In the early 1990s when I came here, the prevailing wisdom was that its categorically better to immigrate to the US from India if you get a chance. India was too far back in the tech space, too much bureaucracy, corruption, red-tape etc etc...
In the 2020s, the consensus is quite mixed. A lot of people I personally worked with, who successfully got their visas and green cards, have given it all up and gone straight back to India because that's where the action is. It was quite baffling to me because it takes a lot of work to get these documents. But after a few trips to India, I must say it makes a lot of sense. The startup funding situation, tech jobs hiring scenario, cost of living, telecom, healthcare, no prevalence of gun culture...every aspect is much better in India currently than the US. If you have high 6 low 7 figure USD saved up, and not too deeply tied to the US, you should consider moving back if you want to tap into a potential windfall. That said, if you only have 5 figure USD, coming to the US is the better option if you can swing it. If you're already here on a visa, stay frugal & grow that nest egg. Going back with a 5 figure sum is quite risky unless you have some solid contacts in the startup space or are ok with the Indian job scene. Interviews over there are insanely competitive. 500+ LC. Kids just stay at home grinding LC all day. There are dedicated youtube channels in Hindi & other regional lang telling you how to dynamic program, backtrack, div & conquer, two pointer....its a whole different scene.
I worked in the US and felt that H1B status was very insecure so I tried to start my own company in India in 2020, and also explored the job and housing market. I agree 100% with all the great financial and work-related competitive points you've highlighted but I believe it misses the human and quality of life factors.
Things that really affected my mental health in India during that time:
1. Food: Lack of variety in food and food ingredients. I like to eat out and cook different cuisines (Japanese to Korean to Middle eastern to French to Northern European). Beef is a major issue in India and fresh sushi can be a hit or miss even in Balgalore. And nothing is available if you're outside of the major metro cities.
2. Prices: If you're in Bangalore you do get a wide variety of food including beef dishes but equivalent quality restaurants and bars in India have the similar range prices as the US (I used to live in the south so it might not be apples to apples). Same goes for food ingredients - e.g. Almond milk and cheddar cheese costs the same in India as in the US.
3. Traffic and honking: Even sitting in an Uber for 30 mins can be maddening for me. Not to mention people actually yell obscenities at each other in traffic jams.
4. Interruptions: India still has power cuts, water supply and flooding issues and the bigger the city (with more opportunities) the worse these problems are. The gated communities in the metros alleviate many of these issues but then you're paying $1000 or more per month in rent or purchase for $600-700K. So same as most developed countries.
My conclusion was that if you got somewhat acclimated to the having a better QoL in the west (which is different than standard of living) you really need to try living there for a few months and see if it makes financial sense, because you'll be paying western prices on a Indian salary. As always YMMV depending on your preferences. I myself ended up moving to Canada.
Sounds like those points are all ripe opportunities for startups of their own no? Just a matter of identifying market gaps, I'm sure that's why US companies have hired so many Indians, just simple filling of needs and not some other mechanic as to way the world works.
Pretty sure you forgot the /s but just in case: a startup to fix "power cuts, water supply and flooding issues"? Like "startup government". I guess that's what the gated communities are?
"Snow Crash" described the logical conclusion of such a development:
"Have to bulldoze lots of neighborhoods to do it, but those seventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed, right? No sidewalks, no schools, no nothing. Don’t have their own police force — no immigration control — undesirables can walk right in without being frisked or even harassed. Now a Burbclave, that’s the place to live. A city-state with its own constitution, a border, laws, cops, everything."
"MetaCops Unlimited is the official peacekeeping force of White Columns, and also of The Mews at Windsor Heights, The Heights at Bear Run, Cinnamon Grove, and The Farms of Cloverdelle. They also enforce traffic regulations on all highways and byways operated by Fairlanes, Inc. ... MetaCops’ main competitor, WorldBeat Security, handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways, plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals, Pickett’s Plantation, Rainbow Heights (check it out—two apartheid Burbclaves and one for black suits), Meadowvale on the [insert name of river] and Brickyard Station."
Balaji recently wrote about a version of startup communities in his book The Network State. Although, he talked about first creating virtual communities and then agglomerating enough critical mass to enable people to demand physical changes in the infrastructure/ affect government in the real world. He also speaks highly of India in a related context because of the proliferation of technology supported by the fact that major technology shapers hail from India among other things.
I don't agree with many of the views and feel like India is missing a key piece. We are not a single country (never have been as goes popular meme goes). It is hard for us as a nation to optimise for success because we have too many competing priorities at the local, state and lower levels. The exaggerated impact of diversity stemming from diverse cultures is too much to handle and optimise for one country's leadership in my humble opinion. I want to think differently but unfortunately the ground reality is telling for e.g., if you only look at the garbage dumps across various cities despite a national campaign of cleanliness. We as a people needed to be made aware in 50+ languages that we should hesitate from destroying our surroundings and not trash them.
It is easy to think that a 5Gbps connection with air conditioning and organic rations just arrives out of nowhere as it sometimes does in many industrialised/developed countries in the West. There is basic infrastructure that is needed not just to stimulate the economy but also allows for those lowest in the social rungs to benefit and operate like normal human beings do in the West. This is nothing new of course and we all have seen the disparities in large Indian cities. Some even tend to compare it to what is happening in SF and other large cities in the US. My experience is that the environment I was in, both in Singapore and US brought out the best in me. I could spend my intellectual bandwidth on things that actually mattered to the larger society around me. One could say that the return on investment (action/thought ratio) was much higher because I was enabled by basic infrastructure. I didn't have to care about rowdy neighbours or worms in chocolates or dysfunctional municipal services (comparing the occurrence of these disturbances among others to problems like gun violence is a bit ridiculous in terms of the impact they cause on day to day life for an average common person).
All this is not to say that India is doomed and there is nothing happening here or possible in the long term future. I'm just opining that it takes a lot of basic needs to be satisfied for a society to operate optimally. Without being too cynical, Kunal Bahl had a basic foundation to leave MS and build Snapdeal (after pursuing a great education in the US). It's not impossible and is a worthy dream that many if not all should pursue but the popular narrative that India is now ripe to be the next Silicon Valley is not realistic. And to me it feels like most technology (only) solutions to societal challenges are like a band-aid. The solutions need to be deeper and cultural, and as much of a curmudgeon this might make me seem, Government needs to be involved in those solutions. Not just government marketing and branding as has become popular these days but actual government action. It will be hard for a large part of the population to see beyond the marketing so yes, it will be an uphill battle.
Apologies for the rant (maybe this should have been a warning up top). There is no TL;DR for this post either because it's a horrible summary of my unquantified opinions.
Just in case you're not /s, you can't run clean rivers as a service. I hope the rivers in Bangalore aren't as bad as they were when I visited in 2009, but waste treatment did not seem to be a priority then, and that's something you need the whole society connected to... It doesn't help to only clean wealthy people's poop.
One reason not to go back to India: climate change and heat. People are basically burning alive there and due to the high population, many people will starve in the coming decades as droughts cause crop failures. This will cause food and water wars as rising instability of the subcontinent means many people will need asylum. The area will not be geopolitically, financially, or otherwise stable in such a time. If I were a betting person, I'd move as close to the poles as possible in the coming future.
Not to forget the air pollution. The PM 2.5 levels are morbidly high. Millions of deaths are linked to air pollution. People in their 40s,50s are increasingly dying of cardiac arrest, more and more kids have asthama and other lung diseases. Delhi is literally a gas chamber, even Bangalore air is mostly at unhealthy level. Given the population density and increasing industrialization, this problem is only going to increase in the next 10-15 years.
This is the thing for me. You couldn't pay me a million dollars a year to live/work in Gurgaon (Ok, maybe a million for a year or two, but then I'd be out). It is the place that comes closest to Blade Runner in my mind. Every time I went outside I felt like the air was trying to kill me. All of the giant hulking new offices and extremely little green space are like right out of some post apocalyptic nightmare.
In Delhi this year, I had my ACs running practically 24x7. I could stomach the power bills but the quality of life is atrocious. I basically couldn’t work outdoors or even go for a simple walk to the neighbourhood otherwise I’d be drenched in sweat.
Modern Indian apartments in major cities are also atrociously designed with little care for ventilation and materials.
You can fight the elements, but then you’re just locked inside a concrete and glass box all day long. No fun in that.
Yes, however due to there being significantly more poor people than rich people, especially tech workers, there will be antagonizing behavior in the future. There will be country-wide instability, and even if you're rich, a comparatively rich country like in Europe or the US will be substantially more stable than one with a higher degree of income inequality.
It is not only income inequality one needs to look at, it is the amount of the baseline population which is well fed and taken care of, as generally, those that are will not wage war against the rich, while those that aren't are much more likely to.
If 90% of the population is starving and makes 10 dollars a day (hypothetical numbers), and 10% are rich and make 100 a day, the poor will be much more likely to revolt than in a scenario where 90% make 100 a day and can afford food, shelter, education etc, and the 10% make 1 million per day. It is not the level of inequality, it's the baseline.
And then the sea levels will rise to where Mount Everest will become beachfront property. No one is safe anywhere, climate change will destroy everything.
Impact Lab has a pretty cool map of temperature projections.[0] I don't think see level rise will impact humanity as a whole that much. - The dutch for example have been successfully fighting the tides for centuries. It is certainly a problem in this context that the majority of the world lives in coastal cities, but generally there will be time to either build dams or evacuate. Extreme weather events are much harder to deal with though, and they are going to ramp up greatly with 2022 giving us a good first taste of what is about to come. Note also that while I filtered the map for the high emissions scenario, there are little understood feedback loops that might make things much worse than we currently can predict with certainty. The effect on permafrost, rainforests and the oceans from extreme heat is too complex for us to currently simulate adequately.
Fighting the tides is one thing when sea levels have been stable for millennia. Now we're heading towards meters of difference in average levels by the end of the century. I fully expect most of the Netherlands and most coastal metropolises to be underwater by late 21st century.
the thing you have been talking is of crop failure but just ask your stepdad google they would better tell you that even you all will die of hunger if india won't produce and export in the countries and hope this you hate was also there at the time begging for vaccines from India. better mind the buisness you can get into your control.
Let’s not forget that all of this only applies if you’re of the “right” religion. There’s a thick glass ceiling in vast majority of Indian professional world if your name sounds a certain way, no matter how good you might be. We like to ignore this facet but on the ground level, this is the obvious reality. Around election time one has to worry whether their family member who has gone out for an errand will return in one piece. Yes I know you might’ve not have to worry about this particular aspect (HN crowd is generally a lot more privileged), but it’s the ground reality for a large number of people. Families will literally take out loans against their entire sum of generational wealth for a mere chance to leave India, that takes pretty strong push factors than just “status” within community. In summary, outside a handful of big cities, and if you belong to the “right” religion, life is incredibly rough for the majority. There is simply no comparison when choosing to plant one’s roots in India vs a western country. It’s great to visit, but not to build a family life. Yet.
be careful generalising india because anything that one can claim, the opposite is also true.
A major reason countries like the USA and the UK flourish is stability. Stability is not something india has and that is a very difficult thing to put a price on. Indian capital markets are not transparent though that is less of an issue for startups. What should be telling is the number of "Indian" startups that are registered in places like Singapore.
I have to rain on your parade but there are many aspects of life in India that money cannot solve. I am no fan of the USA either but the "gun culture" thing is a strawman that doesn't affect daily life in the cities. It is certainly a problem but not a problem that many make it out to be. Be careful with the healthcare argument too. India's legal and police systems are a joke and their healthcare system is cheap but kills millions every year due to medical negligence. The US healthcare system - for all its flaws - has some of the best outcomes provided you have enough money to access it.
The UK isn't thriving - 18% inflation, low salaries (except in the money laundering industry), bad and very expensive housing, no infrastructure investment, etc.
UK doesn't have 18% inflation, that is just a projection from Citigroup [0] (if gas prices continue to grow it will probably get there, like the rest of Europe). Inflation is at 10.1%.
I'm not sure why you say 'low salaries'. Adjusted by cost of living, salaries are not that low [1]. Median (removes those salaries from 'money laundering industries') salary in London is almost £39.7k [2]. Adjust that by cost of living, and it is higher than median income in San Francisco or NYC [3].
Infrastructure is miles better than the US. Public transport, while expensive, works quite well. The US has virtually no public transport whatsoever.
Housing and renting is expensive in every major city, it is not a problem exclusive to the UK.
It's really not a great point to use London, by far and wide the only and biggest exception the rest of the market in the UK, to compare salaries for tech workers. You can earn quite a lot more adjusted for conversion and taxes pretty much anywhere in the US if you compare to someone living outside London. And even then, London rents (never mind houses) are ridiculously expensive.
I think one could say anything about UK these days, but lack of infrastructure investment? Seriously? UK compared to the US, it's like 50 years of difference. And I'd argue it's still ahead of most of the old EU, too.
Get a license for what? I don't really understand the relationship between bureaucracy and buying a book... You can buy anything you like from anywhere in the world, pay your duty online, and have it delivered to your door. I did it a couple of times with DHL, Royal Mail, and never had any issues.
Are you kidding? London has the highest quality apartment buildings in Europe. Well designed new builds with good services are abundant. This stuff hardly even exists in countries like France, Germany or Spain.
> their healthcare system is cheap but kills millions every year due to medical negligence.
This is a problem money can solve though. If you have the money, you can get pretty good medical care in India. "cheap but kills millions" isn't really a problem faced by most people who have the money to afford it.
> The US healthcare system - for all its flaws - has some of the best outcomes provided you have enough money to access it.
> Exactly. You need the money in the US to just be able to afford healthcare here. There are millions of people who don't have insurance (private, medicare), or have expensive deductibles to make healthcare out of reach for some.
Yes, you can be denied treatment. ERs are just obligated to stabilize patients no matter their ability to pay. Nobody who needs it is getting an insulin supply or chemotherapy without the ability to pay for it.
Right. Anything beyond that nobody is obligated to provide. However, if you're in that level of dire straits there's almost always a way to get it covered. In most states, anyway.
Healthcare in India also has one very negative aspect which is that more than half of the doctors have qualified due to some form of caste based affirmative action. More than 50% seats in Indian Medical colleges are reserved for "lower castes." It's much easier for a less hard working/bright student to get into the college if he belongs to the lower caste which reduces the quality of doctors so much that a lot of people refuse to get treated by doctors who have lower caste surnames. Atleast in America you are guaranteed you have mostly competent folks treating you, hard to do that in India without doing background checks on the caste of the doctor as well.
How is this any different from saying you would avoid a black/Hispanic/minority doctor in the United States? The US also has affirmative action for medical schools. If anything this problem would be worse in the US, since it's harder to determine race by name here.
Your comment reads as thinly veiled casteism/racism.
You can go with doctors with Jewish/Asian last names - that way you chance to hit affirmative action doctor are pretty minimal.
PS I personally never thought about it that way and it’s probably silly to filter like that for routine care but may make sense for high risk surgeries when you can’t do due diligence other way.
The qualifying exams for MBBS degree is the same for everyone. A huge percentage of medical seats are literally purchased by wealthy parents for their kids. Yet the concern is always about low caste physicians, not nepotistic physicians.
The exam is the same, but the scores required vary by a large margin based on if you are in a reserved category or open category.
I'm not saying that someone with a lower exam score cannot be a better doctor than someone with a higher score, but I would assume there would be a strong correlation
I am not talking about the entrance exam. I am talking about the final exam you need to pass to graduate. It is the same for everyone.
Once again, most of the students who qualify in the entrance exam with a lower score are the middle-high income class, donations and payments based upper caste students.
In all my years in India, not once has anyone complained about the upper caste doctors who have literally purchased a seat in medical school, including yourself. Their only concern is caste. The racism is very loud and very clear.
You would be a fool to go to any doctor who has a degree from a random private university in India. So you only go to doctors from reputed govt. colleges like say Maulana Azad or AIIMS where you can't just buy the degree. But here the issue is reservation which is as bad of a problem. So vetting out quota doctors is required here if you want proper treatment. You are saying they all qualify the passing exams on the university? But is there no difference in someone getting barely passing marks to other student getting distinction? I have heard professors giving grace marks to SC/ST students just because they fear being slapped with draconian caste discrimination cases if they fail the undeserving student. If you look at the topmost doctors they are all of unreserved category, now this is not some "racism" but in reality it shows that merit wins in the long run.
> The US healthcare system - for all its flaws - has some of the best outcomes provided you have enough money to access it.
If you're going to use the qualifier "provided you have enough money to access it", then Indian healthcare is equivalent or better depending on the illness.
> I have to rain on your parade but there are many aspects of life in India that money cannot solve. I am no fan of the USA either but the "gun culture" thing is a strawman that doesn't affect daily life in the cities. It is certainly a problem but not a problem that many make it out to be. Be careful with the healthcare argument too. India's legal and police systems are a joke and their healthcare system is cheap but kills millions every year due to medical negligence. The US healthcare system - for all its flaws - has some of the best outcomes provided you have enough money to access it.
I think its interesting that you manage to both minimize the impact of firearms in the US and ding the healthcare system of India in the same comment.
I have to disagree with both. Guns are a constant threat, even in the bluest of cities since there are Red States just a few hours of drive away (if you're not already a Blue City in a Red State which is extremely common). The threat of school shooting is very real. Kids have to go through bs "active shooter drills"... this is not the sign of a healthy society.
Indian healthcare system certainly has flaws but it manages to provide basic healthcare to all citizens. There are lots of fantastic doctors trained every year in India.
The legal and police systems, I buy that argument. The mainstream media, totally under the control of the authoritarian right wing Government. Modi. Those are legit criticisms.
> I have to disagree with both. Guns are a constant threat, even in the bluest of cities since there are Red States just a few hours of drive away (if you're not already a Blue City in a Red State which is extremely common). The threat of school shooting is very real. Kids have to go through bs "active shooter drills"... this is not the sign of a healthy society.
Sorry you are buying far too much into the news. I suspect more people are burned alive in housefires from shoddy construction in India, than die in the US to guns.
It’s actually surprisingly close in absolute numbers. About 20k not-self inflicted gun deaths in the us, and 17k deaths by fire in India. Ofc per capita gun deaths>>fires.
Correct - though the US doesn’t have a dramatically higher suicide rate compared to countries with vastly lower gun related homicide rates. So excluding non self inflicted rates may provide the more relevant metric for this analysis.
Too late to edit - I meant to write "excluding self inflicted rates", not "excluding non self inflicted rates", though I don't get the impression there was any misunderstanding.
Yep - many people see the "gun deaths" number and assume all of those are crimes (well, technically suicide is a crime where the victim and the perpetrator are the same).
Are you telling me there is ACTUALLY gun violence in Chicago, Detroit, and New York? Well, knock me down with a feather!
BTW Someone needs to tell India to get a handle on their vehicle death culture. It is a constant threat. Children are being absolutely slaughtered in the streets by these assault vehicles and the numbers are only rising.
> even in the bluest of cities since there are Red States just a few hours of drive away
I remember reading somewhere that the statistics and likelihood of innocents being shot were more closely tied to "blue" and gun-free cities and states.
That makes sense. Gun control is an all or nothing thing. You can't ban guns in some states and let other states run amok with them. People and guns can move easily across state borders.
The threat of a school shooting is real everywhere, I don’t think the news does justice to showcase how often gun violence could have been avoided if the individuals in the kids life payed attention.
> The US healthcare system - for all its flaws - has some of the best outcomes provided you have enough money to access it.
You're kidding, right? Vast majority of Americans have poor outcomes despite being insured. Let's not even talk about the uninsured that are constantly kicked to the curb as soon as they're stable. Medical debt is a big issue in the US regardless of your insurance status. Medical bankruptcy is a thing. People have to choose between food and life saving drugs like insulin which are cheap and easily available pretty much everywhere in the world. Do you want me to go on?
It has been stable since I have been here? In fact all the issues that make the most $$$, gun violence, abortion, race relations, these are not a problem at the macro level. If anything it should be commended that our media and leadership has the luxury to complain about these “issues” that affect less then 5% of the population.
Surely a man would say that abortion is not a problem at the macro level and only impact 5% of the population.
Doesn't impact you so of course you don't care, but it does impact a lot more than 5%. Same for race relations, lots of people having to spend their life being put all kind of barriers in front of them.
Stable for who, and how do you define stability? For you it feels stable, for some factory worker it's not great.
But I was getting more at American politics - that feel to me like they've reached rock bottom (at least compared to the last 2-3 decades). Eventually a crippled political system will bring down the economy.
It's very possible all things considered, and relative to Europe (or China, India, whatever), the U.S is doing good.
But that's not gonna matter much to the average American citizen. There's no way Americans won't feel the political and economic mayhem that's coming the coming decade or two.
Even though it can be agreed that coming back to India is a good option for most many Indians, it is also to be noted that Indian political games within Indian orgs make it super hard to do anything. IMO the only reason to go back to India should be to start on your own with your trusted friends. If you think you can work in India and contribute positively think again.
Let's compare crime rates, rates of conviction, police corruption, judicial corruption, etc. and see what place is safer to live in.
> Kids just stay at home grinding LC all day.
That's sad. I would rather study a computer science subject that helps me create something of value.
Do you think Linus Torvalds, John Carmack, Dennis Ritchie, and others spent their days grinding Leetcode? no. If they did, you would not know about them today.
They spent their days improving their craft by creating and delivering value.
All of the people grinding Leetcode will be replaced in a couple of years by Github Copilot anyways.
> its a whole different scene
Sure, it is. A scene obsessed with passing interviews rather than what comes after you accept the offer. A scene obsessed with entering a MAANG and total compensation. A corruption of the software engineering discipline.
It can be a nightmare finding a good doctor in India. The way most doctors behave can be insulting plus a lot of them are truly incompetent or corrupt. There are no real consequences to any of that. Most private hospitals are out to maximize how much they are earn from you and unnecessary procedures are the norm.
As just one data point, check out the ratio of natural births to c-sections in India in private hospitals.
While I agree that for-profit hospitals do have a lot of money-minded doctors (I hesitate to call them corrupt, as desire to earn more is normal in every field), I disagree with you completely that from the healthcare point of view India is a negative. India has excellent healthcare facilities and very good doctors (in the city) - and most importantly it is affordable for the upper-middle class even without insurance (in the sense that it won't bankrupt you). Medical insurance is also comparatively cheaper and makes healthcare quite affordable, even for the middle-class. It's a huge positive compared to the US.
(Your point about C-sections though is very valid and I too consider it extremely unethical that many doctors now treat it as a norm and less seriously - there are too many C-sections done unnecessarily both because of greed and for an over worked doctors convenience.)
Personal anecdote, but most of my wife’s friends in India have themselves opted to go with a c-section. Mainly to avoid a tough labor and be able to plan ahead. My wife gave birth naturally here in the US where it is not an option unless medically necessary. In India patients can choose it seems and doctors allow it because it is a higher bill for them as well.
Yes, this seems to be becoming common too as a perception has been generated that it is a "minor surgery". One of my relative too opted for C-section because someone close to her frightened her that natural childbirth is horribly painful and really bad experience. At no point did the doctor tried to dissuade her from having a c-section or explain to her the potential danger to her and her baby's health if she underwent it.
1) they will join Meta and be a cannon fodder developer for a PHP coder that never excelled at those puzzles, Mark Zuckerberg.
2) a Github Copilot user will wipe the floor with them. Being good at LeetCode puzzles will be as practical as being able to mentally calculate square roots. Just a party trick for low rating TV shows.
When I joined CS degree I also thought like you did.
Now looking at insane competition, the kids who can't write a real program if their life depends upon it, constantly getting better internship and job offers than me, I believe I was wrong.
No one cares.
People who interview are also likely Leetcode kids. So they will ask some obscure question from 14th page of Leetcode to flex, so the probability of passing is almost proportional to amount of time you grind.
If I have a chance to go back to year 1, I focus on Leetcode. Fundamentals be damned.
In this industry no one has an incentive to care about efficiency. If they did, we wouldn't be gambling with right candidate answering an obscuring question from some 10+ page of Leetcode or Hackerrank.
Now someone from outside India can reply to this with their usual justifications. To be clear, I don't hate DSA questions. Just pointing out as your leetcodes get harder, you tend to select people who do leetcode whole day than those who are good at DSA and also good at programming.
Edit: and yes, "if you're good at DSA you should be able to answer the obscure question". Dude obscure question will be LC hard or upper end of medium. The kid who does Leetcode 3 hours a day already seen the question and remembers the answer too, and there are n > 10 kids like that.
All of this was fueled by zero cost credit, tidal waves of VC money and the very early stage of monetizing the web. Soon the world wide web will be a thing of the past and most economic value will have been captured by corporate walled gardens and this job marked will fall in line.
I think learning data structures and algorithms as a software engineer is important. And if you legitimately want to pursue a deeper understanding of those because you have a practical purpose in mind, that's great.
But if that does not really interest you, and you only do it to pass some pointless interview to become an entry level employee at a MAANG... you need some perspective in life.
Let's say you do become an employee at a MAANG. You buy an expensive house, now you have to pay the mortgage for years. You get married, start a family with kids... now you have raised your cost of living to the point it is really hard for you to make less money. Now you have long-term, lifetime commitments that require you to make a lot of money, and your MAANG manager will sniff that desperation, will rub his hands, do an evil laugh and then work you to death.
Your family will be happy and abstracted from everything, but you will be deeply unhappy. You will have no time to make friends, you will be a foreigner in a very different country and nobody will understand you. You will go on vacation to expensive places, but your mind will always be trapped in the anxiety dimension created by your manager and your H-1B status. With a couple of mouse clicks and the stroke of a pen, your manager can make everything go away at any moment because when you lose your H-1B status you have to leave the country at once.
You will eventually get used to your higher standard of living and become indifferent to the materialistic aspects of your life. The excitement of your new life will fade away. Living in a nice house won't matter, having an expensive vehicle won't matter. You will have musical instruments and a boat and whatever hobbies but you'll have no time to pursue them. You will soon realize that you have money but no time.
The little time you have left, will be for you to spend with your kids, but you will be too tired to have meaningful interactions with them. Your kids will become spoiled by the standard of living you provide and will barely know you because you are always busy with work. They will grow in another country, speak a different first language, and will be assimilated by another culture. As they grow, they will feel more culturally disconnected from you, and become indifferent to you, your culture and your identity. Just like you did, they will leave the nest and never look back. You will be reduced to a contact in someone's smartphone that is never called.
You soon realize that the cost of your prosperity is the solitude and distance from your family and friends. You will be a miserable MAANG salaryman that made a pact with the devil and lost his soul. And it all started with the empty promise that if you complete enough stupid Leetcode exercises you will be rich and happy. If you are not already happy without a MAANG job, you won't be happy with one.
And I am going to plagiarize the ending of a similar story here:
His darkest secret, however, is that he lives in constant fear that, some day, he will fail. He will fall behind with his tasks, he will not meet his manager expectations and be replaced by younger engineers with more energy and more up-to-date knowledge. He will realize that his friends at work were fair-weather friends and that he lost, in a single stroke of fate, the attention he was so eagerly seeking.
Like the rest of us, he will grow old, his priorities will change, his eagerness will die down. As he looks around him, he may realize that the best times of life have passed him by, and that there is no making up for the lost time. He will be bitter, having left an insignificant mark on the world, having wasted his time in pointless pursuits. No one will miss him.
Assuming you're from India and know well about the job market here,
My comment tries to highlight a very specific issue that using progressively harder leetcode problems selects for people who do leetcode all day, and me trying to focus on CS fundamentals and actual programming was a mistake.
It has nothing to do with me wanting to work in FAANGM or not, or any of the philosophy you wrote.
You wrote that FANGM salaried person will be miserable. You know who will be more miserable? The software engineer who had to settle for a less paying company or startup. The engineer who came from a humble rural background and wanted to leave a mark on the world, but lost to the measure-oriented competition which rewards the cargo cult mentality.
Looking around me, the cargo cult leetcoding kids are more happier, that's probably because they are already from a better background than I am. Doesn't change the fact that if I grinded what it required to game the job market, I would've been at a place better than them.
Doesn't matter you are one of the most gifted athlete, if you're playing the game that doesn't have any prizes.
You assume that the facade people put on social media means they're happy. It will be all happy pictures at expensive restaurants and exotic vacation destinations, until one random day they change their relationship status to divorced or whatever, and then all that MAANG income will go to alimony and child support, and the wife will be keeping the nice house and car.
If the main thing that connects you to your family is money... well, guess what: your wife can have all of your money and stuff without needing you to be around. If you are married and working all the time, you are playing a very dangerous game. Once the net worth grows, so does the incentive to divorce.
All those innocent MAANG kids are in for a big surprise when they realize who is really in charge. Perhaps if they became a bit more informed about family law instead of focusing solely on those dumb Leetcode puzzles...
Doesn't matter. That's the most important thing that helps to get job here. Insane competition and qualifying questions for even low paying jobs are around LC medium.
Is that why my LeetCode ranking is always so depressingly abysmal? My solutions are always bottom 25% of speed and space usage, and the pass rate for some of their questions are way higher than my average.
Why is it then that it's common understanding that Indian teams are usually bad? Why are they so difficult to deal with and why do they produce bad code?
A significant number of engineers that FAANGM and a lot of others brings into the US from their Indian offices are top-notch. The salaries they pay in India are in the $60k-130k range which is incredibly good there. Same with a lot of good startups and core engineering firms.
The off-shore consultancies you might be familiar with are sweat shops that are a dime a dozen with engineers coming and going a revolving door.
They're optimized to make a quick buck with as cheap labor as possible. Just like the US firms that hires them.
Body/team leasing is nearly always shit quality, doesn't matter if it's from India or not. You can try to pay folk in India much less than you can get away with in e.g. Europe though.
I've had some good experience hiring contractors. It all depends on what the goal is. If the goal is high quality work there are shops for that and if the goal is for a big enterprise to manage costs and de-risk themselves by hiring contractors as easy-to-let-go resources, you get exactly that. I've dealt with both and the latter is just extremely frustrating made infinitely worse by dealing with the timezone.
If you've seen job placements in top tier colleges in India, it's obvious that none of the body shops ever get even a small percentage of graduates wanting to join. They're always the last choice even for the less academically inclined. It has been the case since at least 2005. Until then these companies still had some sway and were hiring some good candidates. Now they're coasting on their "account winning" architects who then transfer all day-to-day stuff to some of the most tough to deal with engineers.
There a over a billion people in India, and tech is where the young have been going for a while. In any large population you willhave good and bad people. In the US the bad move to something else, but in India there isn't a something else better than working for a place that will hire you cheap to produce bad code.
There are a lot of bad engineers in India, but if you can weed through them and are willing to pay there are a lot of great ones too.
You're probably thinking of a few big consulting companies who by no means represent the best and brightest and are just resume fodder for many others. The turnover at these places is awful.
Just one example, a lot of target's tech seems to be developed in their Bangalore office: https://india.target.com/work/teams/targettech. Hard to tell how much, but I imagine that being a significantly better workplace than Accenture. I hope one of their developers sees this and can clarify the extent their team works on the app/sites.
I find my general quality of life to be better. Access to clean air, a great commute, education, a more relaxed lifestyle, better treatment for women in public in the US as compared to India
Of course this is highly contextual, but this my opinion
I haven't tracked Indian politics, but they are comparing India with the US here.
After Trump, you think India could be doing worse? That's saying something.
May I ask, how fast are the exits if I was to invest in India companies?
One thing that turned me off from US venture capital was the culture of delaying exits to the stock market, compared to the 90s when Microsoft/Netscape/Amazon all IPO'd at like $30 million market caps and rallied and there was so much upside and liquidity. Is there a culture like that in India right now, or something similar?
I really like how the Matic/Polygon team achieved "unicorn" status while in India and stayed in the scene (I heard they moved to UAE since). I don't care that its crypto, I care that its tech and moving fast.
Is the action just in Bangalore or is it all over or a few other tech hubs?
The exit scene is very rough actually. Indian investors are conservative and the public markets don’t have much appetite for loss making companies. Silicon Valley accounting chicanery such as “adjusted EBITDA” don’t fly here - investors demand PAT - Profits After Tax.
Many of the current crop of unicorns have been waiting for years for an exit. If the current funding downturn continues, there is a good chance most of these will wind down without ever getting an exit.
> 500+ LC. Kids just stay at home grinding LC all day. There are dedicated youtube channels in Hindi & other regional lang telling you how to dynamic program, backtrack, div & conquer, two pointer....its a whole different scene.
That's because it is a deeply rooted culture/attitude of the people in India (or other developing countries): intellectual one-upmanship (i.e.: my "brain" is bigger than yours).
Nobody wants to be perceived to acquire something (a job, a house, anything) easily; people want to have a sense of the greatest achievement after a tough grind.
This is something that is really concerning to me. If everybody is pushed towards a STEM job the market becomes saturated affecting salaries (and the associated "prestige" in Indian society). And to top it off young children are forced to give up their childhood to pursue Byjus and other scams that prey on the parents' emotions. I grew up in the professional class in India and a lot of thinking is plain irrational and just driven by a herd mentality and superiority complex. Just toxicity all around tbh.
If someone wants to become a travel photographer and is happy with the job and the lifestyle why push them towards a soul sucking STEM job where they may not even excel? But somehow having a low paying "engineer" job is somewhat better than a higher paying "artist" job in their eyes.
And to those reading from outside of India: WITCH company jobs are actually considered prestigious in India. Maybe not by those who frequent HN (bubbles everywhere) but the vast majority of STEM graduates and their communities.
how in the world is working in Infosys or Wipro prestigious. you are just a robot doing some repetitive task for some random dude on the other side of the world
> That's because it is a deeply rooted culture/attitude of the people in India (or other developing countries): intellectual one-upmanship (i.e.: my "brain" is bigger than yours).
> Nobody wants to be perceived to acquire something (a job, a house, anything) easily; people want to have a sense of the greatest achievement after a tough grind.
We have intellectual oneupmanship and hustle & grind culture in the United States as well too. And contrary to popular, it's not new, as Tocqueville and Weber had made note of it during their days.
Developing nation one upmanship is more like this:
"Oh, so you can get into Google Silicon Valley with just 300 LC? You can't do that here in India; you need at least 500+ to join <insert lesser company>".
How exactly does an American keep up with this level of intellectual one-upmanship ? This was on my linkedin timeline today - https://imgur.com/a/dLpo9G7
People are making an error based on the past 20 years of debt binge and capital flooding that took over the world.
When the FDI dries up, India is a very weird place. The energy costs will put a number in Asia and Europe in the next decade with dramatic food security challenges.
Overall, at macro level, US beats India, but are there positive offshoots in some niches.. perhaps!
India is getting Russian oil pretty cheap now as far as I know, and most likely Iran as well.
The U.S is not immune to the energy problem btw, Shale oil is getting more expensive because all the easy spots were already used.
India imports more than 90% of it's oil.India hardly has any natural energy reserves good enough for it's huge population. It's definitely going to be tough to fullfill the aspirations of 1.5 billion people who will have increasing energy demands while supply will be perennially limited. If per capita consumption of India even has to reach China levels, it's going to be a massive challenge even with renewables involved. Energy security of India doesn't look good unless they try doing something like the good old introducing democracy in the middle east.
To be fair, Europe was first to start trade war and ramp it up to 100%. Russia is just responding in kind. Europe had a choice in whether to back Ukraine or not (including pushing it to reject Russian demands before the war) and risks were known in advance.
Considering India and Russia has no common border and global interests are mostly aligned, repeat of situation is extremely unlikely. With any critical import you take a risk but this one is pretty small as far as geopolitical risks go.
It's very unlikely Russia will do anything to mess up what they have going with China and India...because they don't have much other alternatives.
I am not talking morals here ... I am calling it as it is. This has nothing to do with morals.
If Russia did reasonable things they wouldn't have attacked Ukraine. Since we are talking about a Russia willing to do stupid things there is no reason to believe they won't mess with India or China.
Russia. I don't see how anyone can see the massive losses Russia has had as well as the lasting impacts of sanctions as anything but suicidal. Russia cannot even build a modern car with ABS and airbags, let alone a plane or a tank while sanctions are in place.
They will get whatever tech they need from China in return for their oil and gas. I also think for sure overall invading Ukraine was a bad move but calling it suicidal sounds like a reach to me; at least as far as we can see so far - Russia is holding on and shows no signs of cracking.
I don't think they will find drop in replacements for all the parts, or even replacements in general that meet the same quality standards for some of the parts. This issue will likely require a drastic redesign of a large number of parts and will halt production for a while.
> Russia is holding on and shows no signs of cracking.
I don't understand how people can think this when Russia is heavily recruiting from prisons and rolling out ancient T-62s, Russias modern weaponry continually gets depleted whilst Ukraine gets more modern weaponry every month. I think the first main cracking point will be the Russian retreat / Ukrainian recapture of Kherson in the coming months.
Honestly I have no idea how's the fighting going there...it seems like we've reached peak interest a few months ago unfortunately. Russia can just keep Ukraine in this weak state, maybe fire a few rockets now and then. It doesn't even have to keep up the invasion if it doesn't want to...Ukraine would still be a very dysfunctional country with the threat of Russian invasion always on the background. No one sane will want to invest or buy an apartment there. What does Russia gain out of all this shit I have no idea but my point remains is that Russia can keep this up if it wants to. The average Russian citizen is either fine with what's happening (surprisingly many) or too afraid to do anything. It's very hard to predict but the chance of Russia making it like this cannot be ignored imo.
If you want to this how a country can make it like this look at Iran.
> Honestly I have no idea how's the fighting going there...it seems like we've reached peak interest a few months ago unfortunately. Russia can just keep Ukraine in this weak state, maybe fire a few rockets now and then.
This is not an option, due to the amount of lives and equipment lost I don't think Russia has the option to pull out. It's a bit hard to have 50k casualties and lose thousands of pieces armoured equipment, hundreds of planes and just be like 'actually that was for nothing'.
> Ukraine would still be a very dysfunctional country with the threat of Russian invasion always on the background
I think Russia has more of a problem the longer the war goes on Ukraine is already going to receive NASAMS and IRIS-T anti air equipment from the US and Germany, which would significantly change the balance in the ability for Ukraine to control the sky.
The weapons aren't going to stop until Ukraine wins, pulling out also means losing Crimea and all the other gains they had made from 2014 until prior to the full on invasion.
Ukraine is more than capable of hitting installations in Russia even in their current degraded state, I don't think anyones gonna let Russia go back over the line and wash their hands of it.
> What does Russia gain out of all this shit I have no idea but my point remains is that Russia can keep this up if it wants to
Can it though? Russia is quickly running out of pretty much everything, they aren't using T-62s (tanks that don't even have a autoloader, a staple of Russian and even USSR tanks) because they want to its because they have to. I think the systemic corruption in Russia means they cannot fight this war for that long, for more then now? sure, but for years? im not so sure.
> The average Russian citizen is either fine with what's happening (surprisingly many) or too afraid to do anything. It's very hard to predict but the chance of Russia making it like this cannot be ignored imo. If you want to this how a country can make it like this look at Iran.
The longer this goes on the more the average Russian will be affected, the more assets that will be seized, the more people that will be sanctioned and the more companies that will pull out.
It's fun playing predictions but truth is no one knows what is going to happen. I hope Russia retreats and gives up as you are implying but I am very skeptical it will happen soon. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised...
if Russia loses the war and the army collapses there could be some very consequences from Putin, and that it seperate from the consequence of the slow moving collapse of the Russian economy that has already started.
> The Russian rouble is outperforming the usd this year. That does not look like a collapsing economy. In fact, it has gained 40% on the euro.
It only looks like this because it’s being propped up by massive cash spending of Russian foreign reserves and because it cannot be traded internationally in any significant volume.
> If Russia loses, they will withdraw to their borders. In the worst case they lose access to the Caspian sea. If not, they will acquire Ukraine.
If Russia losses they lose access to their Black Sea headquarters and also Crimea. They also face quite badly, but I guess that’s really already come to pass no one thinks Russia is the number two army in the world anymore.
Even if Russia did capture Ukraine they would face a long insurgency that would make Afghanistan look like a cake walk. I initially thought Russia would capture a lot of land early on but I didn’t they would be able to hold it, and we already seeing this with how many collaborators and Russian soldiers keep dying in occupied cities from partisans.
> The real loser is Ukraine, no matter what happens from here on.
This is hundred percent true but they lose much harder if they just let the genocidal Russians take over Ukraine and keep committing genocide against them.
Not all countries are blessed with the nature's bounty that the US is blessed with. I agree Energy is something India will be working on furiously in the coming decade. I presume both nuclear and renewable will be expanded rapidly. In the interim, India does have good relationships with most energy producing countries (Russia, Saudi).
What food security challenges does India have? India has been much poorer in the past and hasn't had any food security issues in a long time.
I remember when the price of onions went from well under a dollar for a single large onion to about a dollar or more for a large one when there was an enormous amount of flooding in india around 2019-2020, ruining their crops. Apparently the onion is a huge staple out there compared to the Americas and so they needed to source onions from pretty much everywhere else.
It sounds like a trivial price increase maybe to some people in more affluent countries but some in Latin America, it was a pretty challenging price increase.
My personal groceries bill is about 25$usd per week, meat vegetables and a bit of cereal goods. Used to be less within a decade ago, but hey what can you do - North America I was paying closer to 100
India is entirely dependent on the monsoon for fresh water. When combined with a warming climate, this is a disaster waiting to happen. I am 100% confident that we will live to see the days when food scarcity returns to India. Mind you, indian soils are some of the most fertile in the world so this really is an alarming scenario.
India's past issues with food scarcity were due to a combination of mismanagement and theft. Partly the british empire and partly the lack of skills in India. Widespread crop failures haven't been a thing for a while now.
Why? They treat eachother like partners, not like vassal states, and the rest of the world is not treating India like a pariah, despite its relationship with Russia.
The US may beat India in macro level economic factors for quite a while to come, but for a more senior professional with a marketable resume I think it's not too hard to find the positive niches.
Honestly the main thing that keeps me from moving back is quality of life concerns with traffic, air quality, and noise pollution.
I think the pollution, weather, water quality, noise, dust, and overall lack of high quality public spaces is a big deal.
India is amazing and dynamic in a lot of ways, but there are major intangibles to account for (like how much one values a quiet evening walk in fresh air).
The most important amenity is Employment. Only a small portion of people would move to tier-2 seconds and that too because of familial ties not some over whelming amenities.
By and large NRIs moving back from US end up in the usual metros at least in the beginning.
I grew up in a state capital and lived in 2 metro cities and honestly the infrastructure was better in my home city in terms of electricity, water and flooding.
But there are very few tech jobs, which gives the 2-3 employers there huge leverage due to the lack of job mobility.
Hopefully between fibre penetration and WFH culture things will improve.
Man there is really nothing much to do in these smaller cities. It gets boring very fast. There is also a culture that’s very socially intrusive. People will drop in on you unannounced randomly.
Which is great if you’re a socially extroverted person but if you want to get some work done, not the best case scenario
Note this was in 2007, during the height of the H1B body shop scams. The USCIS visa system was overwhelmed by companies like Infosys and Tata just submitting 1000s of applications for clearly underqualified, yet cheap candidates for jobs that didn't exist. This writer probably got their visa rejected over a less qualified candidate because of the quota limits for H1b.
FY 2008/2009 were indeed a bit of outliers at the time, but since 2014/2015 it's getting worst and worst. FY 2023 had 483,000 applications for ~85k total slots.
This is unfortunately still the case. H1B lottery is still a thing. I had to lose a team member and the person saw a similar email in their inbox. Sucks!
> This is unfortunately still the case. H1B lottery is still a thing. I had to lose a team member and the person saw a similar email in their inbox. Sucks!
The lottery is still a thing, but I vaguely recall that a few years ago they slapped down some of the foreign outsourcing companies that were abusing the system. I'm I remembering correctly?
Fwiw, there are other countries who would be very happy to have your team member if they’re interested in moving. Canada is much like the US and is way more generous with its visa policy, and the UK for all its problems is extremely easy to move to if you already work for a company who can sponsor your visa. Indian citizens also get a nice perk which (because India doesn’t allow dual nationality) they might find enjoyable - commonwealth (including India) citizens who gain permanent residency in the UK are entitled to pretty much all the rights of citizens including voting and standing for office.
You are talking about the diversity visa. It only applies to countries that don't send many people already.
H1B has a global cap, so there's a lottery. It's a completely different thing.
Green Cards also have a cap. China (and India in particular) are screwed. If you are from India and take your 1 year old baby to the US, it's likely – if nothing is done – that your baby will never get a green card. Child dependents lose eligibility at 21 years old; the current projections are pointing to much longer times than that.
I think you are talking about the Green Card lottery which doesn't allow certains countries that have had too many immigrants in the past 7 (I think) years. The H1-B lottery doesn't have country limitations.
It was in no way the easiest: For that you have to go back to 2001-2003, where there were 195k available visas every year, instead of the current 85k. Visas would still run out, but the big race to submit on the first day, which eventually gave us the lottery, came later.
It wasn't all easy though: All those extra H-1s didn't come with extra green card slots, so even an EB2 from Europe had a very long wait.
In 2014, I interned at a small startup in SF, and one of the other interns was someone in the US on a student visa partway through a postgrad degree. He was super smart, super friendly, and fully wanted to stay in the US after he graduated. Unfortunately he wasn't able to get an H1B to stay working in the US after graduating, and he was forced to move back home (and I think later ended up moving to Canada, although I can't remember if that ended up going through or not). It seemed kind of crazy to me that we'd let someone smart come here and receive a great education, but then not let them stay and actually work here and contribute to an American company, pay taxes, etc. If anything, it seems like it would make more sense to _require_ that someone work and live in the US after going to college here on a visa to get a return on the investment.
Companies like Tata and Infosys also required their H1B employees to grant them power of attorney, and they would also file fraudulent tax returns on behalf of employees.
As a foreigner living in another country, you represent your country. Depending on what you do, you may be opening doors or closing doors.
I don't know what Kunal's temporary work authorization was, but note also that the STEM extension for the OPT program has been tweaked in recent years, so that you can typically get three bites at the H-1B apple while you're still on an F-1 visa.
US immigration policies for Indian and Chinese nationals has been a blessing for their home grown tech ecosystem. There is no path to a green card or citizenship for anyone who immigrated in the last ~15 years, and the top 5% talent that used to come over by default is now working at or founding companies at home instead. This is directly correlated to the number of tech unicorns in these countries growing exponentially in the same time period (0 in India before 2010, 100+ in 2022).
We should've just have a stack ranking of H1B candidates, based on income (and severe penalties for regression in comp, so you can't just do it for the visa). This would immediately break companies like Infosys that simply spams the lottery system with bogus applications.
Why doesn't the government auction H1B visas? If H1B numbers are capped then they are a scarce resource that should be price-rationed so they are allocated to their most productive use (i.e. to companies that are willing to pay the most). It would also mean more of the gain from bringing over H1B workers would accrue to the public instead of private companies, which would increase public support for immigration.
The current system is in place only because all of the US companies that benefit from cheap labor provided by the likes of Infosys have lobbied for it.
H-1B applications must pass the prevailing wage test, i.e. applicants cannot earn less than the prevailing wage for their position at the chosen employment location.
Companies like Tata, Infosys, WiPro, etc. need to maintain a part of their workforce in the US for certain projects anyway, so they slave away these applicants with draconian contracts. It's not that they pay them significantly less than any other, but the fact that they can guarantee a 3 to 5 year headcount for their larger US based projects, with a larger talent pool to choose from, if needed.
A shortage at a certain wage level probably indicates that the prevailing wage is too low. So targeted visa programs designed to provide more workers at the prevailing wage can suppress wage growth, which, over time, really is no different from a reduction in wages.
This is why a lot of people, like me, favor high levels of general immigration but don't support targeted visas like the H1B. I'm especially opposed to visas that are controlled by the employer and restrict the personal and economic freedom and mobility of immigrant workers in the US. If employers are lobbying for visas that allow someone to work in the US only on the condition that they remain in a specific role at a specific company at a specific salary, that should raise all kinds of red flags. You're allowed to be a software developer in the valley, but you'll be deported if you try to open a small business or enter a different profession or even change employers without new "sponsorship"? I find it remarkable that so many people don't see the egregious problem here.
How could it not be cheaper- H1B applicants have to perform their jobs virtually under threat of deportation. How are they negotiating for regular raises or stock refreshers in that situation? How often are they changing jobs due to poor working conditions or personal growth if their sponsorship could be jeopardized?
Frankly, at the end of the day, this is better for Humanity as a whole.
People are coming to the US, learning about technologies, and bringing those back to other countries with plenty of people willing to use them. In the longer term, this will result in more, better technology, all over the world.
There will be more net good than if all such technology were concentrated in the US, though the US will have less domestic benefit than it would have otherwise.
> There is no path to a green card or citizenship for anyone who immigrated in the last ~15 years
I'm no expert, but I don't think this is quite right. For an applicant with a bachelor's degree, the cutoff date is February 2012 for India, and April 2018 for China:
There is a path though, you can marry someone who is from any other country but India (even if they are not going for a EB-2/EB-3, have a green card, or are a US citizen). You can cross charge your employment green card to your spouse, some of my Indian colleagues have done this, it’s super rare because of cultural expectations though.
Yeah sure, let's go ahead and facilitate the 2nd biggest decision of your life (country you work in) by compromising on the biggest decision (marriage) of your life.
While dating across cultural groups to find the one, is rewarding in its own right , being that materialistic with your choice in partner is probably going to make for shaky foundations of a relationship.
> by compromising on the biggest decision (marriage) of your life.
I don’t see how that’s a compromise though? The cultural expectations are just different for folks from India: no parent from France is expecting their kid who decided to move to another country to be with a French person, and 90% of immigrants from India end up marrying another immigrant from India, even if they more to the US in their early twenties.
Culturally, 'Western Europe + USA' are more similar to each other than Indian sub-cultures among themselves. In most cases you are interacting with other white people coming from christian cultures. Even the People-of-Color that white people do date tend to be deeply integrated into western culture to the point where they're more culturally white than Indian.
In terms of cultural exchange, most of the effort to integrate is being put in by the Indian. (replace Indian with any non-western cultural group). The extent to which the cultural exchange is unidirectional isn't even funny.
There isn't a lot of great data on this, but limited dating data tells us that it is actually white people (esp men) who have strong intra-race-dating preferences as compared to Asians or Latinos. [1] [2 Table 3]
> Culturally, 'Western Europe + USA' are more similar to each other than Indian sub-cultures among themselves
I'm French and my partner is American. This is really really really really not true, the cultural differences between French and American people are enormous.
> While this is significantly below the 53% that we would observe under random matching, it is still far above the 4% of interracial marriages observed in the Census data
> There is no path to a green card or citizenship for anyone who immigrated
One thing I find really strange as an American, is that while our immigration system could be improved, in both China and India there is absolutely no way for a US Citizen to get permanent residency.
Not "it's really hard" or "takes a long time", but short of maybe being a billionaire or world famous athlete, a non-Chinese/Indian simply cannot permanently immigrate to these countries. It doesn't matter if you marry someone who is a Chinese/Indian citizen, doesn't matter if you have kids with them, etc there is zero possibly you will be able to immigrate to these countries.
As an American from an immigrant family, I think the US is really losing here. We should be giving visas out liberally to any skilled professional who wants one. Immigration is the only thing that ever truly made the US stand out.
On the other hand, as a global citizen with multiple passports who hasn't lived in the US for some time, maybe this is a good thing for the rest of the world. Spreading innovation out a bit and allowing other countries to thrive. Growing up in an immigrant family, I always had a sense of diversity being America's strength. But the last decade or so the US seems to have lost sight of the value of diversity. Not completely, but in many ways, partially thanks to US hegemony and the export of the English language, Europe is currently the cultural melting pot I idealized the US as growing up.
I think the world would truly be a more peaceful and thriving place if every country were more culturally integrated.
What always boggled my mind is we allow students to come study in the University system, but then when they graduate send them away. I suspect a platform of "We will train foreigners to enrich their homelands" wouldn't get much popular support, but it's the de-facto rule we live under.
The mental model many people seem to have is "foreigners will pay us exorbitant amounts of tuition for a prestigious diploma, and education isn't actually valuable so we might as well send them back home".
And it's only mildly surprising people think this way. The median American does seem to go through an educational system that takes all their money and gives them a diploma without actually providing valuable expertise in anything. But the experience is exactly the opposite for the best immigrants, who only sometimes pay much tuition (PhDs in STEM in particular very rarely pay with anything other than their labor as teaching/research assistants), and gain enormously valuable expertise. It's completely asinine, but perhaps not so surprising.
Many US scholarship comes from private money. So having a scholarship doesn't automatically grant citizenship or people would abuse the system and limits would need to be placed on students studying.
I don't think there is any country in the world that gives citizenship based on a grant. These people just want a chance at finding a relevant job in the US using their newly earned skills.
This is a weird take considering most states offer tuition breaks for people that live in that state. If this is really how people felt about these schools you would think they would be boycotting their mere existence considering they cost a lot of state tax dollars to fund.
I mean, its a complicated and slow process. State funding of colleges has been on decline for ages -- every time a recession hits the university system gets another budget cut but its rare to see the cuts restored when the economy recovers.
Meanwhile the median voter is probably more excited about college sports than college degrees.
As a citizen of the US, I like having a vibrant tech economy here in the US and I love working with brilliant people, so I would like it if everyone educated in our world class universities could stay here if they wanted. Also as a citizen of the US who likes stability in the US, I like that the children of elites all over the world come to the US for university and many return to their native countries with a fondness for the US from their time in our universities.
As a citizen of the world, I think there's tremendous value in distributing knowledge and our best ideals all over the world.
Even more confusing is why we then have 100k immigrants that are randomly selected with unknown skills from all over the world to come here and take up things like driving taxis. All the while we have labor shortages for basic things like nannies and baby sitters.
If developed nations with top tier education systems attract the best talent from the developing world and retain them all, who is going to develop and grow the economy, workforce and consumer markets of the developing world?
what boggles my mind even more is US lets people from other visa categories so easily without even vetting but creates so many hurdles for students & tech-workers who definitely contribute more positively to US economy. Take marriage green card route for example. Green card marriage is a widely known term now. Similarly, refugee visa is exploited a lot. I know people who received refugee visa by faking their stories. In some cases they are not even from the country they are claiming to be. All those people who game those visas come and take one or the other form of government support whereas students and tech workers only contribute to the economy.
I am not sure if you are responding with actual information or just anecdata. There are hundreds of thousands of students who actually want to work in the US but are unable to (and are sent back) because of H1B Visa lotteries and archaic green card processes.
No, relatively speaking, it's not a lot. Yeah, it's a big number in a vacuum, but comparatively it's dwarfed by other countries we should want to compete with.
119,700 isn't a lot in the context of overall immigration and the number of immigrants who come here to study and for employment. The number also includes the immediate family of the recipient (spouse + children), which would be about 2/3 or 1/2 of the 119,700.
Alternate viewpoint, we have more than enough students graduating in Computer Science and other STEM fields, many of whom have a hard time finding a job because most companies don't want to invest in training anyone up anymore, and they're enabled by the H1B program. If we incentivized/forced companies to build people up from basic college graduate again, it would be even better than finding skilled immigrants.
H1B employees cost a lot more to employ than fresh grads. On top of having to pay above average wage, companies have to employ lawyers to handle a lot of paperwork.
> most companies don't want to invest in training anyone up anymore
The past four companies I've worked for had training programs for new employees and internship programs to funnel college students into jobs after graduation. Maybe bad experience on your part?
They earn above the tech average wage, or they earn above average wage in the country? If they work in tech, but earn below the average tech wage, then they’d actually be bringing the average wage down when you consider the opportunity cost.
You're basing that assertion on what data? If that's really the case, our schools need to do a better job of prioritizing entrants into STEM classes -- talk to a prospective CS student at Stanford or Berkeley and ask them how easy it is to get into the program, for example.
It’s tough because many of our societal problems are only exacerbated by population growth, especially in the areas where these types of workers tend to congregate. Highly skilled workers don’t go to the Midwest or the deep south. They go and drive up rental prices in New York and San Francisco, where the jobs are. Well the first order effects of having a more skilled in competitive work for us are good, the second order effects can be very very negative and we got to be careful about that
I work with a bunch of highly skilled immigrants. They live in Texas, Kentucky, Colorado, and a bunch of other places. Now that remote work is prevalent, people are moving to all sorts of places.
There's also a lot of great wine and delicious pizza in TX, KY, and CO, but I bet if I throw a dart in the dark 9 times out of 10 I'm going to land on a name from CA or NY.
as another American from an immigrant family. I think getting an H1-B should be easier, not tied to a company, and require companies to pay them more than a citizen. This prevents a lot of the abuse I see right now to people on H1-B's, staying with jobs that they hate, and prevents wage suppression in the industry for others.
I don't particularly care if work visas get harder. Maybe they should.
What should be done is serious scrutiny _before_ someone is admitted. Once they are, the system should get out of their way. A person is working for years at some company, paying their taxes, spotless track record (often not even traffic tickets as they can cause trouble) and yet, they cannot even sponsor for permanent residency themselves. They depend on some company, which has no interest of doing so until the time is close to running out.
H-1B is portable in theory, and many H-1B's to switch. However it is tedious and risky for many reasons. For example:
- There are many restrictions. H-1B is still coupled to a particular occupation (type of job). Any new job has to remain >50% similar. People on H-1B can also only go to companies that will sponsor their H-1B going forward (so self-employment and most smaller companies are out), and one would not want to go to a company that would not also sponsor the greencard. Transfers in the same company are possible, but even just changes to the job description (e.g. becoming a manager, or switching from devs to ops) or worksite usually require a new PWD (Prevailing Wage Determination) and LCA (Labor Condition Application).
- The processing of H-1B transfers has recently taken around 6 months for some. Theoretically you can switch before the government approves the transfer; practically if the transfer is rejected for whatever arbitrary reason or government error you want to be able to fallback to the existing H-1B. And so it is advisable to wait for the transfer to go through. How many potential new companies are fine with that? (What is the damage to previous companies from people quietly just coasting and waiting for the H-1B transfer to go through due to such delays?)
- Any change also increases the risk of rejections during the next renewal (and people from greencard backlogged countries have to renew every year, for decades at the current rate). How big the risk is depends a lot on federal politics (for example, the prior deference rule was withdrawn during the previous administration, and reinstated during this administration) and can change fast.
- Switching jobs while on H-1B during certain stages of the immigration/greencard process (PWD, PERM, I-140 plus 6 months for AC21 portability) resets that process, and restarting it incurs potentially years-long delays and large expenses (for the company, which is worse). PERM itself may have become harder recently due to changes in the legal landscape and one would not want to give up a successful PERM.
- The risk of layoffs is perceived as greater for new hires than for established engineers. A person on H-1B who is laid off has 60 days to find a new job, or the H-1B ends. So during an economic downturn giving up a solid position is a risk.
Almost every point here applies to all non-immigrant visas. H-1B is better than the others because it allows Indian born citizens to remain in the United States despite the Green Card backlog injustice.
As an American from a non-immigrant family, I think stamping visas is easier than fixing a broken education system, so that’s what corporate leaders would rather do to fill seats. We have over 330 million Americans in this country, many seeking good jobs and salaries like those found in tech, yet we struggle to produce enough qualified STEM grads and resort to importing other countries’ elites. The programming and computer science education in most US high schools is near zero. It’s a national embarrassment. And frankly, the more US companies are helmed by new arrivals who retain strong ties to the mother country, the less they feel a kinship to the majority of Americans and the less likely they are to invest in those Americans’ futures. I’ve seen this preference play out firsthand inside Google and other places.
I expect disagreement from many who’d flip viewpoints if the shoe changed feet.
(I'll preface this by noting that I'm Canadian and will never vote in an American election)
One of the reasons that immigration and green cards has always been such a hot-button political issue in the US is that first and second generation immigrants tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat. You end up with this awkward feedback loop where D's are objectively politically motivated to increase immigration, while for R's it's the opposite. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying, that's just how it was explained to me once.
It’s because legal immigrants are overwhelmingly well educated so they vote like the average well educated American does. It also doesn’t help that the current GOP is more or less openly racist so a vote for them goes against basic self preservation.
Right, but you should be able to see that the “why” doesn’t really make any difference here, the effect is still the same. D’s remain motivated to keep immigration high, R’s remain motivated to bring it down.
Saying "Republicans are just uneducated racists, so immigrants don't like them" may be convenient, but it's an oversimplification at best. It doesn't explain voter dynamics in Florida, for instance.
Because sponsoring an employment based GC takes considerably more time than filling for an H1B. We're talking at best less than a year for an H1B (filling in April and you receive it in October of the same year) vs 18 months minimum for an European (10+ years for an Indian).
I actually got my H1B at my 2nd try. I did not get pick at my 1st try and had to wait until next year but it went quite smoothly.
However for my GC, it took 4 years between the initial conversation with my employer and getting it in my hands. The actual process itself, from the moment the lawyers received all the documents, took 2 years.
I'm not an immigration lawyer but you don't need to have the GC in hands to start working for your employer. You usually get a work permit quickly after the petition is filed.
I used to work with someone whose visa was about to expire so the company just filed a GC to keep her.
That being said, I feel like these things change all the time. When people describe the current H1B process it always seems completely different from the one I went through.
The work permit (I-765) does not allow you to enter the US, only to work when already legally in the country (for example, via an H-1B). And neither does the re-entry permit / advance parole (I-131) let you enter, unless you obtain it while in the US.
And those documents can anyway only be applied if already in the country, and once your I-485 is current and I-140 is approved, which for Indians/Chinese/Filipinos means a >10 year wait, and for everyone else means a >1 year wait while PWD, PERM and I-140 process. Large companies can shorten the PWD/PERM wait a bit, but that does little for the backlogged countries and those not already inside the US.
There is no _realistic_ employment based path to a greencard that does not go through a non-immigrant visa.
Also, the work permit processing times have been extremely backlogged over the past year. It is getting better, but I have personally seen a greencard arrive after about a year recently, and the corresponding work permit arrive a week _later_ (useless, by then).
And if you look at large scale statistics available in immigrant communities, you can see approvals are all over the place, with no rhyme or reasons - some people get it in months, for some it takes years. There is no predictability.
> and for everyone else means a >1 year wait while PWD, PERM and I-140 process.
Filed I-485 in 2020. Still pending. It's currently way more than one year. Some 2022 filers are getting it in a matter of months, but older applications are taking forever.
> The work permit (I-765) does not allow you to enter the US, only to work when already legally in the country (for example, via an H-1B).
H1B allows one to work, by itself. If you get a I-765(aka EAD) and you use that, you immediately lose your H1B status. Which is fine as long as your application is pending. If your I-485 subsequently gets denied, you have to leave and you just lost your shot. Game over. You have to start again from scratch. Assuming you didn't incur in too much unauthorized stay, as you'll get hit with retroactive unauthorized stay.
Most H1B holders do not use their EAD because of that. Note that it's different from the EAD you get as a L2 (spouse of L1). That one doesn't mess with your status. Unless you get EAD pursuant to your green card application. That one messes with your status.
Same with advance parole. H and L visas don't need that to travel.
You can get your H1B status back if you file for an extension.
And even then there are always more caveats of course. For example, while as you say H-1B's generally don't rely on EAD/AP, H visas are 6 years and can be renewed indefinitely once I-140 is approved, whereas L visas are hard capped at 5-6 years. This means there is serious risk for someone on an L visa to max out their visa and end up being forced to rely on the Employment Authorization Document (EAD) and Advance Parole (AP). With all the problems that brings. This can easily happen if just a few things go wrong (e.g. during the PERM stage - hiring freezes, PERM audits, random covid fallout like legal uncertainty around how notice posting requirements interact with company wide work from home...). That is one reason why many L-1's like to play the H-1B lottery every year.
That's not actually true. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. The confusion is somewhat understandable though. The reason why is that the H-1B program allows a migrant who does not currently qualify for an immigrant visa to work in the USA while they try to get one rather than having to wait at home.
It's kind of like hanging out in a fancy restaurant's bar in hopes that they'll be able to get you a table.
If it was strictly a non-immigrant visa, then you cannot get a green card. Ever. You need some other type of visa that's either an immigrant visa(like marriage) or some other dual-intent visa.
That's one thing that many americans don't understand. "He's lived in the US for 50 years, why didn't he become a citizen?!" Because, for most people, they have no path.
I have observed that this misunderstanding is widespread, for what it’s worth. Dual intent merely means intending to immigrate isn’t a disqualification, but that still requires getting some sort of additional immigrant visa.
You're right that they are formally non-immigrant visa (allowing dual intent), but it is a mostly meaningless distinction as far as H-1B's and L-1's go and it is incorrect to say that they are not dual-intent visa (as dual-intent visa can very well be a descriptive name rather than a proper name. In much the same way that one might refer to a Macbook as a laptop). There are even a few government sources that call them that: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22dual-intent+visa%22+site%... .
It is a bit of a pain point because it is sometimes used in discussions by people who are against immigration to suggest that "those people" on H-1B's/L-1's should not immigrate, should not expect to immigrate, and should have known better because they "are on a non-immigrant visa" and should have simply chosen a different path. Nevermind that this _is_ more or less the only realistic way to do employment based immigration, and by far the most common one. One might consider it a bit of an anti-immigrant dog whistle. (I am not accusing you of this, just explaining why you may have gotten that reaction.)
It is, however, entirely incorrect to say that immigrating _requires_ an immigrant visa. There are two ways of becoming an immigrant:
1. From outside the US, by applying for an immigrant visa at a consulate, and then presenting the immigrant visa at a port of entry. The officer may then admit the alien in the LPR (lawful permanent resident) status.
2. From inside the US, by petitioning USCIS to adjust the status to that of an LPR. There is no immigrant visa in this case.
In general, a visa is used to legally enter the country, and status is used to legally be in the country. They are entirely separate, with different expiration dates, physically separate stamps/stickers and all (see https://www.google.com/search?q=visa+stamp+and+admission+sta...). For example, a person can present an H-1B visa (a sticker in the passport, plus a stack of paper) at a port of entry, then be admitted in H-1B status (and usually get a stamp over the sticker at that time). However, while using a visa is one way to gain a status, it is not the only way. And visa do not correspond 1:1 to statuses.
The two different ways to become an LPR are very different in terms of process, which agency to petition, processing time, availability, conditions while waiting, options if denied, cost etc. So those really cannot be mixed up.
And so, yes, one can immigrate with only a non-immigrant visa such as an H-1B. That is an officially supported function of the system. And for employment based immigration, that is the normal way to do it. Therefore the more descriptive name "dual-intent visa" is rather useful in the context of employment based immigration, even though the proper classification is "non-immigrant visa". Whereas even if it is formally a "non-immigrant visa", it can be useful to say that in practice it is not really a "non-immigrant visa" but a "dual-intent visa".
I don't think absolute numbers tell the story. Also, it is not a complaint, really.
I think the citizens in the US have a right to decide as a polity how they want to structure their immigration policies. However, in order to make a good decision, it is important to start with the full context. Here are some facts:
US has 46.6 million in foreign born population and a total population of 333 million. [1][2] That makes about 13.9% of the total population to be foreign born.
Australia has 29.1% of its population that is foreign born. [3]
A little over 20% of the population of Canada is foreign born and it is projected to grow. [4]
Mostly through family reunion which is completely irrelevant to the issue discussed here.
The US has the most nonsensical immigration laws for skilled workers of the developed world. Even Japan or Korea are pretty straightforward in comparison.
That is why there are other visa types. You are talking about a type of visa specifically intended as a mechanism to fill a specific seat at a specific company. For other forms of immigration, there are other types of visas.
Like what? I went over the USCIS page and Wikipedia and there does not seem to be very many options for skilled workers besides H and L, both of which are tied to employers.
American used to promote VISAS based on what a person brought to the country, but that was revised to instead promote keeping families intact. Put it to a vote, if people prefer putting a $$$ value on immigrants instead of keeping families together we can change the visa program. But there are still other means for visas, you just don't like the priorities America puts on them. That doesn't mean you can abuse the purpose of H1.
> The system is unbelievably cruel. People die (or see their loved ones die) before they get greencards.
People die before many things, that's not really relevant and it's just an emotional statement. Compare the length and rate to other countries for an actual assessment.
A lot countries I've looked into take 5-10 years for citizenship, the US is 14.5 months on average.
I'm talking about the amount of immigrants taken in vs other countries. Yes the US is large and can take in a lot of immigrants, and we do, by far.
The full process is the better part of a decade in the best case (e.g. expensive lawyers, STEM degree, immigrating from an easy country like Canada). If you're from a country like China or India where lots of other people are also applying for those slots - or if anything else is less than optimal - you're looking at between a decade+ and never.
Yes, US citizens can sponsor foreign nationals both within and outside the USA for green cards through marriage. The process itself (current status or no status) to green card easily takes 2 years. Once that person arrives, they can get citizenship (not residency) within 3 years.
The sentence structure though seems to imply marrying solely for status, which is fraud, and reflects very poorly on both applicant and petitioner. This kind of thing definitely happens which is why it takes 2 years for the honest applicants to get though, as the immigration system doesn't do a sufficient job filtering out fraud at the beginning stages of the petition and leaves too much of that work at the end of the petition stage (interview) which is where the biggest bottleneck is.
I'm not sure where you got the 14.5 months from. This is roughly how much time it took for my citizenship application to get processed, but it does not include the 5 year period of being a permanent resident (and applying for it also took ~1.5 years). Total time from setting my foot in the US on H-1B to getting citizenship was roughly 8.5 years.
> Most countries I've looked into take up to 10 years.
The set of countries you want to compare with are the countries that claim they want to welcome immigrants. You don't want to compare with countries that you like but are hostile.
America claims to be immigrant friendly but compared to other immigrant friendly nations, the process is brutal and eats away entire lives.
> A lot countries I've looked into take 5-10 years for citizenship, the US is 14.5 months on average.
This is misinformation as citizenship petition N-400 is merely the last step. This does not count the time for green card before this. Getting a green card could take 3-10 years. Then, they'd need to remain a permanent resident for 5 years before they can even apply for citizenship.
Current green card wait times are approximately 10 years[1] right now. Given the length of the green card wait time you usually need some other visa (such as H1B) that will allow you to still live in the USA before you can actually apply for green card.
Currently the H1B lottery approves less than half of the people who apply.
So if you are trying to immigrate from India you are looking at:
H1B (1-4 years depending lottery luck)
Green Card (10+ years)
Time to become US citizen (1-2 years from what you posted)
So as a highly skilled advanced degree holder from India (the case of this Tweet) the overall time is 12-16 years and that is still no guarantee due to H1B being a lottery.
Here's a better, more holistic overview, in case you want to see what starting "from nil" actually entails (hint: you don't just step off a plane and tell Uncle Sam that you want to be a citizen):
> The time it takes to become a permanent resident varies dramatically, affected by many factors such as USCIS processing, visa availability, labor certification/background check delays, the applicant's qualifications, nationality, residence, profession, luck, and so on. Most people are probably looking at 5 - 15 years. Some also spent several years in a nonimmigrant status prior to starting the immigration process. After green card, add roughly 5 - 7 years towards citizenship
In addition to the time, as others said there's a high probability the path will fail for most. The process starts with winning a visa that allows you to immigrate (tourist/business/student visas don't count). I say "win" because you need to find a company willing to pay and apply for that on your behalf, go through a lottery based on degree to see if you even get the opportunity to apply, and then hope the application isn't rejected on the grounds of the job being something a U.S. citizen can do. if you studied in the U.S., you get 1-2 more years to work under your student visa on what's called "Optional Practical Training" to convince your employer you're worth the hassle of sponsoring an immigration visa. Once you have that visa (e.g., an H-1B visa), you have 3 years to try rise to a senior position and convince your employer that you are valuable enough to splurge on a green card application. If that fails, you can apply for a 3 year extension and try again. If that also fails, you must leave the country for at least a year, and start over. If you succeed, you wait some number of years depending on your birth country and quotas imposed on each before you get the chance to start applying for a green card and get this process rolling. Hence 10-22 years, for those lucky few who didn't get rejected at any of the aforementioned points.
> How Long Does It Take to Get U.S. Citizenship After Applying?
That's what the link is talking about.
AFTER you qualify, that's the time it takes for just the paperwork to go through. The easiest path to qualify is marriage, which takes about 3 years - 90 days. That also has a similar processing time for the paperwork.
Please, go learn a bit more about the system. You don't know anything about the subject.
The system is different for everyone. It depends on visa types, country of origin and a bunch of other factors.
Also, the 14.5 months on average is just the time it takes for USCIS to process the N400 application for naturalization. The actual time it takes for the naturalization is 18-24 months. And the biggest part that comes before you apply for naturalization for most immigrants is to obtain a Greencard, which takes the longest time, in some cases more than a few decades.
> A lot countries I've looked into take 5-10 years for citizenship, the US is 14.5 months on average.
Not even close. Heck, _permanent residency_ applications take longer than that. If your PERM gets audited, that step alone can eat more than one year. Even without that, 14.5 years for _residency_ would be shockingly fast. Some countries (like India) have a 100 year backlog, give or take a few decades.
After you get permanent residency, add 5 more years. 3 years if married to a USC.
There's NO WAY that any form of citizenship takes 14.5 months.
> Are you referring to the 7% cap on the number of people that can get a green card from any one country in a calendar year?
No. I am talking about the constant asking for paperwork, processing times that vary from 2 months to over 2 years and preventing people from traveling to their home countries, lest they get locked out.
> What is the processing time for European countries?
IRRELEVANT
There's no reason why you should be prevented from traveling just because you applied for some document.
Next you'll argue that noone is being prevented from traveling, technically. Don't bother.
There's also no reason to require the _employer_ to handle all immigration matters. The initial application? Sure. But then allow the employer to file for his permanent residency. Let them file for visa extensions. Let them transfer employers without risk. Maybe get another source of income. _Let the spouses work!_ There's no reason to limit a household to a single income. And so on. That's how its done in many countries in Europe.
You may say "you should go to those countries then". Many have. But you don't know the full extent of the issue until you are in the system. At which time you have relocated your family, upended your life, and staked your career in the system.
Slow denials is a feature not a bug of immigration systems. Fast denials with systems that allow retries just quickly get backlogs of people applying again after finding a quick fix to the rejection reason, which makes it harder to give proper time to new applicants who may be more eligible.
There's nothing that says quick retries are allowed, or that subsequent tries should even be adjudicated quickly. Take H1Bs. If you get selected and subsequently denied, you can only apply next year.
Some types of visas require a cooldown period outside the country after you have used them. And so on. This is all solvable.
Snapdeal revenue (not profit, just top-line revenue) in 2021 (after 11 years in business): $64 million USD
Is that Amazon-like? Amazon was founded in 1994 and AWS was created in 2006, 12 years later. Did Snapdeal launch their own Indian AWS competitor in 2022? How's their revenue growth holding up compared to Amazon?
For comparison, my own 4 person e-commerce startup had ~$6.4 million in revenue in 2021 with gross margins around 30%. Of course, we've only been in business since 2018, not 2010 like Snapdeal. If we take Softbank money (2014, Snapdeal), will we also be an Amazon-like "unicorn" in seven years with mediocre revenue?
It’s not a public company so there’s no reason to care about this. You cannot invest in it. You cannot benefit from it. You can merely use it, but as you said, it’s just a shittier version of Amazon, so why bother?
Three worst addictions: Heroine, Carbohydrates and a monthly salary - Nassim Taleb
It's more common for people who are in-between jobs to take things that would be otherwise compromise their monthly salary income. It's less common for someone to quit a high paying job and take on a risky endeavour.
Relatedly, the Tarzan strategy is another way to mitigate this risk (side projects or finding your next gig before just quitting the current), etc. Called Tarzan because you hang on to the next rope before letting go of the current one.
> Three worst addictions: Heroine, Carbohydrates and a monthly salary - Nassim Taleb
Nassim Taleb is a bit of a wack.
This sentence doesn't make sense. I really hope it was taken out of context, because otherwise, there's absolutely no value to it other than glorifying risk for the sake of it. May as well be talking about gambling money away.
yes, describing the serfdom as "self-employment" reminds how some in US describe the slaves brought here back then as "immigrants" or "labor migrants".
Being a subsistence farmer was incredibly risky. One bad year and your whole family starves to death. People only did that because there was no alternative. As soon as the industrial revolution came, people left their "self employment" en masse to work at a company.
Not even "work at a company". Most of the dairy farmers here where I'm from are part of a collective called Arla where the independent dairy farmers collaborate, effectively building their own safety net with an organization that could support them if they had a bad year.
Companies are not required, but social safety nets are hugely important for modern systems of production.
At least in the case of England, it wasn't initially voluntary. The enclosure acts removed their ability to farm and feed themselves, removing the last benefit they received from feudalism. It was from lack of means to farm anymore they moved to the city.
That's because it wasn't risky to get a job as a helper to a working professional, learn their trade while doing the worst/easiest part of the work, transition to doing skilled work while having your helpers do the crapwork and the professional did inspection and finishing, then either taking over the shop from the professional, partnering with the professional, or opening your own shop with your already established customers.
Self employed in the sense of being part of the gig economy (serfdom), working all day for a modest living under Uber (local ruler of the day). The risk was dying when the next war broke out or it stopped raining for a year.
I take Heroin here to really mean all narcotics including alcohol. I think crystal meth would be worse than heroin anyway, but have no direct or indirect experience.
Low carb diet is and giving up alcohol completely: I recommend people try.
This is definitely an inspiring story but isn't it an isolated data point?
On average, the US has a lot of things going for it for a young software professional if he or she can navigate the immigration maze and is reasonably lucky. Might not be for everyone but for the average person, getting a cushy job in a large company might be better for stability and long term satisfaction that risking it on an attempt to create a unicorn (which is rarely successful).
Its an extremely isolated data point. He was born rich. Had the money and privilege to do coaching to go to an elite Indian engineering college. Went to US from there. When he came back his buddies from college where VCs. They funded him. His startup collapsed terribly even after so much of luck, privilege and funding. So now he gives outdated gyaan(wisdom) in Twitter.
This is true everywhere tbh. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos all came from families that were upper-middle class or rich.
It's not a bad thing imo since families should strive to improve their situation with every generation, but it's important to highlight that rags-to-riches stories are extremely rare.
There are probably many who also got their visa rejected and were stuck with huge loans for their studies and an Indian salary, or had to move to EU/CANZUK countries as a second option.
True about the people you mentioned but there were several others in that same group (upper middle class) who wasted their opportunities and didn't get anywhere. These people you mentioned are an exception and there are lessons to take away from that.
Doesn't that make his point stronger? If you are well connected, rich, and went to an elite college, it would make even more sense for the US to give you the visa.
That's the thing with all the interesting stories though. I'm in no way criticizing you, just thought about this for a while. If we let ourselves guided by interesting(and thus rare) stories, we are obviously setting ourselves for failure, because that's not playing the game that needs to be played.
They also make choices and compromises people in US don't. Every interaction in India is loaded with suspicion. Dishonesty is the baseline. Disrespect is the norm. Xenophobia is common. Insecurity is the guiding North Star. Entitlement is prevalent. Hard work is looked down. Rules are for fools and loyalty (however earned/enforced) is everything. I love my country, but those are the facts.
Arguably, Asian industry (India specifically), has much more room to grow - the west is is where things happened, Asia is where things are happening.
But East and South Asians immigration will continue. Being "westernized" (usually western education and green card) is valuable as a source of social prestige - having a US masters degree makes you attractive in the marriage market and in social circles.[1]
This is amazing! I think a lot of immigrants should really use their talents back home, building their own country. It will be good for everyone, for the world as well.
This is obviously the answer. Rank the H1B applicants by salary and let the most valuable in first. This will force companies to consider how much a worker is actually worth.
A variety of other non-software jobs also rely on H-1Bs: See, for instance, lab technicians. A change to highest salaries, while probably way better for the software industry, and applicants in general, would wipe out other sectors.
The system definitely needs fixing, but simple solutions often have all kinds of negative side effects.
The simple solution is to pay them more if they are so vital. Their value is directly related to their pay.
The issue often isn't that talent can't be found... it's that talent can't be found at the price the corporation wants to pay. We need to encourage corporations to pay more which should correspond to the most essential positions needed, not just find the cheapest worker.
If your startup is already H-1B dependent, then I don't feel super bad. Raise more and find local talent at the market rate or go out of business--but startups aren't entitled to a pool of cheap, foreign labor via H-1Bs.
Pay them more if they are so vital then. Or would the business really rather just go out of business instead of raising wages? And if the business can't operate without raising wages, maybe it's not a sustainable business anyways.
Yes, absolutely. Scientists are paid a pittance, so they're clearly not valuable to American society, and they should be kept out. America doesn't value science much anyway; just look at how many Americans don't believe in vaccines.
Or is it rather that Big Tech and unchecked venture capitalism is inflating wages to unsustainable levels at rate that other industries cannot keep up with? 100 -1000x growth expectations as in in SV is simply not sustainable in the long run, it's kind of obscene. May be a tough pill to swallow though on this forum.
Most of the top talented engineers i met at meetups are commited to build companies in India. Defence, Infra, Fintech, Medical, Space and Drug sectors are the ones most popular. we are going see future unicorns from these sectors.
> What is the point here? Let them all in in case one of them makes a unicorn?
The point is that if a talented engineer has to go back home because becoming a permanent resident takes over ten years, and the H-1B system is a literal gamble, then the US immigration policy has failed.
> This is rock people thinking on the level of "every aborted baby could have become the next Mozart".
The difference being that we know that visa holders are already talented, and maybe they wouldn't build the next unicorn, but their work provides a net benefit to the economy.
If anything, it would be overall better for the economy to kick out all the underperformers, regardless of their nationality, and let H-1B holders in.
Maybe shut down the southern border and instead admit more H1Bs? And use some judgment instead of a lottery. Someone who's been a manager at Microsoft is obviously a better bet than a TCS bodyshopper.
Unless you come up with a new innovation like self-installing drywalls and roofs, self-picking fruits, or self-slaughtering chickens, shutting down the southern border seems like a really counterproductive idea.
Perhaps in a world where people did not need to live under a roof, and did not need to consume fruit or chickens, that idea would be great.
Most of the money people in unskilled occupations make goes into purchasing essential stuff like food, which pays sales tax and provides income for corporations.
Does it mean it costed the US of potential opportunities? I don't think it made any difference in the US. But it surely helped in his home country.
While we are at it, what do you think of current visa issue in the USA? For a long time, I thought it was difficult only to people of Asian countries to migrate to US, but turns out it is equally difficult for any other nations.
In the long term, does it make a difference in US if it doesn't bring talent across the world? Of course, there are a lot of talent and there is always someone willing to move to US. So it shouldn't be an issue, should it?
> In the long term, does it make a difference in US if it doesn't bring talent across the world?
Of course, it does! The only reason the standard of living in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world is because the US makes stuff the rest of the world covets.
America is the leading economy in the world today not because it has the most number of people, but because it has the best and the brightest, gathered from around the world. We have the smartest people not because the smartest people of the world were all born here, but because smart people born elsewhere have been immigrating to the United States. Stopping this is not the path to creating jobs.
US tech exports in 2018 was $338 billion. Tech is our biggest export by far. Think of the US tech industry as a siphon that sucks in wealth from foreign countries. Would you want to make that siphon bigger or smaller? If you want to make that siphon bigger — and more competitive — how would you do it? By limiting the people that can work in tech to whoever you can find locally, or by bringing in the smartest people from around the world?
Keep in mind that the money this siphon brings in is not only benefiting tech workers and tech shareholders. When the money is spent it turns the wheels of our economy, which leads to prosperity for all Americans, not just the few that work in tech.
Think of the tech industry as a way to suck money from foreign countries and pump it into the economy of our country. The beneficiaries include all Americans, including those who work in restaurants, retail, healthcare, insurance, education, housing, transportation, entertainment and so on.
Limiting tech industry to whoever companies can find locally will hurt its global competitiveness. Such a move will not just hurt the few would-be tech immigrants that are prevented from immigrating, but American prosperity in general.
>US isn't by no means bad when it comes to standard of living, but it definitely isn't "higher than anywhere else in the world".
It depends on how you measure "standard of living", as it's actually pretty subjective.
In short, if you're a billionaire, you'll probably get the highest standard of living in America, living in a massive private compound somewhere. You'll have access to whatever food you want, the best medical care, etc. And if you're not a billionaire, you don't matter in America; only the opinions of billionaires matter there.
I think there are several countries, across North and Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, perhaps Singapore and Hong Kong, that could compete with the US for "standard of living". These countries don't have similar immigration policies or histories compared to the US.
If you think of a person who builds a unicorn as a national level resource, which makes sense because they create jobs, capabilities, and wealth, then you seem to be saying that it is good for the US to drain the national resources of other, poorer countries. Why isn't a good thing for Indian entrepreneurs to create Indian unicorns in India?
I'm an engineer that moved to Canada. Let me tell you, I am here because they made it easy (or at least do-able) to come, and the people made it extremely pleasant to stay.
In America, you also get the mostly immigrant-friendly culture, but it's orders of magnitude harder and more involved to get there. So it's not even on my radar.
Judging by the high quantity and quality of Canadian engineers I've worked with in America, I think Canada welcomes foreign engineers because all their domestic engineers already left for America.
Further, most of those foreign staff at tech companies in Canada (or, more likely, US tech companies' Canadian offices) are there because they are waiting for US visas, or can't get US visas.
Canada's immigration system favors engineers and skilled professionals. As the comment I was replying to put it this is a way for rich countries, like Canada, to drain the resources of poorer countries. This process benefits you, because you prefer to live in Canada compared to your home country, and it benefits Canada, because they get more professionals, but it hurts your home country who loses professionals.
Arguing I should stay there because I was born there is not even just nativism, it implies countries own their citizens as property. This idea would set the whole world back.
If they wanted me to stay, they could have tried harder to create a nice environment for smart people there.
This is simply an improved version of colonization - rich countries extracting resources from the poor. Only now, the rich countries don't have to bother with the maintenance of the poor countries - they just drain the valuable citizens and leave the rest.
As to what you, or Canada, owe your home country - this is a nonsense question. Either there are moral obligations between people or there aren't. If there are, then the rich taking from the poor (Canada importing professionals) or the relatively well off abandoning their poor countrymen (professionals departing their homeland for better lives in rich countries) are likely failing those moral obligations. If there are no moral obligations you owe nothing but neither is anyone else obliged to not point out the resource extraction.
Where are the lines of obligation drawn? Do I owe allegiance to my home country, which is a political entity with arbitrary borders? If so, why? Or do I owe my efforts and talents to the poorest people? Again, why? Or to all humanity? To my family, to like-minded individuals?
If you think it’s wrong for me to have emigrated for a better life, well, off you go then, you go save the people of Africa.
Australia takes in twice as many immigrants per year, compared to the US, as a percentage of their population. Canada almost 4 times as many. Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong too take in more immigrants than the US.
>Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong too take in more immigrants than the US.
Is this still true for Hong Kong after the recent Chinese crackdown? The stuff I've read says HK lost a significant number of people who fled after that.
Canada and Australia both use a points based immigration system. Both countries are isolated from land borders that can be easily crossed. Contrast this with the non-points based immigration system in the US and tens of millions of immigrants from South and Central America. As I wrote - different immigration systems.
Shouldn't the government do more to promote equality? The current approach makes possible to arbitrage at scale when the government can
* bring in a large number of already educated (for free or _much_ cheaper) foreigners
* often from an upper middle class background in their home countries
* progressively lower the bar on the secondary education for Americans to jeopardize their chances of competing with foreigners for STEM majors and eventually jobs in high-tech. Which hits the disappearing [lower] middle class the hardest.
* keep college education significantly more expensive than it is for the very same foreigners
americans can do the same - move to Europe for college and get higher education for a fraction of cost/almost free.
then come back debt free with great education.
I dont understand why Americans are not taking advantage of these arbitrage opportunities. You don't need government to do anything for you, just take your destiny in your own hands
* part of the problem is that education is not funded much federally but mostly by cash strapped states and localities, and there are many reasons why politicians and parents may not want local control or funding to be loosened.
* part of the problem is that there are huge segments of politicians who are not interested in or do not want equality, and to that end even actively try to destroy education
> While we are at it, what do you think of current visa issue in the USA? For a long time, I thought it was difficult only to people of Asian countries to migrate to US, but turns out it is equally difficult for any other nations.
I suffered the consequences of the ongoing visa mayhem myself, losing my job in early 2022. Luckily, I received my green card soon afterwards.
The US immigration policies, especially for work and talent related visas, are incredibly disconnected from reality. There is still no mechanism in place to curb the abuse by IT consultancy companies, aka "visa mills". Instead, we have brilliant people rejected because of their nationality, not their achievements. Even worse, people with 5, 10, 15 years in the country, high earners and taxpayers, may see themselves kicked out because bureaucracy is just slow.
> Of course, there are a lot of talent and there is always someone willing to move to US. So it shouldn't be an issue, should it?
It is. At some point, money won't justify the looming feeling of insecurity, and people will be less willing to leave their home countries and come to the US.
Even now, immigrating to the US is prohibitively expensive. The talent pool is being reduced to those who can either afford it, or are sponsored by their companies, and this doesn't guarantee that the best and brightest are the ones arriving anyway.
Likely. The absorption of young, motivated people by the US is a major loss for their origin nations. Why this never seems to be a concern for anyone involved is the proverbial gorilla in the room.
> Why this never seems to be a concern for anyone involved is the proverbial gorilla in the room.
Young, motivated, smart, driven, creative, innovative, persistent…hmm, all the right ingredients to successfully challenge the existing status quo in many nations.
If you were part of the elite in those nations, what’s not to love about the current setup where the US not only absorbs the best and brightest who have a shot at upending your sinecure but even if those best of the best return to your nation, they are usually turned towards industrial rather than sociopolitical leadership pursuits that would bring “disruptive innovation” to your sphere?
> Does it mean it costed the US of potential opportunities? I don't think it made any difference in the US. But it surely helped in his home country.
Our immigration service hands out N visas a year. You reject one, someone else will pick up that slot. On an average it should not make a difference either for US or the other country unless they are so small their number of visas doubled or something because of this one reject.
> In the long term, does it make a difference in US if it doesn't bring talent across the world?
Yes it does make a difference, but fixing that has other impacts. In the 90s when the H1 visa regime started (or got big), if someone in Ceylon wanted to write software for an American company, they probably could not do it, at least in the early 90s. They did not have too many other options so US not acquiring an available talent did not impact them. Nowadays such un-acquired talent can do anything - set up a company, work for Russia (or choose any other name who you would rather not have acquire talent, maybe an oil company). However, the fix is not so simple. To acquire all the talent pool would require upping our immigration intake many fold, and that is not going to happen for various reasons (politics, cost, limits to how much immigration can you absorb).
That number is pretty clearly a number pulled out of someone's ass, rather than anything 'scientific'. It's a nice round number that sounded good to someone, but is pretty completely disconnected from reality.
agree, since India is like 5-10 years behind USA in the tech space, most unicorns in India are just companies that already exist in some form in USA. In India, the execution of a business is the hard part by far, and not the novelty of the idea.
> ...since India is like 5-10 years behind USA in the tech space
The fact that the tech scene in the West (which is the place where most things happen) is white-male dominated and likely outranks Indians by a factor of 10x (?), which means, as a group, they're likely to accomplish 10x in a lot of metrics.
Also, India is roughly 5x / 10x behind the US in tech salaries too (amidst high inflation and weakening currency), resulting in the infamous brain drain to the West (where they then make things happen, if they catch a break).
This idiom is referring to the maturity of their tech industry at a high level, not their tooling (though that could be a minor part of it).
As an example, a country with paper-only tax filing might be said to be a decade behind a country with easy online e-file. It’s referring to the difference in technical capabilities, capacity, and/or innovation.
I guess they're trying to say that things like Uber, Amazon, Door Dash, AirBNB, Venmo etc. have a strong foothold in USA, but in India there's a lot of "home grown" alternatives that have beaten the US big tech to adapt to the Indian market. eg. Ola, Flipkart, Paytm, etc.
I feel that a reason for this is the cheap human labor available in India, which naturally allows manual-powered processes to scale much more easily in India compared to tech solutions. Also, given the sheer size of the market, even building CRUD apps backed by manual labor for more and more niche use-cases can still garner a lot of users (but revenue per user is still quite low). And note that there is nearly no upside to actually replace the manual component or build state of the art tech solutions because labor costs are relatively small and non-prohibitive
dude no. most foreign apps won't work in india bcz we don't like to pay for apps.
"people come to india for dau, not arpu" ~ kunal shah on the knowledge project [0]
tiktok executed perfectly bcz they were optimizing for dau but even flipkart is doing better than amazon here. many apps just won't work bcz they don't understand. see how netflix lost by asking to pay?
people don't understand india as much as they think they do so i'd suggest you to watch the video below as it covers actual india from an actual indian who understands it.
Tbh, this sounds like a good thing to me. Snapdeal is an amazon competitor that likely would not have made it in America. Now Snapdeal gets to actually contribute to the economic growth of India while they are going through their own "industrial revolution" of sorts.
Brain drain is devastating for the developing world. Abolishing H1B completely would be a net positive for the world in my opinion.
Immigrants take note of what your fellow software engineers are saying here. If you join a union and make it strong, that's what it will look like. Then they will kick you out once you help it be strong.
> The more this happens the more people will just stay and work in other countries because US and Europe don't have anything to offer.
The point here is that the US is missing on talent, not that other countries would benefit from it. It's a failure of the US immigration policy to the economy.
it's a bit sad to lose talent like this. Wonder how we can attract talents like this to Australia? I guess the market isn't big enough but selling software is easily an international business so in Aus we have some powerhouse software companiest too like Atlassian and Canva
So brain drain is bad (when it happens to Russia) but good (when the US does it to India)? India is a desperately poor country that needs Indian entrepreneurs. It's ridiculous to frame this as a loss to the US. It is a loss to the world if the desperately poor in India are never lifted out of poverty by their own best and brightest. The US should encourage them to stay in India.
If US dealed with immigration in the 1930s-1940s like it's done today, the Manhattan project probably would never had happened and Hitler would get the A-bomb first. Is omnious when a nation that owes so much to migrants becomes hostile to them.
Curious if you have example of racist US visa/immigration policy?
There's a lot deserved criticism of current system, but can't think of anything specifically racist.
Green card quotas are based entirely on your country of birth.
For example, a UK citizen can obtain a green card far, far faster than an Indian citizen. If a UK citizen and Indian citizen on an H1B visa start the Green Card process at the same time, the UK citizen will obtain permanent residency typically in 9-18 months. For the Indian applicant, who applied on same day with same visa and process, it will likely be over 10 years before they have security of permanent residence.
Where you were born is built into the foundations of how the USA allocates Green Cards to many visa holders, regardless of who you are, how much you contribute to the USA or earn etc etc.
The UK is an interesting example given that it’s, effectively, the only country in Europe that cannot take part in the annual GC lottery.
And even then, Northern Ireland is exempt from that.
This has got something to do with the amount of British people who are already in the US, and I expect in the case of your example, that might also have something to do with the number of Indian H1B holders.
Exactly, H1B visas should be entirely blind to country of origin since to do otherwise would amount to de facto racism due to the racial demographics of many countries.
I guess happy ending for every one. US got enough H1Bs that's why rejected excess applications. Indian govt get to crow about thriving startup ecosystem. And Indians got some cheap deals on fashion and other household goods. As a result of all this, this guy got to be billionaire or some such.
Can anyone point me to how much the guy had actually earned? I feel that if he’d stayed in the US and earned Microsoft stock options he’d be much better off financially
The latest news I can find shows the company he founded was planning to IPO at a valuation of $2.5billion. If one were to assume the founder owns 10% of the company (reasonable at IPO based on what I know), he would have made about $250 million in equity. [https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/snapdeal...]
No but if we want to quantify whether a decision was a net win or not, a valid approach is to express it in monetary terms. There are other approaches, some more objective some less, but money is simple.
E.g. if I worked at MS and over 10 years built a capital of $1mln, vs having worked in India and built a capital of $300k, there may be other considerations, but in purely monetary terms the MS approach would’ve been much better. Further compound interest will make the $1mln wealth run away much faster than $300k.
I wouldnt want this unprofessional person working for me. Look at how he lazily half-censored the names of his co-workers at Microsoft that sent/cc the email, in such a way that you can easily read it.
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In the 2020s, the consensus is quite mixed. A lot of people I personally worked with, who successfully got their visas and green cards, have given it all up and gone straight back to India because that's where the action is. It was quite baffling to me because it takes a lot of work to get these documents. But after a few trips to India, I must say it makes a lot of sense. The startup funding situation, tech jobs hiring scenario, cost of living, telecom, healthcare, no prevalence of gun culture...every aspect is much better in India currently than the US. If you have high 6 low 7 figure USD saved up, and not too deeply tied to the US, you should consider moving back if you want to tap into a potential windfall. That said, if you only have 5 figure USD, coming to the US is the better option if you can swing it. If you're already here on a visa, stay frugal & grow that nest egg. Going back with a 5 figure sum is quite risky unless you have some solid contacts in the startup space or are ok with the Indian job scene. Interviews over there are insanely competitive. 500+ LC. Kids just stay at home grinding LC all day. There are dedicated youtube channels in Hindi & other regional lang telling you how to dynamic program, backtrack, div & conquer, two pointer....its a whole different scene.