Notes on Relative Incomes and Standards of Living - 10:23 PM Kolkata Time, 8/23/2005
For reference, the Indian Rupee is currently exchanging at something like 42 to the dollar. This means that if somebody is making, say, RS 6000 per month, that works out to about just under $150 per month.
I bring this figure up because, apparently, it is what an entry-level computer programmer with no other work experience can expect to earn at a medium-sized IT consulting firm in Kolkata. It is also, at least according to the owner of the company that we're working with, about the lower boundary of the income bracket that constitutes the middle class here. His definition of the middle class lifestyle is actually pretty similar to what we might have in the US: by his definition, if you're a middle class resident of Kolkata, you probably have a computer with a high-speed connection to the Internet of some sort. You almost certainly have a mobile telephone1. You might have a motorscooter or a small car. Food and rent are not an issue, and neither is clothing. Basically, you are more than just "getting by" and are well into the "comfortable" range.
After three to five years of experience, if you're good at your job, and have risen to a team-leader-level role, you can expect to be pulling in around RS 20,000 per month. This is still under $500 per month, but puts you near the upper edge of the middle-class income bracket. You'll be pulling in enough to go on periodic trekking vacations to the Himalayas2, and will have a very flashy mobile phone.
Of course, at other companies, the pay can be much higher— apparently, the pay at Infosys or Wipro (two of the biggest IT consulting firms) starts around RS 20,000/mo. However, it's not a 1:1 comparison: working for one of those companies would involve living somewhere with a higher cost of living; also, the competition for jobs at those firms is extremely intense, and very few people are able to get in. In addition to those two considerations, the owner of the company we're working with here had a few other points that I thought were extremely salient. He pointed out that working for one of those companies is not very much fun. The typical programmer is given very strict specifications and instructions, and has to follow them to the letter. There is not much room for creativity, and the atmosphere can become very stifling. Many people, he said, prefer to work for a smaller firm where they can be more creative, and enjoy a more relaxed work environment. Also, it seems as though the opportunities for further learning and career growth can be greater at smaller firms as well. The owner of this firm also mentioned that since they are unable to compete with the big guys in salary, they try and compensate for it by having better health insurance and also by having lunch and tea brought into the office every day for the employees. Throughout our entire discussion today, I felt as though I could have been talking to the owner of any small-to-medium-sized software house in the US. If it hadn't been for the chain-smoking, intense humidity, unmistakable traffic sounds, and intermittent power supply (the power cut out twice during our meeting), I might have forgotten where I was.
On a slightly off-topic note, I had a bizarre morning today. I'd gone into the owner of the company's office to pick up a book on Indian art that he'd brought in for me to borrow, and ended up staying and chatting for almost two hours. While I was in there, unbeknownst to me, one of the co-workers I'd come with was having some severe technical problems, and could have used my help. So, after two hours of shooting the breeze with this guy and a couple of the other programmers on a whole variety of hard-core software topics (they have Knuth here, too!3), as well as various approaches to outsourcing, Indian art, history, wildlife, etc., I came out feeling like Thomas-freakin'-Friedman, and I find poor Dan tearing his hair out. He'd thought that that the owner and I had been having, oh, I don't know, some sort of discussion that was actually work-related or something, and hadn't wanted to interrupt. Doh. It all worked out, though. He had been able to figure things out on his own, and now he knows that it's okay to interrupt. I still felt bad, though. Trying to work while coping with severe culture and gastronomic shock has been more stressful than any of us had predicted. We're doing pretty well at dealing with it, but from time to time the increased stress manifests itself and something that would ordinarily not be a problem becomes one for a few minutes. Then we just remind ourselves of where we are and what we're doing, and it's all good. :-)
Back to the topic of income, though: I'm definitely having trouble with the fact that I'm staying in a hotel that, while not not very expensive at all by American standards, costs more per night than most people in Kolkata make in a month. My boss wanted to make sure that we had a comfortable, familiar-feeling place to come back to every night. So, the decision was made that we would stay at a Western-style business hotel. I'd initially scoffed at this idea, but have since come to appreciate it a bit. If I were here on my own as a tourist, I'd stay in a local hotel— in fact, I will be doing just that in a week or two. Since the first few weeks of my trip are work-related, though, I definitely think it was the right idea, at least in principle. In practice, however, I think it may have worked a little bit too well.
The hotel is a Hyatt, and as such is about a thousand times nicer than any hotel that I've ever stayed in in the US. It's actually being double-culture-shock: on the one hand, outside the hotel is India, with all of the usual shock awaiting the first-time visitor. Inside the hotel, though, is this whole other world that I also have never really lived in for any length of time: feather beds, people pulling chairs out for you, an entire staff of people to open doors for you, a whole other staff dedicated to not letting you carry your own bags, etc. It really heightens the contrast between the way that we live in the US and the way that the overwhelming majority of Indians, even well-off ones, live. What really makes me feel like a shit is that the company we're working with has provided us with a full-time driver. So far, his only job has been to drive us from the hotel to the office in the morning, wait outside for ten hours, and then drive us back to the hotel in the evening. I have no idea how much they're paying him per day, but I would bet my spare camera battery that it's less than I just dropped on a sandwich and a beer at the hotel restaurant.
I initially was unsure of how I felt about this contrast, but after a few days, I can conclusively say that it does not feel good. On the one hand, I'm glad to be helping to employ him. Dog knows he needs the job— one need only look at the vast4 number of people living on the sidewalks here to see what the alternative to employment looks like. On the other hand, I can't shake the feeling that I'm somehow being exploitive, and the gross imbalance in our financial situations makes me somewhat uncomfortable. It's not a feeling I'm used to... in the US, I'd say that I'm pretty solidly in what I'd call the middle class, but the difference in financial situation between myself and somebody working at, say, Taco Bell or somewhere is almost insignificant compared to what's going on between myself and everybody else here. For example, I clocked twelve hours yesterday. Not counting overtime, that means that I made more (before taxes) in one day than some of the people I was working with made in the entire month5. Even our hypothetical Taco Bell worker would have no problem earning more in a day or two than a well-paid Kolkatan software engineer makes in a month.
The hotel's more casual restaurant is, by Kolkata standards, staggeringly expensive. It would perhaps be analogous to eating at the Heathman in Portland. By American standards, it is pretty normally priced: entrees are mostly in the $5-10 range. We're pretty much the only Westerners staying here. There are a few groups of tourists from somewhere in Asia, and lots of Indians, but we've only seen one or two other Westerners. Most of them seem to work for an airline; there are lots of pilot and steward/ess uniforms running around amidst the sarees.
1: Mobile phones are far cheaper here than they are in the US. For a monthly CDMA plan (In an odd reversal from the US, CDMA seems to be the system with the best phones, whereas GSM seems to be lagging in that regard and as such is less popular and cheaper) you're looking at well under $10 per month, which, even by the lower salary standards, is still definitely affordable for many people. Yesterday, we were offered a pre-paid GSM plan for about $5. This included several hundred minutes as well as a phone. There was no contract. According to an article in yesterday's paper about the upcoming celebrations for the 10th anniversary of mobile phone access in India, the government is not subsidizing phone prices or usage rates. I have no idea why it's so cheap here, and neither does anybody else, as near as I can tell. The only thing I can think of is that there are so many freaking people that the economies of scale make it work.
2: One of our programmers, upon seeing the pictures from my recent trip to Alaska, exclaimed at how closely some of the mountains resembled the Himalayas. Today, he brought in pictures of his last trip up there, and, sure enough, the glacial murrain pictured therein looked very similar to that seen in Alaska.
3: The owner's comment when I exclaimed over his set of "TAoCP": "Oh yes, these are like the Koran, or Bible, or the Vedas of software. I used these as textbooks in the courses I taught at the university." It's nice to know how much is universal in the world.
4: And I do mean "vast". Portland has, for an American city, a significant homeless population. I don't mean to be callous, but it is nothing compared to what is going on here. Imagine walking down Yamhill St. in Portland, and seeing every single square foot— literally, every single one— occupied by somebody. People sitting, standing, lying down, running around, playing cards, reading, and doing yoga. Eating, selling stuff, etc. One after another, foot after foot, for the entire length of the street. Now multiply this by every street in Portland. Now, take every window, and hang some laundry out of it. Also, fill the gutters with a little sewage and a lot of garbage. You now have a very vague approximation of what the nicer parts of Kolkata look like.
5: This says far more about the income levels in Kolkata than it does about my job, FYI.
I bring this figure up because, apparently, it is what an entry-level computer programmer with no other work experience can expect to earn at a medium-sized IT consulting firm in Kolkata. It is also, at least according to the owner of the company that we're working with, about the lower boundary of the income bracket that constitutes the middle class here. His definition of the middle class lifestyle is actually pretty similar to what we might have in the US: by his definition, if you're a middle class resident of Kolkata, you probably have a computer with a high-speed connection to the Internet of some sort. You almost certainly have a mobile telephone1. You might have a motorscooter or a small car. Food and rent are not an issue, and neither is clothing. Basically, you are more than just "getting by" and are well into the "comfortable" range.
After three to five years of experience, if you're good at your job, and have risen to a team-leader-level role, you can expect to be pulling in around RS 20,000 per month. This is still under $500 per month, but puts you near the upper edge of the middle-class income bracket. You'll be pulling in enough to go on periodic trekking vacations to the Himalayas2, and will have a very flashy mobile phone.
Of course, at other companies, the pay can be much higher— apparently, the pay at Infosys or Wipro (two of the biggest IT consulting firms) starts around RS 20,000/mo. However, it's not a 1:1 comparison: working for one of those companies would involve living somewhere with a higher cost of living; also, the competition for jobs at those firms is extremely intense, and very few people are able to get in. In addition to those two considerations, the owner of the company we're working with here had a few other points that I thought were extremely salient. He pointed out that working for one of those companies is not very much fun. The typical programmer is given very strict specifications and instructions, and has to follow them to the letter. There is not much room for creativity, and the atmosphere can become very stifling. Many people, he said, prefer to work for a smaller firm where they can be more creative, and enjoy a more relaxed work environment. Also, it seems as though the opportunities for further learning and career growth can be greater at smaller firms as well. The owner of this firm also mentioned that since they are unable to compete with the big guys in salary, they try and compensate for it by having better health insurance and also by having lunch and tea brought into the office every day for the employees. Throughout our entire discussion today, I felt as though I could have been talking to the owner of any small-to-medium-sized software house in the US. If it hadn't been for the chain-smoking, intense humidity, unmistakable traffic sounds, and intermittent power supply (the power cut out twice during our meeting), I might have forgotten where I was.
On a slightly off-topic note, I had a bizarre morning today. I'd gone into the owner of the company's office to pick up a book on Indian art that he'd brought in for me to borrow, and ended up staying and chatting for almost two hours. While I was in there, unbeknownst to me, one of the co-workers I'd come with was having some severe technical problems, and could have used my help. So, after two hours of shooting the breeze with this guy and a couple of the other programmers on a whole variety of hard-core software topics (they have Knuth here, too!3), as well as various approaches to outsourcing, Indian art, history, wildlife, etc., I came out feeling like Thomas-freakin'-Friedman, and I find poor Dan tearing his hair out. He'd thought that that the owner and I had been having, oh, I don't know, some sort of discussion that was actually work-related or something, and hadn't wanted to interrupt. Doh. It all worked out, though. He had been able to figure things out on his own, and now he knows that it's okay to interrupt. I still felt bad, though. Trying to work while coping with severe culture and gastronomic shock has been more stressful than any of us had predicted. We're doing pretty well at dealing with it, but from time to time the increased stress manifests itself and something that would ordinarily not be a problem becomes one for a few minutes. Then we just remind ourselves of where we are and what we're doing, and it's all good. :-)
Back to the topic of income, though: I'm definitely having trouble with the fact that I'm staying in a hotel that, while not not very expensive at all by American standards, costs more per night than most people in Kolkata make in a month. My boss wanted to make sure that we had a comfortable, familiar-feeling place to come back to every night. So, the decision was made that we would stay at a Western-style business hotel. I'd initially scoffed at this idea, but have since come to appreciate it a bit. If I were here on my own as a tourist, I'd stay in a local hotel— in fact, I will be doing just that in a week or two. Since the first few weeks of my trip are work-related, though, I definitely think it was the right idea, at least in principle. In practice, however, I think it may have worked a little bit too well.
The hotel is a Hyatt, and as such is about a thousand times nicer than any hotel that I've ever stayed in in the US. It's actually being double-culture-shock: on the one hand, outside the hotel is India, with all of the usual shock awaiting the first-time visitor. Inside the hotel, though, is this whole other world that I also have never really lived in for any length of time: feather beds, people pulling chairs out for you, an entire staff of people to open doors for you, a whole other staff dedicated to not letting you carry your own bags, etc. It really heightens the contrast between the way that we live in the US and the way that the overwhelming majority of Indians, even well-off ones, live. What really makes me feel like a shit is that the company we're working with has provided us with a full-time driver. So far, his only job has been to drive us from the hotel to the office in the morning, wait outside for ten hours, and then drive us back to the hotel in the evening. I have no idea how much they're paying him per day, but I would bet my spare camera battery that it's less than I just dropped on a sandwich and a beer at the hotel restaurant.
I initially was unsure of how I felt about this contrast, but after a few days, I can conclusively say that it does not feel good. On the one hand, I'm glad to be helping to employ him. Dog knows he needs the job— one need only look at the vast4 number of people living on the sidewalks here to see what the alternative to employment looks like. On the other hand, I can't shake the feeling that I'm somehow being exploitive, and the gross imbalance in our financial situations makes me somewhat uncomfortable. It's not a feeling I'm used to... in the US, I'd say that I'm pretty solidly in what I'd call the middle class, but the difference in financial situation between myself and somebody working at, say, Taco Bell or somewhere is almost insignificant compared to what's going on between myself and everybody else here. For example, I clocked twelve hours yesterday. Not counting overtime, that means that I made more (before taxes) in one day than some of the people I was working with made in the entire month5. Even our hypothetical Taco Bell worker would have no problem earning more in a day or two than a well-paid Kolkatan software engineer makes in a month.
The hotel's more casual restaurant is, by Kolkata standards, staggeringly expensive. It would perhaps be analogous to eating at the Heathman in Portland. By American standards, it is pretty normally priced: entrees are mostly in the $5-10 range. We're pretty much the only Westerners staying here. There are a few groups of tourists from somewhere in Asia, and lots of Indians, but we've only seen one or two other Westerners. Most of them seem to work for an airline; there are lots of pilot and steward/ess uniforms running around amidst the sarees.
1: Mobile phones are far cheaper here than they are in the US. For a monthly CDMA plan (In an odd reversal from the US, CDMA seems to be the system with the best phones, whereas GSM seems to be lagging in that regard and as such is less popular and cheaper) you're looking at well under $10 per month, which, even by the lower salary standards, is still definitely affordable for many people. Yesterday, we were offered a pre-paid GSM plan for about $5. This included several hundred minutes as well as a phone. There was no contract. According to an article in yesterday's paper about the upcoming celebrations for the 10th anniversary of mobile phone access in India, the government is not subsidizing phone prices or usage rates. I have no idea why it's so cheap here, and neither does anybody else, as near as I can tell. The only thing I can think of is that there are so many freaking people that the economies of scale make it work.
2: One of our programmers, upon seeing the pictures from my recent trip to Alaska, exclaimed at how closely some of the mountains resembled the Himalayas. Today, he brought in pictures of his last trip up there, and, sure enough, the glacial murrain pictured therein looked very similar to that seen in Alaska.
3: The owner's comment when I exclaimed over his set of "TAoCP": "Oh yes, these are like the Koran, or Bible, or the Vedas of software. I used these as textbooks in the courses I taught at the university." It's nice to know how much is universal in the world.
4: And I do mean "vast". Portland has, for an American city, a significant homeless population. I don't mean to be callous, but it is nothing compared to what is going on here. Imagine walking down Yamhill St. in Portland, and seeing every single square foot— literally, every single one— occupied by somebody. People sitting, standing, lying down, running around, playing cards, reading, and doing yoga. Eating, selling stuff, etc. One after another, foot after foot, for the entire length of the street. Now multiply this by every street in Portland. Now, take every window, and hang some laundry out of it. Also, fill the gutters with a little sewage and a lot of garbage. You now have a very vague approximation of what the nicer parts of Kolkata look like.
5: This says far more about the income levels in Kolkata than it does about my job, FYI.
posted by steve | 10:33 AM
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