How to Get a Raise? Always be interviewing.
I have done my part in collecting these facts to you. Now its your turn. Like this article, share it on Facebook, Quora. Now!
In general, you should interview every quarter for a higher paying job.
Legality of what I am writing: “Under a nearly 80-year-old federal labor law, employees can talk about their salaries at work, and employers are generally prohibited from imposing “pay secrecy” policies.” Also, men are more likely to ask for a raise than women. When it comes to differences among racial backgrounds, white Americans were the most likely to have asked for a salary increase while Asian Americans were the least likely.
Some people collect stamps, some collect coins. I am a collector of facts and trends on how companies pay. Some of my best findings are below:
- Please share this widely: I recommend Indian engineers not to fully rely only on low or middle tier IT outsourcing, please focus on the following more stable jobs: Government jobs of all kinds, Dentistry, Architect, Lawyer, Banking (PSU, Indian private, Foreign), HR, Footwear design, Graphic design, Indian Railways, Fashion design, Occupational therapist, Merchant navy, Pharmacist, CA and accounting/finance, Company secretary, Optometrist.
- All software engineers should learn machine learning as much as they can. AI/ML engineers make 50–200% more than normal ones right now.
- We operate like a startup is code for “We make you work startup hours without the financial upside of a startup.” BEWARE.
- Huawei, Viptela, Mist Systems pay 30–80% more than Cisco for top engineers. Arista networks is hiring a lot too.
- Top 6% or so engineers at Amazon, Oracle, Google, Facebook, Twitter are paid more than $1.3M per year. Next 11% make $650K on average.
- Facebook has lost relevance to Medium, Snapchat and Quora. If you are working at Facebook ask for a 30% raise else move to a startup.
- 90LPA to 2.1 crore packages are becoming increasingly common in India. Average 10 year experience pay is now 70LPA.
- $600K to $2M packages are similarly becoming common in the US. Software engineers with 10 years experience you should be making ~$420K per year with ~$210K salary.
- $240K to $470K packages are now common in China.
- Fresh MS graduates in US are getting $220+K packages at Google, Amazon, Ebay, Twitter, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Facebook, Snapchat, will add more.
- Fresh MS graduates in US are getting $180+K packages at Visa, Cisco, Salesforce, Microsoft will add more.
- Entrepreneurs should come to Canada, North Europe or Australia. Canada gives PR in less than 9 months. If the priority date of your EB2/3 is after 2013, MOVE TO CANADA. All US companies hire in Canada for roughly equal pay if not more.
- If you are in the first or second year of a second or third tier Indian engineering program, apply to Canadian (http://www.4icu.org/ca/), New Zealand and Australian (http://www.4icu.org/au/index.html) universities immediately. Don’t think, JUST GO.
- If you are hell bent on migrating to the US, have an anchor baby asap. I kid you not.
- Electronics industry is doing quite well too. Average package should be $320K with 10 years experience.
- Average package in aerospace after 10 years experience is now $320–350K. The field is the hottest after machine learning. Top opportunities are: Blue Origin, Bigelow Aerospace, Boom, Planetary Resources, Kairos Aerospace.
- Online resources for algorithms and data structures: GeeksforGeeks, Learneroo, research!rsc (quite advanced).
- Good coders making < 20K$ in India: your best next step is to learn algorithms and data structures and join Amazon, WalmartLabs, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Zoho, Zenefits, Cloudzilla, Stayzilla, VMWare, LinkedIn, solutions.axelta.com. It will increase your pay 4–6 times.
- If you are on H1B visa through an outsourcing company, learn algorithms and data structures and transfer to a US technology company. It will double your pay.
- Mechanical engineering opportunities in India: ISRO, Brahmos Aerospace, Tata Advanced Systems, Mahindra Aerospace, Godrej Aerospace, will add more.
- Data scientists with minimal (but not zero) coding skills are making $190+K in silicon valley. If India does not respect data scientists, immigrate to Canada or New Zealand.
- Cybersecurity is becoming hot too. (I will add links to courses on it.)
- If you are from business development, sales, marketing, product development background and are struggling to find good jobs in USA, Canada, Russia, Australia, Europe, etc., I will encourage you to try India out. We are strong in engineering but weak in above mentioned areas. Our plan is to remove all visa restrictions/policies for citizens of developed countries by 2019.
- Google pays 40% more than Microsoft, Amazon, Apple.
- Bloomberg, HortonWorks, Nimble Storage, Nutanix, Appdynamics, Instart Logic, Palantir, Mu Sigma, Lenskart need to increase salaries by 60%.
- Accenture, Infosys, Tech. Mahindra, Wipro need to increase salaries by 500%.
- Join WalmartLabs instead of Amazon.
- Do not go to Singapore, Germany or UK. Go to Canada, Australia, France, New Zealand or South Africa instead.
- DO NOT WASTE MONEY ON AN MBA. You will make 2X more on average as an engineer.
- Machine learning PhDs and other experts are making ~$1M. Do not accept anything less.
- Top hedge funds for quants: PDT partners, Bridgewater Associates, Tower Research, Cubist Technologies, (will add more). They pay $450K starting packages to fresh PhDs.
- Tableau, Splunk, Slack, Airbnb, Quora, Twitter, Facebook, Google pay more than $340K salary to their top hires. Definitely interview at these fine places. Uber engineer salaries are $250–500K per year.
- Houzz, Pinterest, Magic Leap, Asana, Palantir pay more than $350K salary to their top hires. Definitely interview at these fine places.
- Infosys, Wipro pay 10% more than Oracle, Cisco, GE!!!
- Huawei pays 20% more than Lenovo. Xiaomi pays 40% more than Lenovo.
- Starting salaries for fresh software engineering graduates is now $130K-160K. Ask shamelessly. For the best ones its ~$180K. If you are doing a major in anything except CS you are a *****.
- Indian computer science graduates from top 200 schools be aware that starting packages are now 40–65LPA INR. I still see folks accepting 22–32LPA. So please spread the word that it should be higher.
- Goldman Sachs, WorldQuant, Tower Research now pay 50–70LPA starting packages for India based roles.
- Apple pays 60% more than Samsung.
- If you are an American citizen wishing to study engineering, Canada and UK offer better programs at one-fourth the price and in English.
- Chinese pharma companies pay 6 times more than ANY company in India.
- All Apple engineers you are doing a great job. Ask for a 70% raise. We customers will gladly pay 10% more for iProducts to cover said wage increase. If you have friends working in Apple, tell them to ask for a 70% raise.
- Top startups: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-startups-join-right-now-amit-agarwal
- Companies in Canada pay 10% more than USA due to lower taxes and cost of living for the same role.
- Japan is back in high tech. and hiring a lot. Offers I have seen are 30–50% more than USA. For the right candidate even million dollars is possible. I encourage everyone to atleast talk to the Japanese companies.
- Write blogs and later books on what you have learnt. Writing books or novels on your thoughts can be a fast and monetarily rewarding exercise today.
- More coming…