Rant - People in Tech have lost their mind
People in tech are in over their heads. There’s been an unsustainable inflation in salaries and somehow 20 somethings have actually started believing their skills are worth what they’re making
I speak to so many engineers who just with two years of experience are making 30-40 LPA packages. They actually believe they are better than people in say banking who make the same salary after 15 years of grinding it out.
It’s all supply-demand. Supply will soon catch up to the demand. Salary normalization will happen.
Your salaries may not grow for years if you don’t personally grow as well in skill set and become more valuable overall.
At the least, don’t have an attitude about how much you make. Stay humble. Enjoy the good times while they are still here
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Techies were highly underpaid
- barring: 1000-3000 jobs created annually by FAANG which are like 30 -50CTC+, WITCH hired 1,00,000+ techies at 4-8 LPA
- the latter has corrected because it was already a suppressed market
True. There has been a massive spike in salary ranges post covid and none of it makes sense. I was a hiring manager for a good 4 years and have seen people cognizant of what they are asking and what they bring to the table. Since 2020, I’m seeing so called “Data Scientists” with 2-3 years of exp and knowledge limited to just model.fit() and model.predict() asking for north of 25lpa. And the funny part? They are getting it!
What these younglings don’t know is that the market also takes what it gives. Every bubble bursts and every role has its budget and your exceptionally high salaries will get normalised sooner or later.
Instead of chasing that big fat cheque, focus on your skills. That’ll get you further in life than the paystub of an overvalued startup with limited shelf life.
My take may sound rude, but that is the truth.
I disagree with the overall premise here:
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The demand for software outstrips the supply of software engineers by a significant margin & this won't close up, until significant software automation kicks in. Even with the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, I don't see it happening anytime soon.
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Even in banking, there's investment banking and commercial banking & investment bankers always get a significant premium. In terms of salaries, the order will always be:
Investment Banking >= Software Engineering > Commercial Banking
- The appropriate value for a salary of an individual is largely decided by market factors.
So if a company deems that the salary of a 25yo software engineer is more than the salary of a 35yo commerical banker than that largely an issue with commerical banking sector underpaying their employees. How is the software engineer at fault here?
True. But why do you think software automation is not kicking in(assuming you are in tech)?
I think its pretty much here
Irony and reality is that those who create (like original versions of codes) mostly do it for free and uploads it on open source platforms/ github etc. Rest copies codes/ calls libraries and charges 💣
India got this island of higher pay (IT industry) well before the manufacturing/infra investments happening now. Still the difference was not so great in old days and people made real money only going and slogging on onsite assignments. Then fang became a printing press for dollars and capital dumping from US China happened to any startup with a good story about “next billion consumers”
End of day other than WITCH, India still does not have global brands in manufactured goods that can compete with best - like shoes/clothes italians dominate luxury brands, zara is spain, h&m and ikea swedish, koreans and japanese sell cars and motorbikes, germany sells autos and machine tools… our banks are also global midgets and cost of capital is high.
Only a solid manufacturing and innovative product economy can drive the need for sustainable tech cos in any field internally.
Else it will always be tied to global cos and their policies / currencies / capital allocation.
Need more zeus numerix , newspace, pixxel and astra microwave type cos
Despite decades of hero atlas bsaslr cycles we all use , taiwan is the cycle making superpower. The design sw, machines that drive that no doubt made there only.
One cannot float a ship forever on a hot air baloon
Think catia, ansys, matlab, labview, eda, solidworks type high value licensed sw how many indian cos do we in those? We are wasting our best manpower doing pieces of everything while real control and overall design remains in foreign capitals
But the sad part is, even the ones that grinded out for years and climbed up, are also getting the axe.
More layoffs are to come. The market always corrects itself.
This doesn’t make sense. You are comparing apples to oranges. Going by your logic, a banking person with 2 years of experience also should not earn more than a gardener with 15 years of experience, right?
Free markets bro, capitalise and move on. Grinding, being super smart, being are glorified bs when it comes to real world.
Will there be correction? Definitely, but if you are decently smart and know how to play your cards, you’ll be well off
This is perfection. This is what I was looking for in the comments.
A lot of salty boomers here. Tired of these archaic dinosaurs who mope all day because a 20-something year old makes more money.
Well said Thala!
No one cares about your ctc. Enjoy your inflated paycheck. Just keep in mind it is more of a result of overvalued startups and overinflated budgets trickling down to your pocket. It may be good for now, but the party won’t last forever. You need skills to back it up. You have the skills? Good for you! Else no company is stupid enough to stuff your pockets needlessly just coz you once took a Udemy course to build a webscraper.
🫂