"Compensation: How much is enough?"

L has put up a blog post with this title. And I wouldn't have responded in kind had I not seen a number there. Two numbers actually - 15L and 4 years. Pardon my language, but I can't help it - WTF?!

I always thought EDA was one of the more lucrative fields in the industry in India, specially because one can't just jump into the field from any other - you need knowledge about more things than the standard C/C++/Unix and the number of experienced people is limited. And here are Java and .Net people talking about 15L in 4 years?! As I said before, WTF!

This can mean either of two things - that kids nowadays are very greedy or that I need to move to a Java based field. The funny thing is that none of the people whom I know (and whose compensation I know as well) get anything close to that number.

Right, now that I have that out of my system, let me go back and see what else L has to say. Ho hum, how much is enough? Ideally, zero work and infinite pay. Next question.

How much time should one spend in a job? That really depends. Job satisfaction and the way you are treated in the company matter a lot. But only at the start of your career, I think. Because that's the time when almost everyone you know have more or less the same pay. But once the years pass, you see people who get paid a lot more just because they happened to land in the right place. Or because they jumped ship 7 times in 7 years. Or because they are in a company that believes in sending you abroad for years together. And once you see the changing lifestyles, the reckless display of wealth, the buying of apartments and cars, the exotic vacations, then it hurts because all I have is certificates and a bunch of gift coupons.

I wouldn't want to judge the quality or worth of the work that all these folks do. But it hurts because I know these were the same people who learnt Fortran programs by heart in the first semester because they didn't understand what was going on. If society values their work much more than mine - then somewhere, somehow, I have slipped and I have failed. How does one rectify that? By getting paid more. Which is possible only if you move.

The sad fact is that you do get a good hike if you move. I've never got the 60-100% that L mentions, but 20-30% is a good number. I lay the blame squarely on management for this one. The way it works in many places is that you get a good hike when you move into the company. During the yearly appraisal, you miss out on the hike because you're too new there. You might even fall behind others in the same role. To keep up, what do you do? You move. Again, and again. There are always other companies willing to take you on board for a 30% hike.

L is probably wrong about us losing out on the cost advantage. As long as I am not paid 80 to 120K dollars, I am a cost advantage to the company, because that is what it will cost them to get someone to do the same work elsewhere (maybe 60K, but the point still stands). And even with all the salary hikes, I am still MUCH below that number. Cost matters a lot to those companies where skill and experience do not matter as much as the head count. Call centers come to mind. I may be wrong, flame me if you will.

Back to the management. Create a job profile vs. compensation matrix, and, damn it, stick to it! Turn the candidate away if he's asking for more. "But what if the candidate is exceptionally qualified/experienced?" whine the MBAs. Then he doesn't belong to that job profile, does he? DON'T base your offer on what the candidate is earning now. One large company that shall go nameless, seems to be making offers directly related to what the candidate earns in the current company. So the numbers I get to hear about fluctuate wildly for the same position.

What I would really like to see is standardized salaries. Yes. Everyone in a given company (or department) at a particular designation or experience level or with the same job responsibilities should have the same compensation. If someone has done exceptionally well, then reward him with a performance bonus, or more stock options or whatever. But I should know when I join a new place that I am not being shortchanged just because I didn't negotiate, and that everyone else is also being paid the same, with point variations depending on performance. It should also reduce favouritism a bit, because you will have to justify any performance bonus you give to an employee.

We come next to the fact that moving often looks bad on the resume'. I don't know. I've seen both kinds of cases, people who have done really well because they moved once a year and ended up as big shot managers, and people who cannot get hired anywhere because they moved once a year. It depends on the people doing the hiring and the reasons that you come up with for moving. Like so many things in life, chance rears its ugly head again.

People say that all this moving around is bad and that soon the market will stagnate because nobody will have the resources to offer you yet another hike. I believe they say this to convince people not to move around so much. From my point of view, if it is inevitable that the market stagnates, then I better move around as much as I can before that happens! (Just kidding, I'm not moving again for some time.)

Why do companies and recruiters hire you even after looking at your history of leaving in a year in all previous companies? I don't know either, but possibly it has to do with you convincing them that you won't. You might even be sincere when you tell them that all the previous ones were a mere coincidence and that you are applying at this place to be able to make a career here. Maybe the people doing the hiring feel that their company will provide a better environment and compensation and that you will finally remain for more than a year. Maybe they just want to complete their headcount.

Finally, uh, is someone actually GETTING that 15L in 4 years? If yes, please, please, please, let me know which company it it, and how one goes about getting a job there.

Grrr...

Don't you just hate it when articles supposed to "educate" the aam janata are wrong?

In an article on "GREAT" laptops, rediff says that a particular Dothan based laptop is faster than a P4. Why? Because it supports a 533MHz FSB!

It goes on to say that another model has a builtin VGA webcam and expands VGA to "very good appliance, a standard for electronic goods"!

The whole text reads like a concatenation of the advertising material of the various players in the market. I'm sticking to Anandtech for my daily tech dose.

Well done Bangalore!

Or should I say, the people who "run" Bangalore. Guys, it's time to leave. If someone of his stature is treated like this, I don't even want to think of the common folks...

http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/oct/20murthy.htm

Uhhhhh....

Techtree.com sends me a newsletter every day. The one I see today has this:

Bi-directional printing: Printing in which not only does your PC send data to the printer, but the printer sends data to the PC, like information on the current printer status (for example, out of paper).


Maybe I'm mistaken here but I thought that bi-di printing was back in the good old days of dot matrix printing where the printer head would actually print one line in one direction and the other in the reverse direction, to save the time required for the carriage return. Those good old days!

Can anyone tell me if I am correct? (Of course I am, I just want to see if there are any other people left over from the good old days.)

The Book

Ah, Kaddu. Happily married man. I doubt if he would be interested in collaborating on something so mundane as a book.

That was us in college - roll numbers 1, 2 and 3. Three very different people, who landed up in very different places too. Wonder if all those years studying were worth it.

Rant...

Let's see. What can I rant about today?

How about the fact that the flats in the building next to the one in which I live are going for a minimum of 80 lakhs? No doubt they're made by a famous builder and have nice landscaping, but 80 lakhs?! I think I could live forever in my rented apartment for 80 lakhs, and it too is nothing to sneeze at.

Finally got cable TV, got my TV running, got my TV tuner running... and there's nothing to see on TV!

The weekend looms large, and nothing to do except sleep the hours away.

Sigh. Such is life.

The book and the DVD player.

Nope, we won't rewrite Five Point Something, we will write "Seventy and Counting" (seventy being the percentage that would mark you as an excellent student in my class). Of course, this book will be about us elite people and the adventures we had in the middle of nowhere. In fact, I invite Chaos to contribute chapters to this book (profits, if any, will be shared in proportion to the number of pages contributed to the book*). Any other RECTian who's not already in a lucrative line of work can contribute too. Especially those with lurid details which we are woefully short of.

I was actually looking at a Panasonic model on the web (For the context-switching-impaired readers - we're talking about DVD players now). This one is for my folks in Bangalore, I aleady have two DVD readers (one each on the desktop and laptop). The point is that the older generation does not wish to be at the mercy of us young folk to turn on the PC and start the software for playing DVDs/VCDs. DVD players are easier to use. And they are pretty cheap nowadays too. Things I thought of that a player should ideally have:

- multi-format support
- photo cd support + functions like browse
- play slow motion / fast / single frame advance
- zoom / pan
- good remote control features (i.e. easy to use)
- THX sound
- dts/dolby built-in decoders
- multi disc / cd changer
- continue on power cycle
- 10 bit video DAC (also saw a model with 4 bit DAC!)
- progressive scan (I don't need this right now, but the future is uncertain)
- virtual surround sound
- 24 bit audio DAC
- optical & coax audio out

From what I see on the web, pretty much all players have most of these features (except maybe the CD changer and continue-on-power-cycle). Considering it's Diwali time and everyone seems to be putting out discounts and offers, it might be a good time to buy something like this.



* Conditions apply. Acceptance of chapters at the sole discretion of this author. Contents may be edited for clarity. Font size and line spacing will be consistent across pages of the published book. Pictures/photos will not be considered for sharing of profits. Void where prohibited. No warranty, express or implied, is made for fitness of purpose. All rights reserved. May require some assembly. Batteries not included. Results may vary.

Me? Cosmopolitan?

The word brings back memories... Ahem. This tagging business is getting out of hand (did I already say this when I was tagged the last time?). Especially since I know that nobody actually reads these blog entries.

The latest tag is about the cities one has lived in. And it comes at a time when I am looking for the perfect DVD player. Not that the two are related, but if anyone has a recommendation, please do drop a line.

Now let's see. Pune, Indore, Nadiad, Indore, Nashik, Trichy, Hyderabad, Bangalore, (Chennai,) Noida. Yeah, Indore appears twice. Actually the chronology is confusing at best, because my family did a bit of moving around; when I was in studying in a godforsaken land, for example. Chennai is in brackets because I never lived there myself, but my sister was there and I had shifted my mom and granny there to live with her, so it's sort of a pseudo-home.

I won't write any more right now. It's close to midnight and you know what happens to me at midnight, right? Yes, I fall asleep.

Suffice to say that I studied with Chaos in the same college and, to my everlasting misfortune, in the same class too. He has written a few words about the city and none about the college itself - we could probably write a book to rival Five Point Someone (without the lurid parts, sigh).