TBH Amazon Indian org is known (from the Seattle folks I spoke to) for being sub-par filled with employees from service companies, so no surprises there.
On the contrary I think the frugality strategy has lead to hiring the top talent in India and not in the US. Therefore the pay here is higher compared to the bigger companies (not MNCs but product as well), I am from an Indian unicorn startup and the pay was very competitive. The US opinion of any Indians IT worker seems to be the same, that is that we are service oriented workers who don't code, therefore I'd take it with a grain of salt on what they say.
But yeah, the talent here is good since hiring talent is cheaper here compared to US. If you have to pay 170k$ to hire the best in US then in India you'll be able to hire the best at 50 LPA which is about 70k$.
I have been part of many interview panels and they haven't been any easy interviews as such.
I'm curious as how are the salaries in top start ups in India compared to the likes of Amazon/Google? Like for a mid-senior engineer. Appreciate any numbers you know off.
^this. Part of my team at AMZN is in Bangalore, and they really are way below average compared to US. Usually its taken as low cost centre to send less lucrative work there, like operational stuff...
Disagree. Amazon.in teams sits here and all of the India related initiatives are done here, which include lucrative initiatives as well - which I won't delve into. However it is also true that some of the US operational burden is sent to India, but not all drudge work happens in India. In my opinion Amazon is moving to a model where they are going to hire top talent in India giving the premium salaries of India and hire cheaper - less talented engineers in the US for US centric operations primarily as a measure to cut costs, this is why the it has become a common notion that anyone can get into Amazon US.
But yeah, the talent here is good since hiring talent is cheaper here compared to US. If you have to pay 170k$ to hire the best in US then in India you'll be able to hire the best at 50 LPA which is about 70k$.
I have been part of many interview panels and they haven't been any easy interviews as such.