[sures]

I am a brown male working in India. The salaries are rounded to the nearest 100000 INR. USD values are rounded to the nearest 1000 USD. These are salaries per year. Need to emphasize this because when you see numbers like 3000 USD you may think this is per month. No it is indeed 3000 USD per year. When there are stocks involved, only the stocks that vest per year is included as part of the yearly salary.

  2003 -  0 YOE -  200000 INR (  3000 USD) - Software Engineer  - One of the very popular Indian IT firms
  2005 -  2 YOE -  300000 INR (  4000 USD) - Senior Engineer    - Same as above
  2007 -  4 YOE - 1000000 INR ( 14000 USD) - Software Engineer  - A small American company with their office in India
  2009 -  6 YOE - 1500000 INR ( 20000 USD) - Senior Engineer    - Another small American company with their office in India
  2011 -  8 YOE - 2000000 INR ( 28000 USD) - Principal Engineer - Same as above
  2013 - 10 YOE - 3500000 INR ( 47000 USD) - Principal Engineer - A big American company with their office in India
  2015 - 12 YOE - 7000000 INR ( 95000 USD) - Principal Engineer - A big American company with their office in India
  2017 - 14 YOE - 9500000 INR (128000 USD) - Principal Engineer - Same as above

[madmax108]

Just to clarify, salaries in India differ VASTLY across companies, FAANG or otherwise, depending on whether the org looks at the India center as a cost-saving measure, or as a secondary RnD center. And also, if the org is more services based (the notorious Infy/Wipro/Accenture types) or actually building products. The latter almost always pays more.

I'm a non-IIT Masters graduate with 3.5 years of experience and I work at the India center of a non-FAANG US-based company, and I make more than @sures made with 10 YoE (leaving aside stock options as well).

Salaries are higher in cities like Bangalore and Pune, but even there the salary ranges are very varied, so it's difficult to get a representative sample. Funnily, if you check on Glassdoor (for what it's worth), you'll find companies (both Indian and US/UK-based) where Director of Engineering in India as much as I make with <4 years of experience.

Also, Indian companies are notorious for asking previous salary details/payslips etc before making offers. As such, if you start off at the lower end of the spectrum, you spend a lifetime playing catch up. Usual hikes between job switches is about 1.4-1.6x, so the 2x jump @sures got in 2015 is also not that common (Well negotiated @sures!) :)

[sures]

Good point. One more point - salaries differ vastly in the same company too.

These days it happens in many companies that a very senior folk with 10+ years experience makes something like 2000000 INR (28000 USD) but a fresh college undergraduate is made an offer that is 3000000 INR (41000 INR). It sounds contradictory and pisses the senior folks off but that's the reality of the Indian IT market today.

[fjsolwmv]

Are those senior folks less skilled in relevant areas, or does something makes them unable to renegotiate or change jobs?

[arun6582]

are you giving factual information or are just pissed off on tier 1 college freshers getting such salary. Not every fresher get such salaries

[sures]

I agree not every fresher gets such salaries. The actual figure depends on the company. A company could be paying less to a fresher. Is 1500000 rupees or 2000000 rupees a good number for you? Then in the same company it is possible that there are people with 10+ years of experience who are earning 5% to 25% less than that.

But my 3000000 rupees example is not unusual. You can see madmax108's comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18343962 where he was earning more than 3500000 without being from IIT in just 3.5 years of experience. Not a fresher exactly but when I had 9 years of experience I was earning less than that!

Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18343659 where someone says fresher salaries of 60000 USD (4400000 INR). So I don't think my example is unusual.

[blrdev356]

Here is my salary history for comparison (Bangalore). Every time I dream of hitting $100k gross, my government prints boatload of money devaluing rupee and bringing my $ salary down. I have kinda given up on the 100k milestone at this point:

  2007 -  0 YOE -  350000 INR ( 4600 USD) -  Software Engineer  - American company (indian office)
  2010 -  3 YOE -  900000 INR ( 12000 USD) - Senior Software Engineer    - Small indian company
  2012 -  5 YOE - 1200000 INR ( 16000 USD) - Lead Engineer  - Korean company (indian office)
  2014 -  7 YOE - 2900000 INR ( 38000 USD) - Staff Engineer    - American company (indian office)
  2017 -  10 YOE - 5400000 INR ( 72000 USD) - Principal Engineer - Small American company (indian office)
  2018 - 11 YOE - 6200000 INR ( 82000 USD) - Dev Manager - MNC

[sures]

Hey! Thanks for responding to this thread. Because you have moved from Principal Engineer to Dev Manager position I want to know how the experience has been.

I have remained in Principal Engineer role and do not want to climb the ladder further because I don't think I can take the meeting load of management role.

What do you think about your role? Do you enjoy being Dev Manager more than Principal Engineer? Does it provide faster growth (designation and money wise)?

[blrdev356]

It has been terrible in the initial few months. It was definitely out of my comfort zone and every week had been a roller coaster. But now, I kind of settled in and started to enjoy it. There are certain nuances this role needs us to learn which no one can teach and needs to be experienced first hand. I'm becoming better at small talk and ability to sell ideas which I lacked in previous roles.

It may not provide faster growth designation wise but I'm hoping money wise its a good choice as what I'm now paid is the entry level salary in management in most of the companies I worked for previously.

[lnkmails]

All these INR numbers are making me want to come back :). As much as I enjoy working here in the US, the cost of living etc pretty much takes most of the income. I still manage to save 30% of my income but it requires good level of discipline and actively avoiding anything I think is "luxurious" (not eating out much, doing household chores ourselves.). I make a decent high six figure salary and I am not in SV but in DC metro area (not that cheap compared to SV). In India, I could probably have a maid/help and offload few of the chores and lead a far more comfortable life than here. Sure, I won't be driving a BMW but at least I will be close to family saving the exact 30% but with more happiness being around culture I am more familiar with. I am fairly Americanized but the climate here is becoming more hostile. I do walk into stores preparing for some racial comments or worst case a mindless idiot going for his gun. I didn't know how much I would be making in India because I never ever worked there but looking at these numbers, the move is at least worth contemplating.

[blrdev356]

Quality of living sucks though. The same money won't buy you same comforts. Commute is terrible. Housing sucks. Coming from a small village, I often feel alien here :). Though its a different kind of alien when compared with when I was in USA for short visits.

Healthcare is usually way cheaper and you can hire maid+cook. All I can say is that money shouldn't be primary driver for your decision unless you are doubling your savings. Also there is huge risk of rupee depreciation which is robbing us of any real wage growth.

[sures]

I agree with this comment. The quality of life in a place like Bangalore or Mumbai is quite bad when you compare with an American city. Imagine spending 60 minutes to 90 minutes for one way commute to work just 6 miles away!

[tata2020]

Can u tell me which company offers such package i am really surprise as to wat role and company and wat skills ll get such package.

can u share any way to connect with you?

[Alterlife]

Something significant happened between years 10 and 12. You managed to double your pay.

May I ask what it was?

Incidentally, I'm at exactly the same experience as you and I'll just say I make a lot less.

[myth_buster]

Essentially inflation [0] and weakening currency [1].

[0] https://capitalmind.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Adj-for-In...

[1]https://s.tradingview.com/widgetembed/?frameElementId=tradin...

[pjc50]

They doubled their $ pay several times - this is probably related to just how massive GDP growth has been in India.

https://tradingeconomics.com/india/gdp : the country is 5x more productive than it was in 2002! By comparison the US has only doubled: https://www.statista.com/statistics/188105/annual-gdp-of-the...

[pgsandstrom]

So you make 40 times more now than at the start of your career? Thats insane! I make a very good salary in Sweden and I've only doubled my salary in my 10 year long career.

[thisisit]

The inflation in India is similarly insane.

Last I calculated someone earning 200k INR in 2007 has to be earning nearly 800 k INR by 2017, just to ensure that their earnings are not eroded by inflation. And this is going by government official figures. On ground figures are even worse.

Now when you double that salary it comes to 1600k. And is where another caveat kicks in. I know people who make around that with similar experience as sures. So, he is successful for sure but also in the top 95% percentile of the Indian IT salary figures.

[maxerickson]

High salaries in the US create quite an incentive to pay well for similarly skilled employees elsewhere.

[alistairSH]

In my limited experience (hiring some Bangalore-based developers, working for a US-based company, we have a full office in both locations), this isn't all that uncommon.

Salaries can start VERY low. Shockingly so, at least to me. And they ramp up quickly. The unfortunate side-effect is frequent job-hopping - it's easier to get a big raise by moving (not that dissimilar to the US, just orders of magnitude more impactful).

[boriskl]

im also based in sweden. can I ask what youre at currently?

[throwawayindia]

Here's my attempt at shame of not being able to ramp up quickly enough:

2007 - 0 YOE - 2 lakhs INR (3000 USD) - Software Engineer - UK Company

2013 - 6 YOE - 11.5 lakhs INR (16500 USD) - Technical Consultant - Australia based company

2014 - 7 YOE - 14.5 lakhs INR (21000 USD) - Senior Engineer - Mid Size American Software company

2018 - 11 YOE - 30 lakhs (43000 USD) - Staff Engineer - Mid Size American company

College - Tier 3 college, I actually dint even have a job after graduating, not even Infy/Wipro/TCS etc. It was mix of circumstances and some hustling that I landed my first job.

What I am working on? Plain old ERP systems.

How many hours I work each week? 3-10 hrs max per week with projects taking maybe some more time. I manage people well and ensure that they are able to do their jobs effectively lessening the burden on me.

For people looking for advice on how to get these kinds of salary - I have a colleague who left the UK company along with me at same salary. Currently he is drawing 20 lakhs (29000 USD) after the same amount of years. One of the reasons is that he went to work for Tech Mahindra.

And even though I referred to him at couple of companies like JP Morgan his interview skills weren't great.

And, he has changed only 1 company since 2013, while this is my 3rd job.

Lastly, different technologies not only mean different salaries but also that your competence might differ. Hence the difference in salaries.

[8sigma]

Hi,I am also from India(staying in Bangalore) and would like some advice from you.I have over 5 years of experience as a Programmer.For the first 3 years I have worked as a contractor.From the last 2 years I am working as a Software Engineer in a small startup and my take home salary is 70000INR(monthly).I want to switch to a more stable job with better salaries.I have never worked for a big company.What does it take to earn such salaries in India?I did not pass out from any Tier 1 institute.Currently I am preparing for interviews with help of CTCI and CLRS books.It would be helpful if you can give me some advice on what measures I can take to get a job at one of the better paying companies.

[12301231122]

Both you and tata2020 have asked for advice from sures and, having often been in the position of hiring programmers from India, something really stands out:

I honestly couldn't tell if sures was an American, British or Indian through his writing. The use of punctuation, general cadence and adherence to the standards of written communication popular in America mean I have more immediate faith in him as a candidate (however unjustified that may be).

On the other hand (8sigma and tata2020) I can tell in a flash that you are from southern Asia, and your writing immediately evokes long online pages of poorly qualified Indian programmers seeking work or personal experiences of dealing with poorly-qualified programmers from India.

I'm not, in any way, a stickler for grammar or spelling. However, for reasons I am not sure of, a number of common conventions have emerged from Indians that differ dramatically from American/British usage in casual writing: Not placing a space after punctuation, using "From" rather than "for", "needful", etc.

I suspect you could do very well for yourself if you made a few small adjustments in your writing.

[8sigma]

Hey, Thank you for the feedback. I am aware of my poor English skills. I am working on improving it. Can you offer me some tips on how I can improve it?

[sures]

I see this thread has become a point of interest for many. I wish I could offer some wise advice. But the truth is that I have not done anything special or done any special preparation in my career.

The only thing I have done is learn tech and non-tech stuff. I do it everyday. It is easy for me because I like technology. Computers have been my hobby for a long time. I read a lot of books in all kinds of domains. And I read a lot more for my special domain of interest (distributed systems). So I think this naturally makes me equipped for most kinds of interviews. I do not like solving or reading about puzzles that do not have a relation with real world projects, so I am naturally bad at such kind of interviews.

I am myself not a fan of CTCI. But I think CLRS is a good start. Sorry I don't have better advice than this. Someone else in this awesome forum could be of better help to you.

[logicuce]

Ready for making the move? Where can I find your resume? :)

[8sigma]

Was this reply for me?

[meinbhiengineer]

2014 - 0 YOE - 350000 INR - Software Engineer - A big Indian MNC

2016 - 1.5 YOE - 700000 INR - Software Engineer - Startup

2017 - 2.5 YOE - 1200000 INR - Software Engineer - Another Startup

2018 - 4 YOE - 1300000 INR - Software Engineer - Same as above

[umeshgmrl]

Can I know your tech stack?

[throwawayBLRDev]

Bangalore, India based developer

2004: 2,75,000 INR , Software engineer

2005: 4,00,000 INR, Senior software engineer

2009: 12,00,000 INR, Senior software engineer

2010: 14,00,000 INR, Senior software engineer

2011: 17,00,000 INR, Tech lead

2013: 22,00,000 INR, Senior software engineer (another company)

2015: 30,00,000 INR, Senior software engineer (another company)

2018: 40,00,000 INR, Senior software engineer

[lifeisstillgood]

A quick question - presumably your first position was based in India - is this still true ?

(I mean that's a 40-fold increase - well done, but if the India IT industry is seeing that sort of inflation it must be a weird ride.)

[sumedh]

> but if the India IT industry is seeing that sort of inflation it must be a weird ride.

It depends, the IT out sourcing companies like Infosys and TCS wont pay such huge salaries, the American product based companies will be happy to pay them for the right candidate.

[sures]

Yes, I am still working in India.

[tata2020]

Can u tell me which company offers such package i am really surprise as to wat role and company and wat skills ll get such package.

can u share any way to connect with you?

[sures]

I don't want to mention a single company because I want to protect my privacy. I will share multiple company names where I have worked earlier or that I have interacted with in the past and I know with confidence that they can pay salaries in this range.

LinkedIn, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, Google, Microsoft, Directi, InMobi, Intuit.

Some of the company names like Flipkart and Directi is based on very old information (>5 years) I have. I don't know if they still pay as well as they used to.

Any one of these skill sets: Big data application development, big data analytics, big data security, machine learning, cloud development. I worked in distributed computing myself.

Sorry I don't have a convenient way to offer you to connect with me while protecting my privacy. If you or anyone can create an online medium somewhere where we can talk anonymously, I can join that. I can answer your questions here too.

[blrdev356]

Most of the American companies with head count < 3000 usually seem to offer good packages. My skill set is C++ based (professionally) but I have knowledge of full stack dev and devops (never worked professionally). Having Tier-1 college stamp has helped quite a bit (though lack of CS degree keeps me from applying to Tier-1 companies)

I can answer your questions here.

[godelmachine]

Does your current employer pay you in rupees? If yes, that’s so great!!

Do you have a Masters degree? If yes, may I ask from which university?

[sures]

My current employer pays in rupees.

I don't have a Masters degree.

I cannot share which university to keep my privacy. But I am not from IIT, NIT, or any top state college. Basically I am not from any Tier 1 university or college. My university must be Tier 2 or Tier 3.

[codesternews]

What is secret of your high salary. Can you please point out what thing helped to you get high salary?

[sures]

Is it really that high? I know people of my experience level who are earning even more. :-)

I have no secret. I am decent at my work. Like to keep learning new tech and non-tech stuff. So I think the interviews go well and I get the good paying jobs. Not the algorithm puzzles type of interviews. I suck at those too.

[godelmachine]

And people of your experience earn ever more than you do?

Do you mind giving us a fair idea of how much they make? The highest amount in your experience range?

[sures]

I know one guy in my experience level with a pay of 12000000 rupees. He works in speech recognition and translation area in Bangalore. There are others in the 9500000 - 10500000 rupees range. But everyone is not an engineer in this sample. Some are directors too.

In contract based employees in specialized skills the numbers for my experience level goes even higher like in the 12000000 to 16000000 rupees range.

It gets me also thinking that I should take risk in life and choose contract based employment. But the work pressure is higher. There is also pressure of renewing contracts. So it is not an easy decision.

[godelmachine]

So, what kind of interviews are you talking about, if not algorithm puzzles kind of interviews?

[sures]

Like simple algorithm and data structures problems and problems related to my domain expertise.

Simple algorithm problems are things that have some connection with my work like vector clocks, detecting duplicates, traversing trees, graph search algorithms. Another type of simple algorithm problems are things that use CS fundamentals only and no ingenious tricks like manipulating trees, matrices and likewise. I can manage these problems in an interview room.

But if it is more complex than this like banker's algorithm, manipulating segment trees, finding convex hull, printing numbers on screen in some weird fashion or like that I will get stressed in the interview room. I suck at these.

The best interviews for me are those that are related to domain expertise. Like problems involving maintaining integrity of data in a distributed database, implementing partial ordering of events, designing data consistency policies.

[stale2002]

The secret is to work for an American company.

[godelmachine]

Same question :)

[fjsolwmv]

Why is pay in rupees great? Dollars can be changed to rupees at a bank, yes?

[codesternews]

That's great. What's your stack and on what technologies are you working?

[sures]

I don't have a specific stack. I have moved between stacks over the years. Programming languages involved were Java, Scala, Clojure, Python, C, JavaScript (Node.js), Go, R. So the stacks change based on the programming language. The area of technology I work on have more or less been more constant. I work on distributed computing. Like implementing message passing protocols between nodes, writing job schedulers for distributed database systems that can synchronize jobs, and likewise.

[amelius]

How many hours do you work per week? How many days off per year?

[sures]

The hours of work per week varies. Some weeks it is 5-10 hours per week. Some weeks it is 30-40 hours per week. Sometimes I had to stretch to work for 10 hours at a time. Such days are rare but they happen sometimes. This pattern has been like this in all my jobs from the beginning (2003).

The days off per year in my current job is just like any other company in India. Apart from 104 weekends and 10 government holidays, there are 20 vacation leaves for planned vacations and 12 casual leaves for ad-hoc personal time off. So total of 32 leaves. This has varied from job to job but the number of leaves has always remained between 28 and 34 in these jobs.

[CalRobert]

" Some weeks it is 5-10 hours per week"

That's a pretty important data point! There are exceptions but I'd say very, very few people doing 200k+ in SV are working less than 40 hours per week, much less ever working 10 hours per week.

[amelius]

Well, some of us spend hours per day slacking on HN :)

[roel_v]

There's 'working' and 'being at work'...

[vadym909]

holy smokes- talk about an opportunity to reverse offshore outsourcing. Take LCOL principal engineers in US to work in India.

[thisisit]

Please use commas or even quote numbers in thousands. Otherwise it is unreadable.

Edit: Here's an edited version for easy readability:

  2003 -  0 YOE -  200,000(  3,000 USD) - Software Engineer  - One of the very popular Indian IT firms
  2005 -  2 YOE -  300,000 (  4,000 USD) - Senior Engineer    - Same as above
  2007 -  4 YOE - 1,000,000 INR ( 14,000 USD) - Software Engineer  - A small American company with their office in India
  2009 -  6 YOE - 1,500,000 INR ( 20,000 USD) - Senior Engineer    - Another small American company with their office in India
  2011 -  8 YOE - 2,000,000 INR ( 28,000 USD) - Principal Engineer - Same as above
  2013 - 10 YOE - 3,500,000 INR ( 47,000 USD) - Principal Engineer - A big American company with their office in India
  2015 - 12 YOE - 7,000,000 INR ( 95,000 USD) - Principal Engineer - A big American company with their office in India
  2017 - 14 YOE - 9,500,000 INR (128,000 USD) - Principal Engineer - Same as above

[robin_reala]

For INR I would have expected the Indian numbering system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system

[thisisit]

I know but given the audience this system seemed more apt.

[hadrien01]

What do you mean? I find the numbers readable, what format would you prefer?

[azhenley]

Why did you omit a zero from the larger numbers? That seems to make it less readable to me (or at least confusing).

[thisisit]

Which number is missing a zero?

9500000 is 9,500,000

[azhenley]

Sorry, it was a display issue when viewing on mobile with horizontal scrolling. Everything looks fine on desktop and is readable.