The digital revolution presents a very bright future for tech minds. In the world of Start-ups and emerging businesses the importance of retaining and attracting tech talent is vivid and strong. All the industries such as- Healthcare, Automotive, Banking & Financials, Gaming and Manufacturing to name a few are investing a lot on the technology.
Let us imagine that all the companies are participating in a massive race. It’s not a race of Athletes, but a race of Human resource professionals of the company running as fast as they could to attract quality to tech talent and those who attract the most will be conferred with the prestigious trophy of “The fastest achiever of digital transformation”. Metaphorically it is the trophy, however in literal sense it is the quality of being expeditious in accomplishing digital transformation and Automation roadmap. Why it is called a race for attracting tech talent is still an unanswered quest. This is due to some hurdles that the race presents, which is called as “The cost of getting the impeccable tech brains”. There is no free lunch and no free resources for the company. Brains, by God’s grace, can be replenished. They are not non-renewable as fossil fuels, they can be renewed by knowledge. They come at a cost and we call this cost as “Salary”. Now it is pretty clear that in order to buy the best tech minds, retaining them, renewing and maintaining them is exorbitant. That is why organizations hike salaries to get the best tech brains in their technology squad. Let’s discuss the importance of salary hikes in the IT roles:
1) New technologies as the blazing sun: Indeed, there are many technologies that have been evolved like Blockchain, Digital twin, Artificial intelligence, Machine learning. Many companies are investing into these technologies. These technologies are as popular and bright as the blazing sun. Hence, to develop and incorporate these technologies to architect a cutting-edge viable product requires the brightest tech brains and in order to attract those tech brains, competitive salary hikes are essential.
2) Pandemic cycles: Covid-19 pandemic acted as a warning beacon for the companies to bolster the infrastructure to work remotely. The Global IT sector saw an increase in the salary raise. According to the report by theladders.com , approximately 4 in 10 technology specialists got a salary hike in the year 2020, with around 59% of the development management professionals leading the package. Even 41% of system architects, software engineers and Data scientists say hikes. From these figures, it can be comprehended that tech careers thrive well and witnessed the biggest hikes globally. In India also there has been an increase in the salary hikes for tech based jobs. Here is the glimpse of the sectoral salary hikes for the reference:
(Source: Economic Times)
From this infographic, it can be seen that the High-tech sector would witness the highest salary raise as compared to other sectors. The pandemic paved the way for many other sectors as well to increase tech talent along with attractive offers in order to get a competitive edge.
3) Automation as a welcome boost: Automation in every sector is a welcome boost for investing more into R&D. Recruitment in the tech-based roles surged due to automation goals. Many Automotive companies are hiring highly skilled STEM workers, Data science & engineering professionals and also aiding them with futuristic learning models.
4) To prevent high dropout rates: This is one of the major reasons why Human resource teams are burning their midnight oil in order to retain highly skilled talent. The attrition rates & dropout rates are creating problems, in order to curb this, salary hikes are important. Many IT companies face a dropout ratio greater than 40% as the tech people sit with multiple offers in their hand. This is the reason that companies are realizing the importance of retaining and maintaining the tech talent by lucrative offers as well as other perks allowances like dating allowance.
5) The insatiable demand for the niche skills: The tech professionals with niche skill sets like IoT, AI, Blockchain are gaining more traction. The global clients demand niche skills from the IT outsourcing companies, that is why it is important for the IT sector to raise salary hikes. According to the Times of India article, those with specialized skill sets account for 94% increase in salary hikes. In order to satisfy the client’s demand, the IT companies spend a lot on niche skills, give job related certification benefits so that their tech gems are abreast of latest technologies. The tech talent with the niche skills like Java developers with in-demand microservices skills are in great demand, Data scientists, Data engineers as well as the Fullstack engineers are the company’s arsenal. In order to sharpen the arsenal companies give certifications and sabbaticals to revamp the skills.
6) Tech talent foster’s company growth: The presence of tech talent is an important engine to drive companies as well as Start-ups growth. The well funded Start-ups are investing a lot on technology. They raise the in-house tech professionals salaries by 15-120% based on the level, roles and the skillsets. Even the IT industries pay a lot to retain tech talent and to raise the pay of new age tech talent. The tech people promote innovation, which in turn promotes company’s growth in the long run.
The race to hunt tech talent will be never-ending for Big companies and Start-ups. Therefore, those companies who have the strong intent to hire as well as the capacity to pay more salaries to tech people will win the race. However the expedition continues as more & more companies grow in number.