Rant - People in Tech have lost their mind

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:

1. 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.

2. 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

3. 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?

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

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

A lot of salty boomers here. Tired of these archaic dinosaurs who mope all day because a 20-something year old makes more money.

🫂