But as the IT industry evolves—rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are churning the technology sector— companies are examining whether a candidate’s skill sets, besides their degrees, are compatible with the changing requirements. “An excellent academic qualification still gets precedence in India. Yet, the current trend, especially in the startup ecosystem, is in favour of candidates who come armed with newer skill sets. For emerging technologies, IT companies want candidates who have gained new skills, or upskilled, through specific advanced courses,” says Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Bengaluru-based staffing company Xpheno.
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According to data collated by Xpheno, freshers draw an average ₹2.5- ₹3.6 lakh annual salary in Indian IT companies after getting their B.Tech degrees (see graphic). The payoff is much higher for IT jobs abroad. According to the US department of labor, a software developer’s median annual earnings in the US is $121,001, or nearly ₹1 crore at current exchange rates.
Mint spoke to some IT professionals about their journey of finding a job, the costs involved in acquiring new skills and how quickly they have been able to recover these costs.
The straight path
Pradeep Jha, 33, chose to study BTech (Computer Science) from Annamalai University in Tamil Nadu because it was a quasi-government college back in 2008 and the fees comparatively less, at ₹30,000 per year. Jha says he would have spent a total of ₹2.5 lakh-3 lakh, including fees of ₹1.2 lakh and living costs, over the period of four years.
“I had also taken coaching for JEE and that would have added another ₹60,000-70,000 towards my education costs,” he says. Jha, who landed a job at Infosys in Pune after his grduation, claims to have recovered the costs in about five years.
Being a part of a large IT company helps as it offers several opportunities to learn and upskill, he says. “We have an internal portal for employees looking to learn new stuff. The company also sponsors employees who want to take up specific courses or training, or reimburses them ,” he adds.
The road not taken
By the time Alok Shah, 36, earned his bachelor’s degree in tourism from the University of Winchester, UK, in 2008, there were hardly any job opportunities due to the global financial crisis. He ended up at a retail outlet of Marks & Spencer and worked there for five years. When he felt that his life was stagnating, he approached his cousin, an IT engineer, and sought to know how he could enter the IT sector without an engineering degree. He was advised to clear some certification courses.
He quit his job, worked part-time for a year and started preparing for this. “If I take into account the opportunity cost of not working full-time and the cost of my certifications, I would have invested around ₹7-8 lakh in that year,” Shah says.
In 2013, he landed his first job as an IT professional in a small company. In the initial years, he had to invest in certification courses, but as he progressed in his career and switched companies, his courses and upskilling needs were paid for by the companies that employed him. Today, he is a senior analyst, systems operations, at Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of New York Stock Exchange.
Shah says it is very important that your company is willing to invest in your upskilling. “Only then is it worth sticking with the company,” he adds. He has been with ICE for the last eight years.
Tech disruption
Nishit Vadhavkar, 45, got his engineering degree in computers in 2000. That was when the recession was at its peak and he could not land a job for the next two years. He did some part-time work, giving tuitions and building websites.
In 2002, he landed a proper IT job with French multinational company Atos. In just two years, Vadhavkar had recovered whatever he had spent on his graduation. “My fees was ₹30,000 annually. In addition, I had attended some tuition classes. In total, I must have spent around ₹2.4 lakh over four years. I was able to recover all this quite quickly after getting the job,” Vadhavkar says.
However, Vadhavkar saw the risk of technology disruption early on in his career. He was working on MFG/PRO—an ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions—which was offered by his company to large clients to manage their supply chain and inventories. But soon, MFG/PRO started facing stiff competition from SAP (systems applications and products).
“MFG/PRO ERP system was facing challenges. I wanted to look for something where the risk of technology changes is mitigated. A friend told me to look at quality management opportunities as he saw that I was good at handling audits,” Vadhavkar recalls.
He quit Atos in 2006 and joined a small IT company where he got the opportunity to be a quality lead.
After one-and-half-years, he moved to Siemens in 2007 in the quality profile and, ironically, after the merger of Atos Origin and Siemens, Vadhavkar was back in the same company where he started, but in a profile that he preferred.
At Atos, Vadhavkar says, there are lot of opportunities for learning and growing. He says the fact that the company sponsors upskilling requirements helps employees in their career growth. Vadhavkar says he has benefitted from that. Today, he is the quality head at Atos for its global delivery centre in India.
Deepak Rao, 43, who was with Vadhavkar at Atos, took a different approach when there was a risk of technology disruption. “I felt that all businesses won’t be able to adopt a new ERP system overnight as this could be disruptive for their operations. And the systems we were working with were highly customizable, which was not the case with SAP at that time,” Rao recalls.
So, he decided to stick around in the same company. For Rao, cost of getting an engineering degree (in electronics) was minimal. He got his degree from Padmabhushan Vasantdada Patil College in Mumbai through a “free seat” (government quota or subsidized seats).
“I was very clear that I didn’t want my higher education costs to be a burden on my father and didn’t want to take any loan. So, I applied for a scholarship and didn’t mind opting for a college that was not in the creamy layer,” he says.
Rao just had to pay ₹4,000 for each of the first two years of his graduation, but he received a scholarship as well, which fully covered his first year fees. In the second year, he received 50% scholarship. For the remaining two years, he had to pay ₹8,000.
Thus, his college fees totalled ₹22,000 and he spent another ₹10,000 on books and apparatus. Overall, he would have rung up a bill of ₹32,000 in four years.
Rao had obtained a degree in electronics but wanted to get into the software industry., So, he did a course for ₹2,000 to learn 4-5 programming languages, which helped him make the switch. Rao, who joined Atos in 2002, says it only took seven months in his first job to recover all his costs.
The decision to stay put with the same technology turned out just fine for Rao. He was asked to work on a project for a client that had highly customized ERP system and was in no position to replace it. Over the years, he rose to become the senior project manager heading a team of around 150 people. After 16 years at the company, he quit and joined QAD, which had originally created the MFG/PRO ERP systems.