|
MBAs beat techies fair & square in pay
Economic Times - India
NEW DELHI: Even as the IIMs uncork the bubbly , their tech
cousins have only salary sorrows to drown in their drinks.
With over 2,84,000 fresh engineering graduates entering the
fray this year, salaries offered by IT bigwigs at several
campuses have taken a beating. Many leading IT firms are
offering salaries about 5% to 7% lower than last year at
many colleges.
In sharp contrast, even those with a couple of years in the
tech industry have seen their salaries shoot up about 30%.
Even as companies grow younger by the day, the salary skew
in favour of seniors is getting sharper. And a techie with
three years’ experience earns double or even more today,
compared to a fresher.
Insiders confirm that entry-level salaries are not keeping
pace with the mid- and senior-level compensation structure
and stagnate at about Rs 2 lakh per annum, though the number
of jobs being offered is going up by leaps and bounds.
While many IT companies are offering lower salaries this
year in some campuses, even in the best of cases, salaries
are stable at last year’s levels when they took a small dip.
Confirming that salaries offered to freshers in some
campuses have seen a downward revision, R Anand, head
(placement programme), HCL, says, “Those with 2-6 years of
experience are the most sought after in the industry and get
the best incentives.”
“Given the demand-supply equation, the scale of growth at
the entry level definitely does not match up to the hikes
being offered while hiring laterally,” agrees Hari T, senior
VP (HR), Satyam.
“One needs to spend a lot on training freshers and it takes
a while before they become billable,” he justifies.
And the number of freshers entering the IT industry is
expected to swell by about 70,000 every year, according to
Nasscom estimates, and touch 3,82,000 by ’06-07.
While there is no good news on the salary front, the number
of jobs being offered to engineering graduates showed a
healthy growth — a record number of freshers joined last
year.
Already, about half the recruitment takes place at the
entry-level for a majority of IT firms. In fact, industry
insiders feel the skew towards hiring youngsters comes from
the industry’s efforts to control salary costs. |
|
