The 50% hike playbook breaks above ₹40 LPA — and the senior engineers who keep hopping are getting filtered out.

The 50%-hike-every-two-years playbook works beautifully through your first three jobs. At the senior level — ₹40 LPA+ — it starts breaking. Hiring panels at top Indian product companies now explicitly filter for tenure above 30 months on at least one recent role, citing "leadership and ownership" but really screening for flight risk. The senior engineers who keep playing the hop game are quietly getting routed to the back of the queue at the best companies. The rational move at this stage isn't to stop optimising for comp — it's to stay 3+ years at a company where the comp matches the market through internal hikes.