7 ms·

I'm really glad US has such tight immigration norms. As someone from India, it is great the see that those innovators who couldn't get visas, are innovating out

I'm really glad US has such tight immigration norms. As someone from India, it is great the see that those innovators who couldn't get visas, are innovating outside US and living a much better life. why move be an alien in US, when you can live in home country and innovate? I think the author (also an Indian turned American) has been making this point for quite a few years. Not all, but some of America's loss is China and India's gain. India and China are so vastly different markets, that most of the products made for US really dont fit outside US. And innovating in China / India truly help these countries!

dhab 10y ago
Can you provide some examples of product-market mismatch outside US - for types of things cities akin to Silicon Valley come up with?
- jeyoor 10y ago
  It seems that markets such as India and China[1] are more comfortable with apps packed with numerous features (i.e. WeChat or LINE), whereas US apps seem to usually be more focused on minimalism [2]. Snapchat is a notable US counter-example. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/technology/china-mobile-tech-innovation-silicon-valley.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/technology/china-mobile-te... [2] https://blog.benroux.me/your-app-has-one-feature/ https://blog.benroux.me/your-app-has-one-feature/
  - gohrt 10y ago
    That's not really a feature that people are "comfortable with", that's because Chinese Internet has been captured by monopolists, like the AOL of USA in the 1990s.
    - cerebellum42 10y ago
      I doubt that's all there is to it, there really are some cultural differences that show when you take western services and put them on the chinese market. Amazon for example found that their site simply looked too "clean", had too much whitespace, for the chinese market. All that empty space was not taken as a clean look by users, but as a sign that there weren't a lot of products available. If I go to amazon.com now, there are literally 5 products on the landing page. On amazon.cn, more like 30-50. (I am recounting this story as it was told by an Amazon employee who came to my Uni a while back)
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - rabboRubble 10y ago
    Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong all have fantastic mobile infrastructure, unlike anything offered in the US. Innovators there don't have to code with data caps in mind. Minimalism with associated lighter data requirements is a US market peculiarity.
- rogerbinns 10y ago
  Credit cards are far less common, and especially far less used for ecommerce. Figuring out how to do payment on delivery is what helped Flipkart in India (and doomed a competitor who couldn't). Example article http://indianonlineseller.com/2016/01/cash-on-delivery-cod-slowing-down-indian-ecommerce/ http://indianonlineseller.com/2016/01/cash-on-delivery-cod-s...
- calvinbhai 10y ago
  WeChat and related services Line and related services Multi-sim phones Emojis language/script support for local languages ... and many more basically thinking like a local lets you disrupt many age old creaky systems.
kamaal 10y ago
Also, Tighter immigration is just one part of the story. India itself has grown up and fixed a lot of its issues. Apart from the current generation, even the generation that saw the first wave of benefits of 1990's reforms has already reaped far more benefits than their peers who moved to US around the same time. Most are disproportionately rich, have had better careers and family/social circles in India. My guess is as more things get fixed in India(which they will), and more situation improves here, it will be harder by the day to think of restarting your life elsewhere while your peers do better than you back home. At the end nobody wants to end up being worse off than their peers despite doing a lot more of that extra work as immigrant in a foreign land. Now we are in the second generation of this trend. Among my friends who moved to the US for MS and never returned. Most of us in India have done better on nearly every count. Essentially today immigration to a foreign country in India has been reduced to a social status issue. The actual financial reasons have been drying out for a while and very few remain today.
- realz 10y ago
  I can only speak about myself, I come from a lower middle class family in India and probably was the poorest in my school. Now, I am at senior position in large well established tech company and definitely doing better than any of my class mates back in India. My family still lives in India and I am amazed how tough their life is when dealing with every day things. My life is so much better than my sister's who lives in Pune and also works in a similar position for a tech company. She would move to US in a heartbeat but has some personal issues. This is how bad conditions in India are, my mother, who lost her husband when she was 34, worked all her life and raised 2 kids on her own. After several decades of employment, she needed to withdraw some money out of her PF account. She had to bribe at least 4 guys and pay a total of 20,000INR to be able to withdraw money from her account, her own hard earned money. Life in India is pretty bad, I do believe us Indians have a "chalta hai" attitude and a lot of problems are just shoved under the rug or considered "yahan aise hi kaam hota hai" (this is how things are done here) category. I would want India to be the same as US where I have lived now for more than 15 years and Bollywood movies keep promising me that India today is so much like any other developed country, but my 15 visits in the last 15 years break every one of those promises. Back to the original point, no financially a person earning at the same position in India vs US is not any better off by a huge margin. Now if your point was is it worth it moving from Germany or Australia to US, then the answer is completely different answer. India is not there yet, a lot of work needs to be done, a lot of change needs to happen. If people in India start believing that they have arrived then they will be doing themselves a hige disservice.
EugeneOZ 10y ago
> why move be an alien in US, when you can live in home country and innovate? for example, because president of your (my) country is a dictator.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  so you want to move to police state to be under constant surveillance (as a foreigner it means forever, including your relatives), you want to support corrupt war machinery with your taxes that literally feeds of death of hundreds of thousands of innocent all over the world? in the country with highest nr of prisoners per capita, where one mistake (or not even) will ruin your life forever? that ain't american dream, that is american reality. you can try to do better than that
  - EugeneOZ 10y ago
    Huh, what you know about bad government. I'm trying to leave country where 99.99% of all Judge verdicts are "guilty" (it's official statistics - you have 1/1000 chance to remain free if you are in court). I'm trying to leave police state where all phone calls and sms messages are _officially_ tapped and cellular operators have to store records for 3 years. Where government officially wants to decrypt all of your ssl traffic (it's just impossible technically, but they are too stupid to realize it), and all non-encrypted traffic is already being monitored. In Russia, if policeman is going to your direction on the street - you are nervous. If he is knocking to your door - you know there's a big chance of big problems. I can say much more, about feeding wars also, it's just offtopic. But trust me, US reality right now is something we can't even dream about. And I know about US not from movies, it's not so difficult to monitor US-related news.
- calvinbhai 10y ago
  I'm sure my comment doesn't apply to all countries, especially ones run by a dicatator (since it means zero innovation). If you have trouble immigrating to US, you should checkout Canada or India.
rushabh 10y ago
I totally agree. As a company, we lost two of our best engineers who emigrated to the US in the past year. And no, it was not because of the pay or working conditions or no equity. People have been sold the "American Dream" to people outside America over the decades. Young people have seen their relatives from previous generations live much better lives in the US over India. Bringing people back will take time and I think once the infrastructure is fixed (which is very fixable in the next 10-15 years), most people will not think of emigrating. Having lived in the US and India, I think the society in India is as free as in the US, without the anxiety of "fitting in" and leaving your family behind. Also today you have access to the best products, technology and knowledge being in India so other than the physical infrastructure (housing, travel, cleanliness) the gap is much reduced. I sincerely hope the immigration laws get tighter in the US so that we can build great companies, create wealth for the society, create jobs and remove hardship and poverty in India.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  As an American, I hope so too - there's a real cost to emigrating and I would think that home is always home and people should have the option of being there. I'd like to be able to buy cool things no matter where they are made. In principle, I'm also for pretty much unrestricted immigration but that's politically ... difficult. It may also be practically difficult.
  - DVassallo 10y ago
    "people should have the option of being there" != people's only option is to stay there
- DVassallo 10y ago
  You should never hope for less freedom of movement. You can never know what lies ahead in the future of your country, and the freedom to move elsewhere could be your only option to protect your safety and inalienable rights.
- booleandilemma 10y ago
  Your comment is a little off-putting. It would be like me writing "I sincerely hope India doesn't fix its infrastructure so their best and brightest decide to come work in the US".
realz 10y ago
> why move be an alien in US I think you may have missed the whole point about USA. Nobody is an alien in this country, a lot of people would life to make you feel that way, but I know a lot of people from Sikkim regularly get asked where in China are they from.
- rogerbinns 10y ago
  > Nobody is an alien in this country [USA] ... There may be some terminology or crossed wires here. For example I have a US government issued card that literally says on it that I am a "resident alien", and is the reason I can be in the US. When filling out forms, such as employment related, or opening a bank account there will be somewhere that I have to say (again literally) that I am an alien. Also the government can revoke this at any point for any reason they deem fit, there is no right of appeal, nor do they even have to tell me why. This is at least one way that someone is an alien in this country, using US government terminology.
- option_greek 10y ago
  I guess most of it has to do with education. I genuinely had no idea that there people in Inda who look different than what I see around me till I was in my late teens. I guess its lot better now with the internet but diversity education won't hurt.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Nobody is an alien in this country Legally, any person who is not a citizen (including a legal immigrant who has not yet been naturalized) is an alien in this country.
  - turar 10y ago
    And continues to be an alien for years, and sometimes decades. You only stop being an "alien" after naturalization ceremony. "Alien" terminology is not some emotional made up word, it's a real term that America calls any non-citizen.
- rayiner 10y ago
sbank 10y ago
To be a little crude, and in my opinion, what you are basically saying is that you are glad that the choice and autonomy of other people unrelated to you is restricted so that your vision of what the world should look like can be realized.
drakonandor 10y ago
Your comment might have more weight if Indians weren't queuing up to work in USA.
- bduerst 10y ago
  They're saying that because there is a queue, the innovators are staying in India.
morgante 10y ago
> India and China are so vastly different markets, that most of the products made for US really dont fit outside US. What? Most successful US companies end up developing massive international markets. In fact, for many top tech companies their international revenue can exceed domestic revenue. This is in stark contrast to Indian and Chinese companies where even the biggest successes have a lot of difficulty appealing internationally.
- shas3 10y ago
  Uh, it's not that clear cut. Also, the line is drawn along the lines of developed vs. developing economies. Having lived in India and had some experience with US multinational companies, the 'massive international markets' in developing countries are limited to electronics, automobiles, and computer science: a few companies like Ford, GM, Microsoft, Intel, and most significantly, Apple. In other industries, companies like Unilever, P&G, etc. setup subsidiary structures because the markets in India and China are often much smaller in $s. At the same time, in structures similar to how P&G or Ford manage their Indian or Chinese businesses, Indian and Chinese companies control US/European corporations: Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo, Starwood Hotels, AMC Theaters, etc.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > Uh, it's not that clear cut. Also, the line is drawn along the lines of developed vs. developing economies. It really is. No developing economy companies enjoy anywhere near as much international success as American companies do, however you want to parse it. Since this is a tech forum, we're talking about tech companies. You already noted how Apple, Intel, Microsoft. Add on Google, Facebook, and Amazon and you can see that almost every single major US tech company has strong international profits.

dhab 10y ago

Can you provide some examples of product-market mismatch outside US - for types of things cities akin to Silicon Valley come up with?

jeyoor 10y ago
It seems that markets such as India and China[1] are more comfortable with apps packed with numerous features (i.e. WeChat or LINE), whereas US apps seem to usually be more focused on minimalism [2]. Snapchat is a notable US counter-example. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/technology/china-mobile-tech-innovation-silicon-valley.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/technology/china-mobile-te... [2] https://blog.benroux.me/your-app-has-one-feature/ https://blog.benroux.me/your-app-has-one-feature/
- gohrt 10y ago
  That's not really a feature that people are "comfortable with", that's because Chinese Internet has been captured by monopolists, like the AOL of USA in the 1990s.
  - cerebellum42 10y ago
    I doubt that's all there is to it, there really are some cultural differences that show when you take western services and put them on the chinese market. Amazon for example found that their site simply looked too "clean", had too much whitespace, for the chinese market. All that empty space was not taken as a clean look by users, but as a sign that there weren't a lot of products available. If I go to amazon.com now, there are literally 5 products on the landing page. On amazon.cn, more like 30-50. (I am recounting this story as it was told by an Amazon employee who came to my Uni a while back)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- rabboRubble 10y ago
  Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong all have fantastic mobile infrastructure, unlike anything offered in the US. Innovators there don't have to code with data caps in mind. Minimalism with associated lighter data requirements is a US market peculiarity.
rogerbinns 10y ago
Credit cards are far less common, and especially far less used for ecommerce. Figuring out how to do payment on delivery is what helped Flipkart in India (and doomed a competitor who couldn't). Example article http://indianonlineseller.com/2016/01/cash-on-delivery-cod-slowing-down-indian-ecommerce/ http://indianonlineseller.com/2016/01/cash-on-delivery-cod-s...
calvinbhai 10y ago
WeChat and related services Line and related services Multi-sim phones Emojis language/script support for local languages ... and many more basically thinking like a local lets you disrupt many age old creaky systems.

kamaal 10y ago

Also, Tighter immigration is just one part of the story. India itself has grown up and fixed a lot of its issues. Apart from the current generation, even the generation that saw the first wave of benefits of 1990's reforms has already reaped far more benefits than their peers who moved to US around the same time. Most are disproportionately rich, have had better careers and family/social circles in India. My guess is as more things get fixed in India(which they will), and more situation improves here, it will be harder by the day to think of restarting your life elsewhere while your peers do better than you back home. At the end nobody wants to end up being worse off than their peers despite doing a lot more of that extra work as immigrant in a foreign land. Now we are in the second generation of this trend. Among my friends who moved to the US for MS and never returned. Most of us in India have done better on nearly every count. Essentially today immigration to a foreign country in India has been reduced to a social status issue. The actual financial reasons have been drying out for a while and very few remain today.

realz 10y ago
I can only speak about myself, I come from a lower middle class family in India and probably was the poorest in my school. Now, I am at senior position in large well established tech company and definitely doing better than any of my class mates back in India. My family still lives in India and I am amazed how tough their life is when dealing with every day things. My life is so much better than my sister's who lives in Pune and also works in a similar position for a tech company. She would move to US in a heartbeat but has some personal issues. This is how bad conditions in India are, my mother, who lost her husband when she was 34, worked all her life and raised 2 kids on her own. After several decades of employment, she needed to withdraw some money out of her PF account. She had to bribe at least 4 guys and pay a total of 20,000INR to be able to withdraw money from her account, her own hard earned money. Life in India is pretty bad, I do believe us Indians have a "chalta hai" attitude and a lot of problems are just shoved under the rug or considered "yahan aise hi kaam hota hai" (this is how things are done here) category. I would want India to be the same as US where I have lived now for more than 15 years and Bollywood movies keep promising me that India today is so much like any other developed country, but my 15 visits in the last 15 years break every one of those promises. Back to the original point, no financially a person earning at the same position in India vs US is not any better off by a huge margin. Now if your point was is it worth it moving from Germany or Australia to US, then the answer is completely different answer. India is not there yet, a lot of work needs to be done, a lot of change needs to happen. If people in India start believing that they have arrived then they will be doing themselves a hige disservice.

EugeneOZ 10y ago

> why move be an alien in US, when you can live in home country and innovate? for example, because president of your (my) country is a dictator.

saiya-jin 10y ago
so you want to move to police state to be under constant surveillance (as a foreigner it means forever, including your relatives), you want to support corrupt war machinery with your taxes that literally feeds of death of hundreds of thousands of innocent all over the world? in the country with highest nr of prisoners per capita, where one mistake (or not even) will ruin your life forever? that ain't american dream, that is american reality. you can try to do better than that
- EugeneOZ 10y ago
  Huh, what you know about bad government. I'm trying to leave country where 99.99% of all Judge verdicts are "guilty" (it's official statistics - you have 1/1000 chance to remain free if you are in court). I'm trying to leave police state where all phone calls and sms messages are _officially_ tapped and cellular operators have to store records for 3 years. Where government officially wants to decrypt all of your ssl traffic (it's just impossible technically, but they are too stupid to realize it), and all non-encrypted traffic is already being monitored. In Russia, if policeman is going to your direction on the street - you are nervous. If he is knocking to your door - you know there's a big chance of big problems. I can say much more, about feeding wars also, it's just offtopic. But trust me, US reality right now is something we can't even dream about. And I know about US not from movies, it's not so difficult to monitor US-related news.
calvinbhai 10y ago
I'm sure my comment doesn't apply to all countries, especially ones run by a dicatator (since it means zero innovation). If you have trouble immigrating to US, you should checkout Canada or India.

rushabh 10y ago

I totally agree. As a company, we lost two of our best engineers who emigrated to the US in the past year. And no, it was not because of the pay or working conditions or no equity. People have been sold the "American Dream" to people outside America over the decades. Young people have seen their relatives from previous generations live much better lives in the US over India. Bringing people back will take time and I think once the infrastructure is fixed (which is very fixable in the next 10-15 years), most people will not think of emigrating. Having lived in the US and India, I think the society in India is as free as in the US, without the anxiety of "fitting in" and leaving your family behind. Also today you have access to the best products, technology and knowledge being in India so other than the physical infrastructure (housing, travel, cleanliness) the gap is much reduced. I sincerely hope the immigration laws get tighter in the US so that we can build great companies, create wealth for the society, create jobs and remove hardship and poverty in India.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
As an American, I hope so too - there's a real cost to emigrating and I would think that home is always home and people should have the option of being there. I'd like to be able to buy cool things no matter where they are made. In principle, I'm also for pretty much unrestricted immigration but that's politically ... difficult. It may also be practically difficult.
- DVassallo 10y ago
  "people should have the option of being there" != people's only option is to stay there
DVassallo 10y ago
You should never hope for less freedom of movement. You can never know what lies ahead in the future of your country, and the freedom to move elsewhere could be your only option to protect your safety and inalienable rights.
booleandilemma 10y ago
Your comment is a little off-putting. It would be like me writing "I sincerely hope India doesn't fix its infrastructure so their best and brightest decide to come work in the US".

realz 10y ago

> why move be an alien in US I think you may have missed the whole point about USA. Nobody is an alien in this country, a lot of people would life to make you feel that way, but I know a lot of people from Sikkim regularly get asked where in China are they from.

rogerbinns 10y ago
> Nobody is an alien in this country [USA] ... There may be some terminology or crossed wires here. For example I have a US government issued card that literally says on it that I am a "resident alien", and is the reason I can be in the US. When filling out forms, such as employment related, or opening a bank account there will be somewhere that I have to say (again literally) that I am an alien. Also the government can revoke this at any point for any reason they deem fit, there is no right of appeal, nor do they even have to tell me why. This is at least one way that someone is an alien in this country, using US government terminology.
option_greek 10y ago
I guess most of it has to do with education. I genuinely had no idea that there people in Inda who look different than what I see around me till I was in my late teens. I guess its lot better now with the internet but diversity education won't hurt.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Nobody is an alien in this country Legally, any person who is not a citizen (including a legal immigrant who has not yet been naturalized) is an alien in this country.
- turar 10y ago
  And continues to be an alien for years, and sometimes decades. You only stop being an "alien" after naturalization ceremony. "Alien" terminology is not some emotional made up word, it's a real term that America calls any non-citizen.
rayiner 10y ago

sbank 10y ago

To be a little crude, and in my opinion, what you are basically saying is that you are glad that the choice and autonomy of other people unrelated to you is restricted so that your vision of what the world should look like can be realized.

drakonandor 10y ago

Your comment might have more weight if Indians weren't queuing up to work in USA.

bduerst 10y ago
They're saying that because there is a queue, the innovators are staying in India.

morgante 10y ago

> India and China are so vastly different markets, that most of the products made for US really dont fit outside US. What? Most successful US companies end up developing massive international markets. In fact, for many top tech companies their international revenue can exceed domestic revenue. This is in stark contrast to Indian and Chinese companies where even the biggest successes have a lot of difficulty appealing internationally.

shas3 10y ago
Uh, it's not that clear cut. Also, the line is drawn along the lines of developed vs. developing economies. Having lived in India and had some experience with US multinational companies, the 'massive international markets' in developing countries are limited to electronics, automobiles, and computer science: a few companies like Ford, GM, Microsoft, Intel, and most significantly, Apple. In other industries, companies like Unilever, P&G, etc. setup subsidiary structures because the markets in India and China are often much smaller in $s. At the same time, in structures similar to how P&G or Ford manage their Indian or Chinese businesses, Indian and Chinese companies control US/European corporations: Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo, Starwood Hotels, AMC Theaters, etc.
- morgante 10y ago
  > Uh, it's not that clear cut. Also, the line is drawn along the lines of developed vs. developing economies. It really is. No developing economy companies enjoy anywhere near as much international success as American companies do, however you want to parse it. Since this is a tech forum, we're talking about tech companies. You already noted how Apple, Intel, Microsoft. Add on Google, Facebook, and Amazon and you can see that almost every single major US tech company has strong international profits.