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Other
day a final year student came to my cabin and this is the conversation we had
Me:
Good Morning
Student:
Good Morning, Sir; Sir, I came to tell you a happy news. I got 2 jobs; one in
IT company XXX with a pay package of 3.4 lakhs per annum and another in a
mechanical engineering company with a starting salary of 1.44 lakhs per annum.
Me:
Great, Congratulations
Student:
Thank You Sir
Me: So
which job you are taking?
Student:
Of course the software job
Me: But
you were doing mechanical engineering all these years and isn’t this job suit
your profile better than the software job?
Student:
Sir, it is not that I don’t like the job profile of mechanical job profile.
Sir, these days who will work for a paltry pay of 1.44 lakhs per year in any
company? Company XXX is paying me more than double and I am going to take that.
Me: So
do you like the job of the software engineer more than mechanical engineer?
Student:
Nothing like that; Both jobs are OK but 1.44 lakhs per annum is too low a
salary, sir.
If you
interact a lot with final year engineering students you will come across so
many situations like this. I always believe that starting salary should never
be the ONLY criteria to take up your first job. I am seeing lot of students who
study different branches of engineering going to software jobs just because the
salary is higher to start with.
*********************************************************
I
happened to read an article that came in New York Times in 2010 titled “AHigh-Tech Titan Plagued by Potholes” that narrates the lack of “qualified”
civil engineers to execute various infrastructure projects in India. The article written by Vikas
Bajaj says
The problem is a dearth of
engineers — or at least the civil engineers with the skill and expertise to
make sure those ambitious projects are done on time and up to specifications.
In the
same article Dr Ravi Sinha, Professor in Civil Engineering at Indian Institute
of Technology, Bombay
says
Ravi Sinha, a civil engineering professor at the
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, says professionals in his field with
five years of experience make about as much as their counterparts at
information technology companies. But those starting can make as little as half
the pay of their technology peers.
I was
convinced by this statement by Dr Sinha as most of my class mates who joined in
Civil Engineering companies after engineering who started their career with
very low salary are now in a position to demand salary with their 15 year
experience in this field.
I want
to test this theory that “civil engineering professionals in his field with five years of
experience make about as much as their counterparts at information technology
companies. But those starting can make as little as half the pay of their
technology peers."
So I called up two of my
undergraduate classmates (Let us call them K and P) – both did their bachelors
in civil engineering with me and we all graduated in 1997. K got placed in one
of the best software companies in India through campus placement
while P joined a construction company as Field Engineer. I asked them to send
me the salary they got from 1998 to 2011. They were courteous to send me the
salary and this is what they send me (see graph below). This graph shows the
annual salary of my friends for the last 13 years.
My friend P joined construction
company for a salary of Rs 4500 per month that never got increased for the
first four years. By that time salary of the friend K working in software company was close to Rs
60,000 per month. Now see the sharp rise after 10 years for P (P changed
company after 11 year while K remained in the same company till now). Now in
2012 P is drawing more salary than K.
Let this analysis be an eye-opener
for all those students who consider starting salary is most important thing to
select your first job.
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There are so many people who
really need help. Instead of spending so much money on such silly advertisement
why can’t the government spend this money on poor like our servant maid?
There are so many people who
really need help. Instead of spending so much money on such silly advertisement
why can’t the government spend this money on poor like our servant maid?
