BENGALURU: Infosys EVP and group HR head Krish Shankar told TOI in an exclusive interaction that freshers in the company today get promoted much faster and get substantially higher jumps in salaries than a few years ago.
The point was made in response to the concern often expressed about fresher salaries in the IT industry having stagnated at about Rs 3.5 lakh per annum for years. “Earlier, a software engineer trainee who joined us would have got a 50% compensation increase over three years. Now, given our early career rewards and accelerated growth, trainees get a 90% increase in compensation over three years,” he said.
Shankar, who retires on Tuesday after over seven years with Infosys, also said that while previously IT services companies hired freshers only as software engineers, now there are various roles like digital engineers and power programmers, who join with a higher salary package. “Power programmers make about Rs 6. 2 lakh per annum when they join, and digital engineers make Rs 9 lakh. So, the proportion of freshers joining at Rs 3.5 lakh is coming down,” he said.
Promotions too have been fast-tracked. Freshers, Shankar said, can rise up to mid-career levels, or what the company calls JL4 (job level 4, equivalent to a technology analyst) in four years, instead of the 7-8 years it took previously.
“Over the last year or two, we have spent time thinking about our value proposition. We have the Bridge programme and there is good demand for that. Lot of people are getting skill tags in these areas. Our promotions have also become faster. If the candidate is really good, then the rise can happen in two years,” he said.
The Bridge programme enables employees to shift careers into adjacent or new career tracks. It involves a stringent selection process and subsequent capability building, and is focused on building talent pools in critical areas. Bridge candidates get access to higher skill level training, one-on-one interaction with leaders, and career counselling.
Shankar said all their training is AI-first. “Artificial Intelligence is a big area we have. Other than that, we push people, based on the demand, to upskill in those areas. Sometimes, they have a choice about what to upskill in. Some will go based on the team and its needs. Each unit has a talent council on what reskilling has to be done,” he said.
Cloud is a big area of demand, as is SAP, he said. In SAP too, the demand is cloud related – it’s coming from the shift from on-premise software to S/4Hana Cloud.
Closing the cloud skill gap has become a key priority, Shankar said, as accelerated cloud adoption has widened the demand-supply chasm for cloud talent. “We have seen a collective yearon-year growth of over 40% in cloud professionals, data professionals, and cloud architects, and we continue to invest very heavily in these areas,” he said.
As more and more automation happens, he said, the industry will move towards specialised skills. Currently, Infosys has 46 streams in the foundation programme for fresh hires. Every trainee goes through the basic IT foundation, and any one of the 46 tech streams based on business demand. In 2021 and 2022, the company enhanced tech streams like cloud native development, data science, low code no code, end user computing, and MS Power platforms.
Infosys hired 80,000 freshers in the 2021-22 financial year, and is expected to end this fiscal with 50,000 hires. Shankar said reports suggesting Infosys had fired freshers this year was incorrect. He said what happened was no different from what has happened every year, which is that freshers have to undergo tests after the end of their training programme, and whoever does not clear those tests have to leave. Trainees get two attempts to clear the test. The failure rate in the tests in the last two years, Shankar said, could have been higher because training had been remote in these two years.
The point was made in response to the concern often expressed about fresher salaries in the IT industry having stagnated at about Rs 3.5 lakh per annum for years. “Earlier, a software engineer trainee who joined us would have got a 50% compensation increase over three years. Now, given our early career rewards and accelerated growth, trainees get a 90% increase in compensation over three years,” he said.
Shankar, who retires on Tuesday after over seven years with Infosys, also said that while previously IT services companies hired freshers only as software engineers, now there are various roles like digital engineers and power programmers, who join with a higher salary package. “Power programmers make about Rs 6. 2 lakh per annum when they join, and digital engineers make Rs 9 lakh. So, the proportion of freshers joining at Rs 3.5 lakh is coming down,” he said.
Promotions too have been fast-tracked. Freshers, Shankar said, can rise up to mid-career levels, or what the company calls JL4 (job level 4, equivalent to a technology analyst) in four years, instead of the 7-8 years it took previously.
“Over the last year or two, we have spent time thinking about our value proposition. We have the Bridge programme and there is good demand for that. Lot of people are getting skill tags in these areas. Our promotions have also become faster. If the candidate is really good, then the rise can happen in two years,” he said.
The Bridge programme enables employees to shift careers into adjacent or new career tracks. It involves a stringent selection process and subsequent capability building, and is focused on building talent pools in critical areas. Bridge candidates get access to higher skill level training, one-on-one interaction with leaders, and career counselling.
Shankar said all their training is AI-first. “Artificial Intelligence is a big area we have. Other than that, we push people, based on the demand, to upskill in those areas. Sometimes, they have a choice about what to upskill in. Some will go based on the team and its needs. Each unit has a talent council on what reskilling has to be done,” he said.
Cloud is a big area of demand, as is SAP, he said. In SAP too, the demand is cloud related – it’s coming from the shift from on-premise software to S/4Hana Cloud.
Closing the cloud skill gap has become a key priority, Shankar said, as accelerated cloud adoption has widened the demand-supply chasm for cloud talent. “We have seen a collective yearon-year growth of over 40% in cloud professionals, data professionals, and cloud architects, and we continue to invest very heavily in these areas,” he said.
As more and more automation happens, he said, the industry will move towards specialised skills. Currently, Infosys has 46 streams in the foundation programme for fresh hires. Every trainee goes through the basic IT foundation, and any one of the 46 tech streams based on business demand. In 2021 and 2022, the company enhanced tech streams like cloud native development, data science, low code no code, end user computing, and MS Power platforms.
Infosys hired 80,000 freshers in the 2021-22 financial year, and is expected to end this fiscal with 50,000 hires. Shankar said reports suggesting Infosys had fired freshers this year was incorrect. He said what happened was no different from what has happened every year, which is that freshers have to undergo tests after the end of their training programme, and whoever does not clear those tests have to leave. Trainees get two attempts to clear the test. The failure rate in the tests in the last two years, Shankar said, could have been higher because training had been remote in these two years.
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