About 2.9 million students enroll into courses related to software engineering. Of these 2.9 million students every year 1.5 million software engineers are released into the job market.
This statistics was released by HRD Ministry of India in 2019 for the year 2018.
A big 97% of graduating engineers want jobs in software development or core engineering.
But, only 3% have suitable skills to be employed in software or product markets and only 7% can handle core engineering tasks.
What is the problem here?
The problem is not just supply and demand problem. But the bigger problem is related to the quality of supply.
How do IT companies handle this Issue?
Very simple IT companies design a very low starting salaries for Software Engineers.
First they hire software engineers at very low CTC (Cost to Company).
Then they provide all the required training on real projects within the company.
Next they track the performance of these software engineers on real jobs and get feedback from Project Managers and Clients.
Finally they adjust salaries of software engineers with good potential and high performance.
What are the challenges for Software engineers?
This big supply compared to low demand in software engineering jobs is causing a real challenge for software engineers.
There are uncertainty, chaos, and luck for all engineers in the job market.
On one side the fees of engineering have been going up at a constant pace every year. On the other side, the salaries of engineers are looking stagnant or even coming down.
My engineering fees for 4 years was Rs 54,000. Today the fees is about Rs 10,00,000. You can see the increase in the fees.
At the same time the starting salary for someone in Software Industry in 1995 was about Rs 6,000 per month. Today it is about Rs 25,000 per month. Not a proportional increase compared to 1995 and today between college fees and starting salaries.
In fact salaries since last 15 years have remained about Rs 25,000 per month for most software engineers.
This phenomenon is applicable to engineers from every field.
How to get a job even with average marks and an unknown college?
I am an engineer from 1995 when the competition was less. Not that less. But along with competition, the opportunities were also less.
And with that having poor marks in engineering did not help.
Even then I was able to get a job in one of the reputed Antivirus Software Companies of that time. It took me 90+ days to find this job. Little did I know that this job was going to shape my entire career.
Here is the complete story of – how I got my first job.
I was excited, enthusiastic and eager to prove myself because I considered this job as a stepping stone for my career ahead.
The unknown Art of getting multiple promotions in software company
My salary was not something that I could boast to my friends about. I was less than all my friends at that time.
My parents did not understand why my friends from engineers were getting twice or thrice as much as I was getting paid. I did not want to explain that, “Mom – Dad, in these marks who is going to give me a dream job.” Because that would have immediately got a reaction, “We told you to study when you were in college. Now see what you are getting.”
This minuscule salary did not deter me from doing well.
On the first day, I asked my Manager, how I can prepare for my Customer Support Engineer Job. He gave me some five manuals of the products I needed to support. The product was an Anti-Virus software and a few tools that helped in keeping the hard disk in shape.
I immediately went to work. I started reading each manual. I carried the manual in the train because I used to commute 3 hours daily. One and Half hour to get from home to office and one and a half hour back. Within five days I had read the manuals at least two to three times.
Then he gives me the first customer support call. That call went well and there was no looking back.
But this was not enough to get promotions.
There was an admin team who used to manage all the calls for Customer Support Engineers. They would get desperate calls from irate customers because of the virus on their computer and we had to go and solve the problems.
Most of the problems were easy. The software would do the work. But there were problems where the software would corrupt data on the hard disk and we had to recover the data. This was very challenging and only our manager could handle such calls.
I told my manager to teach me how to recover the hard disk. None of the other engineers were interested in that because it was difficult and sometimes you would be late by 3 to 4 hours if you are stuck with recovering data. The person who could recover hard disk data was the last person to leave the office.
My manager taught me by taking me to these calls. Within two to three months, I was able to recover the hard disk just like my manager. My manager was happy. In the first 3 months, I got my first promotion. I was made Sr. Customer Support with an increase in my Salary.
After that, I told my Admin. Give me the most difficult calls in the Office. The ones which none of the other engineers wanted to take. During that period I had recovered data from more than 50 hard disks. The words spread that, “If no one can do that then Amit has to look into it. If he says, NO then it cannot be done.”
The company recognized this and they promoted me continuously every 3 to 6 months. I became a Regional Customer Support Manager within 18 months. I got both the recognition, financial recognition and position wise.
This happened because I forgot that I had poor marks and worked really hard on my first job in such a way that I was more valuable to the company than all the other engineers combined.
You are paid according to the value you can create.
Watch this video if you want a salary increase in the same company you are working without changing your job or project.
Low income is problem of every profession not just engineers
In every industry, Engineering or Music or Education or Entertainment or Sports, the problem remains the same.
The problem is a big supply versus a small demand.
So the top 10% always get more than the bottom 90% in every industry.
There are 1000s of actors but we only know a few who are constantly in the news. They are in the news because they are highly paid actors.
There are 1000s of singers but we only know a few who we listen to and are in the news for their songs. They are in the news because they are the best singers.
You can compare this with any industry. You will find that when everyone comes out of college they are at the same level. But within one to three years period 10% of these people would have created their career by working differently than the 90% others. They will always be paid 4x to 10x times more than their colleagues.
This has nothing to do with Engineering. It has everything to do with Skills – Talents and more importantly the discipline with which the engineer takes up every opportunity.
Aspire to become the top 10% in any industry – You will never again complain about your salary or opportunities you get.
Are you the software engineer the industry is looking for?
You can go to any job board. Study the jobs published on the job boards. You will find that filling up jobs is so difficult for companies because the requirements they have are not fulfilled by the current engineers.
Recently while giving an interview, Mr. Narayan Murthy – Ex CEO of Infosys said this,
About 80-85% of youngsters are not trained for any job.
This is the bigger challenge every industry is facing.
When engineers come out of college they have not been trained for any job. When they get hired at companies, they don’t try to learn and grow within their company. When they get opportunities that are challenging, they don’t accept these opportunities because they don’t feel confident.
The problem is that the entire engineering industry including computers, mechanical, electrical and civil have more requirements than the number of engineers can fulfill. Not just in India but around the world.
How to get a Double Salary with new skills?
Our education system is to be blamed for sure. Because even our IIT’s have not moved as fast as Technology has moved in all the sectors.
There is also a lack of interaction between Universities and Industries. That gap needs to be reduced so that good – employable – engineers – come out of college campuses.
Watch this video to learn – Why TCS is giving double salary for freshers? How this is changing the entire software industry and salaries in the coming years.
So as an engineer you need to learn these new-age skills that will make a difference to your salary.
You should stay away from rumors
I completed my engineering in 1995 – even at that time people said, “Nowadays there are a lot of engineers. It’s useless.”
Every year the media promotes news about unemployment and jobs not available. But every year thousands and millions of engineers get a job. Otherwise, think in the last 22 years how many unemployed engineers would be there in India. Many we cannot even count.
This news makes the engineers so desperate that they are ready to work somewhere even without pay. That is what is driving the salaries down.
There are hundreds of thousands of companies that work on really simple technology. They don’t really bright engineers. They can do with someone just knowing about the things they are doing. That’s it. In such places, the salaries are going to below.
Even in such places if you can learn something and then start building upon your knowledge then your salaries are going to grow.
Final Piece of Advice just for you
If you are an engineer in any stream, my advice to you is thinking about, why did you do engineering? If you did your engineering only to do a job then best of luck.
But if you did your engineering to learn how you can apply this engineering to create something then you are a true engineer. The companies are looking for people like you.
Instead of worrying about your salary, it is the last thing to be worried about, think about what you can do with what you have learned in your engineering college.
You can start small – but with discipline, honesty and hard work – I’m sure you can build a career that you, your parents, your neighbors and everyone is happy about.
If you are really dedicated to engineering then you may also be someone who will give birth to future technology where you will become a legend.
Use your engineering to create something useful for the world. And the world will give you money beyond your capacity to spend.
Final Words
Engineers are the most required people on this planet. They transcend every field. Think about entertainment, music, sports, agriculture, telecom, space, medicine, clothing, food, etc. Every industry today needs engineers.
Without engineers we would all be living in caves and our only job would be hunting and eating.
