| >>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. |