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For the people arguing that Indian Techies are expensive, Here are the pay bands for Amazon in India vs USA. USA India SDE1 160k

For the people arguing that Indian Techies are expensive, Here are the pay bands for Amazon in India vs USA. USA India SDE1 160k | 30k SDE2 252k - 325k | 65k - 100k SDE3 400k - 600k | 150k - 200k Also, Labor laws in India are non-existant where you can work your employee to death. Amazon also pays top of the market in India and you can get decent workers for much less. Hence, you can get 10x the output by investing the same capital in India instead of USA. Another point is the labor of India being poor quality. These come because people contract WITCH companies which pay not even pennies to its employees. Expecting people to create top notch work while paying 4k$ per year is just not feasible even in India. (McD worker in US makes 13k$ per year).

0xDEF 4y ago
>WITCH It's been a while since I heard that term. They are everywhere in Danish government IT (through KMD). InfoSys (the I in WITCH) invested in OpenAI back in 2015. How much is their investment worth now? If it is in the billions they should probably take the OpenAI hype and pivot to something else than being a cheap outsourcing company.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  If they were able to invest billions in a moonshot then obviously their profit model was working...
crop_rotation 4y ago
Because the US is an outlier. People are comparing to UK and Canada. Compared to UK India is similarly expensive enough. Nobody is claiming India is expensive when compared to the US.
- prakhar897 4y ago
  UK salaries are 75k$ for SDE1, 165k$ for SDE2. Roughly 2x Indian compensation. EU region also has strong labor laws.
  - coffeebeqn 4y ago
    > UK salaries are 75k$ for SDE1, 165k$ for SDE2 They’re definitely not. Where are you getting this? Divide by three
    - iaseiadit 4y ago
      https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer?offset=20&country=253 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en... Filtering on UK gives total comp of $60k-$200k+ at Amazon
    - Balero 4y ago
      UK engineers are earning much over £20k a year, even outside of London. Amazons site says: SDE1 is on a low of £45,653 which is $56,344.02 SDE2 is on £70,703 which is $87,257.47 So somewhere between you both.
kamikazechaser 4y ago
There is no SDE2 in India making 82 LPA. The correct band for India should be around: SDE1 - 30k SDE2 - 40K - 45K SDE3 - 50k - 70K
- __debugger__ 4y ago
  82 LPA may be an outlier but the range you mentioned is wildly incorrect. I’m an SDE2 making 57 LPA ($70K), and know other SDE2s making >70 LPA ($85K).
  - da25 4y ago
    What ... In India ? I've only heard about Quants rarely making such amount. Where can a SDE2 get >70 LPA ?
    - crop_rotation 4y ago
      You just had to switch companies last year when there was massive demand. I know of people who make that much purely by jumping at the right time.
      - da25 4y ago
        I agree - that's definitely one way to land a lucrative offer. But I'm surprised that there was a massive demand last year. Because I was of the opinion that 2022 was the year where they really slowed down the hiring
- prakhar897 4y ago
  My friend makes 80LPA = 98k$ as SDE2. Multiple former teammates makes around 70LPA = 85k$.
  - da25 4y ago
    SDE2 is quite wide band, how much is their YOE ? IMO, for such numbers, the their base pay is 50% of TTC - so something around 40L and the rest is RSUs.
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> Hence, you can get 10x the output by investing the same capital in India instead of USA. Then why doesn't every tech business around the world of any size do that?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
foobiekr 4y ago
There are exceptional engineers in Bangalore, Chennai, … It’s just they are outnumbered 1000:1 by some of the worst engineers I’ve encountered. That set is hired entirely for low cost area-under-the-curve reasons. It’s sad because clearly there is interest in the profession (at least, seemingly, until their parents start asking why they aren’t VPs yet) but somehow companies and the educational system fail them. For the most part India “worked” because it was so cheap you could hire an army of people and a crazy number of managers to make those people minimally productive. There is an art to that but it has enormous costs on the non-mediocre teams that have to burn tons of energy constantly course-correcting the remote teams and push back constantly on code quality issues. I’ve worked for companies with massive india teams. Consistently they are pretty bad. The companies who do it right are doing it to find talent, not cut costs, and ruthlessly filter and winnow the WITCH fodder until they get teams that are functional. But you have to be ruthless on quality and nepotism.
- frognumber 4y ago
  This is exactly the problem. Median income in India is $3.6/day. It takes very little training to have someone do work for $10/day, which is a three-fold increase in income and a huge boost to standard-of-living. That's call center, data entry, etc. From there, it takes a moderate amount of effort to train someone to churn out low-quality code. That brings income to perhaps $100/day, which is a very decent standard-of-living in a low cost-of-living area. That's maybe 2 years of bootcamp-level training and 4 years at a low-quality university. Most of the talent pool in India (and many other developing countries) is shaped like a pyramid, where top-tier talent exists, but it's hard to find the needle in the haystack. Interviewing is far from a perfect process. It's not a problem which is quickly solvable. The amount of top-tier talent can grow exponentially, but low-tier talent can grow just as quickly for many years -- India has over a billion people. It's not clear it's even a bad thing. At the end of the day, the transitions from $1 => $10 => $100/day are a lot more important than $100 => $1000, since they provide for access to decent food, housing, and medicine. It's okay to prioritize growth at the bottom. Without prioritizing the top at all, at some point, you do hit the middle income trap, but that's a much still better place to be than $3.6/day median income.
roncesvalles 4y ago
There is also an interesting phenomenon that is perhaps overlooked -- Indian tech salaries are low because American tech salaries are high. How? Many Indians only work at these 30k jobs because of the possibility that they can eventually parlay those years of experience to emigrate and get a 300k job in the US. At big tech companies, many join the Indian office with the implicit or sometimes explicit promise that the company will sponsor their L1 or H1B after a couple of promotions. I see parallels to how medical school graduates treat residencies and fellowships. If becoming a doctor meant making fellowship money forever (often 1/5th to 1/10th of what a full doctor would make), not nearly as many quality people would go into medicine. You can only pay them so little because they see themselves as still in training for the "real job" that is in the US. Don't confuse this for true arbitrage.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  > Many Indians only work at these 30k jobs because of the possibility that they can eventually parlay those years of experience to emigrate and get a 300k job in the US As opposed to... working for that salary because it's an amazing salary by Indian standards?
paxys 4y ago
150k - 200k for an offshore developer is ridiculously expensive. This is why companies are increasingly moving development out of India to places like SE Asia and Eastern Europe. The costs savings have to be worth the efficiency hit, otherwise there is no point having remote dev teams.
shusaku 4y ago
“I’ll hire 5x as many people and work them twice as hard to be 10x more productive” is a disastrous mindset for managing software….
93po 4y ago
> Also, Labor laws in India are non-existant where you can work your employee to death. I feel like this is my current work experience in the US. I frequently work 65 hour weeks and overnight shifts while also having to work all day the next day. There are no laws protecting me from this and I don't get paid overtime for any of it. I've worked the equivalent of 12 extra weeks of full-time work in the past year with no extra pay or time off to compensate. (I've been casually looking for a new job/I'm quitting my current one in a few weeks)
dredmorbius 4y ago
For those unfamiliar with the initialism: WITCH: Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, HCL tech. <https://analyticsindiamag.com/witch-vs-faang-saga-to-continue-in-2023/ https://analyticsindiamag.com/witch-vs-faang-saga-to-continu...> Comparable to FAANG.

0xDEF 4y ago

>WITCH It's been a while since I heard that term. They are everywhere in Danish government IT (through KMD). InfoSys (the I in WITCH) invested in OpenAI back in 2015. How much is their investment worth now? If it is in the billions they should probably take the OpenAI hype and pivot to something else than being a cheap outsourcing company.

Ancalagon 4y ago
If they were able to invest billions in a moonshot then obviously their profit model was working...

crop_rotation 4y ago

Because the US is an outlier. People are comparing to UK and Canada. Compared to UK India is similarly expensive enough. Nobody is claiming India is expensive when compared to the US.

prakhar897 4y ago
UK salaries are 75k$ for SDE1, 165k$ for SDE2. Roughly 2x Indian compensation. EU region also has strong labor laws.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  > UK salaries are 75k$ for SDE1, 165k$ for SDE2 They’re definitely not. Where are you getting this? Divide by three
  - iaseiadit 4y ago
    https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer?offset=20&country=253 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en... Filtering on UK gives total comp of $60k-$200k+ at Amazon
  - Balero 4y ago
    UK engineers are earning much over £20k a year, even outside of London. Amazons site says: SDE1 is on a low of £45,653 which is $56,344.02 SDE2 is on £70,703 which is $87,257.47 So somewhere between you both.

kamikazechaser 4y ago

There is no SDE2 in India making 82 LPA. The correct band for India should be around: SDE1 - 30k SDE2 - 40K - 45K SDE3 - 50k - 70K

__debugger__ 4y ago
82 LPA may be an outlier but the range you mentioned is wildly incorrect. I’m an SDE2 making 57 LPA ($70K), and know other SDE2s making >70 LPA ($85K).
- da25 4y ago
  What ... In India ? I've only heard about Quants rarely making such amount. Where can a SDE2 get >70 LPA ?
  - crop_rotation 4y ago
    You just had to switch companies last year when there was massive demand. I know of people who make that much purely by jumping at the right time.
    - da25 4y ago
      I agree - that's definitely one way to land a lucrative offer. But I'm surprised that there was a massive demand last year. Because I was of the opinion that 2022 was the year where they really slowed down the hiring
prakhar897 4y ago
My friend makes 80LPA = 98k$ as SDE2. Multiple former teammates makes around 70LPA = 85k$.
- da25 4y ago
  SDE2 is quite wide band, how much is their YOE ? IMO, for such numbers, the their base pay is 50% of TTC - so something around 40L and the rest is RSUs.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> Hence, you can get 10x the output by investing the same capital in India instead of USA. Then why doesn't every tech business around the world of any size do that?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

foobiekr 4y ago

There are exceptional engineers in Bangalore, Chennai, … It’s just they are outnumbered 1000:1 by some of the worst engineers I’ve encountered. That set is hired entirely for low cost area-under-the-curve reasons. It’s sad because clearly there is interest in the profession (at least, seemingly, until their parents start asking why they aren’t VPs yet) but somehow companies and the educational system fail them. For the most part India “worked” because it was so cheap you could hire an army of people and a crazy number of managers to make those people minimally productive. There is an art to that but it has enormous costs on the non-mediocre teams that have to burn tons of energy constantly course-correcting the remote teams and push back constantly on code quality issues. I’ve worked for companies with massive india teams. Consistently they are pretty bad. The companies who do it right are doing it to find talent, not cut costs, and ruthlessly filter and winnow the WITCH fodder until they get teams that are functional. But you have to be ruthless on quality and nepotism.

frognumber 4y ago
This is exactly the problem. Median income in India is $3.6/day. It takes very little training to have someone do work for $10/day, which is a three-fold increase in income and a huge boost to standard-of-living. That's call center, data entry, etc. From there, it takes a moderate amount of effort to train someone to churn out low-quality code. That brings income to perhaps $100/day, which is a very decent standard-of-living in a low cost-of-living area. That's maybe 2 years of bootcamp-level training and 4 years at a low-quality university. Most of the talent pool in India (and many other developing countries) is shaped like a pyramid, where top-tier talent exists, but it's hard to find the needle in the haystack. Interviewing is far from a perfect process. It's not a problem which is quickly solvable. The amount of top-tier talent can grow exponentially, but low-tier talent can grow just as quickly for many years -- India has over a billion people. It's not clear it's even a bad thing. At the end of the day, the transitions from $1 => $10 => $100/day are a lot more important than $100 => $1000, since they provide for access to decent food, housing, and medicine. It's okay to prioritize growth at the bottom. Without prioritizing the top at all, at some point, you do hit the middle income trap, but that's a much still better place to be than $3.6/day median income.

roncesvalles 4y ago

There is also an interesting phenomenon that is perhaps overlooked -- Indian tech salaries are low because American tech salaries are high. How? Many Indians only work at these 30k jobs because of the possibility that they can eventually parlay those years of experience to emigrate and get a 300k job in the US. At big tech companies, many join the Indian office with the implicit or sometimes explicit promise that the company will sponsor their L1 or H1B after a couple of promotions. I see parallels to how medical school graduates treat residencies and fellowships. If becoming a doctor meant making fellowship money forever (often 1/5th to 1/10th of what a full doctor would make), not nearly as many quality people would go into medicine. You can only pay them so little because they see themselves as still in training for the "real job" that is in the US. Don't confuse this for true arbitrage.

pcthrowaway 4y ago
> Many Indians only work at these 30k jobs because of the possibility that they can eventually parlay those years of experience to emigrate and get a 300k job in the US As opposed to... working for that salary because it's an amazing salary by Indian standards?

paxys 4y ago

150k - 200k for an offshore developer is ridiculously expensive. This is why companies are increasingly moving development out of India to places like SE Asia and Eastern Europe. The costs savings have to be worth the efficiency hit, otherwise there is no point having remote dev teams.

shusaku 4y ago

“I’ll hire 5x as many people and work them twice as hard to be 10x more productive” is a disastrous mindset for managing software….

93po 4y ago

> Also, Labor laws in India are non-existant where you can work your employee to death. I feel like this is my current work experience in the US. I frequently work 65 hour weeks and overnight shifts while also having to work all day the next day. There are no laws protecting me from this and I don't get paid overtime for any of it. I've worked the equivalent of 12 extra weeks of full-time work in the past year with no extra pay or time off to compensate. (I've been casually looking for a new job/I'm quitting my current one in a few weeks)

dredmorbius 4y ago

For those unfamiliar with the initialism: WITCH: Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, HCL tech. <https://analyticsindiamag.com/witch-vs-faang-saga-to-continue-in-2023/ https://analyticsindiamag.com/witch-vs-faang-saga-to-continu...> Comparable to FAANG.