What's wrong with salaries
Hiring for a bunch of roles for an early stage startup. Salaries of people who have been laid off is through the roof 2-3 years experience asking for 30-40l and while we chose not to judge the experience and spoke to a few of them, most of them are not even worth half of the pay. Many are jobless since last 2-3 months and none of them are willing to take a paycut of even 5-6L and are willing to stay jobless ( probably have a ton of savings ) Market correction is necessary. Roles : PM, software engineers, generalists
If you are paid less, don’t extrapolate it on others. If they are willing to wait, let them. You should keep praying for “corrections”.
zebra
Stealth
a year ago
There's absolutely nothing wrong with salaries.
What's wrong is, your inability to filter candidates based on your requirements (read YOE vs Salaries vs Resume Filtering).
Projecting a problem that you have on others is not going to solve your problem.
zebra
Stealth
a year ago
Five in the last six months :)
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30-40L for 2-3 years of experience is something you should be willing to pay for only exceptional talent. Exceptional talent would mean building quick products with near zero customer escalations and ability to do quick RCAs for difficult escalations for a software engineer. Do not cower to mediocre entitled pricks.
1000% aligned. Exactly the reason we are speaking to on paper good profiles
Ayonax
Stealth
a year ago
As per you whats a good range for 9yoe dev?
I am about to jump from 20 to 40 next month. And have exceptional skills as per my management.
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BiryaniEnthu
Stealth
a year ago
When we can't get value for skills, doesn't mean we should pull down people who have.
It's the mindset that needs to change
That's not true, have spoken with over 7 profiles in last 3 days. Most dont have the skills to command the pay
BiryaniEnthu
Stealth
a year ago
Probably, startups poached many during 21-22 boom. Anyone and everyone was getting fat cheque coz they marketed themselves well.
And you wanted to highlight that, but it came across as shooting down salary
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Swe salaries inflated around the world not just in india.
I agree with your points to some extent.
I think the reason is also that we worked like an ass for good 3 years for good 12-16+hrs everyday when the demand was there!
Demand was no created by swe's and not every company just flashed money on us.
World moved to digital.
Now, digital products are not required in that amt plus cash is gone.
But one thing is still expected out of us is the long working hours. 12-14+.
so even if you are hiring a guy with 2-3 years of exp and interview skills are not aligning to that extent what he is asking for, he still might have the ability to deliver things.
Plus he has to put in long hrs for corporate's extra time demand.
Time sheet for 8hrs and actual work for 12+ hrs.
This. People only seem to see the salary side of things being inflated over the last three years. They don't see that COVID blurred a lot of lines and made people work long hours. Now they want the salary to go down but still expect the same output as COVID. You can expect what you want but atleast don't put down other people because of it.
Tell me one other field who worked tirelessly other than swe's and ui/ux designers who were popping their eyes out and gave up their health so much!
None!
Did fashion designers pumped in 15-16hrs daily for 3 years ?
Did finance guys, marketing guys, field people, etc worked that much?
Did they suffered from physical health issues like digital eye stain, fatigue, gain weight by not getting personal time at all ?
Did anyone else suffered issues like we did ?
Did corporates extended timesheets officially ?
They forced us.
Increase increase in salaries can be justified by adjusting billable hours easily.
If corps are so ethical, they should pay for every extra hrs we put in to work.
But no!
They fired everyone who raised their eyebrows in the name of efficiency. That we are not able to do the extra tasks with impossible deadlines.
We suffered when we were laid off!
We have families and responsibilities too!
The runway/emergency funds people created by slogging our asses is already gone for lacs of swe's.
Going forward, if you corporates have to adjust the inflated salaries, they should come back to the same timeline for deliverables and stick to 8hrs of billing with and 1hr lunch break in between.
If the corporate can do that, swe's will also be ready to settle for less.
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"Won't pay 30L" but expect you to work 12-14 hours. Along with the money the work hours also inflated during COVID so they'll also come down with salary.
BYJU'S doesn't exactly have the best reputation either though 🤔🤔
Not hiring for Byjus here. Hiring for a role that i just moved into as a founding growth pm
RagePank
Stealth
a year ago
"founding PM" yikes.
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PM's do not deserve the salaries they've been getting right now. It's absolutely exorbitant.
I know someone who had absolutely zero technical experience. Went to ISB after faking that he ran a startup for 2 years, got placed at meesho and is making 50L CTC.
I mean it's absolutely ridiculous how inflated tech salaries have become. Super glad people are getting laid off and extremely happy market correction is going on.
These PM need to go back and learn some skills first. Idiots.
Why rant only about PMs here? When anyone from any field can become a clout and take hefty salaries.
Guess, who is jealous about PMs making good salaries?
@Yabadabadoooo your stupidity is enormous. Cherry picking anecdotes from personal life doesn't justify the claim you're making about salaries.
You're glad about people getting laid off.. what's wrong with you bro?
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I don't like OPs attitude; he is not valuing Devs' contributions but is able to justify his own role (mostly on a more significant pay check) in BYJU's due to the scale it has grown into. He thinks that BYJU's exponential growth with no clear vision on profitability is a stand out metric and things going wrong has nothing to do with the team there.
IMO this is an amateurish view. He needs to do some further introspection and learnings from the 'failed stint' there before starting up another venture and going down that same path.
SorryYaar
Stealth
a year ago
@SnapeSkywalker Strong statements for someone working at Swiggy. Zomato has out executed Swiggy in spite of starting delivery business later, consuming lesser capital. Should we then assume that everyone working at Swiggy is not talented and worthy?
Byjus has built something but ended up reaching a valuation that the underlying market cannot justify and is now imploding. But Swiggy is also sitting on a valuation that is difficult to justify.
Reality is both organizations have built some value with a lot of blood and sweat of a large number of people. Eventual outcomes are dependent on so many variables which cannot be completely controlled by anyone.
@SorryYaar Don't want to go into a hypothetical debate about justifying the valuation of Zomato & Swiggy. You should read about the growth of Revenues and Unit Economics for both the companies in the past 2-3 years, that should answer your question about "justifying valuation".
Can you say the same about BYJU's?
Also my comment is in response to OP's multiple arrogant comments in this thread. I agree that there have been many factors contributing to BYJU'S downfall and "unsustainable business growth" has to be one of the leading factors among them.
Had to happen someday. Glad it's happening and will keep happening for sometime...the exorbitant amount being paid between 2020-2022 is easily the biggest scam that nobody talks about... everything with VC money and with no real businesses or skill sets of folks being hired ...
I guess it was the demand supply game. Right now there is a lot of supply. So hoping things would change
Yup, pretty much like it and to be frank things are already changing and folks who had astronomical salary expectations are finally coming back to earth
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Qwerty2398
Stealth
a year ago
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the salaries. If a cheating predatory edtech can be valued at 30 billion or a shitty listed fintech that has never made profit in in entire existence can still be valued more than HUL in market cap after a 70% fall from it's ipo price. Nothing is unreasonable. If you guys can skim them please do. If you can cheat them by overselling your skills, please do.
Nothing wrong in scamming a scamster.
I think @LazyAbsence mentioned that the hiring is not for Byju’s. I think you said it @LazyAbsence and the companies are to be blamed as well for this. Having worked in start ups myself they just look at the need of the hour and hire so many people at unrealistic salaries just to speed up the whole process and compete in the rat race and when their demands are fulfilled or recession happens , blindly lay off people to manage runways. For eg how it happened in Byju’s freshers earnings 20-30 lakhs and MNC’s are not ready to pay that salary . I think it becomes tough for the employees too.. This culture that starts up have started off, the employees they fire also pay for it
Product Managers entitled for ZIRP era salaries. Why am I not surprised.
Chiller
Stealth
a year ago
Here I am looking for a PM role since last few months on anything to no avail
India really is not place for ex founders, have 3+ yrs as founder managing product, project, etc on 2 different startups one of which covid crushed and other couldn't find PMF
Everybody needs prev salary slip and other corporate things. None of hr folks get that you can't pay yourself shit as you've already put money into it
Our ecosystem is really not mature to handle ex founders
Sorry for long rant but hiring system's been insanely brutal compared to laid off folks or people w sabbaticals
LooseGoose
Stealth
a year ago
I can relate, was looking for jobs while still working on my startups during lockdown for backup plan. Job market has gone to shit in the last 5 years with few good jobs and hundreds of unemployed people applying for them. The few I spoke to questioned if i would actually give enough time to the job.
Job market is brutal for founders and ex founders in India sadly.
StoicPhilosopher
Stealth
a year ago
I encountered the same problem with developers as an early stage founder. I outsourced some of the software work to a low code/no code team in Hyderabad (Broken Atom) led by IIT founders. Super helpful guys, if you want I can connect you to them.
Barbaadeshwar
Stealth
a year ago
Why're you whining this hard on Grapevine. Why not filter candidates by being honest and telling them yeh level ki liye yeh aukad hai humari. Aapko acha lagta hai toh interview Karo, warna tata bye bye. You wanna waste both y'all times and then cry about mismatch. Tell them straight up. I'm sure your startup isn't ChatGPT so don't see why folks should clamour to take pay cuts and punt their future careers on whats possibly another decimal in the startup graveyard.
This problem can be easily solved by putting the budget in the JD itself. IIRC, some states in the US, has laws about declaring the budget in the JD. Sadly, it won't happen here.
Barbaadeshwar
Stealth
a year ago
Jaldi jaldi doodh pikar Grapevine par RR bhi toh karna hai
@LazyAbsence even if they ask you that much money from where early startups can pay that much to 2-3 yoe?
I mean people join early startups not for money but to be aggressive in their learning and then switch to big startups for hefty money.
If people don't match the salary range you're offering them, you should (and I guess you are!) politely let them down and let it go. It's very difficult to go backwards in terms of salary, not just in terms of professional ambitions and expectations but also in terms of livelihood planning. I have an absolutely exceptional friend who is a Tier 1 MBA that was laid off by Meesho and hasn't found something yet because of salary mismatches, but I'd bet my last buck that she'd give better ROI than most of the folks hired in her stead.
Salaries are earned, especially if people grew in an org and were able to show impact. Interviews and selection processes are bad proxies for quality measurement in the best of times, but now they're just a giant lottery in which no one truly wins. Markets correct themselves and if they are willing to stay jobless it means that they are acting as the market expects them to.
Tarabat
Stealth
a year ago
For generalists and PM. there are so much talent available in the job market willing for switching But I feel most of the CV 's receiving at technical round discussions are of references. References are good medium, but candidate filtering by HR is something which is lost in outsourcing. Most of the HR outsources their screening activities to third parties which end up in a non technical person screening cvs for technical roles and vice versa
In the Indian ecosystem, HR plays a very diminishing role in filtering the right candidate for technical rounds.
With WFH culture, salary differences ( especially in software and digital) between west and India will keep converging. It used to be 6-8x pre-covid. Now it is 3-5x even 2x for top talent. Even after WFH is fully over, things might not go back to old normal. So, everyone has to adjust for new normal.
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