15 best-paying companies for software engineers

Wonder which are the best paying companies for software engineers? Online jobs and career community Glassdoor’s recent survey claims to reveal just that. The figures collated by Business Insider ranks companies on the basis of the average base salary of their software engineers. Here are the top 15 companies from the list.

1. Juniper Networks: Juniper Networks makes networking equipment, security products and network operating system. The company offers average base salary of $128,378 to its software engineers, says the survey, the highest in the industry.
2. Google: Google is a tech titan that is known throughout the world for products like Search, Android, Gmail, Nexus smartphones and tablets, Picasa and online advertising platforms. Software engineers working at the company are paid average base salary of $124,520, according to the Glassdoor survey.
3. Twitter: Twitter is the microblogging website where users can type messages with only 140 characters; the company claims to have over 500 million registered users. Software engineers earn average base salary of $120,768 at the company, says the survey.
4. Facebook: Facebook is the biggest social network in the world and has over a billion registered users. As per the Glassdoor survey, the company pays $118,857 as average base salary to software engineers.
5. Apple: Founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple is a US technology company that makes gadgets like iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac series of computers etc. Software engineers earn average base salary of $118,192 at the company, the survey shows.
6. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the most popular professional networking website in the world, with over 200 million active users across the world. As per respondents in the Glassdoor survey, average base salary of software engineers at the company is $116,375.
7. Brocade Communications: Brocade Communications is a US technology company that offers data and storage networking products, such as LAN and Wi-Fi switches, routers, network security appliances etc. The company pays average base salary of $111,858 to its software engineers, the survey reveals.
8. eBay: eBay is one of the biggest online marketplaces where retailers as well as individuals can sell their goods to consumers; it also operates an online auction platform on its website. According to the Glassdoor survey, average base salary of software engineers at eBay is $108,461.
9. Bloomberg LP: Bloomberg LP, which is well known for its media publications, takes care of data acquisition, distribution and management of enterprises. Software engineers working in the technology arm of the company earn $108,430 as average base salary.
10. Zynga: Zynga is a social game making company that is best known for hits like Farmville and CityVille that took Facebook by storm. The software engineers employed at the company take home average base salary of $107,242.
11. PayPal: A unit of online retailer eBay, PayPal is the world’s biggest online payment company. The Glassdoor survey reveals that software engineers at the company are paid average base salary of $106,920.
12. VMWare: Palo Alto, California- based VMWare makes cloud and virtualisation software and services. According to respondents in the Glassdoor survey, the company’s software engineers get average base salary of $106,568.
13. Oracle: Oracle, the third biggest software maker in the world, makes database management systems, computer hardware system as well as ERP, CRM and SCM software. The average base salary of software engineers at Oracle is $105,660, as per the survey.
14. Nvidia: Nvidia is a Santa Clara, California-based company that manufacturers system-on-chips and graphic processing units for mobile devices. The Glassdoor survey says it pays an average base salary of $104,717 to its software engineers.
15. Microsoft: Microsoft is the biggest software company in the world, best known for its Windows operating system for computers. Other Microsoft products include Surface tablets, Xbox gaming console and Windows Phone mobile operating system. The company offers its engineers average base salary of $103,563, according to the survey.

Source: GlassDoor

Mid-tier IT companies Tech Mahindra, MindTree may raise salaries by 7-12%

Mid-tier IT firms such as Tech Mahindra and MindTree may raise salaries by 7-12% this fiscal to ensure they do not lose talent to top players TCS, Infosys and Wipro, according to HR service providers.

The larger players have announced wage hikes ranging between 6% and 10% for this fiscal.

"Current environment is challenging and companies are looking at preserving their bottomline. Despite that, keeping employees' interest in mind, organizations have given hikes ranging from 8-12%, which is a good development."

"In general, we can expect 7-12% hikes for employees working with mid-tier IT companies," Randstad India president (staffing) and director (marketing) Aditya Narayan Mishra told. He added that as the demand for IT services increases in the coming quarters, one can expect above-average hikes.

Last week, Infosys said its employees in India will get on an average 8% increase, while Wipro said it has raised salaries by 6-8%. Onsite employees have seen salaries going up by 2-3%. India's largest software services exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has increased wages by 8-10% in India and 2-4% for overseas workforce. HCL Technologies has started its appraisal process and is expected to make an announcement by July-end. Most Indian IT firms give increments around April or May.

"IT sector has been fairly conservative in terms of pay hike. We recently did a survey, where we asked some of our customers on increments this year and almost 46-47% of the respondents said they are looking at wage hikes between 6-15%," HeadHonchos.com CEO Uday Sodhi said.

IT firms are also looking at the global economic scenario, which still has not been very promising and it plays an important role in determining the hike percentage, he added.
Source: TimesofIndia

What is keeping India's engineers unemployed

Somewhere between a fifth to a third of the million students graduating out of India's engineering colleges run the risk of being unemployed. Others will take jobs well below their technical qualifications in a market where there are few jobs for India's overflowing technical talent pool. Beset by a flood of institutes (offering a varying degree of education) and a shrinking market for their skills, India's engineers are struggling to subsist in an extremely challenging market.

According to multiple estimates, India trains around 1.5 million engineers, which is more than the US and China combined. However, two key industries hiring these engineers -- information technology and manufacturing -- are actually hiring fewer people than before.

For example, India's IT industry, a sponge for 50-75% of these engineers will hire 50,000 fewer people this year, according to Nasscom. Manufacturing, too, is facing a similar stasis, say HR consultants and skills evaluation firms.

According to data from AICTE, the regulator for technical education in India, there were 1,511 engineering colleges across India, graduating over 550,000 students back in 2006-07. Fuelled by fast growth, especially in the $110 billion outsourcing market, a raft of new colleges sprung up -- since then, the number of colleges and graduates have doubled.

Read More @ TimesOfIndia

Zynga to cut 30 jobs in India

Online gaming company Zynga is laying off at least 30 of its over 400 employees in India as part of a global restructuring. Globally, Zynga , creator of the once wildly popular FarmVille and City-Ville games, is laying off 520 employees, about 18% of its 3,000-strong workforce.

Zynga had not responded to a mail sent by TOI at the time of going to print, but company founder Mark Pincus's letter to employees said the layoff impact would be felt across every group in the company. The word in Zynga India is that at least 6% of the employees here would be impacted. Zynga's Bangalore centre, started in 2010, has rapidly expanded to become the company's second largest operation in the world, after its San Francisco centre. It started as a centre doing core R&D for the company. A year later started a studio that now manages multiple games, developing new content and creating new features for them.

On his first visit to India in April this year, Pincus had said India had been "a terrific investment and experience for us" . That experience and the lower costs may be the reason why the layoffs in India are limited, compared to the global cuts.

Wipro wins deal worth $500m from Citigroup

Wipro is said to have won a $500-million (Rs 2,900 crore) outsourcing contract from Citigroup. The win will come as a boost for the Bangalore-based company that has been going through a lean patch.

Wipro will provide application development and maintenance, and infrastructure services for Citi's global operations. The five-year engagement requires Wipro to set up an offshore delivery centre in Bangalore, said sources familiar with the development. When TOI contacted Wipro, the company said it does not comment on market speculation. Citi too declined to comment on what they call market speculation.

Citigroup had called for bids for a $1 billion IT contract. TCS, HCL, Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant were said to have put in bids along with IBM, Accenture, Dell and others for this contract. Citi already has large outsourcing deals going with TCS and Wipro. Wipro had acquired Citi Technology Services for $127 million in 2008. Wipro and Citibank had signed an agreement to take over the operations and management of Citi's data centre in Meerbusch, Germany, a suburb of Dusseldorf, in 2010. Wipro had intended to use the site to support other outsourcing clients too. The Meerbusch centre was Wipro's first data centre facility in Europe and enabled the company to offer a full portfolio of infrastructure management solutions to its global clients. TCS had won a $505 million outsourcing contract from Citigroup to handle their core back office processes and customer transactions in 2008.
Source: TimesOfIndia

H-1B visa: Silicon Valley intensifies lobbying on US immigration bill

Eager to secure more visas for skilled foreign workers, tech companies have stepped up their lobbying this week in support of a comprehensive US immigration reform bill.

Human resources executives from Adobe, Broadcom, Intel, Motorola Solutions and other corporations met with dozens of lawmakers and senior advisers on Wednesday from the congressional committees in charge of immigration laws. They also spoke to a wide array of Democratic and Republican senators including some on-the-fence Republicans, such as Mark Kirk of Illinois and Rob Portman of Ohio, and some who have voiced opposition, including Mike Lee of Utah.

Lawmakers who favor the bill "have been urging us to work with them to make sure that the bill gets passed with the highest number of votes possible," said Robert Hoffman, senior vice president with the Information Technology Industry Council trade group.
Source:EconomicTimes