Hacker News Reader

Comment by harichinnan | Hacker News Reader

That's a long time ago. Now there are many companies and many jobs that pay a 100K USD in India. Also Indian software engineers get promoted really fast into management with vastly higher salaries.

View on HN

ISRO salaries straight from glassdoor:

Scientist/Engineer ₹802,100 Scientist/Engineer ₹798,473

So, 800k rupee is about $12,000 USD. NASA's avg engineer salary is 10x that.

edit: NASA employees also get generous government benefits like pensions and such. Federal employee benefits are the envy of the nation. Not sure why you people are arguing against basic facts here. Salaries, cost of living, etc are a fraction in India compared to the states. Thus you can't compare project costs.

ISRO salaries are extremely low compared to NASA's (or any engineer in the US). Indian government positions do offer more "benefits" but it still does not add up to nearly half of what an average NASA engineer's salary. You also have to take into account that what ISRO puts into space versus NASA is very different (due to budgeting and that the ISRO has become more active recently).

Don't go on these numbers alone. There are a lot of other perks that you get when you work for a government organization or PSU in India. For example housing, transport, pension etc is all taken care by the organization.

Housing yes. Transport is taken care of only for official purposes. Only once in 2 years is a family travel paid for by LTC (IIRC). Pension is now more like the 401(k) in the US.

the cost of living is much lower in India. $12,000 is a good chunk of money if you live in India.

Actually, $12k (INR 800k) is a good salary in Bangalore (ISRO's main office), but only for an entry level position. If you are in your 30s, you would need at least double this to live nicely. This is quite less compared to the salaries of people working in multinationals in Bangalore.

Just so you know, people who look for competitive salaries, don't really dream of working in ISRO. It's not nearly as attractive to decent Indian Engineers as NASA is in America.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com