Indian immigrants are tech's new titans | Hacker News Reader

Indian immigrants are tech's new titans

latimes.com

75 pointskungfudoi70 comments

This article generalises way too many things for me to be interesting.

"Unlike the people in some cultures, Indians learn to challenge authority" - This can't be further from the truth. At the risk of generalising myself I'd still like to say that Indian culture in general doesn't want anyone to challenge authority (parents/teachers/bosses) this is something we are taught as children.

More reasons to rebel. I come from a similar culture. In my life I have challenged everything!

This is something more common to 1st generation immigrants. Although often true for 1st gen immigrants from India...

The driving factors for taking a big risk and ditching the expected norms are similar to taking risks and rebelling. Couple that with a strong emphasis on success and business and you have something that works well in the tech industry.

I second NikilVerma. Indians in India hardly will challenge authority.

As an Indian, you're spot on. Rebellion is the last thing you see among Indian youth. Most of my friends still can't tell their parents that they drink/party/have sex. We are a deeply conservative society and the middle class expectation is to get a stable job at a known name brand.

I had a close friend who refused to wear his Patka/Keski Dastaar anymore (sorry if this is incorrect, I'm going off of images on google) and was nearly disowned by his family.

The crazy thing is his family wasn't, to my eyes, even particularly religious.

Sometimes, this plays out in hilarious ways. Infosys and TCS, for example, are well-known companies in India. Tower Research, on the other hand, is not known at all. A friend got an offer from Tower Research (he went to the same college as Sundar Pichai), but his relatives were appalled that he would choose it over a code monkey role at Infosys.

It's some combination of survivor bias and sampling bias: people who are reasonably "rebellious" (in the good sense of the word) and ambitious are more likely moved to US in the first place, and successful people are of course likely tend to have more of those trait.

Although I wouldn't call successfully climbing the corporate ladder to be much of "challenge authority" ...

I've had problems in the past whereby people have said 'yes' to do you understand. Or have noticed problems with an approach, or seen better approaches but decided that challenging authority, or admitting you don't know something to someone in authority is perceived as some kind of weakness.

Very sadly I've also seen meritocracy trumped by social status. The brightest, most diligent, best informed person being overruled by their peers because of their status outside of work.

Once aware of both these scenarios I found them easy to work around but nonetheless it was a shock the first time.

>>At the risk of generalising myself I'd still like to say that Indian culture in general doesn't want anyone to challenge authority (parents/teachers/bosses) this is something we are taught as children.

You did end up generalizing. We are taught to 'respect' elders. Challenging authority doesn't mean lack of respect.

Plus it also depends on what kind of background you hail from. People from upper middle class background and rich have generally little incentive to challenge the authority. Because they are the authority and they benefit from it.

Some one from lower castes, lower middle class and poor people have no other option but to be anarchists. Following the system can only do more damage to them.

There is a Reason why Indian Immigrants are CEO's of Companies like Google and Microsoft rather than founder of Companies like Google and Microsoft.

Current EB2 (For people who have done masters) green card wait time for Indian Born immigrants is 10 Years (mind you this is for people who have done masters and would have worked for a company at least a year to start the process). By the time an Indian Immigrant can legally start a company and work for the same, he/she has to be atleast 35.

Yup. 12 yrs and still no GC in sight.

Or you could start a company in India.

Last time I checked, you can start a company from anywhere.

Challenging authority is far from norm in Indian culture. There is just a hint of this in the current generation. Plus running a company is hardly challenging any authority.

Taking my example. I am working on a startup, plus doing some freelancing work to pay the bills. I am constantly pestered by relatives, parents, friends to get a 9 to 5 stable job. There have been times when I have been told that I should work instead of staying at home (thank heavens that I am living by myself) and being on the computer by some friends and relatives. Kind of funny.

I think hypocrisy is more our thing, rather than this rebellious, challenging the authority attitude. I am talking of the vast majority of the country. I wouldn't use Indians as a way to generalize, because I think most of us lack passion and interests, the willingness to do something new, to do it flawlessly. This is why a few Indian immigrants who do extremely well, will stand out and I think they deserve the respect for it. The rest are there for the opportunity to make more money, to live a more comfortable life. I do not think the vast majority of us can ride this 'tech titans' tag.

I'm sure we all are going to react with - hey, I know a lot of rebellious, passionate people. I agree, I know a lot of people too, but they do not make up for the big majority we're calling Indian immigrants.

The majority of immigrants has been looking for a more comfortable life since the beginning. The pilgrims came over to escape religious persecution.

>>I think most of us lack passion and interests

This is not generalization, you are making blanket statements which are straight untrue. Most people can't chase their passion because, they first need to bail out of shitty conditions they were born in. Passion and interests are the luxury of the rich. For vast majority of Indians, they have to undergo at least two to three generation of slogging to get their kids to college and a decent day job. This is if you break out of caste problems, poverty and low income jobs. Else its life as usual.

When your father and grandfather toiled in a farm for their whole lives to get you a 9 - 5 job, you don't throw it way. Not only would that be disrespectful to their whole lives. It would also be stupid. Most entrepreneurs fail, if you are one of them you are gambling three generations of sincere effort in providing your descendents a good future.

The very fact that some of us complain about things like these shows how far detached we are from lives of fellow Indians.

The real tech titans will always be founders, not the promoted CEOs of companies on their descent. People of all cultures should aspire to create their own new things in the world, not run bureaucracies created by other people. It may be prestigious and make you rich but that's true of many terrible jobs.

I, too, find running bureaucracies to be rather boring, but your last sentence isn't all that stinging: except for the money, there are very few jobs most people would want.

Microsoft is still one of the largest companies in the world. Adobe. Pepsi. What, would you have them run uber or something small like that?

He's just saying its more impressive to make a ball from scratch and get it rolling than it is to keep a ball rolling. Extra-ordinarily hard to do either one imo.

Isn't this just post-hoc rationalization? I mean what if Germans were running the show? Wouldn't the article say all the same things with Indians replaced with Germans? I mean good for all the CEOs but I don't think it has anything to do with being Indian.

It's post-hoc rationalization from a tiny sample. If this isn't reading signal in noise, I don't know what is.

The reaction of anyone, male, female, whatever race or sexual orientation, should be: "Cool story brah, I have work to do."

A lot of engineers aren't appreciated for the good work they do. But none of them will benefit from worrying that it's because they're not Indian.

Selection bias is an important factor to consider why emigrant societies are seen as industrious, innovative and ultimately successful.

If you survived an oppressive homeland government, escaped harsh socio-economic living conditions, bootstrapped yourself (or your family) out of illiteracy, invented creative ways to succeed the stowaway journey, brave the xenophobia of an alien culture, solidified your determination to "stick around" ... chances are you are already in the group that has the top 5% of successful leadership across the world.

Not just Indians - you see this with almost every expat society in different countries.

We're very argumentative

Indians, as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen tells us, are argumentative by nature and given the opportunity, we will debate and discuss till the cows at home. Jean-Christophe Lettelier got a taste of this as soon as he took charge at L'Oreal India last year. The meetings he conducted would go on interminably with everyone going in circles.

"Maybe it's because of an inductive approach to understanding things, but Indians make things more complex than they really are," he says. "I value the depth of thinking, but sometimes I have to just close the topic. Else there is complete chaos."

Mitsubishi's Makoto Kitai is another expat CEO who has had a hard time conducting meetings. "Japanese are very good listeners. We as a culture never speak out of turn which ensures that our suggestion would be asked every time. My Indian colleagues, on the other hand, are very ardent speakers and are always impatient when it comes to an opportunity to articulate their views," he says. We also have a propensity to get into time consuming discussions just about anywhere.

As Tetsuya Takano, MD of Ricoh India points out: "In India it's easy to form a discussion group. You only have to ask someone something and suddenly five people are around you and you can discuss anything. The preferable subject is politics."

https://justpaste.it/Argumentative

Off my head - Softbank, Sandisk, Cognizant, NetApp and pepsi ceo's are indian as well.

well.. i have positive experience working for an indian company. they were pretty relaxed and kind and let people do their thing without interference. they also let me in when nobody else would. It's definitely not by chance they succeed.

We Have Petitioned US/UK To Stop Issuing Visas To Indians, The Most Racist People On Earth;

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/stop-issuing-visa...

https://www.change.org/p/president-of-usa-and-prime-minister...

'that a generation of Indians has benefited from upbringings in a culture that, at its best, values humility, close-knit family ties and respect for all walks of life.'

Lol, how does that match with India's caste system? So much respect for lower castes, a huge gap between poor and rich...so much humility...

Probably a corporate environment very much matches a caste system, hence Indians are the most suitable for running such an environment.

And lets not forget, the author is Indian.

How many % of the world population does Indian make up ? I say its just starting to reflect that.... nothing to see here..

Nope. China, Brazil, Russia are all humongous % populations - disproportionate representation.

As is Nigeria.

Sundar Pichai is a https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmin They've mastered the art of manipulating and using people/professionals/programmers for past 2000 years;

Good luck to Google;

I know only one tech titan, and he is South African; the other one was half-Lebanese, but he is dead now.

half-syrian...

You cannot survive/succeed in a corporate world unless you're a sociopath.

I get that positively singling out a disadvantaged minority is not racist, but still, who cares about the race or home culture of the CEOs of Microsoft and Google? Isn't the whole reason these guys are able to get these roles because the tech scene as a whole doesn't care much where you're from? (as long as you have a penis, of course)

It matters because it a lot of these people didn't grow up or studied primarily in India or in Indian Universities.

They only ended up doing a Msc or Phd in the US as a way to enter the US labour market. Not always but often enough.

Most of that education was paid for by Indian taxpayers. So I think its unfair to Indian taxpayers.

I cringe whenever I hear people talk about "entrepreneurship" and "free-enterprise" as the reason for silicon valley's success.

You cannot start a electronics company when your country's philosophy is a darwinist one of man eating man.

Silicon Valley is lucky that they get a free supply of highly specialized labour from the rest of the world that they didn't pay for.

Lots of large international cities have sizeable numbers of expats who got educated back home, Singapore, London, Hong Kong, etc. None of the home countries would cry "brain drain" in seriousness.

If they did they'd be wrong to say that. Make it attractive to stay home and on balance people will. Stifle opportunity and people will leave.

And conversely, Europe and north america don't cry, third world, you're off loading your undereducted and you have us foot their education, etc.

People go where they see opportunity. Countries allow immigration of poor if it makes economic sense to them. And of course they welcome highly skilled, for the most part though quotas exist to appease the professionals in host country. The working classes enjoy no such protection, again, because economy.

There are 1.2B Indians and 300M Americans. And there are strong ties between the Indian middle class and the u.s. In education and business. The indian middle class is around 300M. It's surprising that there aren't more Indians in high corporate roles considering how many there are in universities, for example.

Something that is disturbing long-term is the low number of Chinese nationals in corporate roles in the u.s. China is arguably ahead of India socially and economically. They have 500M in the middle class. But we don't have strong ties with mainland China like we do with India. We run the risk of continuing to diverge.

I chat with my Indian friends all of the time about this. A few of the reasons we came up with are:

1) China has a better infrastructure so it is more attractive for a talented Chinese person to return to China than an Indian person to return to India.

2) Indians immigrants speak better English on average.

3) There might be some cultural difference or inheritances. But I haven't figured them out yet.

Also John Chen was the CEO of Sybase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Chen

Couldn't it be that the perception of China being ahead of India socially/economically is why you don't see as many Chinese nationals in corporate roles in the US?

I've talked to a number of Indian workers in IT here in Japan who've said that they'd do "anything" not to have to go back to their family homes. But Chinese IT workers I know don't seem to mind the idea; in fact, they usually go back a couple of times a year.

If you replace "Chinese nationals" with a first-world European country, does it sound disturbing? e.g.: "the low number of German nationals in corporate roles in the u.s." It doesn't to me.

I always assumed this was due to the language barrier. China has roughly 10 million English speakers while India has hundreds of millions. To me, language appears to be one of the largest causes of cultural divide.

The trend holds in the other direction as well. There are large Indian companies lead by foreign executives, but foreign executives do not get far in Chinese companies.

we desperately need to increase immigration from india in order to save our economy

Satya Nadella/Sundar Pichai are NOT Entrepreneurs;

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

Four degrees in hand, he still cleans sewers due to Caste system in India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Four-degrees-...

Indian regime owes reparations to 300 million Untouchables for 2000 years of Caste system;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shashi-tharoor/caste-wont-disa...

Indians immigrants have mastered the art of

What you know is NOT important. Who you know is very important.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation...

49% of children dropping out of school are Untouchables and 25% are Muslims

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/49-of-children-out-...

https://www.change.org/p/independent-nation-for-300-million-...

So we're doing racist fluff pieces now? Look, generalizations about a race of people, positive or negative, are just wrong. We are going to need an international code of conduct for the industry because people from outside the US obviously have no problem making gross generalizations like "Indians are just better in tech." Obviously it is unprofessional for Americans to say "Americans are the best at tech" or "Whites make the best programmers." People from other countries are getting away with WAY too much fucking bullshit.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M :)

The liberal guilt trip isn't going to work. Liberal guilt is over. It's played out. There are no minorities in tech. That's why any sort of supremacist or exceptionalist tone by anyone is going to be met with criticism. Relevant:

http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/narendra-modis-american-excep...

Oh BTW, India has 13.9 million slaves right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India

More it is highlighting cultural nuances and differences?

Your point? Are you also trying to make a point about the supremacy of the Indian race/nationality/culture?

Wish they do not inject 'covert' racism into your society http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...

Tell us more of your 4th grade social studies stories.

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting uncivil, unsubstantive comments to HN.

it seemed quite substantive to me...of course, it goes against the mainstream politically correct paradigm, too.

India follows the "Sheep Herd" mentality. The whole country's economy is based on people getting into "Profitable" domains mostly following the success of a pioneer in the field. The most recent example of this ideology is the "Business Process Outsourcing" industry. New BPO units are propping up here and there at a dime a dozen leading to a quality deterioration in the final deliverable. This process will continue till a saturation level is reached and then they will wait till another "Killer" domain picks up momentum. Till then India will be in a so called "Calm Period" where nothing great and major takes place.

Titans give us 0 to 1.

I'm waiting.

Or, it could be a coincidence :)

I think the key is this "They have my values yet all the American advantages. They can achieve the same as my generation at much younger age." Most of these guys have done their masters in respectable places and their experience is in USA.

The way the US top 10 schools collaborate with Industry is yet to come in India though it is starting slowly. But I see Indian companies still family owned business though it is traded so working in Indian company even thinking that you will be the super boss is not there. It is going one of the major owners kin.

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