It's actually the other way round. More T2 people keep applying or contact recruiters for T1s. Because the WLB is the worst regardless of the firm in most practices and sometimes actually worse at smaller offices due to understaffing and quality dearth. So the only thing better is better pay.

Parrot approach. They've just heard it from seniors, who passed it to their juniors. When they finally land the job then realise the toxicity involved. It's tier 1 in money but tier 3 in mental health. I'd work all day in courts and earn in pennies initially than ruin my mental health in the start. So start in litigation and then move to corporate. Not the other way round.

Yeah, and you still did not get the point. Your 5.5L at the end of 6-7 years amounts to 66L. The pay at tier 1s, at the end of that term, ballparks between 55-60. Now while this looks like a 5-10L difference a year, you forgot/chose to ignore the fact that we get the advantage of a more liberalized income tax regime. On top of that, our takeaway is almost the entirety of what we get because we do not have to make contributions that you guys have to make mandatorily. How wealthy you are (because of how much you earn) is not the number on your gross salary. It is how much you retain.

And we are not even bringing litigation into this argument. Yes, it pays very poorly to its freshers, but we all agree that once litigation starts paying off, there are very few independent businesses/practices that can reward you with such a corpus in such a short span.

In addition to this, lay-offs. We are not the ones who wake up with the fear of being laid-off in the hundreds and thousands. There is mostly enough work to go around unless your performance has been abysmally pathetic or the senior/partner has decided its time to cut you loose, and even then it's a smaller number compared to what software developers go through.

"What career progression?"- I won't even bother replying to this because someone else probably will.

None of this makes your profession or mine superior to the other. We all chose our poison, so let's drink it peacefully and without this di*k measuring.

Take home means in hand, after tax deduction and contributions to funds, which remains your money. So if after 6 years, you get 55-60, you'll fist have to pay tax on it. So effectively your earning is say 50 after tax. What an employed guys gets 5.5 in hand, it's 66 after taxes plus ~ 10 lacs pa in fund contributions so 76. It's still 50% higher mate. But yeah, we all choose our poison so let's just drink it.

Yes yes. Absolutely. Took a lower number for tax just to illustrate that even with such lower tax amount, the difference in overall earning is significant. Btw, Haven't factored in Gratuity which is significant amount and also other workplace facilities and perquisites for analysis.