I was reading a blog post a few weeks back about 3 categories of tech companies globally & thought to myself whether it is true from a Sri Lankan perspective. And then I came up with my own set of categories of tech careers for a Sri Lankan who works in the tech industry.

First of all, these are only imaginary categories I created on my own. Anyone can agree or disagree. Decided to write this down so it will be helpful for anyone to figure out in which category they are in right now & some guideline/motivation if you consider changing your category into a different one.

Let’s name these 4 categories,

• Category A
• Category B
• Category C
• Category D

These are the categories of tech companies you are working on or you can work on who work in the tech industry Srilanka or abroad.

Category A

• Most of the Sri Lankan tech companies fall under this category.
• Once you graduate in CS or IT, this is the easiest job you can get.
• You are competing with thousands of IT industry talents of Sri Lanka in the job market.
• You can get a higher salary than most other industries.
• If you don’t want to push yourself, take risks & you have an above average salary than other industries, this is the place you can spend your life above average Sri Lankan lifestyle.
• If you become too comfortable at what you are doing, it will not be easy to find the next job & you have to continue working in the same place & then your salary increments will not be higher.
• Almost all of the companies in this category are software houses.
• Not hard to get a job in this category as long as you have a tech relevant degree.

Category B

• Top IT companies in Sri Lanka fall under this category.
• They try to hire the best of Sri Lankan IT talents.
• Salary level is one of the highest you can get by working in Sri Lanka.
• You are competing with the best Sri Lankan IT talents in the job market.
• You need to be updated with the latest technologies & be good at what you are doing to get a job in these companies.
• Most of the companies in this category are also software houses, but there are few product companies also.
• Your friend who got way better A/L results than you but decided to do some other degree cannot even think of getting your salary.
• You need to have good grades + some additional skills in your CV as a fresh graduate, or else good grades + coming from top Sri Lankan undergraduate programs.

Category C

• Working abroad in the tech industry falls under this category.
• Depending on the country, the salary level differs, but most of the time your salary is higher than Category B salaries.
• You have to compete with global tech talent to land a job.
• If you have proven experience, it’s not hard to get a job.
• You don’t need to do IELTS to get these jobs.
• Visa & everything will be taken care of by the company you are getting hired.
• If you are very good at what you are doing, you can choose which country you want to work & find a job.
• You should prepare to take risks, because you should be prepared to leave Sri Lanka within a couple of months. So the more ties you have in Sri Lanka, the harder it is to do this.
• Possible you are getting an equity package as part of the full compensation package.
• Not impossible to get a job in this category as a fresh graduate, but then you should have a very good CV with proven skills.

Category D

• FAANG or FAAMG companies fall under this category.
• You should be one of the top at what you are doing.
• You should be very good at algorithms, data structures to get through the interviews.
• You are competing with the best of the world talents in the job market.
• You are getting one of the highest salaries in the world.
• You are getting an equity package as part of the full compensation package.
• You should be good at managing work load & stress.
• Visa, relocation & everything will be taken care of by the company.
• Don’t need to take a risk as high as Category C.
• There should be few cases of Sri Lankan graduates landing jobs in Category D as fresh graduates. But you need to be extremely good.

It is easy to go down from your current category if you prefer. But you need to work a bit hard to go up in the category. It may require a few months of interview preparation to level up your next job category. It is always easy to change jobs in the same category & get salary increments. But most of the time the category above pays higher salaries.

Cheers,
DilumN