There’s a strange trend on LinkedIn these days. A company publishes a job opening with a salary or internship stipend, and the first reaction from many people is to mock it. “₹15,000 for this role?” “Is this even a salary?” “How can anyone survive on this?”
Maybe the compensation is low compared to what you’ve seen. But that doesn’t automatically make the company wrong for publishing it.
India is a huge country, and not every company operates with Series B or Series C funding. There are bootstrapped companies, early-stage startups running on angel funding, small businesses trying to survive, and companies operating with extremely limited budgets. Their ability to pay is going to be very different from that of a well-funded startup or a large enterprise.
And there’s another side to this conversation that we often forget: the candidate.
Not everyone graduating today comes from an IIM or a top-tier MBA college. We have graduates coming from Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges and universities. And they are not all looking for the same thing.
Some desperately need a job. Some need an income. Some want an opportunity to prove themselves. Some want to get their foot in the door. And some are willing to take a lower-paying opportunity because they see it as a chance to learn and build experience.
That doesn’t mean everyone should accept a low salary. It simply means the decision should belong to the person looking for the opportunity.
Let the Candidate Decide
If a company is offering ₹15,000, ₹20,000 or ₹30,000 and you think that’s too low, don’t apply.
It’s really that simple.
You may have completely different expectations based on your experience, skills, location or current compensation. That’s fine. But someone else might look at the same opportunity and think, “This is my first chance to get some real experience.”
Why should we make that decision for them?
A job posting is an opportunity being offered at a particular price. The candidate gets to decide whether that price is worth accepting.
Transparency Is Better Than Silence
Here’s the part I find particularly interesting.
Most companies don’t publish salaries. They simply write: “Salary: Competitive.”
Then you go through three rounds of interviews, an assignment, an HR discussion and sometimes an entire week of back-and-forth before you finally discover what “competitive” actually means.
So when a company actually publishes the number upfront, at least you know what you’re getting into.
You can reject it immediately if it doesn’t work for you. You don’t have to waste your time, and the company doesn’t have to waste theirs. Everyone knows the terms.
That’s transparency.
And if we start publicly mocking companies every time they publish a salary or internship stipend that we consider too low, we shouldn’t be surprised if companies eventually stop publishing the numbers altogether.
That doesn’t help candidates.
Not Every Company Has the Same Economics
A ₹20,000 stipend at a small, bootstrapped company isn’t necessarily comparable to a ₹20,000 stipend at a company that has raised millions in funding.
The same applies to salaries.
Companies have different revenues, funding situations, business models, locations and cost structures. That doesn’t mean candidates should settle for less than they’re worth. It means we should stop pretending that one number works for everyone.
The market is far more complicated than that.
Let the Market Decide
I’d rather see more companies publish their salary ranges than fewer.
Let companies be upfront about what they can afford. Let candidates decide what they’re willing to accept.
If the compensation is too low, candidates won’t apply. If the company can’t attract the right talent, it will eventually have to rethink the offer.
That’s how the market is supposed to work.
Companies should be allowed to state what they can afford. Candidates should be allowed to decide what they’re willing to accept.
And the rest of us?
Maybe we should stop playing salary police on LinkedIn.
The market can make that decision.