A viral post by a Walmart employee on the professional networking platform Blind has triggered fresh debate about salary trends in India’s tech sector.
The anonymous user claimed that ₹1-crore annual packages are now fairly common, especially among software engineers with just 4–5 years of experience.
The post quickly caught attention, leading to divided opinions. The techie, who has 13 years of experience in data engineering, reflected on how hard it had been for him to reach that salary level. He questioned whether such high pay had now become the norm, sparking a wider discussion.
To gauge reactions, he ran a poll asking what a decent salary should be for someone with his experience. About 33.6% of respondents said over ₹75 lakh per annum was fair, while 38.3% believed it should be over ₹1.5 crore. A smaller group felt ₹1 crore was enough.
The conversation drew mixed reactions. Some agreed that product-based companies like Google, Microsoft, and Walmart offer such packages to select roles like staff engineers or tech leads.
Others pointed out that most engineers, especially in service-based firms like Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, and HCL (collectively known as WITCH), earn much less.
While ₹1-crore salaries may not be as rare as before, especially in elite product firms, the general consensus remains that these packages are still far from being the industry norm.
