Bangalore: Tough times call for tough measures, and as a result of it, most of the MNCs hung the axe on lower and middle level staffs than top level management at the time of crisis. The current global slowdown, the worst economic crisis after 'The Great Depression' of 1929, forced around 94 financial institutions to shut their operations in the U.S. and at the same time more than 20,000 IT professionals have been laid off by various IT firms in India to cut their operational cost and survive in the market

Now, even though the situation seems to be recovering for Indian IT firms with the onslaught of projects, the lean period is yet to tide over for the junior level employees. Viju George, the Vice President of Edelweiss Securities said, "Salary hikes may not be coming necessarily at the lower levels and that it may be more at mid-level to high-level as against well-defined, well-crafted performance norms."

Bringing in more projects, India's largest IT services company TCS is eyeing about $1 billion revenue from government contracts in three years, while Infosys Technologies sees 'booked business' from India at $1 billion in the same period. HCL Technologies and Wipro, too, are gearing up for a slice of the domestic market. Also, in the current fiscal, TCS has already got Rs.1,000 crore ($208 million) 'Passport Seva Project' to provide speedy passport delivery services, and also looking to tap opportunities to be offered by Unique Identification Database (UID) and e-panchayat projects. Similarly, Infosys also reported increase in the demand of its products and stability in the market. In the second quarter results, Infosys strengthened with cash reserves of Rs.13,796 crore ($2.8 billion) against Rs.8,858 crore. The company and its subsidiaries added 35 clients during the quarter as against 27 in the previous quarter (April-June) and 40 in the second quarter a year ago.

Also, industry experts say that, apart from large contracts in telecom, railways and defence, the domestic proposition is also strengthened by State Government orders, including e-district, e-municipality and e-health. The coming days for these firms seems to be brighter, as Indian public sector enterprises like India Post and Indian Railways, along with other government agencies, are expected to spend nearly $2 billion over next 12 months on outsourcing different processes and software services. According to a recent study by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) and consultancy McKinsey, the market for technology and business outsourcing services in India is expected to expand fivefold by 2020 to Rs.450,000- Rs.500,000 crore ($90-100 billion) on the back of a growing economy.

Although there is huge government opportunity in pipeline for the IT firms, "The salary of middle and lower management will be hiked by 0-5 percent, whereas it will be 8-10 percent for CEO and top executives of the companies," said a HR expert who requested for anonymity. Also, with the number of domestic projects increasing post recession and IT market being expected to touch greater height in the coming years, most of the companies have decided to hike the salary and pay the variables according to the performance of individual rather than company's performance. In an interview to SiliconIndia, S Janakiraman, President, Group CEO - Product Engineering Services, MindTree said, "Variable pay should not be linked only to the company's revenue, but also on productivity of the employee."

Even though these companies are getting abundant projects from government as well as global MNCs, it seems that they are still showing negligence in hiking the salary of lower and middle level employees. On the current situation, Mohit Gupta, Senior Application Engineer, Infineon Technologies said, "Even though companies are recovering and happy days seem to be back, they are likely to hike the salary of lower levels by five percent, while by 10 percent for top levels executives." He also feels that companies are taking this step as they can afford to lose the lower level executives, but not the top level.