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Leetcode Compensation report (India) Jan 2019 – Jul 2021

43 points by krumboy 5y ago

debarshri 5y ago
I'm amazed that some of the salaries that are offered are way more that what you would earn in Europe (countries like NL, DE) for the same experience. I wonder what is the average attrition rate given there is so much options to move around and how do companies try to retain employee.
- jakobbuis 5y ago
  If I calculated correctly, the 75th percentile is about 43k in euro's. That's quite a bit below market for the Netherlands, but does not take cost of living into account.
  - ausudhz 5y ago
    That's a very good salary in India. Not to mention that taxes are lower to many other European countries. I'd say they definitely earn more money than their folks in south Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece)
  - debarshri 5y ago
    I wouldn't say it is quite below the average. One of the things about Netherlands is that it really depends upon the city you live in. If you are not in Amsterdam, it is a different story.
- ausudhz 5y ago
  Ironically that's true in many places in Asia. They pay way better than Europe with a cheaper cost of living and less taxes too. It reminds me of a friend of mine that had his ex boss establishing a company in Ukraine. Initially the developers' cost was cheaper if compared to the other parts in Europe, then many companies started to move one of their office there till they reach the point that they had one of the best salaries in Europe (compared to purchase parity and cost of living) due to the high job offer.
  - HourglassFR 5y ago
    That's not ironic at all. There are less inequalities in Europe than Asia, at least in this century.
    - ausudhz 5y ago
      I don't know what century and which country are you referring to but is well known that inequalities have been growing lately in Europe in many countries (especially the south European countries) Definitely is not as high as some countries in Asia. But while in Asia they're working to reduce inequalities in Europe it's mainly increasing (from 2000 onwards, with the spike after 2009)
- krumboy 5y ago
  Data will be a little biased, still i'm surprised at the packages being offered out there. Salaries reported at glassdoor, linkedin, etc feel outdated. I can see very similar numbers at https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/India/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/India/ as well.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  I discovered it the hard way when I immigrated to the Netherlands in late 2018. For a senior role it doesn’t make a financial sense to move to EU. Especially so if you have kids as international school will punch a huge hole in the pocket. We couldn’t save absolutely anything from what we earned. If not for RSU it would have been a financial disaster for me. Due to lack of growth opportunities I moved back last year and the quality of life (financially) has jumped up again. Also, I found the tech scene to be not as vibrant in EU. Most of them are government run digital transformations or outsourcing work. I also discovered that IT is way down the pecking order which is reflected in salaries. And being a hiring manager when I interviewed candidates I saw that they didn’t have as much exposure to large scale software development. I later realized that the best of the lot just immigrated across the Atlantic to earn multiple times than what they would in Europe. To answer your last question, attrition in FAANG companies are around 8%. In startups it varies wildly. I would discount the last 8-10 months of data because the job market has absolutely exploded with offers thanks to insane funding of startups as well as more US companies moving jobs to India due to WFH. Software professionals across all experience levels have never had it so good in India.
  - debarshri 5y ago
    I am in a similar situation. I have recently decided to move back. Would love to be in touch with you and learn about your experience moving back and rebooting your career.
    - vishnugupta 5y ago
      Sure! I can be reached at hn@arunj.net
- IceDane 5y ago
  The average salary for a software developer in Denmark is probably around $80k, and at my company the "ceiling" is about $130k. On $80k you live very comfortably.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  Not so much in FAANG as they pay well and life is good. So much in startups - usually pay is good, life is shit. So it’s a revolving door there. You were the sucker who prepped hard and came for salary bump, when you leave there’s another sucker waiting. There are too many suckers to be always available (late nights, weekends - this is what kills the culture in Indian companies) to get a big salary. That’s true about EU <-> IN though. I wanted to work in EU but didn’t want to settle there. It didn’t make much sense monetarily as I’d retire in India. So not only I’d save more in India, hell I was absolutely earning more in India. However if my plan was, or changes to, settling in Europe I’d have done it. (Among few I had an offer from Booking)
fmax30 5y ago
These number are pretty crazy. Interesting to see people in India being paid so much while people in Pakistan aren't paid that highly, I think the highest I have heard of are around 300,000 - 350,000 PKR per month ( which is like 20$ K p.a)
halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
Honestly surprised to not see Accenture in that list. Working there for a couple years, it seemed like IDC was huge. Guess not in comparison.
- krumboy 5y ago
  I found it so funny that Accenture was sitting at 31st position based on # posts(i have filtered for top 30). Here you go https://ibb.co/XS3Q2qX https://ibb.co/XS3Q2qX https://ibb.co/QHG2npW https://ibb.co/QHG2npW
alangibson 5y ago
As an American programmer that moved to the EU, I can say for sure there's no reason to move here if you want to stack up cash. Do it for the low stress living and quality of life. Don't expect to move back home with a fat bank account.
- debarshri 5y ago
  Absolutely agree with you. It is better quality of life, great lifestyle and opportunities to travel freely across countries.
- IceDane 5y ago
  I don't know where you live, but where I live, most software engineers are easily in the top 10% of income. Sure, you can chase $200k FAANG jobs in SV and go through all the misery that is associated with that, and then spend 50% on housing and living costs, or you can make a comfortable $130k here with free healthcare, education and so on, drive a Tesla and own a big house.
  - fuzzylama 5y ago
    what country may that be?
  - alangibson 5y ago
    Austrian transplant here. Yea, we're top earners, but salaries in generally not high. We get the majority of our compensation in vacation, social insurance, pension, etc. 130K would put you in the 50% tax bracket here. So you'd get 14 (no, seriously) paychecks of 4642. Not bad to be sure, but not exactly space tourist money either.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Another Austrian here. 130k IC dev jobs are pretty much unheard of here. Most senior roles top out at around 80k-90k here and they're definitely not stress free as you're expected to deliver outstanding results at that pay grade and have a high availability, plus, most come with the bullshit "all-in" contracts (basically you wave your rights to paid overtime). That's why there's a dev shortage here since most Austrians avoid these jobs and move instead to management/consulting/finance where pay is better for less stress as those jobs are much higher up the pecking order when it comes to money and status in the company while devs are seen as replaceable cogs. While the standard of living is good here with decent social services, Austria is definitely not a good market for devs. Maybe better than places like Italy/Spain/Portugal but worse than the other major tech hubs in Europe, including places in Eastern Europe like Bucharest or Warsaw when you factor in the brutal taxes and high CoL in Austria.
quanto 5y ago
In case people were wondering about the x-axis: LPA = laks (in Indian rupees [IDR]) per annum 1 laks IDR = 1.3k USD = 1.1k EUR = 0.98k GBP The right most tick on the axis, 70 LPA, is about 94k USD/year. It seems that the developer wages in India are higher than much of SE Asia.
- krumboy 5y ago
  I wouldn't say salaries are better in India than SE Asia in general. Just as glassdoor ratings are biased(given by folks who either loveee or hateee the company), same applies here. People who have posted the offers much be pleased with the offer in general so it must be right skewed AFAIK.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  Indian Rupee is INR (₹). Definitely not IDR. That’s Indonesian. And here you go https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=INR&To=USD https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=...
  - quanto 5y ago
    Oops. Thanks for the correction. The currency conversion in my previous comment is still correct, though.
shadeslayer_ 5y ago
Great work. Also, check out if you want to add the India page of Levels.fyi to this - for a broader set of datapoints. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/India/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/India/
sss111 5y ago
How do these compensations compare to the housing costs in top metros there? Are the housing markets in say Banglore as saturated as other tech-focused cities, Would love to hear from folks in India!
- hiyer 5y ago
  Income tax is quite high in India at the upper bracket. For the right-most tick on that chart (Rs. 70 lakhs pa) you can expect to take home around Rs. 3.5-4.0 lakhs per month after tax. In Bangalore a decent flat will cost you at least 10% of that to rent, or around 2.5-3 years worth of after tax salary to purchase.
nine_zeros 5y ago
To put things in context for younger members of HN, the 50th percentile compensation is about 8x of 50th percentile compensation in 2010. Sure, currency has inflated as well but in terms of tech industry, India is tailing China closely. Maybe it will grow to become second only to US in a few years if the speed of growth continues.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
Few points to note: - Indian income tax is quite high. - Besides India taxes the shit out of its people via indirect taxes on everything and that’s too high as well - Inflation is very high - Quality of life is shit. Yes, shit. Even if you earn high. You can rarely live in an alternate reality of gated community. For that you’ll have to be more than software dev salary rich. - Social service - nil. Infra/facilities - close to nil. Healthcare - one of the worst in the world. Healthcare cost can bankrupt you easily even with insurance. - Leetcode regular software dev demographic is already a tiny fraction of Indian software devs. So most of the Indian software devs get meagre salaries. Really little.
- known 5y ago
  "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you" --Oscar Wilde (b. 1854)

43 points by krumboy 5y ago

I'm amazed that some of the salaries that are offered are way more that what you would earn in Europe (countries like NL, DE) for the same experience. I wonder what is the average attrition rate given there is so much options to move around and how do companies try to retain employee.

jakobbuis 5y ago
If I calculated correctly, the 75th percentile is about 43k in euro's. That's quite a bit below market for the Netherlands, but does not take cost of living into account.
- ausudhz 5y ago
  That's a very good salary in India. Not to mention that taxes are lower to many other European countries. I'd say they definitely earn more money than their folks in south Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece)
- debarshri 5y ago
  I wouldn't say it is quite below the average. One of the things about Netherlands is that it really depends upon the city you live in. If you are not in Amsterdam, it is a different story.
ausudhz 5y ago
Ironically that's true in many places in Asia. They pay way better than Europe with a cheaper cost of living and less taxes too. It reminds me of a friend of mine that had his ex boss establishing a company in Ukraine. Initially the developers' cost was cheaper if compared to the other parts in Europe, then many companies started to move one of their office there till they reach the point that they had one of the best salaries in Europe (compared to purchase parity and cost of living) due to the high job offer.
- HourglassFR 5y ago
  That's not ironic at all. There are less inequalities in Europe than Asia, at least in this century.
  - ausudhz 5y ago
    I don't know what century and which country are you referring to but is well known that inequalities have been growing lately in Europe in many countries (especially the south European countries) Definitely is not as high as some countries in Asia. But while in Asia they're working to reduce inequalities in Europe it's mainly increasing (from 2000 onwards, with the spike after 2009)
krumboy 5y ago
Data will be a little biased, still i'm surprised at the packages being offered out there. Salaries reported at glassdoor, linkedin, etc feel outdated. I can see very similar numbers at https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/India/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/India/ as well.
vishnugupta 5y ago
I discovered it the hard way when I immigrated to the Netherlands in late 2018. For a senior role it doesn’t make a financial sense to move to EU. Especially so if you have kids as international school will punch a huge hole in the pocket. We couldn’t save absolutely anything from what we earned. If not for RSU it would have been a financial disaster for me. Due to lack of growth opportunities I moved back last year and the quality of life (financially) has jumped up again. Also, I found the tech scene to be not as vibrant in EU. Most of them are government run digital transformations or outsourcing work. I also discovered that IT is way down the pecking order which is reflected in salaries. And being a hiring manager when I interviewed candidates I saw that they didn’t have as much exposure to large scale software development. I later realized that the best of the lot just immigrated across the Atlantic to earn multiple times than what they would in Europe. To answer your last question, attrition in FAANG companies are around 8%. In startups it varies wildly. I would discount the last 8-10 months of data because the job market has absolutely exploded with offers thanks to insane funding of startups as well as more US companies moving jobs to India due to WFH. Software professionals across all experience levels have never had it so good in India.
- debarshri 5y ago
  I am in a similar situation. I have recently decided to move back. Would love to be in touch with you and learn about your experience moving back and rebooting your career.
  - vishnugupta 5y ago
    Sure! I can be reached at hn@arunj.net
IceDane 5y ago
The average salary for a software developer in Denmark is probably around $80k, and at my company the "ceiling" is about $130k. On $80k you live very comfortably.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
Not so much in FAANG as they pay well and life is good. So much in startups - usually pay is good, life is shit. So it’s a revolving door there. You were the sucker who prepped hard and came for salary bump, when you leave there’s another sucker waiting. There are too many suckers to be always available (late nights, weekends - this is what kills the culture in Indian companies) to get a big salary. That’s true about EU <-> IN though. I wanted to work in EU but didn’t want to settle there. It didn’t make much sense monetarily as I’d retire in India. So not only I’d save more in India, hell I was absolutely earning more in India. However if my plan was, or changes to, settling in Europe I’d have done it. (Among few I had an offer from Booking)

fmax30 5y ago

These number are pretty crazy. Interesting to see people in India being paid so much while people in Pakistan aren't paid that highly, I think the highest I have heard of are around 300,000 - 350,000 PKR per month ( which is like 20$ K p.a)

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

Honestly surprised to not see Accenture in that list. Working there for a couple years, it seemed like IDC was huge. Guess not in comparison.

krumboy 5y ago
I found it so funny that Accenture was sitting at 31st position based on # posts(i have filtered for top 30). Here you go https://ibb.co/XS3Q2qX https://ibb.co/XS3Q2qX https://ibb.co/QHG2npW https://ibb.co/QHG2npW

alangibson 5y ago

As an American programmer that moved to the EU, I can say for sure there's no reason to move here if you want to stack up cash. Do it for the low stress living and quality of life. Don't expect to move back home with a fat bank account.

debarshri 5y ago
Absolutely agree with you. It is better quality of life, great lifestyle and opportunities to travel freely across countries.
IceDane 5y ago
I don't know where you live, but where I live, most software engineers are easily in the top 10% of income. Sure, you can chase $200k FAANG jobs in SV and go through all the misery that is associated with that, and then spend 50% on housing and living costs, or you can make a comfortable $130k here with free healthcare, education and so on, drive a Tesla and own a big house.
- fuzzylama 5y ago
  what country may that be?
- alangibson 5y ago
  Austrian transplant here. Yea, we're top earners, but salaries in generally not high. We get the majority of our compensation in vacation, social insurance, pension, etc. 130K would put you in the 50% tax bracket here. So you'd get 14 (no, seriously) paychecks of 4642. Not bad to be sure, but not exactly space tourist money either.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Another Austrian here. 130k IC dev jobs are pretty much unheard of here. Most senior roles top out at around 80k-90k here and they're definitely not stress free as you're expected to deliver outstanding results at that pay grade and have a high availability, plus, most come with the bullshit "all-in" contracts (basically you wave your rights to paid overtime). That's why there's a dev shortage here since most Austrians avoid these jobs and move instead to management/consulting/finance where pay is better for less stress as those jobs are much higher up the pecking order when it comes to money and status in the company while devs are seen as replaceable cogs. While the standard of living is good here with decent social services, Austria is definitely not a good market for devs. Maybe better than places like Italy/Spain/Portugal but worse than the other major tech hubs in Europe, including places in Eastern Europe like Bucharest or Warsaw when you factor in the brutal taxes and high CoL in Austria.

quanto 5y ago

In case people were wondering about the x-axis: LPA = laks (in Indian rupees [IDR]) per annum 1 laks IDR = 1.3k USD = 1.1k EUR = 0.98k GBP The right most tick on the axis, 70 LPA, is about 94k USD/year. It seems that the developer wages in India are higher than much of SE Asia.

krumboy 5y ago
I wouldn't say salaries are better in India than SE Asia in general. Just as glassdoor ratings are biased(given by folks who either loveee or hateee the company), same applies here. People who have posted the offers much be pleased with the offer in general so it must be right skewed AFAIK.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
Indian Rupee is INR (₹). Definitely not IDR. That’s Indonesian. And here you go https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=INR&To=USD https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=...
- quanto 5y ago
  Oops. Thanks for the correction. The currency conversion in my previous comment is still correct, though.

shadeslayer_ 5y ago

Great work. Also, check out if you want to add the India page of Levels.fyi to this - for a broader set of datapoints. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/India/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/India/

sss111 5y ago

How do these compensations compare to the housing costs in top metros there? Are the housing markets in say Banglore as saturated as other tech-focused cities, Would love to hear from folks in India!

hiyer 5y ago
Income tax is quite high in India at the upper bracket. For the right-most tick on that chart (Rs. 70 lakhs pa) you can expect to take home around Rs. 3.5-4.0 lakhs per month after tax. In Bangalore a decent flat will cost you at least 10% of that to rent, or around 2.5-3 years worth of after tax salary to purchase.

nine_zeros 5y ago

To put things in context for younger members of HN, the 50th percentile compensation is about 8x of 50th percentile compensation in 2010. Sure, currency has inflated as well but in terms of tech industry, India is tailing China closely. Maybe it will grow to become second only to US in a few years if the speed of growth continues.

crossroadsguy 5y ago

Few points to note: - Indian income tax is quite high. - Besides India taxes the shit out of its people via indirect taxes on everything and that’s too high as well - Inflation is very high - Quality of life is shit. Yes, shit. Even if you earn high. You can rarely live in an alternate reality of gated community. For that you’ll have to be more than software dev salary rich. - Social service - nil. Infra/facilities - close to nil. Healthcare - one of the worst in the world. Healthcare cost can bankrupt you easily even with insurance. - Leetcode regular software dev demographic is already a tiny fraction of Indian software devs. So most of the Indian software devs get meagre salaries. Really little.

known 5y ago
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you" --Oscar Wilde (b. 1854)