Wrong for graduates to expect Rs 30k a month, weekends off? Startup founder's post on salary vs skills sparks debate

The job market in India has always seemed like a fever dream. From a dearth of good jobs to decent salaries and even skilled candidates, somehow it's always the lack of one that greatly disbalances the other. But according to this startup founder's post, graduates asking for weekends off along with a Rs 30,000 a month salary was too much of an ask. The subtext? Freshly-minted graduates should focus more on gaining skills and not so much on the salary package and whether they'll get days off or not. It's mind-boggling that this is even a point of debate in 2024. It's almost as if companies want to get the best skilled workers to work for them but not compensate them for their time and effort, and even if they do, it's the bare minimum. Questions remain: why can't skilled employees ask for suitable compensation? Are skills and salary mutually exclusive? Do we give up one for the other?

Why did the startup founder's post spark a debate online?

It all started with the following post on X that eventually made its way to Reddit as well:

Posts from the indianworkplace
community on Reddit

Pritesh Lakhani, co-founder and CEO of Pneucons, an online B2B industrial trading website, recently took to X to respond to another tweet on unemployment in India based on education level. Responding to a data chart showing graduates as the most unemployed, Lakhani wrote, "Its a government figure. Reality will be much more worse than this."?

What seemingly triggered the debate was when he shared in the same tweet that his company couldn't hire freshers because they'd demanded a monthly salary of Rs 30,000.?"Its been more than a month. We couldn't hire 4 freshers. Their expectations are to get a 30K salary. Won't do field work. Principal/Dean of a reputed college in Ahmedabad said no students of our college will apply for sales job that requires them to do field work. Unless you're not offering good corporate setups, laptops & weekends off they will not apply."

"No one is talking about skills. Looks like people are going to run their houses on degrees," he wrote.?The point Lakhani was trying to make was how somehow the hunger to learn new skills and gain experience was not a priority these days. But that was enough fodder for internet users to come after him.?

This debate also takes us back to what the founder and former chairman of Infosys, Mr Narayana Murthy said about India's work productivity being low compared to other countries and how?"youngsters should work 70 hours a week." His statement too got massive backlash online.?

Lakhani, meanwhile, shared some tweets showing some of the reactions to his statement:

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How did Reddit react?

On Reddit, the post was shared on September 11 and is slowly gaining traction on the popular social media platform. Here are some of the best reactions. Take a look:

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byu/weak_superher0 from discussion
inIndianWorkplace

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byu/weak_superher0 from discussion
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byu/weak_superher0 from discussion
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