Days of hefty pay hikes for techies over

This will be perhaps the lowest increment year for IT engineers given the overall demand environment. In FY22 & FY23, salary hikes and increments had been very healthy. For some staffers, hikes of more than 100% during the peak demand period in FY23. Those days are over and we see moderate 5-6% increments rolled out by Indian IT firms this year, - a top executive of a HR staffing firm

Dream Run Over

♦ Except TCS, other top-3 IT firms- Infy, HCL Tech & Wipro yet to announce hikes

♦ Many mid-tier firms are skipping the appraisal cycle this year

♦ Low demand, margin pressure and high wage cost prime factors

Indian IT firms are likely to roll out the least percentage of salary hikes and increments in the current financial year after the dream run in increment space seen during the last two financial years.

Even, some companies are likely to skip the appraisal all together given the pressure on margin, low demand and high wage cost.

“This will be perhaps the lowest increment year for IT engineers given the overall demand environment. In FY22 & FY23, salary hikes and increments had been very healthy. For some staffers, hikes of more than 100 per cent during the peak demand period in FY23. Those days are over and we see moderate 5-6 per cent increments rolled out by Indian IT firms this year,” said a top executive of a HR staffing firm.

“Many small and mid-tier firms may miss the increment cycle altogether as these companies have been impacted the most with slow deal flow,” the person added.

Among the large Indian IT firms, TCS is the only one which has given 6-8 per cent average increments to its employees for this year. Barring it, all top three IT firms- Infosys, Wipro, HCL Tech are yet to announce increments for their staffers.

Infosys, which announces salary hikes in June-July, is yet to give any increments to its staffers. Rather, it has started its next appraisal cycle and ratings will be informed to employees in December. Similarly, Wipro, which has announced salary hikes in September quarter last year, is yet to do so. Reports suggested that it might do so in the December quarter.

HCL Tech is yet to provide any clarity on giving salary increments to junior and mid-level employees. The company has said that it would defer it by a quarter.

The Noida-headquartered firm earlier declared that it would not give any increments to its senior employees owing to the current demand environment.

“This year, we have made a decision to skip the compensation review, starting with the management layer, which is E4+, and also defer for junior to mid-level people by a quarter, which is E3 and below levels,” C Vijayakumar, CEO and MD of HCL Tech, has said.

Regarding junior to mid-level staff, Chief People Officer Ramachandran Sundararajan has said, “Typically, this time of the year, we make our announcements on pay reviews. Last couple of years the hiring that we have done and the compensation reviews that we have done, we have taken that into consideration and have taken a decision to defer our annual reviews by a quarter.” Meanwhile, mid-tier IT firms including Coforge, Persistent Systems and LTIMindtree have rolled out salary hikes so far.

“Many mid-tier IT firms are skipping the appraisal cycle given the project losses and slow inflow of new projects,” said another source.