 "The IIT Kharagpur campus in West Bengal")
The day Pune-based Abhishek Pant told the local media about his "Rs 2-crore dream job in Google," the placement office at his alma mater Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, was busy answering frantic calls from other parents, media and fellow placement officials.
But all that IIT Kharagpur had to say that day was "it didn't come from us."
And it is to avoid such situations that the All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC) recently took an informal decision not to reveal details of compensation packages offered by recruiters during final placements.
And why not? The Rs 2-crore figure, the institute said, is incorrect. "The figure has come from the boy's family and not from the institute's placement office. It is also inaccurate, and the real figure is lower than the one being quoted. This is precisely the reason why in the recent AIPC meeting, IITs have decided not to reveal details of compensation packages in the offers made by recruiters," said an institute source at IIT, Kharagpur.
IITs say such high offers are exceptional, and revealing such figures tends to put unnecessary pressure on other students.
"Students and parents alike start developing unnecessary expectations from offers during placements. At times, this also impacts students' performance during placement interviews. Hence, IITs have decided it is safer to reveal the average salary packages offered in a particular year at the end of the placement process," said a source at IIT Guwahati. IIT Bombay too refused to divulge salary details.
IITs divide salaries into two parts - the guaranteed or fixed component and the variable component. They say they consider only the fixed component in their placement records.
IIT placement cell officials said variable components in salaries - stock options, joining or sign - on bonus, relocation benefits, medical reimbursement, leave travel allowance, transport allowance and other benefits - raise annual salaries to more than Rs 1 crore. Including variable components, international pay packages soared at IITs.
Often pay packages also include payments for students' accommodation in five-star hotels. "These are one-time payments and are completely misleading. We do not club these with the overall package. We focus only on the assured and recurring salary component," said a placement official at IIT Bombay.
Last year US-based firm Oracle made a job offer of Rs 1.83 crore, with a base salary of Rs 80 lakh and 4,000 shares in stock options. With the Oracle stock at about Rs 2,590 ($41.9) then (1 December, 2014), 4,000 stocks were valued at Rs 1.03 crore, taking the overall package to Rs 1.83 crore.
This was also the case with social networking site Facebook, which has made job offers for coding profiles.
Another multinational firm had made an offer of $100,000 as the base salary, $15,000 as a sign-on bonus and $10,000 in relocation benefits, along with stock options at one of the IITs.
Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Facebook are among several companies making big-ticket job offers to students.
IITs said, in many cases, students don't stick to a company for more than a year or two, failing to exercise the stock option. They cannot exercise the option if they quit the company before three or five years.
