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Why do Baidu and Tencent count, but Infosys and TCS not count? Each of these have companies with >10B USD of revenue, so it's not like the Chinese companies are
by wsxcde 9y ago
Why do Baidu and Tencent count, but Infosys and TCS not count? Each of these have companies with >10B USD of revenue, so it's not like the Chinese companies are any larger. And don't tell me, it's because of the difference between product and service companies, because that is meaningless distinction from the perspective of a hardware-marker. They all need hardware to run on and arguably a service company needs more.
> Considering the 'prestige' and money that comes with working in the US, I'd be very surprised if the country can ever accumulate enough talent to do anything fundamentally significant (esp. since all of the relevant Education/Industry is entirely Anglophone).
That was true maybe 10/20 years ago. Right now, thanks to Trump and Republicans, the US is much less attractive destination, especially for top-tier researchers. NSF funding rates are in the single digit percentage range, every year seems to see a new assault from state-level republicans on state university systems. Rising xenophobia and white nationalism obviously don't help the cause.
The situation in India is way better. There is more money available for research: the Shakti project is one example but many other big centers are being funded in various "institutes of national importance." There is a bi-partisan commitment to increasing funding and hiring for Indian research and there is a growing talent pool emerging from the non-IIT undergraduate colleges.
Twenty years ago, every R1 university in the US was better than every university in India. Now, once you get past the top-10 or 15, beyond the Berkeleys, MITs, Princetons and maybe Purdues, it's not at all clear that it is a good idea for a young assistant professor to go to say Virgina Tech over IISc or IIT Bombay. And in fact, these Indian institutes are consistently hiring people who would have been a shoo-in for a faculty position at places like VT.
- signa11 9y ago> Why do Baidu and Tencent count, but Infosys and TCS not count? Each of these have companies with >10B USD of revenue... umm, probably because both of these companies are not exactly known for their cutting edge r&d.
- bluejackal 9y agoEven these people didn't claim they have cutting edge r&d. IITM has implemented that is already open source and continuing their work in open source
- wsxcde 9y agoOn the contrary, both Infosys Research and the TCS Innovation Lab are organically growing research labs who have been steadily producing quality scholarly work for some years now. I'm not aware of anything of note coming from Baidu research. All they've done is a splashy celebrity hire of Andrew Ng, which is the exact opposite of how one would set up a serious research organization.
- TheArcane 9y ago> the US is much less attractive destination The US is still extremely attractive, especially for STEM talent.Indian educated migrants think of Trump as a temporary phase; and given how migrants power the American tech industry, they feel impervious to most Trump related threats.
- wsxcde 9y agoIf we're trading anecdotes, then I'm an Indian-educated migrant with a PhD from one elite US school who is current a postdoc at another elite US school and I've accepted an offer from an IIT. Trump is by no means a temporary phase. The demographic trends that led to Trump will continue for a long while. The "big sort" means that 70% of US population will be represented by 30 senators by 2050. Guess which party the other 70 senators representing primarily rural populations will belong to? The republican advantage in the electoral college will continue to grow as the rust belt becomes older and whiter. The supposed democratic flips of Arizona, Georgia and Texas due to rising Latino population are still far away in future and in the meantime, republican voter id legislation and gerrymandering of state-level districts to control state-level legislatures will ensure they remain red for the foreseeable future. What all this really means is that the current situation -- where winning the primary is far more important than the general for republican politicians -- will continue for at least a decade or two more. Which means we WILL have more Trumps. The scary part of this is that the next guy won't be as incompetent at implementing his own agenda as this one.