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Here's the Twitter thread (by Gergely Orosz) that TechCrunch got the news from: https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1640585325192912898 https://twitter.com/

by LysPJ 4y ago

Here's the Twitter thread (by Gergely Orosz) that TechCrunch got the news from: https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1640585325192912898 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1640585325192912898

ramraj07 4y ago
India is not cheap if you want good engineers. Many folks I know (who are good, but not great) make more than what they’d make in UK or Canada. The US is the only other country that pays more. And the flux is just too much (though this likely is not the case in recent months).
- Gareth321 4y ago
  While true, 99% of the time offshoring to India is done to cut costs, not to seek out higher qualified candidates.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    True, but there has been a big startup-led divide betwen the "offshorting IT engineer" and the "product engineer" salaries. The gap between the two can be 400-1000%.
  - MAGZine 4y ago
    i think a lot of firms believe they can keep quality (by hiring 'good quality') engineers in india and save money. as anyone who has actually been at a place that tried this knows, it's probably not true. and for the time when it is true, you need very good information on the talent, and experience on how to set up your product/engineering teams. and then it still won't be as cheap as you expect.
- dialogbox 4y ago
  India is cheap. I don't think they do the same job what they'd do in UK or Canada. In my team, there are some folks who returned back to India to build a bigger team with much cheaper engineers. The top level seniors could make more but in average, they are very cheap.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    Sounds like you hired cheap in India then. The work done by the top startups in India is much better than the product quality you see in most “western” apps. India lets you go cheap or go premium at this point and you get what you pay for.
- vitno 4y ago
  Everyone else here is not agreeing with you, but having just come back from our India office and dealing a little bit with compensation adjustment, I totally agree with you. Our Indian teams are making really good money these days, and if we don't pay them as such they bounce to another company.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    Precisely. Anyone actually hiring in india would know the reality. everyone else keeps throwing levels.fyi forgetting basic rules about statistics (like cultural factors on bias in reporting salaries).
- 0xDEF 4y ago
  I remember reading some Bangalore-based users in r/DevOps being surprised that they were earning almost the same as devops engineers in Germany.
  - freilanzer 4y ago
    Salaries in the IT sector in Germany really are quite low compared to other countries. With several years of experience you still only earn around 70-80k per year. Entry level salaries can be as low as 45-50k. Almost on the level of full time office workers.
- hulitu 4y ago
  Nobody wants good engineers. They need cheap engineers who can work with a process.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    Spoken like a true middle manager!
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  How do the economics of that work out? I realize Canada is pretty bad, but wouldn't Canadians be more desirable purely because they're in the same time zone and are less likely to have a communication barrier? If your argument is that there are more good devs in India by virtue of there being more devs/people there in general... well, sure, but that means there are more devs in general, and the ones making salaries better than the top 25% of Canadians are probably the top 1% in India.
- hiq 4y ago
  https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/india https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/india has a median in India of $26k. On the same website, UK and Canada medians are way higher, a little under $100k.
  - user568439 4y ago
    But the median quality you get it’s not the same. Basically because a good amount of the top engineers move out for better salaries. As the salaries get better in India, it’s easier to find good engineers, but then the salary difference is not that much.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    I explicitly measured my words when I said “good” - india has a metric ton of engineers most employed in the WITCH consultant shops and none of them know any real programming. The median gets affected by it. A lot. Any decent engineer at the level GitHub would hire would get 40 lacs per annum INR the first year after graduation (very conservatively) which is $50k usd. Someone working at GitHub or any top tier startup or FAAnG after 4-6 years of experience would be making north of 100-150k usd.
    - hiq 4y ago
      > The median gets affected by it. A lot. You're saying it explains a multiplier of 4 between medians, do you have any source for that? If I look for e.g. Apple ICT3 in India vs the UK it's $58k vs $132k. https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-engineer/levels/ict3/locations/india https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-engineer/levels/ict3/locations/united-kingdom https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng... That's still a multiplier of 2. For ICT5 the multiplier is even higher.
    - prakhar897 4y ago
      Not really. Amazon pays 160k$ to freshers in US. It pays 25L aka 30k$ in India. SDE2 band in India is 65k$ to 100k$. SDE3 Gets 150k$ to 200k$. Add to that the lax regulations of labor laws in India and Amazon paying top of the market, they get a skilled and an experienced worker in India for the same price as a 21 yr old US college grad. India is still extremely cheap compared to the west.

by LysPJ 4y ago

Here's the Twitter thread (by Gergely Orosz) that TechCrunch got the news from: https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1640585325192912898 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1640585325192912898

ramraj07 4y ago

India is not cheap if you want good engineers. Many folks I know (who are good, but not great) make more than what they’d make in UK or Canada. The US is the only other country that pays more. And the flux is just too much (though this likely is not the case in recent months).

Gareth321 4y ago
While true, 99% of the time offshoring to India is done to cut costs, not to seek out higher qualified candidates.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  True, but there has been a big startup-led divide betwen the "offshorting IT engineer" and the "product engineer" salaries. The gap between the two can be 400-1000%.
- MAGZine 4y ago
  i think a lot of firms believe they can keep quality (by hiring 'good quality') engineers in india and save money. as anyone who has actually been at a place that tried this knows, it's probably not true. and for the time when it is true, you need very good information on the talent, and experience on how to set up your product/engineering teams. and then it still won't be as cheap as you expect.
dialogbox 4y ago
India is cheap. I don't think they do the same job what they'd do in UK or Canada. In my team, there are some folks who returned back to India to build a bigger team with much cheaper engineers. The top level seniors could make more but in average, they are very cheap.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Sounds like you hired cheap in India then. The work done by the top startups in India is much better than the product quality you see in most “western” apps. India lets you go cheap or go premium at this point and you get what you pay for.
vitno 4y ago
Everyone else here is not agreeing with you, but having just come back from our India office and dealing a little bit with compensation adjustment, I totally agree with you. Our Indian teams are making really good money these days, and if we don't pay them as such they bounce to another company.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Precisely. Anyone actually hiring in india would know the reality. everyone else keeps throwing levels.fyi forgetting basic rules about statistics (like cultural factors on bias in reporting salaries).
0xDEF 4y ago
I remember reading some Bangalore-based users in r/DevOps being surprised that they were earning almost the same as devops engineers in Germany.
- freilanzer 4y ago
  Salaries in the IT sector in Germany really are quite low compared to other countries. With several years of experience you still only earn around 70-80k per year. Entry level salaries can be as low as 45-50k. Almost on the level of full time office workers.
hulitu 4y ago
Nobody wants good engineers. They need cheap engineers who can work with a process.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Spoken like a true middle manager!
pcthrowaway 4y ago
How do the economics of that work out? I realize Canada is pretty bad, but wouldn't Canadians be more desirable purely because they're in the same time zone and are less likely to have a communication barrier? If your argument is that there are more good devs in India by virtue of there being more devs/people there in general... well, sure, but that means there are more devs in general, and the ones making salaries better than the top 25% of Canadians are probably the top 1% in India.
hiq 4y ago
https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/india https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/india has a median in India of $26k. On the same website, UK and Canada medians are way higher, a little under $100k.
- user568439 4y ago
  But the median quality you get it’s not the same. Basically because a good amount of the top engineers move out for better salaries. As the salaries get better in India, it’s easier to find good engineers, but then the salary difference is not that much.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  I explicitly measured my words when I said “good” - india has a metric ton of engineers most employed in the WITCH consultant shops and none of them know any real programming. The median gets affected by it. A lot. Any decent engineer at the level GitHub would hire would get 40 lacs per annum INR the first year after graduation (very conservatively) which is $50k usd. Someone working at GitHub or any top tier startup or FAAnG after 4-6 years of experience would be making north of 100-150k usd.
  - hiq 4y ago
    > The median gets affected by it. A lot. You're saying it explains a multiplier of 4 between medians, do you have any source for that? If I look for e.g. Apple ICT3 in India vs the UK it's $58k vs $132k. https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-engineer/levels/ict3/locations/india https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-engineer/levels/ict3/locations/united-kingdom https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng... That's still a multiplier of 2. For ICT5 the multiplier is even higher.
  - prakhar897 4y ago
    Not really. Amazon pays 160k$ to freshers in US. It pays 25L aka 30k$ in India. SDE2 band in India is 65k$ to 100k$. SDE3 Gets 150k$ to 200k$. Add to that the lax regulations of labor laws in India and Amazon paying top of the market, they get a skilled and an experienced worker in India for the same price as a 21 yr old US college grad. India is still extremely cheap compared to the west.