies for they recruit en masse at low but standard pay packets ranging from 3.5 to 6.5Lakhs per anum.
Work quality and challenge is poor and work conditions are very stressful as they include night shifts. Opportunities for growth are limited as they have become behemoths and the bureaucracy has become stifling for those fresh out of college and eager to prove themselves, climb up the ladder fast and earn a pile in the shortest time possible.
New Start ups are now paying talented software engineers in India substantially more than traditional ones.
Companies like DevFactory, Exponential and Informatica are paying as much as Rs 20 lakh to Rs 40 lakh to talented freshers and mid-level programmers, many times more than the Rs 3.5 lakh to Rs 6.5 lakh that large IT services companies pay.
DevFactory, the R&D arm of enterprise software firm Trilogy, is paying a whopping Rs 24 lakh annually to freshers. It even offers a Rs 1-lakh joining bonus, very unusual at entry levels. DevFactory calls itself the world’s first software factory — it focuses on doing higher quality work with fewer, but highly trained specialists. To quickly transform student recruits into tech professionals, it bundles into the compensation package a Rs 1-lakh bonus for the DevFactory University (DU), a training programme conducted in Dubai.
Others offering such packages include US-based digital media solutions firm Exponential, software development firm Informatica, American Express, Rolls Royce and GE, according to HackerEarth’s Market Research. HackerEarth is an online coding platform that tests the coding skill of programmers. DevFactory ran a coding challenge on HackerEarth recently to recruit six software development engineers.
A notch below, offering salaries in the Rs 13 lakh to Rs 22 lakh range, are companies like InMobi, Yantra, Target, Ebay, SAP Labs, Walmart Labs, and Directi. These companies specifically look for strong algorithm knowledge and experience in building scalable cutting-edge software.
Walmart Labs India, for instance, is hiring 350 people in Bangalore to expand its team of data scientists and technologists in supply chain and pricing technologies. “These firms want strong programmers who can make sense of large sets of data, work on multiple frameworks, and build scalable applications using cloud-based architecture,” said Sachin Gupta, co-founder of HackerEarth.
HackerEarth finds that Indian startups Druva, Flipkart, Practo, Freshdesk, global startups PassportParking and big names such as VMware, Intuit and Intel offer fresher and mid-level salaries in the Rs 7 lakh to Rs 12 lakh range for those with high-level programming skills.
However, while these sort of salaries will be paid to those with special talents, it is unlikely to have a trickle down effect to the mass of graduates that join traditional firms.
