Indian software salaries rise 19%

SALARY SLIP

Top 3 paymasters are software R&D firms "� Cadence, Sun Micro, Honeywell Tech

7 MNCs among top 10 paymasters

Salary hikes don't always lead to higher salary satisfaction

Industry average grew by 11% in 2007 to touch Rs 6.2 lakh a year

70% work force has less than 5 years work experience

Average age of professionals has increased marginally to 28.1 years, from 27.5 years

Software industry salaries have grown by an average 11 per cent in 2007 to touch Rs 6.2 lakh per annum. While a typical Indian software professional saw an average salary increase of 18.3 per cent in 2006, they received a 18.7 per cent hike this year, according to the latest survey by IDC India.

The average salary increase is considered significant as the software talent pool of the top 50 companies has grown sharply "� at nearly 30-40 per cent annually over the last three years. With thousands of freshers recruited through the on-campus route, the average salaries were generally expected to go down, the survey noted.

The results reveal that foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) are paying higher salaries, with those engaged in R&D paying the highest. Not surprisingly, the top three paymasters in the industry "� Cadence, Sun Microsystems, Honeywell Technologies "� were all engaged in R&D. Seven of the top 10 in the list included MNCs such as IBM, Capgemini and CSC.

Though the base of 31 companies surveyed comprised IT services players, R&D centres of software vendors, MNCs, hardware players and even systems integrators and resellers, no big disparities in salary levels were noticed.

While Cadence and Sun were the top paymasters for all employees with up to 10 years of experience, industry bellwether Infosys was more generous with the salaries of its senior and experienced employees.

Infosys was one of the best paymasters for professionals having an experience between 10 and 15 years and more. Going by the salary levels, the study said that fresh engineers could gain from joining software R&D firms.

The survey also pointed out that there was virtually no correlation between 'salary levels' and 'satisfaction with salary'. While the TCS employees ranked their company at No 4 in terms of 'satisfaction with salary,' the company was ranked No 13 in terms of salary. Infosys was ranked No 12 in terms of salary, but No 28 in terms of 'satisfaction with salary'.

Commenting on the survey results, Dataquest's (for whom the IDC survey was done) Chief Editor Prasanto Kumar Roy said, "We knew that high salaries didn't always mean high satisfaction. But the sheer extent of disconnect is amazing. There was less than 8 per cent correlation between salary and satisfaction with salary."

The report pointed out the necessity of finding a way out of this ever increasing wage rise since the rupee appreciation was squeezing the margins of Indian tech companies. The not-so-simple solution offered was, of course, to improve employee satisfaction.

But some of the companies were also trying out a six-day week, to offset the impact of rupee appreciation on their margins by increasing billable hours. Many more companies, including some of the MNC captives, may also do away with the five-day week to make them more competitive.

The survey also said that India had a young workforce, with professionals having less than 5-years work experience forming 70 per cent of the 1.6 million strong Indian software workforce. Only one out of five professionals had between five and 10 years of experience, and less than one in 10 professionals had over 10 years of experience.