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Good for you but there’s no real advantage professionally in moving back, but no disadvantage either. Sure you’re saying H1B restricts but does it really? Have
by ramraj07 5y ago
Good for you but there’s no real advantage professionally in moving back, but no disadvantage either. Sure you’re saying H1B restricts but does it really? Have you truly explored all immigration options? Or did you just balk at all the extra beauracracy and said I’ll go back to india? Which is fine, but do note the irony of moving to india to avoid bureaucracy lol. Apply and do your GST, run between five different branches of the same govt entity for a permit and then tell me you have reduced your bureaucratic burden.
There’s a nice shiny shell of Indian startups now for sure, but the fundamental rotten core of Indian magistration is still there. There are smart people but for every smart cookie that didn’t leave the country there are 5 charlatans demanding the same salary now. Pretty much every successful startup in India is massively building on top of cheap slave labor / bad tech regulation / gambling. VCs are pouring money here because where else can they go? China? Middle East? How long will it last? Who knows.
Not saying india is not going to be successful, but to bet on it’s success over the same industry in the US is at best speculation.
Now coming to the society disadvantages, viz. the pollution and water scarcity, abject inequality in your face, and my god let’s not start on the safety of women (my partner said she will never bring a girl child up in india and i incline to agree). The last point is in particular interesting because only naive people have shrugged it off to my face till now. If you are a guy (or worse a girl) who insists it’s not that bad in india, then you grew up with extreme privilege or are extremely clueless about realities of life in this country. Anyways choose away but don’t for a second suggest this is somehow better.
- billfruit 5y agoThere are definite advantages in moving to India or many other third world countries, there is so much scope and possibly, and the untapped markets can be huge opportunities. Also the same amount of money goes a long way in India than in US. Rents, medical costs, etc are way cheaper.
- ramraj07 5y agothe golden age of startups in india has already started to shutter. It’s still a hot market but all the Low hanging fruits are already done for. Anyone thinking the market here is somehow easier than in the US is absolutely naive.
- 0des 5y agoI hesitate saying that they're third world.
- ge96 5y agoI think about this for another country (islands type), it would be beautiful but also I would lose the things here in the US I take for granted. Don't have to worry about having parasites from food. My 1 day Amazon shipping (sorry I'm thinking more electronics sourcing eg. Digikey). The other thing too is software is not valued there...you make the same amount or less in construction which is interesting unless it's work coming externally from another country. Also the risk of less police... I have this fear if I go there I won't be able to return to the US ha. If you had online income (passive) that would be nice. I knew a person that lived on a boat/had weapons, street smart kind of person unlike me.
- throwaway_1928 5y ago> Sure you’re saying H1B restricts but does it really? Given the author's impressive credentials and ambitious tone, he would be a fool to choose to wait 195 years [1] for a green card. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/03/01/immigration-bill-shows-need-to-end-employment-based-immigrant-backlog/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/03/01/immig...
- ramraj07 5y agoThere are better visa options for more skilled workers. Like the O1, or if you’re smart the L1 for international orgs with some stint outside. Or you can even start a company in a H1B. Or if you did make a lot of money an EB5. The list is long.
- throwaway_1928 5y agoLet us say this young author has a master's degree from MIT and has worked a few years on an H1B at Tesla. But he does not have a PhD and does not publish research. And he is a very good engineer but does not care for management work. And he does not have a couple of million lying around to splurge on an EB5 visa. So his visa category will be 'EB2' and his wait time for a green card will be more than 100 years. Now let us say he has an engineer friend who was born in Bolivia, received a bachelor's from Arizona State University, and works on an H1B at Office Depot. A perfectly adequate employee with a perfectly good background. His visa category will most likely be 'EB3' and his wait time for a green card will be 18 months. The 'better visa options' you mention are in practice applicable only for a small minority of workers (certain PhDs, the very wealthy, expat managers etc). The vast majority like this author find themselves strangely waiting 100+ years for a green card while their colleagues with very similar backgrounds from virtually any other country receive it in a year or two.
- ramraj07 5y agoI am in the exact same category as OP , and there are options. Yes they are annoying. But so is Indian politics and bureaucracy. I view them as equally annoying.
- arcen 5y agoI agree things aren't the best and you make several valid points. However, seems to me that you are in the camp who would rather shit on their own country instead of finding ways to make things better for everyone. You too are a part of the privileged class at this moment - sitting in the US (presumably).
- riantogo 5y agoShit on your own country? What does that even mean? The place you were born by chance? Now you have to “own” it as an identity? Do you have the same beliefs about government? religion? caste? race? I suggest you try freeing yourself of such burden.
- sudhirkhanger 5y agoDo an exercise for me since you have freed yourself from the burden of natural identity. Go to a foreign nation and destroy your password. It will teach you a practical lesson in natural identity. Do make sure to go to a nation that you think is the greatest nation in human lifetime.
- sriram_malhar 5y agoI think of myself as the equivalent of an atheist when it comes to all kinds of identities: national, linguistic, religious, caste, etc. It behooves us to call out shitty stuff just as it behooves us to work towards bettering our surroundings in increasingly larger circles.
- sudhirkhanger 5y agopassport not password.
- nonamechicken 5y agoI know with 100% certainty that unless I go fight for something like ISIS, India will take me back without any problems. No one else will do that. That's where the country of birth becomes important for me.
- xaxaxb 5y agoThis guy is the Enlightened One. He's seen it all to the core: all the rotten things, everything.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Markoff 5y agoI agree with last paragraph, while maybe not very relevant for young single male, certainly very relevant who plans to settle down. But honestly choosing between US and India to raise kid is choosing between two very bad options and there are more options in world, someone with IT background shouldn't have many issues to move to Europe which would be certainly better option long term raising the family, but maybe slightly worse career wise.
- rayiner 5y agoI’d never raise my kids in someone else’s ethnostate. In America my kids are unquestioningly accepted as American even in random rural parts of the country. Meanwhile in say Germany there are many second generation Turkish people who still don’t really feel German; similar things about Muslim immigrants to France, etc.
- RestlessMind 5y agoAs a desi, US and India are much better to raise kids compared to the European countries (well, except maybe for UK). It is easy to become an American within a few days of landing here. But I will never become French even after spending years or decades in France. Same goes with Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland or other places. European countries are nation states and while that may work out well for their citizens, it is a big hindrance to assimilate immigrants.
- Markoff 5y agoI don't understand, I am foreigner not living in my home country and I don't really understand why I should care that I will be never pure German/French/whatever. If I spoke fluently local language I can pretend I am local (since I am white) and locals born there wouldn't be able to spot it, but I would still know it anyway, so what's the point even pretending if you are not discriminated for being different? Also France and Germany are quite multicultural, so I don't see how it's any different becoming French or German vs American or Brit in general. It just comes down to you being Indian and probably only country having large Indian population in Europe being UK, so they can think you was already born there and consider you local. Black people could already pass also for French, Turks for Germans, but yeah specifically Indians will stand out everywhere except UK as not being born there, but just because you stand out it doesn't make your life worse. Other people stand out for other reasons than color of their skin anyway even if they are completely local and still live in their countries without moving to country where people like them stand out less. By your logic very tall people should move to Netherland, dwarfs should move to some dwarf colonies etc. so they won't stand out for being different, your skin color is just another thing to stand out.
- nonamechicken 5y ago> my partner said she will never bring a girl child up in india My wife also has a similar opinion - that being a woman in India is very hard. Yet, she wants to go back to India more than me.
- bhargav 5y agoThe main advantage of India for me personally is a sense of community that I felt when I went back there after 8 years. Everyone in the society (i.e: I'd say equivalent to a street or a suburb) knows you and greets you. You go to the temple in the morning, and pickup some snacks along the way. In the evening, people go out to eat, meet their relatives, etc. There are pros and cons of this sense of community as well, people can be nosy. However, coming back from India recently, I felt pretty depressed and alone. In North America, everyone seems like a busy worker bee that is working all the time. On the weekend, the bees explore a little bit more. Go hiking, or explore their other hobbies. But the sense of aloneness is something I never knew I had until I went back to India. Aside: This was my first trip back after having done a few when I was young and hating those since I was just stuck in the house as a YA and had limited internet access. The country, the people, have come far from that and as an adult I have all the freedom to do whatever the fk I want too.
- Aperocky 5y ago> sense of aloneness I think this is the biggest difference - economic differences are quite large in nominal terms but life always goes on, there's going to be food on the table and roof over your head. Coming from East Asia a lot of my friends are not used to this - but I find myself enjoying the loneliness of it all - being on a boat in the middle of the lake at the middle of the night with no one around you in 2 miles radius is a blessing. For a similar reason, I never liked New York, SF or LA in the US.
- rayiner 5y ago> But the sense of aloneness is something I never knew I had until I went back to India. I only lived in Bangladesh until age 5, and have spent nearly my whole life in America, but this sense of loneliness hit me really hard when I had my own kids. I remember being surrounded by aunties and cousins at their age, and my kids aren’t. Just in the last year we had a critical mass of neighborhood kids move in, but for my oldest, it was a very solitary childhood until age 8 or so.
- ramraj07 5y agoGood that you like this but I honestly don’t like that. This is just a bunch of people saying hello. They’re no more helpful in the case of urgency than the average American you don’t know the name of. Thus what remains is only pervasive gossip. When people do unfathomable things like forcing marriages within caste this community “camaraderie” is what they use as the reason: “what will SOCIETY think of us?” You mean the jobless woman three doors down? I’d much rather live where no one knows or judges with prejudice my life choices. This doesn’t just happen in india but also in the states where there are “tight knit communities”. Aka small church focused towns. Jobless people knowing each other seems like one of the fundamental problems hindering human freedom to me.
- victor106 5y agoI have mixed feelings about India. It has lot of potential but at the end of the day it’s corrupt to the core, cities are hyper polluted and the infrastructure is abysmal(Although better than two decades ago). I also didn’t like it that the government supports Russia.
- Utkarsh_Mood 5y agowell to be fair russia supported india in the war of 1971
- mama123 5y agoI have now been living in the happiest country in the world for more than a decade. As an Indian kid growing up on Cartoon Network, I was quite envious of western kids with skateboards and actual skate parks, tons of toys, gizmos and game consoles. Once you start knowing people well, they start opening up about their past and I have come to realise 3 out 4 of them, pretty decent well educated people have had to struggle with alcoholic/abusive/loveless parents, addictions of their own, depression. I just realised even though things were pretty bad in terms safety (traffic), sanitation, health or access to simple things like telephones or material comforts, most "middle class" Indians grew up in pretty safe social settings. Somethings like safety has certainly improved substantially, but certainly some like alcoholism has grown exponentially bad.
- rohanm1 5y agoMy daughter goes to elementary school in Bay Area. She was cursed and told "Go home and tell you mother m**f** like this *" with obscene gestures. Based on our experience such rude, obscene and unhealthy behavior isn't uncommon. In addition, adults and kids are exposed to all shitty and violent content through streaming platforms which is also impacting their behavior. What do you also think about safety with so much of gun violence and abuse going on in USA? In our experience, private schools in India are much better and probably safer for kids. They offer all-round learning experience (books/studies, sports, cultural experience etc.) and hot fresh meals as well. It is expensive and hence it is not commonly available to all kids, but I don't think such school experience is available in USA as well (especially cold and frozen food given in schools). While I agree about some of your points related to safety, pollution, and overall civic sense, I don't think it living in US is somehow better. May be you are living in USA with extreme privilege and/or with narrow vision and mindset. :)