Which Indian IT Organization is better to join?
There are few large IT organizations in India and they offer significant amount of jobs to engineering graduate (freshers) every year. It is natural for our freshers to ask “Which Indian IT organization is better to join?”. I have seen this query in multiple forums and read couple of answers too. Most of the answers were quite subjective in nature and they were governed by individual/personal experience of writers.
In this article, I would be discussing some objective parameters which can be used by freshers (equally by non-freshers) to answer this query with the help of data available in public domain. For simplicity, I have taken only 4 large Indian IT organizations as sample for this article, but you may use similar methodology for other organizations (in any industry) as well. I will also add a few subjective parameters based on my personal experiences and encourage you to consider these, if they sound logical based on your individual needs.
We will start with objective parameters as listed below:
- Revenue per Employee: This parameter is very easy to calculate and it may give you lot of meaningful information. In simple terms, higher the value of this parameter, better is the salary/growth of an employee. You may see the table below for example:
This parameter shows the income or sales generated by an employee and measures the productivity. Given other conditions remain same, higher value means better salary or growth prospect and better working environments etc. You should try to calculate this for some of the highest paid IT organizations in the world to appreciate the insight provided by this simple number. You should be able to find Revenue & the number of employees for any organization easily in the public domain and calculate this parameter yourself for quick comparison.
2. Revenue Growth Rate in last 10 years: This is one of the most important parameters to understand how the business is growing for any organization with time. In simple words, higher revenue growth rate means better customer management, higher degree of innovation, market share, positive changes and growth prospect for employee etc. Let’s see the data below:
You may calculate growth rate of relatively younger organizations by considering the duration of 5 years. But I suggest to take higher duration (~10 years) as higher duration accounts for organizational culture, internal working conditions and management direction to a greater extent. You should take examples of few most successful IT organizations around the world, calculate this parameter and see for yourself what this parameter implies. I will strongly suggest you to read a book “Built to Last” by Jerry I. Porras and Jim Collins to fully understand my view. This book describes how an organization can stimulate the changes, keeping its core values intact, to grow in ever-changing business situations.
You may get the historical data of any organization in public domains (ex: moneycontrol.com, forbes.com, company home page, any financial/stocks sites etc). We should also consider the inflation rate in India (which is ~6% yearly) in case we want to know true growth rate of revenue.
3. Net Profit per Employee: This parameter shows how an organization is managing its operational efficiency. Again, higher this number means better resource management, higher profit-sharing and bonus.
Sample data is given below:
You may be aware that Profit is dependant on both Revenue & Cost (actually Profit = Revenue - Cost) and hence, higher value may mean either higher Revenue per Employee or lower Cost per Employee or both.
Again, I would encourage you to take data for few other organizations and analyse it yourself to relate this number to wider perspective.
4. Net Profit Growth Rate in last 10 years: This parameter shows how an organization is managing its Revenue & Cost with time. Again, higher value normally shows better financial condition of an organization.
5. Operating Margin (OM): This provides the operational efficiency and is measured in percentage. For IT organizations, a value of OM > 20% is considered good. OM is reported on quarterly basis and below is the average based on the last few quarters:
OM <10% may suggest that the resource management needs some improvement. Again, I would recommend you to check the data for few IT organizations yourself and enhance your understanding regarding this term.
You may calculate few more parameters such as Share Price growth per year, average Earnings per Share price etc to understand financial conditions of any organization in a better way.
For detailed knowledge of financial condition of any organization, I would suggest a book “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham. You will be amazed to see how financial numbers can give complete insight about an organization.
Now, I would be describing few subjective parameters which are also very important to know before joining any organization based on my experience but you should critically analyse these based on your prevailing situation.
6. Producer or Consumer Team: This is the most important criteria to join any organization amongst all parameters (as per my view). You should try to find if you will be working for the development of any new product/services (Producer) or you will be routinely using any existing product (consumer). Given an option, I would suggest you to join a Producer Team or invest your personal time towards being a Producer or actively look for similar opportunity whenever possible. In case you want to understand these terms in the best way, you may read a classic novel “Atlas Shrugged” written by Ayn Rand. If you ask me to give a summary of this book in one statement, I would say “Producer will always be rich and consumer will always be poor”.
7. Supervisor as Mentor: After you join any organization, your career is mostly decided by only 1 person, your supervisor. Every team (HR/Finance/Legal/Compliance etc) will reach out to your supervisor for any input related to your work, ethics, attitude and discipline. If your supervisor is having same interests (technical, subjects, skills, vision, goals and such) as yours, your growth will definitely be much higher. You may contact your supervisor before joining the organization (if possible) or try to work with a supervisor who has similar interests as yours whenever this looks feasible.
8. Technical Skills or Knowledge: It is always better to work with latest technology and keep learning continuously to increase your market value. You should choose a job offer which gives better opportunity of learning new technologies/markets/business etc.
9. Work Location: Most of our decisions depend on personal situations and many of freshers give a preference to location (more than any other parameters). I would suggest to consider other parameters in your early career and consider location as most important parameter when you plan to settle down.
10. Your Mission/Long Term Goal: It is possible that your personal mission/goal/values are more aligned to a particular organization and this may be a deciding factor for you to join a specific organization.
Overall, there are many factors which may affect your decision and you should consider these based on your individual needs, preferences etc. You may give a score to each organization for these parameters and take your decision based on cumulative score in case you have multiple job offers.
Hope you are able to get some useful insight after reading this. You may share your honest feedback in case this article helped you to find an answer to your query :)
