My dad worked at ISRO for 30+ years and is now retired - so what I'm saying has some merit.
I don't know where you are getting the impression that ISRO engineers aren't paid well. Sure, they are not paid Google salaries but they are no way paid peanuts. A fresh engineering graduate will stand to get around 40K INR per month. Please not that if you are not landing up a software job, in India, it's a pretty shitty market out there for other disciplines. ISRO offers are great when you consider for example, what a mechanical engineer makes in other private companies.
Working environment is also comparable to any software facility. Please visit the ISRO facility in Bangalore on old airport road. They have some of the most green and spacious campuses. I don't have pictures because security is super tight and they don't even let you carry your cellphones inside.
For a long time, ISRO offered some of the best retirement benefits. My dad and mom don't have to worry about their healthcare costs for the rest of their lives and my dad gets a handsome pension to take care of his day to day living expenses. This has changed with the sixth pay commission.
ISRO also offers housing in some prime areas, near the office facilities so that you don't have to commute much. Of course, not everyone gets this benefit and it's based more on a lottery basis.
The schooling for your kids is almost free in the Kendriya Vidyala schools - and some of those schools offer top notch education.
While you are employed, you pay next to nothing for healthcare (including surgeries). There is the CGHS card that you flash in almost all major hospitals and you are taken care of.
As if this was not all enough, you get to work on some really state of the art stuff that others can't even imagine. There is absolutely no room for error. You just can't say 'oh crap I'll just fix that bug'. One bug might destroy a satellite or screw up the rocket launch. So, there is a lot of merit in building such mission critical systems and a ton of satisfaction. This satisfaction cannot be compared with money.
During launch days, my dad would work 3-4 days at a stretch without even a phone call in between. Such was the pressure.
So, working at ISRO has a ton of merits and satisfaction. It's not for everyone though. There is no glamour as such in the job. You don't have crazy parties or drunken revelries or annual outings to Hawaii. There is an enormous amount of bureaucracy and bull shit that you have to deal with. But for an engineer who loves to build mission critical applications - the place is a heaven.
My father used to work for ISRO too, from '74 to '97. He started with Satish Dhawan, one of the founders of the Indian space program. They moved at the same time from IISc. I agree with everything deepGem has to say about ISRO. It is far from the 'third world space program' that many like to romanticize.
Few thoughts:
- There is a common myth, one about how Indians used bullock carts to test the antennas on a satellite. This, for example, wasn't because they couldn't anechoic chambers, but simply because bullock carts have few metallic parts to interfere with the actual measurements. Image here: https://lh3.ggpht.com/_1UepX3L4zzs/S6Fd5jUwoJI/AAAAAAAAAjU/i...
- Regarding the budget, the predominant political philosophy in India is what Americans would call 'tax-and-spend'. ISRO has essentially a limitless budget to spend on their projects. My father used to travel first class on international trips to meet suppliers in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The reason for low-brow tables and ceiling fans is more to do with cultural aspects. In fact, there are many top universities, and old corporations (based on anecdata) in the US where working conditions are 'ghetto' by Apple-Google-Facebook standards. The reason simply is that renovating workplace infrastructure is a pretty significant expense.
I can also tell you that there are absolutely no problems with technology infrastructure (including internet speeds) in ISRO. Some of their offices were wired for internet as early as early as 1992.
The one downside of working at ISRO, as with any government establishment is the bureaucracy that one has to deal with, and the general reverence for seniority (vs. reverence for pure merit, etc.)
I wanted to comment on the other comment, but those people were getting abusive and had to stop there.
>>My father used to work for ISRO too, from '74 to '97.
This is comparing Apples to Oranges. 1974 India had such a dismal technology scene, ISRO would have looked like India's technology paradise back then. What were the opportunities for technology folks then? Trying settling down in Europe or US, if you can't the next best case scenario is work at BHEL, ITI, BEL and ISRO sort of companies. The next alternative was to work at a assembly line, and next is open a small time grocery shop.
I see this tone repeatedly mentioned how some one's dad had so much from ISRO at a time when India was in deep clutches of socialism. Technology imports are tightly regulated by license raj system. Any comparison between Government firms and private firms from those times is totally meaningless. Because the very concept of a good career in a non-government firm was non-existent. So its not at all strange that people working in ISRO had a good career, because frankly what exactly was there apart from the government firms.
We are talking of times when the Ambassador was the only car in India, a telephone connection used to take years to get, and getting a current account in a bank required police verification. And the term private firm was synonymous with a TATA owned company.
By these standards, ISRO is the best career option you could have in those days.
There is no way you can compare that with IT companies today. Not with the kind of technology infrastructure, or even working conditions, or the compensation and benefits.
The scenario today is the very exact opposite of 1970's.
You're the one who's comparing Apples to Oranges. Nobody here are worried about ISRO salary, perks etc. (they are actually good).
No one's comparing ISRO to Google or NASA or SpaceX or whatever. You simply started off with this unnecessary, unwanted posts that aren't even remotely true; hopping from one topic to another without any relevance.
Since you don't have any firsthand experience, please stop it since your posts are just a noise around here in this thread. You've difficulty in accepting it and you simply keep hopping from one thing to another.
Why are you not trying to get a job at Google and relocate to USA, or buy one of those 80 lakh flats at Bangalore.
>>Nobody here are worried about ISRO salary, perks etc. (they are actually good).
Here? You created your account 19 hours back, just for this thread. What do you know about things 'here'?
I didn't even reply to you. I am not sure why a Karma 15 account like yours created 19 hours back(Which is a classic troll account sign, which trolls create to work on a specific thread on a particular day) should be even taken seriously.
According to the Internet $650 in Bangalore is $4700 in Seattle. Thats about what you'd start out at as a programmer in the midwest U.S. but kind of low for west coast. Still, a kid straight out of college with no health problems or baby mamas should be fine.
Edit: wolframalpha seems to have something to say but its kind of confusing: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%24650+in+bangalore+in+...
Compensation is sufficient, but in no way competitive. Given the real estate market in Bangalore, some of my friends who've had foreign travel opportunities in MegaCorps are buying 80 Lac+ flats. Some more than one of them. And these are guys are mostly under 35 or some even under 30.
Any one who is on VP/Director/Senior engineering managers levels is buying 2.5 Crore+ villas. Expensive cars, having vacations in foreign countries and crazy lifestyle spending's.
The definition of well paid just became a whole lot different. And there is no way anyone can live that kind of a lifestyle working for a government firm.
Again, you can be happy with what you get. But that thought doesn't work always. Peer pressure does amazing things to you. Even if you don't get into it yourself, you will get into it eventually once you start a family.
Also note, that the public retirement investment vehicles today are strong enough and sometimes even better than the government ones. We are no longer in 1980's India. If you are well paid, you can buy your own food, pay your own bills, have your own home, car etc.
Why are you challenging deepGem when he is confronting based on first hand experience and facts while all you have are just mostly assumptions?
I understand you intend to win the argument here, but this is the wrong way to do it.
>Again, you can be happy with what you get. But that thought doesn't work always. Peer pressure does amazing things to you. Even if you don't get into it yourself, you will get into it eventually once you start a family.
Can you please stop swaying away from the topic at hand just to support yourself?
I take no sides, just that your ignorant arguments are making these places a little messier (and possibly irritating). I just called one of my friends from ISRO to confirm what deepGem said and they seem to be right.
I understand you need to earn Karma here, but this is really the wrong way to earn it - By spreading mis-information about something you don't have first hand experience with.
If I had the tone of the others, I would have probably finished it off with just a single line by saying GTFO, but for the sake of HN etiquette, can I kindly ask you to stop this nonsensical Karma-whorish misinformation spreading?
Well I apologize If my arguments have offended any one here.
And since you have already 'understood' I'm here for karma and you are for the larger good of the humanity. What can I say further? Especially when you have taken so much pain of calling your friends and verifying the information to debate a stranger over the internet.
>>I would have probably finished it off with just a single line by saying GTFO
You already have, haven't you?
>>can I kindly ask you to stop this nonsensical Karma-whorish misinformation spreading?
You definitely have a unique knack of 'kindly' offending and abusing people.
>You definitely have a unique knack of 'kindly' offending and abusing people.
Well, it's much better than spreading false rumours about you just because I don't like you. (Which is what you've been doing about subjects you don't know about)
@kamaal, please don't measure everything in terms of money, and in terms of those million dollar flats. You are simply swaying off of topic. Why do you think you can dispute GP's first hand experience?
Also, you don't seem to have any idea about ISRO. So, please control your assumptions about their salary, working conditions, transport etc. I'd rather trust GP's post about ISRO as he has first hand experience.
I don't know where you are getting the impression that ISRO engineers aren't paid well. Sure, they are not paid Google salaries but they are no way paid peanuts. A fresh engineering graduate will stand to get around 40K INR per month. Please not that if you are not landing up a software job, in India, it's a pretty shitty market out there for other disciplines. ISRO offers are great when you consider for example, what a mechanical engineer makes in other private companies.
Working environment is also comparable to any software facility. Please visit the ISRO facility in Bangalore on old airport road. They have some of the most green and spacious campuses. I don't have pictures because security is super tight and they don't even let you carry your cellphones inside.
For a long time, ISRO offered some of the best retirement benefits. My dad and mom don't have to worry about their healthcare costs for the rest of their lives and my dad gets a handsome pension to take care of his day to day living expenses. This has changed with the sixth pay commission.
ISRO also offers housing in some prime areas, near the office facilities so that you don't have to commute much. Of course, not everyone gets this benefit and it's based more on a lottery basis.
The schooling for your kids is almost free in the Kendriya Vidyala schools - and some of those schools offer top notch education.
While you are employed, you pay next to nothing for healthcare (including surgeries). There is the CGHS card that you flash in almost all major hospitals and you are taken care of.
As if this was not all enough, you get to work on some really state of the art stuff that others can't even imagine. There is absolutely no room for error. You just can't say 'oh crap I'll just fix that bug'. One bug might destroy a satellite or screw up the rocket launch. So, there is a lot of merit in building such mission critical systems and a ton of satisfaction. This satisfaction cannot be compared with money.
During launch days, my dad would work 3-4 days at a stretch without even a phone call in between. Such was the pressure.
So, working at ISRO has a ton of merits and satisfaction. It's not for everyone though. There is no glamour as such in the job. You don't have crazy parties or drunken revelries or annual outings to Hawaii. There is an enormous amount of bureaucracy and bull shit that you have to deal with. But for an engineer who loves to build mission critical applications - the place is a heaven.