Comment by nonamechicken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonamechicken | Hacker News Reader

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> In India, jobs are careers for life, and your employer is part of your personal brand.

This has not been the case for at least the last 10+ years. I cant speak of the 'product' companies such as Microsoft, Google etc. But for anyone working in the WITCH like companies, only way to get your salary changed is to switch companies. People change their jobs every 2 years or so, especially in their first 10 years. After that, it becomes less, probably because WITCHes feast on the young ones more, making more money from them. Openings for 10+ years are very less in these companies. WITCHes hire fresh graduates and pay them very less, hardly enough to survive as a bachelor in a big city like Bengaluru. So the only way to get your salary changed is by finding another job. When a person with 2 years experience change job, they often get double of what they were getting earlier. And every job change from then on comes with a 20-40% increase. Loyalty penalty is a very real thing in these companies.

I don't think anyone in the Indian IT industry thinks jobs are careers for life. I feel like our shelf life is around 40 years of age. Only a few survive the industry after that. Sad thing is there is no social security like in US, so we are completely on our own. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there were so many senior engineers working in US companies. In WITCH like companies, every single team I have seen are structured mostly with 0-3 years, a few 4-8 years. People with more experience expect more salary. Clients want cheap 'resources'. So, these companies hire mostly the cheaper ones.

> WITCH

I would presume: Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, HCL

What are WITCH companies?

W- Wipro I- Infosys T- TCS C- Cognizant H- HCL A- Accenture India.

These companies take up sweatshop jobs from companies in US/europe ( manual testing jobs mostly ).

Below are some pros and cons of joining. ( Speaking only for new joiners at level 12 Associate Software Engineer )

Pros -

1). You won't need any skills to get in, if you can speak english you are already in.

2). Provides employment to a lot of undergraduate students ( talking in hundreds of thousands ) who will be probably jobless due to lack of skills in their field.

3). Work is easy, you will get paid around 400 USD a month ( new comers, which is livable in metro cities )

4). Health insurance is given.

5). Good company to work for if you have absolutely nothing in hand, come from a poor background and have to put food on the table. Have to give props to these companies for that. They have created a lot of job opportunities for the lower middle class people who have undergraduate degrees and cannot find job anywhere else.

6). These companies have been doing great, and will not probably fail in the future.

Cons- 1). Shit work, absolute garbage work. ( Predominantly manual testing QA).

2). NO CAREER GROWTH. If you stay long enough you will have to keep working in these type of companies because no one will hire a guy who has been manual testing for years into dev roles.

3). High attrition rates ( why do you think they hire in hundreds of thousands ? )

4). They call you Associate Software Engineer but there is 0 absolutely 0 engineering job. The title is a joke just to make people at the bottom of the barrel feel good.

5). People who stay in these companies for more than 4-5 years stay here for life because they know they cannot probably get a job anywhere else with the limited skillset.

6). The pay for new joiners have NOT INCREASED SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. Its the same freaking money since they started operating in india !! 400 USD a month since probably 2005-2006. Inflation is a hoax to these companies.

End note.

If you are even a bit ambitious and find yourself working here, please work a bit harder and go to a decent enough company which ships actual products and make you write code.

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