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Comment by osrec | Hacker News Reader

Not sure about that... I worked at an investment bank in London, and had a tech team support our quant desk from India. I signed off on the costs and they were ranging from 10 lakhs to 35 lakhs per person. I think that's comparable, or even better than MS or Amazon for the city they were in (Pune).

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I’ve seen developers in the London office of some banks get paid over £150k who were not any good at software either. it would be disingenuous to say that isn’t common.

I also saw some incredibly good devs there but you get both.

Very true. I was not really on the tech side, but often found myself correcting the code of some very expensive developers. Simple things, like not realising when things have been passed by value or by reference etc. Most developers lack the passion to be truly great at their work, because they consider it just a job. It's fair enough, but every so often you see a developer write effortless technical poetry with their code - they are a rare breed with innovation in their blood.

There are some really good Indian teams in the Banking sector. You do have to be careful of course, but I've worked with some excellent Indian colleagues over there in Hyderabad and Chennai. I think the thing is the banks and other big corporates hoover up the top talent, and retain it, which then becomes invisible to the wider tech industry.

All the problems mentioned here do exist and are real, but they're not the whole story. The management culture over there s a bit different. Managers tend not to want to be involved in anything technical. There is a 'yes' culture of not challenging requests. However there are plenty of exceptions to the 'rule'.

There are definite exceptions. Were those people employed by your bank, or by an outsourcing company? The distinction is important, both in terms of quality and price. Internal hires are much more expensive (training, benefits etc), but generally better and less likely to leave. Outsourced staff basically don't care because they know they're being taken advantage of. So you get what you pay for.

You’re quite right, they were direct hires.

The truly good people would expect a significant fraction of the UK salary, not an average Indian IT salary.

The sad part about India is most people who come from low income households accept any salary. Because a job and the opportunity that comes with it is more important than anything else.

Negotiations are for freshers whose father's have been paying college fees and bills. The remainder can't afford to turn down a job for these reasons.

35 lacks you mentioned is a good starting salary for a person at Amazon or MS. 10L is not, even in Pune.

35L starting sounds like exaggeration. The most common is <15L for 0-5 year of experience.

35L is about 40k GBP - the average cost of a JS developer in many parts of the UK. Are you saying that's a starting salary for a developer in India - because in that case, why outsource?!

There are starting developers who get paid that much but it's not common. I hear most consulting firms pay about 1.5-6L, and Amazon pays 12-14L.

UK is famous for having poor dev rates. A coworker of mine transferred from Microsoft Beijing to Cambridge and had to take a pay cut because the payscale for the level he was at was actually lower there.

I have a decade of experience but get about half of that. Not all companies pay so much.

Not sure how to respond to your anecdote.

If what you are saying is true then you should have a chat with the person who hired them to see what is going on.

The poor salaries which I am talking about is Rs 2 lakhs for freshers who join IT consultancy services.

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