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Cost of living changes and salary changes will never match. It is a never ending debate because of the disconnected way in which the cost of a basket of goods and services change. In India, in the last 20 years, petrol price has risen only 3x but gold has risen 12x which people compare it to a standard way of thinking about inflation but it is not, as it is also a commodity backed by demand and supply.

By comparing the absolute number cost in the last 20 years, vehicles cost about 2x, petrol 3x, clothing 3x-5x, food 5x min in staple raw material cost, almost 10x in green groceries, rental and property 5-10x, phone bills 0.7x, feature phones 0.3x, in general electronics & communication – more features and lesser cost. For a basic living it is generally considered that we have good food, clothing and shelter. In that sense the cost of living has gone up around 5x-7x for most of us. There are some services like hospital and education which have increased the spectrum on both ends thereby making it difficult to assess but in general we can say that also falls in the 5x-7x bucket. We spend a significant amount of money on the basic expenses so 5x-7x change looks a good ballpark.

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The inflation data from across the world suggests that India went through an inflation of around 4x in the last 20 years. This data takes a wide basket of goods and services not just the basic few we have looked at. With that in mind if I compare to the wages offered 20 years ago. The big IT companies in India provided an average entry level salary of 2.1 lakhs per annum in the year 2004. This is for a person just out of college without any experience. The range was something between 1.5 to 5 lakhs per annum. If this was the case in 2004, as per the economists figures in 2024 should be around 6 to 20 lakhs per annum for fresher programmers. If we use our 5x-7x yardstick then the number jumps up a great deal. In reality salary numbers do not keep up.

Why do not salaries keep up with the cost of living? The answer is demand and supply. In the early 2000s an entire state of Tamilnadu produced programmers who have good comprehension and coding skills to just fill up a small office building year on year (In 1000s to 10,000s). Initially companies were so choosy that it was difficult to appear even for an interview if you are not from a top tier college, slowly they moved to lower tier colleges and by the end of 2000s massive walkins were encouraged to hire talent. This trend disappeared when the supply caught up for freshers leaving the salaries stagnated as there were more freshers than available jobs.

It applies in other fields as well, my neighbour who was owning and driving a taxi which was semi luxury 20 years ago earned around 20,000 rupees a month in profit. The cabs and drivers supply hit more than the demand that now the same person will barely make 1.5x to 2x of that money. The only way for us to keep be on the happier side of the cost of living is to create a demand for our skills. A lot of freshers do the mistake of early specialisation, choosing a well paying tech job in a narrow field which works in the immediate future but locks them up forever in a stagnant skill set.

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I keep repeating this statement – software development is about communication of different systems built by different teams. The more things the software does, the more overhead it has, to deal with people and process. For us to get a hang of what is going on in the overall landscape, it is possible only if we have explored the lengths and breadths of technology and tools. It is not necessary to be an expert in each and every aspect, but should understand them in first principles. A developer who spent their early years working in UI, backend, infrastructure, mobile development, data engineering and using different programming languages like Javascript, java, python will have a thorough understanding of the tech landscape. The same developer when working on legacy projects, green field development, brown field development and maintenance will gain enough experience on people, process and engineering in the long run to become a VP of engineering compared to someone who specialised very early in a tech because that was hot.

With AI coding assistants growing in capabilities, there is now even more demand for generalists who can grok and handle a lot of things in the length and breadth. Avoid the temptation of now and plan for the long run, a career is not over in 10 years. Flexibility in the early years and learning compounds to a great growth in the long run.

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I complete 20 years as a working professional this month, this is a rear view look. Times change and what applied to me may no longer be applicable now but felt it as a good exercise to look back and pen down the themes. 20s is the age that you feel you are invincible and have a seemingly long future outlook, that gives us a feeling that the 20s will last forever. This makes us subconsciously go for things that only cater to the present but create a harder one for the future self.To give an idea about how times change, let us see cost of living – gold was 10 times cheaper 20 years ago, which means buying a 100cc bike like Hero Splendour was an achievement, it retailed at 48,000 rupees. A salary of 4,000 was adequate for me to start my career.

Luck is a factor on how big we can make it. I ended with a good job only because I went to meet a friend whom I hadn’t met for a long time and he had arrived at my town for an interview, I went along with him. Walk in interviews had 1,000+ people waiting outside the gate at 7 AM to be let in for a 9 AM interview. That is how bad the outlook was for the first job if not placed through campus placements, it was extremely hard. The interviewers do not have the time to sift through so many profiles and find us, irrespective how well prepared we are or how skilled we are. How to increase the luck? The only way to increase is through serendipity – showing up more at places, connecting with a lot of people, have varied interests. Once our foot is in the door, only then the skills get applicable. Throughout the career, this keeps repeating for me.

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Once I got the job, I felt that going all out on tech skills will be my forte. I used to take pride that people see me as a wizard who gets a lot of things done. Within a few years I had hit a plateau of what I can accomplish individually. I was putting in more and more effort without moving the needle on the performance indicators. I fell sick often in the pursuit and it caused more setbacks. It is when one of my mentors pointed out on how to become a multiplier instead of being a standalone maker. I had to rewire my ways of working and learn what puts me up in the next level. One of them was communication skills which was a bottomless pit to get skilled on – presentation, interpersonal, spoken and written english, non verbal, feedback on and on. The rule was simple, if I am on a team, the entire team’s productivity should go up.

The invincible 20s mindset, makes us feel that we can go at break neck speed, consume anything, don’t rest and yet still manage to survive. All the years of neglect suddenly manifests one day as a bolt from the truth. A major problem I had is that I did not eat and sleep well in my early days of career. After a point it was a constant repeat of medicines, physiotherapy and poor health until I figured out nutrition and exercise. A sound body creates a sound mind.

The more later you learn skills like driving, language, music, cooking the more difficult it becomes due to the time commitment needed get to a basic level. As we move up the life ladder and start a family, time flies and hard to set aside any time for learning new things that require commitment. Cross discipline learning is very important along with life skills, learning never stops but it becomes easy when you start early. Often times you will hit a plateau in the career, it requires a change in the way in which we work and learn that needs extra effort. Example moving from an individual contributor to lead, a lead to an expert, an expert to an org leader etc. Before making the jump enjoy the plateau for a while but don’t settle there.

When speaking about time, the best investments I have made are the ones that help me save time. Fully automatic washing machine/dryer combo, electric cookware where you can program and set timers are to name a few. I made the mistake of buying status symbols first before coming to terms to reality. The amount of time that gets saved by delegating away is huge.

About savings, I was poor like everyone else with savings. I thought property is the biggest savings and went all in as one stop investment. What it made me was to be afraid to try new things so that I won’t lose the steady stream of income. Living paycheck to paycheck is a very difficult situation and makes you put up with toxic workplaces or makes you risk averse. I did not try my hand on starting a business on my own because of the huge loan bills I had to pay every month. Best form of savings/investments are something that you can pause or redeem when needed, not locked up in real estate through a loan. Car and bikes are a spend not an investment.

Recap – Luck plays a major role in what we are today; being a team player matters; communications skills can never be enough; body and mind keeps score, take good care of it; invest on things that saves time; learn as much as possible early in the career including life skills; understand financial resilience and actively pursue it.

Don’t regret anything, just fix the future