Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai slammed IT firms for the alleged disparity in the pay scale between top management and early service entrants.

Sharing an article on X (formally twitter), Pai called the development “a sad state of affairs.”

“Very sad situation in IT in India. Boards should stop being mercenaries, reward the CEOs, also the 1%, themselves more and more and give a much better deal to the top and bottom 50% . This is not the culture that the IT service grew up in,” he wrote.

CEO salaries at India’s top five IT firms rose more than 160% in the past five years, while the top five saw less than a 4% rise over the same period, data obtained by by Moneycontrol.

The annual reports of Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCLTech, Wipro and Tech Mahindra have highlighted the stagnation of wage growth and its impact on economic consumption.

For the seventh consecutive quarter, India’s top five IT services companies have experienced headcount declines. However, the slower pace of this reduction in the April-June quarter has generated optimism that these companies can close the year with a net increase in their workforce, according to a report.

Together, these five companies closed the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 with a total workforce of 1,523 million, compared to 1,525 million at the end of March.

As the discretionary spending environment turned adverse due to high interest rates and cautious consumer sentiment in its core markets of the US and Europe, the growth rate slowed from double digits to low a digit