Education in IT has a huge payoff for those getting jobs abroad

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₹2.5- ₹3.6 lakh annual salary in Indian IT companies after getting their B.Tech degrees (see graphic). The payoff is much higher for IT jobs abroad. According to the US department of labor, a software developer’s median annual earnings in the US is $121,001, or nearly ₹1 crore at current exchange rates.

Mint spoke to some IT professionals about their journey of finding a job, the costs involved in acquiring new skills and how quickly they have been able to recover these costs. The straight path Pradeep Jha, 33, chose to study BTech (Computer Science) from Annamalai University in Tamil Nadu because it was a quasi-government college back in 2008 and the fees comparatively less, at ₹30,000 per year. Jha says he would have spent a total of ₹2.5 lakh-3 lakh, including fees of ₹1.2 lakh and living costs, over the period of four years.

“I had also taken coaching for JEE and that would have added another ₹60,000-70,000 towards my education costs," he says. Jha, who landed a job at Infosys in Pune after his grduation, claims to have recovered the costs in about five years. Being a part of a large IT company helps as it offers several opportunities to learn and upskill, he says.

“We have an internal portal for employees looking to learn new stuff. The company also sponsors employees who want to take up specific courses or training, or reimburses them ," he adds. The road not taken By the time Alok Shah, 36, earned his bachelor’s degree in tourism from the University of Winchester, UK, in 2008, there were hardly any job opportunities due to the global financial crisis.