India hiring Guidebook : ?? Things to watch out before hiring software engineers from India

Things to ?? watch out before hiring ?? ?? software engineers from ???? India:

?? Salary benchmarks

?? How to tackle timezone issues

? How to identify which resume is good

Starting off with an interesting difference b/n ????Indian & ????US engineers:

?? India has much higher variance in salaries; a 5 yr exp Backend developer could get $10k annually in one company vs another $150k in another (unlike in US where most eng are $100k - $175k base salary)

Another interesting difference: Big Tech (ie FAANG+) is more sought for in India as compared to the US, where pre-IPO companies (like Stripe, OpenAI etc) are considered the most prestigious. Hence, the talent density in Big Tech is much higher in India as compared to US.

Given FAANG's talent status in India, let's explore some recent shifts (with layoffs happening in big tech and their "safe" tag being contested): Avg expected salary of 5 year exp Google employee today is just $76k (as opposed to $102k last year). Great time to hire from India!

Averages are sometimes misleading. While avg decrease in salary expectations among all engineers in our database is just 7%; it becomes much more prominent if we zoom into just the FAANG ones (where the avg decrease is 25%!!)

If we consider IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) as Ivy League equivalent in India and use them as representation set of top talent, we can get a good idea of what average salaries of top talent looks like:

Going role-wise, a 4 year exp Backend engineer would command a base salary of $38k in India which is similar to other roles like frontend, AI/ML engineer etc. A Tech Lead/EM would draw on avg $55k (7.5 years experience)

Beyond salary benchmarks, a key query: Does India possess enough volume of talent? India boasts more engineers than US, but their suitability for early-stage startups—given service-based background—is debated. Yet, 400k engineers working in product-led startups is significant

Putting back our lens of FAANG+ as a bar of top quality; FAANG employs total 270k engineers worldwide → 180k of whom are understandably in US (as they are HQed in US) but apart from US, India is their biggest engineering hub with lot of core products being built out there.

20 years ago about 80% of IIT graduating class left India. These people went on to become leaders in Silicon Valley. Now less than 5% leave (as there are enough high paying and high quality work opportunities in India).?

I graduated from IIT Bombay 8 years ago and this trend was visible even then.Less than 20% people have left India so far from my batch. Assuming talent density remains same, a great %age of talent is not coming to US. The only way to tap them is to hire remotely from India.

If hiring from India is such a no-brainer, why don't more companies do it?

The obvious answer is time-zone! And it's a big one.

While there ways to solve for it, it requires a dedicated full-blown approach as opposed to experimental (which is how most startup approach hiring)

You can't just hire 1 person obscurely and ask them to work US hours. Very soon it leads to burn out. The way to do it is to - hire a self sufficient team of 3+ people (along with a senior tech lead) which runs on their own schedule but does regular checkins at India evenings

Cost-wise, 3 people India team would be the cost of 1 engineer in the Bay area. Many fast-paced startups like ThoughtSpot, Nutanix, Rippling, Harness etc have executed this very well just after Series A (some even at seed). However, the key here is finding a great lead engineer.

Next question which comes is: When one has not heard of many Indian companies & their reputation, how does one go about selecting resumes. Especially when the variance in quality is that high. One can't just look at work description & identify if it is really high quality

The answer is: Weekday ?? We will put your hiring on auto-pilot by shortlisting candidates on your behalf, sending outreach and scheduling interviews.

But if you are not ready yet, use this list of 125+ companies which I believe have the best engineers. Comment here & I will share the link with all the names

If you need any help with hiring or benchmarks, feel free to DM me or book a slot

You can alternatively mail me at [email protected] as well.

We have a community of members through which we can get reference checks for 80% of Indian engineers. Message me (or mail me at [email protected]) and we will get backchannel reference for you.