Google still favorite: 2 IITians say 'No, thanks!' to Oracle's crore+ pay

Contrary to popular belief, money is not topprioryat India’s top engineering colleges. Two IIT graduates from IIT Kanpur have rejected US-basedtech major Oracle’s Rs 1.31 crore ($210,000) offer and may have settled for Google, which offered Rs 68.34 lakh ($110,000), or Tower Research Capital, a US-based financial services firm, which offered a package of Rs 74.55 lakh ($120,000), an Economic Times report said today.

“These students are mature; they know money does not reflect everything,” the report quoted a placement team member as saying. Moreover, if you look at the salary package closely, Oracle was only offering $110,000 as the base pay while the rest was performance-based.

Despite that two other students at IIT Madras on Sunday accepted Oracle’s $2,10,000 (over Rs 1 crore) per annum offer on Sunday, while Google made 10 bulk offers at IIT-Bombay. According to a report in The Times of India, Google picked up three people for its California office and seven for India. Samsung Korea made the highest bulk offers at IIM-B with 14 offers against just one in the year-ago period.This improvement in offers for overseas roles can be attributed to the bouncing back of the US economy. But what’s heartening is that even Indian companies are showing signs of confidence.

For instance,Zomato, an online food and restaurant listings startup, offered the highest salary on Day 2 at IIT Bombay, and hired four students from IIT Delhi and Bombay at a uniform package of Rs 26 lakh each.

At IIT-Kanpur on Sunday, students accepted around 125 offers from 20 companies, while on Monday more than 50 students accepted offers.

“This year, placements have been better than last year in terms of number of participating firms as well as compensation packages. As against 150 firms, this year we anticipate 200 firms coming to the campus. Day 1 of the placement itself has been spectacular with EXL Services making one of the largest hiring by a single firm of 34 offers, including US profiles. This is a first in IIT, Kanpur’s, history,” Vimal Kumar, chairperson (training and placements) at IIT, Kanpur, was quoted as saying by a report in the Business Standard.

But do high-profile companies offeringhigh pay packets and bulk hires on campus imply that all is well with India’s job scenario?

Not really.

The lure of attractive salaries, foreign postings and quick promotions seems to be losing its charm over the last few years.

“We note the bargaining power of companies with respect to entry-level employees is at its peak with real wages at their lowest in more than 15 years,” Credit Suisse said in a report.

The global investment bank conducted a detailed research on employment and salary patterns of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) employees and concluded that the average wage hike (7 percent) for offshore employees in 2013-14 was at multi-year low.

TCS is India’s biggest outsourcer with nearly 3 lakh employees.

Entry-level salaries at TCS (adjusted for inflation) are at the lowest in 15 years, Credit Suisse found. In 1996-97, a TCS fresher was offered an entry-level salary of Rs 1.45 lakh. This year the entry-level salary rose to Rs 3.16 lakh, but adjusted for inflation, that amount is equivalent to a mere 1.15 lakh.

Moreover, there is no reason to believe that the higher packages at IIT placements is any indication that there is a meaningful revival in the jobs market.

As this BS editorial points out , “In the first six months of this financial year, 116 engineering colleges and business schools asked the technical education regulator to let them shut down, compared to 100 in the whole of 2012-13. In at least four relatively prosperous states, over 200,000 engineering seats have had no takers this academic year. Reason: only a fifth of the class of 2013 got jobs, which has led many experts to conclude that the job crisis now is in no way better than the situation that prevailed during the 2008 global financial meltdown.”