A recent post by Praveen Chakraborty on X (formerly Twitter) has sparked a heated debate, highlighting the stark contrast between the salaries of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) leadership and the IT giant’s average employees.
Chakraborty, a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress (INC), took to X to criticise TCS layoffs this year, which shook the entire IT industry.
What does the post say?
The post quickly gained traction as netizens flooded the comment section with different opinions and solutions.
Chakraborty also mentioned some bare financial figures to show the contrast between the IT major’s leadership-level and employee-level salaries.
- TCS CEO’s annual pay: ₹35 crore
- Top 5 leadership’s combined pay: ₹40 crore
- Average employee’s annual pay: ₹15 lakh
His core argument revolves around the provocative solution, which suggests that if the top 100 individuals within TCS leadership were to take a small pay cut, it could potentially save 12,000 jobs.
“Their lives wont be terrible at ₹2.5cr pay vs ₹3cr,” he stated. Additionally, he also emphasised the devastating impact on those laid off: “For 12000 families, lives will be miserable at 0 pay vs ₹15 lacs.”
The post also touches upon the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), with Chakraborty asserting, “AI is real; mass layoffs need not be.”
Salary comparison: Leadership vs average employee
According to the TCS Integrated annual report of 2024-25, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director (MD) of TCS, K Krithivasan, gets compensated as much as ₹27 crore on an annual basis.
NG Subramanium, who serves TCS as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Executive Director (ED) gets paid around ₹12 crore per annum.
The details of compensation given to other leadership roles have also been given below:
Netizens react: Concerns and solutions
Netizens were quick to react, with opinions sharply divided. An X user commented to condemn the TCS layoffs by stating that “They opened a company, not a charity.”
However, another X user defended the company’s rationale behind the layoffs. “They are cutting jobs because there is an over supply…Not to save money…A CEO gets paid because he has a job…the employee lost the job .. because there is no work to be done,” the user noted.