This is not surprising at all. I was at an Indian firm a while back and due to arcane labor laws, we did not want to hire a network engineer but needed one to work with some Cisco equipment we were getting. We agreed to pay Cisco about $1000/month for 2 years to have an engineer on their books but placed at our firm. When the engineer was actually placed I learned from someone that he was being paid ~$100/month so Cisco was skimming about 90% of what we paid for him.

> When the engineer was actually placed I learned from someone that he was being paid ~$100/month so Cisco was skimming about 90% of what we paid for him.

Not exactly. These are contract employees.

How it works is that corporates often have tie-ups with certain HR firms to provide them employees with certain skills, on demand. Depending on the requirement, these tech employees work remotely or on-site, but on the payroll of the middle-man HR firm.

So when you ask Cisco for a network engineer, they contact these HR firms and send them the requirement. The HR firm sends a list of candidates, and Cisco selects the most-suited one. This person is then sent to you. But they are not paid by Cisco as they are not really a Cisco employee. Cisco pays the HR firms a fixed contract rate and the HR firm pays a percentage of that to the worker.

Cisco definitely skims some of the money, but a large portion of it does go to these kind of contract HR firms.

Engineering means he did his Bachelors in Technology from any college, not a good one, or a popular one.

And there are so many engineering colleges here in india, you can get into them irrespective of your skills, knowledge, or financial status.

Things are a lot cheaper, there. $1 goes a lot further in India than it does in the US.

things are indeed a lot cheaper.

but Rs21,000 is below the bottom of the barrel for engineering graduate.

Rs 25,000($340) per month would be bottom of the barrel, with Rs 50,000 ($680) per month a decent amount for engineering graduate.

Source: Am engineering graduate from india

Is that the going rate for the area where this factory is? In the US pay varies wildly by geographic location. Someone in Silicon Valley can easily make 5-10x as much as someone doing the exact same work in the middle of Iowa, for example.

when i say "bottom of the barrel" i mean literally the bottom. Anything less is exploitation and abuse, the article says it is located in industrial area [1] near bengaluru, which is one of the major cities of india.

I don't think location should play a negative role here, as factory is located in industrial area, where engineering grads would really not prefer going without a premium (or desperation as is the case here)

If anything, sheer proximity to bengaluru should drive salaries up.

the general verdict here is that the company was offering piss poor salaries to desperate students, and then decided to go lower.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narasapura_Industrial_Area

INR 21K is drastically underpaid even here, but sadly on par with the quality of most "engineering" "colleges" and "degrees".