[kamaal]

I was downvoted very badly yesterday for just saying ISRO engineers were paid less. Actually comparatively even compared to many Indian IT professionals salaries of these folks is actually low.

Most people don't realize how low it is until you start comparing yourself with people of your same age some 10-15 years in to your career who are working with other software companies.

Any decent IIT grad joining something like Amazon or Google gets ~15L-18L per annum these days, If you are from other colleges you can still get ~10L per annum. And this is for writing some HTML or some application around a data base. Heck even people working at IT services industry get paid around ~4-5 L per annum, and plus they can always move on to some nice after a few years, most do and within 8-10 years of their careers can reach atleast ~15L per annum. Plus some people also get foreign travel opportunities. If you have a good saving and investments discipline you can buy youself a home, a car and may be a nice wedding and a good deal of gold within 12 years of your career.

To know how far those people who started their careers in the IT industry in 90's are, many are settled in the US. Many own 2-3 homes in a city like Bangalore drawing insane rent income, Many own stock options worth money you have never heard of. You can talk of Mars mission, pride and all that. But when you see your college mate driving a Honda Accord and eating a 3000 rupee dinner with his family after spending another 2000 on a movie on a Sunday evening. You begin to realize money has its own importance in life.

Working in Government firms went out of fashion as early as mid 90's.

[anupshinde]

Aren't you discounting the perks? I agree some IT guys like me earn in multiples of that - but most don't. And what about the amazing work-life balance (more life less work), job security and "serving-the-country" feeling. Compare that to a heavily stressful job, waking up at 3AM because some server in SF stopped executing some code that was written in SF. And absolutely no job security (I don't really care about job security). And constantly having that feeling "What if I could make this amazing product for my country"

I'd exchange so-called-high paying job to get a job like ISRO now (Somebody misguided me in my early days with the same logic you mentioned)

Obviously IT guys get paid a lot when they settle in US. I can tell you most of these guys are skilled a lot and can do that with little effort - Nobody's stopping them. And when they do, they earn in multiples than most of the IT jobs there.

[kamaal]

>>Aren't you discounting the perks?

Most Indian private companies today offer free lunch, free transport and health insurance. The days when only government firms offered these are long behind us. If not free, most companies at the least subsidize lunch, food and insurance.

>>I agree some IT guys like me earn in multiples of that - but most don't.

Eventually they will. Changing a job will easily get a you a minimum of 30% raise in any company in India. Even a services company. If you change jobs every 3 years you will still be way ahead of any guy working there. And also note their hikes are largely based on a concept of 'pay revision' which are generally once in 10-15 year activity. In that time even your average guy would drawing at least thrice more than than any government employee.

>>And what about the amazing work-life balance (more life less work), job security and "serving-the-country" feeling.

What you call work life balance, will look like stagnation 10 years into your career. Job security will feel more like institutionalization and you increasingly feel like you are stuck in a place from where there is no way out. The difference in salary between yours and your peers will be huge and they would have a lot more touch on any technology than you will.

And not to mention most private companies think of government firms as wastelands where people just push time doing nothing.

>>Compare that to a heavily stressful job, waking up at 3AM because....

Frankly speaking to my ears this sounds similar to what many of my class mates in school used to say about students who study late night working on physics and math problems. Because they thought people were taking too much stress to work on things they didn't have when they could simply have a garment or a shoe shop and earn the same. We all know where they are today.

Money comes at a price. Like it or not my friend money matters. We live in a society where we have to spend money buying things, send our kids to schools, pay their tuition fees, we need to buy a home, car etc.

>>I'd exchange so-called-high paying job to get a job like ISRO now (Somebody misguided me in my early days with the same logic you mentioned)

You seriously should. And there is nothing really stopping you. And you can easily get through the exams they have. But the fact that most of us don't shows us where our true priorities are.

ISRO is just one small island in the massive government bureaucracy there is. In all likeliness you won't be writing any great application but rather clocking 9-5 with your friends sipping tea in the canteen, cribbing about rising prices, a senior colleagues daughter's marriage for which he hasn't any savings ,pay revision which is 7 years away, and discussing lifestyle of a friend who just bought a honda city while you are here saving money commuting in a bus because petrol prices increased by 4 rupees last week.

[Sven7]

And yet they have reached Mars :)