How people set their Salary Expectations ?

(Image Source: Wikimedia)

How do people set their Salary expectations?

Particularly the one who are returning to job-market after a break, returning from other country or switching careers.

For instance when I returned from Japan, and was looking forward to my career shift, I asked. Many were tight-lipped. Even friends won’t share the details. And you will find them very diplomatic like “it depends”.

So when one more colleague is planning to return from Japan and mentioned he is expecting a salary of 20 Laks per annum as Project Manager in  IT firm.

I just explored casually (not some serious research though) …

One friend, who is senior architect in one of the leading software firm, & based in Pune mentioned a thumb rule at his work-place. 

We normally stick with 1.5 times experience. If he has 10 years of experience, reasonable expectation is 14 to 15 Laks per annum. And further this is moderated by skill-set, technology, certifications, kind of organizations, projects that one worked with and need of resource at that point of time.

Just couple of days back, I was talking to another friend. She was with consulting firm, and then resigned for some continuing education (not really increasing her marketability in corporate world). She mentioned that she is expecting a salary of 18 Laks per annum. I was little surprised and asked source of this figure.  Her argument...

Typically MBA receives the average salary around 7 Laks per annum. She has around 14 years of post-MBA experience.  So she added one Laks per year of experience and discounted for the two years of break.

Both the responses forced me to think.

Though there are salary surveys, ( here too ), user-forums, and reports on compensation trends, they don't really answer such special cases. 

More-over, these answers clearly underlined the entitlement philosophy of compensation, so for every year worked ,pay-raises are kind of expected.

Any thoughts or comments ? 

Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smartcard2.png 

Japanese adopting western Bonus culture !

Financial times dated 1-jun says "Nomura's 1600 staff- more than 50% of its investment arm adopted western style contracts" .

This will cut basic salaries , provide higher performance bonus and it will be easier to fire them in case of downturn.

Though the firm maintains that it is essential for integrating Japan and European acquisitions of Lehman , still it is in stark contrast with Japanese employer outlook of "stable Jobs" as well as against the government and regulators efforts all over world to curb executive compensation and golden parachutes.

So is Japanese embracing western culture in pay-packages ? It is difficult to comment with one such example.

More-over news article no where comments about employee reaction .One may doubt about the negotiating power with employees given recessionary trend and downturn in job-market .

Lets keep watching how other Japanese firm are responding ...