The Infosys story…

Let me sart this one out by sending a shout out to Salas whose question inspired me to write up this story. (Salas, I had a long chat with your sister at a dinner party held by one of our classmates last night and she’s a cool cat. I can’t believe it took over 6 months for the two of us to meet and have a conversation)

So, my man Salas left a comment in my last entry asking me why I didn’t think I’d be able to accept the offer from Infosys, so I thought it would be a decent story to tell on here. I hope y’all get a kick out of it.

OK, for those who haven’t heard of Infosys, they’re a GREAT company with a major name in he IT space. Their main focus is IT consulting, but they also have a pretty large research arm that looks into emerging trends in IT to determine how the company can spin up in those areas and use them to provide value to clients. I was in NYC for my BCG 2nd round when I received the email telling me that I’d gotten an offer and I was excited because they would offer a chance for me to get some strategy experience using my tech background as a foundation. The email said that they wanted me to work in Bangalore, India and had instructions for me to take care of the arrangements (their travel dept’s information, how to get an Indian work visa, etc.). In my excitement, I overlooked the fact that the email didn’t say anything about how much I’d be getting paid. I never even thought to wonder about that until one of my peoples asked me about it upon my arrival back in Cali.

When I realized that oversight, I emailed the recruiter from infosys and asked her to give me an update on how much the salary would be. Instead of answering me directly, she referred me to the lady who was in charge of the internship program, who called me up at 1:30am to answer the questions that I had. When we spoke, she told me about all of the perks involved with the internship: free housing, free food, free cab fare around the city, an opportunity to hang out with interns from 70 B-schools around the world, etc. The one thing she didn’t seem like she wanted to touch on was the salary, so I directly asked her about it. She started off by saying “Infosys pays based on the cost of living in the city where you’re working”, which should have set off some alarms in my head. She continued by saying that “the monthly stipend will be 20,000…”, which momentarily had me geeked up at the thought of bringing in $20,000…she dashed all the excitement away when she hit me with “…rupees”. My first thought was “what is a rupee?”, but I didn’t make any sort of reaction to her statement because i dind’t immediately know the exchange rate for rupees to dollars. Once I got off of the phone with her, I found an exchange rate calculator on the Web and discovered that the stipend of 20,000 rupees would convert for $458.17 in American dollars…that shook up my excitement and made me really sad.

For the past week or so, I’ve been thinking long and hard about this and, although I know it’d be a gret experience to work over in India, I don’t know if I can afford to work for less than $500 per month. In addition to getting good experience in an internship, one is also supposed to be making money to survive on when the school year starts. Less than $1000 total from an internship won’t even pay my car note and insurance over the summer (and I haven’t even factored in the amount that the gov’t would take for taxes). I guess I’d better get my hustle on because, if I’m going to pass on a good internship, I’d better be able to secure another one that is just as good.