Fewer foreign entrepreneurs say they need the U.S.
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I think that what's lacking in the american system is the recognition of "normal" entrepreneurs, those making $200 dollars at a time, and growing their high-potential tech-product business from $0 to $1M in 5 years. In the UK, and in most places in Europe, an immigrant can take a job, change job, build a business on the side, and then manage the business full-time. In the american system, this is not possible :
- If you come as a worker you are stuck in the H1B system where changing employer is a pain, starting a company requires sophisticated immigration layers, and the path to the green card often takes one decade or more - which entrepreneur with a burning idea in his mind would accept that ?
- Otherwise, coming as an entrepreneur directly, requires $$$ which young people with creativity and energy simply do not have yet.
The american system works fine as soon as you are backed by venture capital but is at present time not very welcoming for creative and talented people without deep pockets. This lack of exhaustivity is the issue. As far as I am concerned, I've been successful in the UK and am setting up an operation in the US now that I have the dollars. However I have decided to keep my headquarters and the bulk of my operations in the UK. Therefore I totally understand the feelings of the people quoted in the article who applied for a US visa a few years ago and are today saying "Why would I even go there ?"
The US should really not underestimate the long-term destructive potential of this phenomenon.
This situation is a dramatic departure from the original immigration spirit of the US which used to welcome creative immigrants with $0 in their pockets dreaming of success. These people were largely influential in building the wealthy nation we know today but the country seems to be kind of losing what made them great in the first place. Perhaps this is the time to Make America Great Again.
(Sorry, too tempting)
> I think that what's lacking in the american system is the recognition of "normal" entrepreneurs, those making $200 dollars at a time, and growing their high-potential tech-product business from $0 to $1M in 5 years
This doesn't move the needle in the biggest economy in the world. That's not even a viable business in most cities with high cost of living. At that rate you probably wouldn't even be able to pay yourself a decent wage, let alone hire anyone, within the first 2-3 years. Why would the United States want to let you in where there are more promising businesses/entrepreneurs on the path to $100m/year companies within 5 years?
They were hoping Gary Kildall's C/PM would be the OS for the IBM PC, and only leveraged DOS "to save the language business."
It's not clear how much of a factor Gates' parents' wealth and social network was in this process. Yeah, his Mom was on the board of IBM but Microsoft was an established brand already.
.01 * 330,000,000 = 3,300,000
So yes, millions. And yet there are only a handful of Americans like Bill Gates.
This sort of penny-wise, pound-foolish thinking is the root of the problem. Many large, important businesses start very small and stay small for a while. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#1972.E2.80.9384:_Fou... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#1976.E2.80.9384:_Fo... ) By admitting only founders of companies that are already large, you ensure that many of these companies are established and grow elsewhere.
> Why would the United States want to let you in where there are more promising businesses/entrepreneurs on the path to $100m/year companies within 5 years?
Blatant false dichotomy. Nothing prevents the US from admitting both.
I said "on the path to 100m in 5 years"
That could be $0 through year 1-3, but it would be wholly different if that company was a technology startup creating value vs a services business like a non-chain Mexican restaurant mentioned below that is not necessarily creating an outsized impact on the US economy with low wage service jobs.
Apple was incorporated and immediately had $250,000 in capital invested. Me thinks you did not read the wiki page.
> During the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, an average annual growth rate of 533%.
Anyone who is net positive on the welfare system should be welcome to US. Even a company which makes a million dollar profit per year in 5 Years should be welcome.
2. Why do only >100m businesses move the needle? Do 10,000 1m businesses not move the needle?
I'm not sure this was ever true. A blunt review of historical American attitudes towards immigrants shows they were typically despised and discouraged, and only allowed here at all for the purpose of being exploited as cheap labor for industrial projects.
And if there is any take-away point to distill from your post, it seems to be that even the cheap-labour kind of immigration works out well.
At least when you have unlimited undeveloped land, and thus a nearly unlimited need for workers to develop it.
Developed countries? I'm not convinced.
In the 1800s, laws were passed that produced immigration quotas, where each country was assigned a number of immigrants permitted as a percentage of national origins of current Americans as indicated by the census. This law permitted plenty of immigrants from "favorable" countries like England and France, but few from countries like Italy, Ireland, or China. At the same time, the US saw very few people attempting to immigrate from England and France but large amounts coming from Italy, Ireland, and China.
For those immigrants who got in, the attitude towards them is well documented...
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!
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/technology/china-mobile-te...
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)
Innovators there don't have to code with data caps in mind.
Minimalism with associated lighter data requirements is a US market peculiarity.
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.
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.
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.
The issue is most of us want housing in luxury apartments with amenities with no match, and with transit infrastructure closer to office. This was and always will remain very expensive in any economy on earth let alone Chennai.
It will take more or less the same in any major city in the US. Most Indians think if they land in the US, all problems will vanish in thin air, milk and honey will flow from now. While what really happens is all your problems remain as is, except that you get a little better roads.
Please take a good look on all housing related threads on this forum, young people in western economies have it way difficult than any of us.
And how do you get to the city? Through the non-existent highways? Or maybe the congested public transportation, if any? Besides which, I don't know about you, but my parents could not afford a house until I was in high school. And even after buying the house, they still could not live in the house (because of aforementioned problems with commuting).
> The issue is most of us want housing in luxury apartments with amenities with no match, and with transit infrastructure closer to office. This was and always will remain very expensive in any economy on earth let alone Chennai.
Please stop projecting your opinions on others. The demand I see is mostly for livable quarters at reasonable distances with basic amenities and some expectation of privacy... which seems to be too much to ask in any of the major cities.
> It will take more or less the same in any major city in the US. Most Indians think if they land in the US, all problems will vanish in thin air, milk and honey will flow from now. While what really happens is all your problems remain as is, except that you get a little better roads.
I don't know where you're getting these ideas from. Better roads yes, but also: better work-life balance. Decent compensation. Reasonable vacation time. Great career prospects. The prospect of living and working with people from different cultures (not just American, but from many other countries as well).
> Please take a good look on all housing related threads on this forum, young people in western economies have it way difficult than any of us.
Again, please stop projecting your ideas/views on the rest of us.
>>The demand I see is mostly for livable quarters at reasonable distances with basic amenities and some expectation of privacy... which seems to be too much to ask in any of the major cities.
But based on what you just wrote you can relocate to pretty much any city on earth and these problems would barely change. While in US most of my colleagues who had homes lived in far suburbs. This is a international trend. Places close to office had insane rents. And from what I learn property taxes are quite high in California and Texas where most of our desi dudes stay.
This is not a US vs India issue. This basically how demand and supply economics works.
>>better work-life balance. Decent compensation. Reasonable vacation time. Great career prospects. The prospect of living and working with people from different cultures (not just American, but from many other countries as well).
Again all of this is possible if you have an expensive STEM degree. Take note that they are good deal of US citizens who work on minimum wage. There is likely nearly everyone who works for $60K or less. Tech and Medical workforce that comes from India is really like people landing into good salaries at the very start. This could all change if the persons very kids don't get a STEM degree.
I understand that for most people making these immigration decisions its very hard to reconcile with these things.
First step towards change and improvement is to accept the need for it. IMO.
But sir, If you have been out of India for ~15 years now, you are now totally out of touch about ground realities in India. Also it takes far more to get decent health care and housing in US than it takes in India. Apart from this you have the added advantage of a social circle in India in case of death, disease and debt which is totally absent in US.
In most US coastal cities(Only places where can make a decent career) rents are high, and affording a home is basically 2-3 decade venture. And after all that you still have to struggle for your retirement fund and health care during old age.
India has a lot of vacuum as a developing economy for both investments and a long term career.
Also this whole corruption issue is sometimes overplayed. The last time I dealt with a government office for anything was passport office where no bribes were paid, not even to the police who came for verification.
Political, economic and social climate in India is undergoing huge upgrades every decade and anybody who stays abroad for 10+ years essentially would have lost all context about things back home.
India has grown by leaps and bounds. Opportunities compared to what was 15-20 years back aren't even comparable now. Unless you come and live here, you wouldn't have a clue. Calling and talking to relatives won't give you a good idea. They think you are living in heaven, this perspective exists because NRI's send pictures of vacations and their cars and people in India think its all coming either for free or through magic.
I have faced this issue too. People think all they have to do is land in US and pretty much all their issues are solved without doing anything at all. Most people staying in India haven't a clue about life in US. They have never heard about how expensive higher education is, or health care for that matter. They do not realize what it takes to have a mortgage in a place like Bay Area. They haven't heard of minimum wage. They don't know how strict tax laws are. They don't even know how few options their kids have in life if they don't get into STEM branches. This along with harshness of what can happen to your dependents should something happen to your life. Without a strong social circle all these things are hard and set back life for dependents.
Most people, aspiring to come to US are thinking on the lines of Disneyland and Yosemite. And at best the US 101 freeway.
Plus I see this whole thing among NRI's about wishing bad things to happen to India and overplay things about conditions in India to make their own decisions look good. Its sad.
I have lived in US and India. Things are just going full hyper in India. Things might not be same as US, but its no longer the binary 1 or 0 it used to be in the pre-2003/90's era.
Things can become violent at any time even in big cities. Just look at Bengaluru etc situation now due to Cauvery issue. It has already caused Rs 22000 crore worth of loss.
Same in US too right?
Its not like everyone works at Wall Street and drives Rolls Royce. You don't hear about these things in US simply because you haven't set up a family big enough there. Whoever is in US would have generally come on tech work or Medical degree, which are paid well in the US. Other people especially in Non-STEM branches, are basically the equivalent of people you talk about it in India. And please don't even have me start on inequality in the US.
And small businesses in US are not like in India. So most of that population in US works at Warehouses and Walmart sort of places.
>>Everything is so much expensive when compared to their rupee income.
Food is relatively expensive in India(Based on inflation figures). Otherwise higher education is far more expensive in US and student debt takes a good few years to climb out of. Housing in any major US city is a 2 decade mortgage undertaking. And retirement with health care(even other wise) is very expensive in the US.
>>Things can become violent at any time even in big cities. Just look at Bengaluru etc situation now due to Cauvery issue. It has already caused Rs 22000 crore worth of loss.
And you talk of Law and order situation, shooting incidents at schools in US are everyday news these days.
Things are no more the binary they used to be.
Also as some one who has lived both in Bangalore and Bay Area, I know well to understand cities matter in the sense if you are in the middle of all the action chances of progress and growth are higher. Or your long term competitiveness and career will likely suffer.
Sure some hipster culture exists in the Bay Area, but for all of it. There is a lot of good work in Bay Area, and I think if you are in tech and are an immigrant you must absolute stay there.
But there are the daily annoyances like even having to have the police come to verify you live somewhere. Having to get X, Y, Z documents and then waiting for them to get stamped for basic services.
On the other hand transferring money to other person's bank account is actually easier and cheaper than in the US.
If anything these checks are harsher in other countries than in India.
for example, because president of your (my) country is a dictator.
that ain't american dream, that is american reality. you can try to do better than that
If you have trouble immigrating to US, you should checkout Canada or 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.
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".
Think about the influence the exodus of the Soviet Union's best and brightest had on the U.S. The influx of that massive brain power had tangible consequences. It wasn't the first time this had happened: many of very bright scientist and engineers fled (or were "paperclipped") to the U.S. during/at the end of WWII.
For the U.S. in general, this was a windfall and it was a direct consequence of dire conditions in Europe. The newcomers crushed anyone not at the same level who was getting by fine hitherto, many of whom quit academia altogether.
Think about all the people trained for free as M.D's or engineers in other countries who are not able to find jobs for lack of degree recognition in the U.S. and are forced to work as nurses or paramedics or jobs for which they are overqualified which effectively raises the bar. The U.S. and several countries are getting talent that was subsidized by other states.
But it also works, slightly differently, within the same country. If unemployment is high, many qualified people are forced to take menial jobs. For employers, this is a windfall. There was a manager in Courchevel on TV that could hardly hide his joy about the economic conjecture. He was showing the news crew the résumés of people applying for unqualified jobs. People with college degrees in STEM, speaking many languages. For a place at a high-end resort like that, snatching people like that with the same pay an average person would get is a very good deal.
It hurts people who are not yet established in their careers, and some people who are but are unwilling to evolve. Recent graduates must hit the ground running jumping from a truck going a 100mph.
In principle, I'm also for pretty much unrestricted immigration but that's politically ... difficult. It may also be practically difficult.
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.
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.
Legally, any person who is not a citizen (including a legal immigrant who has not yet been naturalized) is an alien in this country.
Meanwhile, my wife's family came over to Oregon on the wagon trains. Almost all her grandparents, cousins, etc. live within a few hours' drive in Oregon and Washington. If you drive along the pacific coast highway, you'll pass a scenic overlook named after her family, marking where their homestead was before the government took it to build the highway. You can see the lighthouse where her ancestors were lighthouse keepers.
America is probably the most welcoming place in the world for immigrants, but that doesn't change the fact that immigrating means basically severing yourself from your roots to come live in a very different country. Many people would not make that sacrifice if they had adequate opportunities in their own homeland.
Do you mean having pets at all? I'm pretty sure that's not at all unique to Americans; most dog breeds I've heard of came from Europe or Asia.
Personally, as an American, I don't understand why so many people love dogs so much either, but not all Americans are dog people. We're basically divided into a few different camps, the biggest two being "dog people" and "cat people" (I'm the latter). There's a few other weirdos out there: "bird people" are the strangest. And definitely stay far, far away from any "horse women" (trust me on this one: do NOT date a woman who loves horses!).
Anyway, in all seriousness, pet ownership is not a uniquely American phenomenon by any means. Having cats as revered pets goes back to ancient Egypt, after all. And to my knowledge, having dogs as pets goes back to the stone age.
I think you're been paying too much attention to some small group of Americans and assuming they represent them all. I can't really speak for Millenials and their dogs vs. kids attitudes, but a lot of people do have dogs, but again I don't think it's unusual; Europeans have kept dogs as pets for millennia.
The helicopter parenting, OTOH, is an epidemic in America these days. Now it seems kids under the age of 10 can't go anywhere alone without the cops being called and parents getting in trouble for "child abandonment". It certainly wasn't like that when I was that age in the 1980s.
And dogs are kept as pets everywhere (including Bangladesh, where I am from), but don't feature as prominently in peoples' lives. My Facebook feed is full of pictures and comments about peoples' dogs. People let their dogs sleep in their beds, favor restaurants with outdoor seating so they can bring their dog along, etc.
Also, I'd sincerely like to know how they deal with employees who are allergic to dogs. Not to mention dogs shitting in the office, barking, getting in fights with other dogs, etc. Pit bulls in particular are infamous for attacking and killing other (smaller) dogs, and of course some "pit bull advocate" is going to insist on bringing her pit bull to work to prove to everyone how "sweet" he his, and then act shocked when it kills her coworker's Chihuahua, and worse she'll blame the Chihuahua owner somehow. Honestly, letting people bring dogs to work is one of the stupidest company policies I've ever heard of.
You're not going to get much of an argument from me about dogs; I honestly don't know why people like them so much. But as I said before, I'm one of those "cat people", so of course I'm not going to understand why people want to have a big, smelly, slobbering animal around that can't even figure out how to take a shit in a relatively clean and hygienic manner. Cats are far more sensible pets: they're smart enough to always crap in a litter box where it's easily managed, they're small (even the rare huge breeds aren't over 20 pounds or so), they don't smell (because of their fanatical cleaning habits and the chemistry of their saliva), and the only downside is the dander is an allergen to some people. You can even get automatic litter boxes these days which make the bathroom part really, really easy.
But I do think you're overblowing things a lot. As I said, I've never seen a workplace myself that allowed dogs (I never worked at Google, just like most of the nation; their ridiculous interview process keeps most qualified people out anyway), and I very rarely see a restaurant that allows them at all, in or out, or where people have them. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I saw someone with a dog at a restaurant, except for one time about 6 months ago inside a Panera where a guy had his service animal (which is something entirely different; very few people get those; I'm pretty sure this guy was visually impaired IIRC). The main places I see these dog-lovers out in public with their dogs is on hiking trails, at parks, etc.
Don't forget that Facebook is not a good way to judge peoples' lives. FB is infamous for having people post all kinds of crap on there trying to show how wonderful their lives are and one-up their friends, and it's driven a lot of people into depression because they see all these happy, smiling pictures. Real life isn't like that; what you see on FB is a tiny non-random snapshot or worse an act, or the shameless self-promotion of a vocal minority. Of course, all the dog proponents who can't spend 30 seconds without thinking about their dog are going to post a bunch of crap about dogs and their dog and how wonderful dogs are and "look! here we are going somewhere with our dog!" and "this restaurant sucks!! they wouldn't let us bring our dog in!!", and you see this and now you're thinking the whole country is like that. My advice: figure out who all these idiot dog-loving people on your FB feed are, and de-friend them, for the sake of your own sanity. Do you really want to see all kinds of dog-related posts on there every time you log in?
I am one of those people who think animals should have rights. I know it's crazy, but it just how I feel.
I had a girlfriend move out because she didn't like my Bull Mastiff's period. She told me to get rid of the dog, or I'm leaving. I literally packed her bags. She had her own apartment, so she wasen't homeless. You would not believe the words she yelled at me. "You love that dog more than me--you a-hole!" Me, "Maybe?"
I didn't think it was an American thing. I guess I just didn't think about it.
(I will say this; I sometimes think family bonds are tighter in other countries. I don't know? I've seen some nasty immoral acts--akways over money in the United States. I loved animals way before I realized how immoral certain family members were though.)
Every one has their own axe to grind based on what they want out of life. But this is plain ridiculous. Discrimination exists on every country on earth.
Every one who is following US elections and speeches from a particular candidate knows what is happening there. Racism has and may be will always exist due to identity consciousness among humans.
On an average US probably has the same levels of this sort of racism as much as there is in India.
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.
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.
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.
America definitely does not need more H1B workers.
He mentions two mains things in his post: 1. Give a path of Green Card to entrepreneurs.
2. Do not bound h1b employees to current jobs. Right now US is allowing quasi slavery by bounding workers to their jobs and making it really difficult to switch. If employers couldn't enslave h1 workers it wouldn't be economically viable for them and they are get lot less h1 workers.
I have worked at startups all of my career, built the biggest social network to come out of India, built another startup, sold it to Dropbox, currently head the innovation group at a Fortune 15. All I want to do is build startups. But on H1 I can't hold majority stake in my own company, and because of my previous experience I don't want to do a startup again on h1.
It will take me 20 years to get a Green Card on EB-2. I am trying for EB-1 but even with my background it will be difficult. If I don't get a Green Card by next year I will move out of US.
I am also discouraging any Entrepreneurs I know in India against a move to US.
I sincerely hope that the situation improves.
If you have probed this possibility already, what is the evidence that speaks against you reaching EB-1A status? I assume making three out of the ten categories won't be problematic, but I myself am unclear about qualitative judgments in totality.
What I do know is, that the many EB-1 grantees from any YC batch were decimated to 50% sometime around 2014.
However I have significant resources at my disposal right now, which many other entrepreneurs wouldn't have - supporting the point raised by Vivek Wadhwa. If I had a Green Card, I wouldn't have sold to Dropbox and would be doing running a startup right now :)
Didn't quite understand your last line. Did it mean that 50% of YC batch applicants for EB-1 got it?
Thanks once again!
> Did it mean that 50% of YC batch applicants for EB-1 got it?
That was unclear of me. Actually, the ratio of granted vs. rejected applications dropped by around 50% (from a discussion in Feb this year). Thus, I don't know how many applied for in total in a typical cohort.
Based on your last line, I guess number of granted have gone down.
Doing all I can to get EB-1 EA. Let's see how it goes.
> The world’s entrepreneurs used to dream of coming to Silicon Valley because it was the innovation capital of the world and there were few opportunities elsewhere. This is no longer the case, as I learned during my recent trip to New Delhi. There are start-up incubators sprouting up all over India, and the quality of the start-ups is second only to those in Silicon Valley and China, which are running head to head.
You could argue that China is possibly #2 but how is India any where near #3? What has come out of India in the last decade besides the export of some good talent?
One other thing most people don't realise is that life on an H1 is shit. You have to do a shitload of paperwork. You have to answer stupid questions when entering US. You have to answer stupid questions at Consulate when getting Visa. There is a lot of paperwork and uncertainty when you are changing job. No one should be stuck on h1 for 20 years. I did my 6 and am looking to get out next year if I don't get a Green Card by then.
With Indian companies, most are operating in Indian Market, are nowhere close to saturating Indian Market. I expect quite a few of them to be worth 10B or more.
http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...
No, the optimal number of H-1B visas is zero, because the concept is fundamentally and irrepairably flawed.
Wadhwa isn't a real academic. He doesn't have a doctorate. His academic appointments are "entrepreneur in residence" or some other vague affiliation like that. He's mostly a pundit, writing for the Washington Post and the WSJ.
No one is at the top forever, that includes the US.
Before WW1 and WW2, US was indeed a 2nd tier nation but they were quite happy.
And don't forget, corporate masters are everywhere, not just in US.
The turmoil in Eurasian continent and Population explosion in Africa when you compared to improved peace in Americas. I will bet by shirt on Americas in general and USA in particular. No, Sir China is not going to touch US in military terms during my life time and probably have some economic benchmarks they may dominate but per-capita will suck. For all the hew and cry, China is middle-income nation with 17 neighbors, Middle East even with Petro-dollars in basket case, Europe is demographically falling and struggling with Immigration.
America will remain the power to reckon for next 50 years if not more.
Most people believe that the US will always have the better fighter planes, the better missiles, or the better tanks. In reality, we are about to be parity. They will be stronger in some aspects, we will be stronger in others.
If you don't believe me, go check out the Chinese J-20, J-31 aircraft. Their DF-41 ICBM. The Type-99 tank.
They have been catching, and fast. They already have some systems that are better than ours. They also have twice as many soldiers/sailors/airmen/marines.
Source: Former Intelligence Analyst.
But if I you were interested in countries and power, I would not focus on J-20 or J-31 but the current purges and anti-corruption drive in China. The most interesting question about China in 2035 is, how will communist party hold power now on.
I don't know where you're getting the notion that the Chinese navy doesn't compare to Japan, because its stronger/larger in every measurable way. Are you accounting for the 30+ ships the Chinese navy has been building every year recently? I would agree with that statement six years ago.
You are absolutely correct: The most interesting question is can they sustain their current output. Will the party hold up?
Economic battles are fought through puppets (Syria, Iran/Iraq, Koreas, etc.), not between the major powers themselves, thanks to nuclear proliferation.
China has more basic problems, their coastal provinces are prosperous and their interior is not, and they have their own centrifugal forces. Long story short, you are overestimating america's problems and underestimating China's problems.
The only people that truly believe the US is in decline are Trump voters, neoliberals, and survivalists.
It couldn't be that there is an idea you MUST be in California and by and large remote work is not offered?
This is not an innovation. Not every change is an innovation. In fact, this is the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I intend on never buying an Apple product again.
There are a huge number of niche, speciality phones, such as phones with extra many SIM-slots - max I've seen is five - extra large batteries, up to 10,000mAh - extra rugged - huge extra antennas - water proof - models with walkie talkie functionality, and many other special purpose models. This is the advantage of reference designs that get copied and adapted over and over cheaply, allowing tons of different companies to churn out variations cheaply.
Given that, I'm sure there will be ones with wired headphone connectors for a very long time.
USB Type-C, if they were so inclined.
USB Type-C has provisions for putting audio directly onto auxiliary pins exactly for this purpose.
However, I suspect most won't get rid of the standard audio jack without a good reason.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4nsp5p/usb_type_c_... [2] http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ [3] http://i.imgur.com/y6xCS9u.png [4] http://www.anandtech.com/show/10273/intel-proposes-to-use-us...
Also, not sure that putting two cameras on a phone and removing the headphone jack is exactly innovation. Those seem more like features. The Internet and mobile devices are real innovation imo.
Bill Gates says that people overestimate what will happen in two years, and underestimate what will happen in ten years. It's easier to see that looking back.
For you younger people ... you see, Nokia was a company that made excellent phones that almost no other company could touch, and then ...
Brilliant move on their part, and I wouldn't trade my google maps for anything. But I miss the hell out of my blackberry email to this day.
To be fair, that was a trend long before Apple made phones. To me, it looked like they tried to break that trend but got too much resistance from users who wouldn't pay the upfront cost.
We eliminate the Tata-style H1B abuses and actually make H1B for TOP talent and not cheap talent, then those future Einsteins can come to the US. Your average "top talent" isn't going to work for Tata or Infosys. They're going to apply directly or they're going to be recruited.
Ted Cruz proposed at $100K minimum salary for H1's. Not a bad way to solve this problem. $100K is nothing for actual top talent, but it certainly means that the incentive to outsource low level IT to H1 companies is much much less.
The problem isn't the lack of talent, it's the lack of companies willing to pay for the talent. You can hire anybody you want if you're willing to pay enough. Start offering $250K for a starting salary for an engineer -- you'll have hundreds of resumes within the hour and probably one or two would be top talent. That same job at $80k -- dozens of resumes and probably not a single one that could be considered top talent.
Top talent is what the O-1A and O-1B are for. We don't need the H-1B for that.
Their point was that much of the talent that helped build the U.S. were skilled immigrants. Likewise, nearly 1/5 of all Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. are founded by immigrants: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2011/06/19/40-per...
Also, your anecdotal evidence is contrary to my experience with H1B co-workers.
Will continue reading the article, but if this is what America thinks is innovation, that's the dangerous thing, not China.
Besides, I'm as patriotic as the next American, but if the Chinese start making better products and we start copying them for a change is that really a bad thing besides some jingoist pride? Letting Chinese companies foot the R&D bill in a few cases would certainly be cheaper. As long as we continue to attempt to compete, and don't throw our hands up because they had chat stickers before one of our American companies.
No, it would be a great thing. Competition is always good, that is practically an axiom of capitalism. I expect serious competition to enhance R+D, not diminish it. No CEO buys back shares or increases dividends when they have a serious competitor. They pour money into R+D, new equipment and strategic acquisitions.
Losing a competition is not so good. History is littered with countries, cultures, civilizations that lost. And I suspect there were many more that are simply forgotten until an archaeologist digs them up!
They were xenophobic. They were sexist. They were racist. They were superstitious.
Disruption happens at the level of nations. The USA has reinvented itself many times before, and will do so again. So far, in the competition between the USA and China, China has moved much more towards a capitalistic, free society than the USA has moved towards totalitarianism.
I'm not stating it is a guarantee. But it is a risk worth taking. And I suspect you agree. And by all means, let's not only end up as an interesting archaelogical dig.
English is the world's dominant language, meaning everyone else has to learn English, instead of the English having to learn Chinese, Polish, Spanish, etc.
The old connections make London a prime financial center, and even that future is questionable given Brexit and the prominence of alternatives like New York and Singapore.
The UK's edge and reach comes from its cultural products. Once the bankers have gone and the techies find better qualities of life away from London's shuttered clubs and the UK's draconian survellience and drug laws, all that's left is James Bond and Harry Potter.
I hope I don't come across as being too pessimistic about England's future, but just as it is in a reasonably good state now, it could just as easily be gearing up for a nasty nosedive.
Still, I love Freedom, so whatever you democratically decide :-)
Not quite. Taken too far it leaves nothing for R&D. Fortunately this tends to balance over time, in part because as margins drop small players are squeezed out, competition cools, and margins stabilize.
In fact, one of the biggest success stories for central planning and protectionism—postwar Japan—involved removing domestic competition for a handful of megacorps to let them charge higher prices, then encouraging them to pool R&D resources so they could Go Forth and Conquer.
So, as nice as competition is, always is an overstatement.
A rough rule of thumb is that a new idea has to be 10x better than the old idea to be worth it. The count of 10x ideas is dwindling.
The project is clearly run by some brilliant ESL techies, who have a truly funky product:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seeed/respeaker-an-open...
I was well chuffed to see fresh ideas. As you say, why does it matter if it comes from a US company ?
China is ahead in biotech, IoT, AR, and a bunch of other areas, and have grown the only serious IaaS competitor to Amazon. The future is here already, much the rest of the world (particularly in the US) has its head in the sand, wheeling out the tired old trope about China being a nation of copycats. If that were ever true, it isn't true anymore.
The H1B visa encourages headcount-think, which is a "policy smell" in tech development. At least some people I've known who've had H1B visas felt it was exploitative.
America has lost an entire generation of entrepreneurs and innovators and bolstered its global competition. That is also why the proportion of immigrant-founded start-ups in Silicon Valley fell from 52 percent in 2005 to 44 percent in 2012 and is probably even lower today.
It's possible that a lower proportion of startups are immigrant-founded because there are fewer immigrant founders, but it's also possible that there may be more native-born Americans becoming entrepreneurs. One can't tell from just this statistic. If the ratio has changed because of an increase in American entrepreneurship, then Wadhwa's argument becomes that it's bad for the U.S. if more Americans become entrepreneurs.
Which is weird. And being an American myself, something I find quite offensive.
The H1-B is supposed to be used only in the case that an American can't be found to do the job. Americans can do IT. Other firms hire H1-B workers to save money using foreigners in place of Americans. Thus the hostility towards H1-B. I think it is highly unlikely that there are even 30,000 jobs per year where American where there is no American to do the job. Some obscure areas of science, for example. In many cases the Americans could be trained to do the specific job.
My great grandparents came over and started a company but I don't recall knowing that they got any preferential treatment coning to this country.
I think the best solution is to decouple the work visa and green card like Canada - and hand over more control to the employees. It will solve a lot of problems!
Canada also does the Labor Market Opinions/US-PERM Certification in the visa phase instead of the Green Card phase in the US - which can theoretically cut down on the abuse of H1-Bs by companies like Disney via. consultancies.
Also, in most of the cases, as I pointed out in my comment, there are Americans that can do the jobs which violates the conditions of the H1-B.
The narrative is also totally inconsistent. Is the problem that foreign entrepreneurs don't want to come to the US at all (what it seems to start with/imply) or that our immigration policies make it exceedingly difficult even when you want to (the truth and meat of the article)? This would be a much better piece if it cut out the bullshit and focused on immigration.
The iPhone 7 has literally nothing to do with foreign entrepreneurs not coming to the US, so why is that the lede? It makes the whole article start on terrible footing.
> There are start-up incubators sprouting up all over India, and the quality of the start-ups is second only to those in Silicon Valley and China, which are running head to head.
Only someone with their head in the sand could actually think this is true. I've spent time in non-US startup hubs, including Chinese ones, and they're definitely not neck-and-neck. Chinese startups might be catching up, but they're still a distant second place by any conceivable metric.
> The reality is that America’s most innovative company is no longer the world’s most innovative company.
Apple might not be the world's most innovative company but I would happily bet that the most innovative companies in the world continue to be in the US.
> As technology designer Himanshu Khanna said, “Why should I move to Silicon Valley when I have a market 10 times as large here?”
By what conceivable metric is the Indian market 10 times larger in general? It's farcical and defies basic economics to say something like that.
The US has a secret weapon for solving its growth problems: let more people in. Is there any country in the world apart from the US that chooses to refuse a long line of highly qualified people looking to come and pay taxes?
For example if China does well in say for example solar research an article always seems to come out that this spells doom for the US.
I want all of the world to improve and firmly believe "the rising tide lifts all boats".
The natural state of the US - with "a moat the size of two oceans" - was isolationist for almost all its history, prior to WWII. Perhaps that's again a rising idea.
And some of the writing on this subject is simply propaganda-ish.
This being said, if I were, say, from India, it would bug me that I have to emigrate to innovate. Why should this be?
Well, the US built more universities, which have lead times in decades. Okay, so send kids to school there, then make it to where they can practice back at home.
Half of Kenyan-trained doctors live and work outside of Kenya. That represents a multi-million dollar direct cost just in the governmental and societal resources used to train those doctors, and a much larger cost to society of the limited health care infrastructure thanks to a loss of so many workers.
The solution IMO is very simple: open up easy immigration path to USA for those with advanced degrees (MS/PhD in science/technology) from world's accredited universities. Thats it!
Attract top talent! Start today! Not throw it away to your tomorrows competitors. Build better society/economy here in USA using help and labor of educated people who are eager to come here to build better lives for themselves and ultimately the entire country.
People still want to come here despite even this shifting tide - the reason again simple - it is still one of the best place to live and work (there are plenty of other countries in Europe and outside of Europe as well), despite all the problems that USA has (like any country).
Do not wait until we have to beg people to come here, because by then it will probably be too late.
AKA How to create diploma mills in one easy step.
no, there should be a list of accredited universities - problem solved! (Insead, MC Gill, Oxford, MSU, UCL ... top schools !) If USA can steal that kinda of talent on a routine basis, can you imagine the things we can do for the economy/politicies/society?
Create a list of best ranked foreign universities and make an easy path for their graduates to come to USA / look for work / start families and and eventually naturalize if they want to.
USA should really use the opportunity where Europe and other parts of the world are unstable and they have a pool of good brains/talents looking to potentially escape those places.
Look at Russia for instance - they lost top brains in science in the late 80-90's due to instability in the country. Where are these guys today? Running science labs at universities/companies in USA/Europe and all over the world. Where is Russia today? Completely screwed and not able to replenish the talent pool. Do you think they do not wish today that they had paid their professors or grad students a bit more than 10$/month to keep them from leaving the country back in the 90's?
How would history develop if Sergei Brin's family was not allowed to get an entry visa to USA? (personally i do not think that google would exist today here or in russia).
The situation with immigration today is unprecedented. USA is given free golden ticket and it does not want to take it.
At my current startup[1] we are currently locking down a rental agreement on an office and may use the rest of the space (significant) to re-start a local makerspace concept that failed to get enough fiscal traction last year.[2] If anyone out there is working on a hardware project and looking for a low-cost base of operations, we can give you a home. In time I would love to transition to an incubator.
Previously I worked in the US (establishing the first foreign office of a London startup), for the US remotely (new SF-based startup), in the UK, China and Australia. I feel the US has a great ecosystem for investment but this is largely outweighed by hassles on visas, litigation, cost and zero life-stability for non green card holders with families. The UK is simply expensive (also with visa hassles) and other than fintech or UK university-related research spinoffs seems sub-optimal. Australia is very strong on research but overheads, lack of VC and a small and widely dispersed domestic market mean that commercialization remains a bigger hurdle than it needs to be.
[0] http://taobao.com/ [1] http://8-food.com/ [2] http://cave.pratyeka.org/
"I was one of the first to outsource software development to Russia in the early '90s. I was one of the first to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the U.S.A.," Wadhwa says. "Why did I do that? Because it was cheaper." That tactic is even more lucrative for corporations today, says Wadhwa: "When you have a person on H-1B waiting for a green card, you have them captive for six to 10 years."
http://www.cio.com/article/2437741/outsourcing/the-next-wave...
Buying real estate is a hedge strategy. You might as well; productive investment is treated shabbily ( in terms of returns) in this economy.
Sydney has more action than Melbourne, but it's only a half-hour away.
If other countries want to create competing systems in similar markets, fantastic, it can only create more innovation and ideas.
Apple?
But seriously, Apple has done more than Uber has. Uber's function is just a different form of taxi - they haven't changed the way the public behaves. Big-screen smartphones have.
If there was a bigger gap between the iPhone and HTC Dream, you could maybe make an argument that one influenced the other. But that's not really the case.
If it wasn't for the first ride-sharing company like Uber getting successful, we could have very well seen another decade+ of shitty taxi cabs.
According to some people I know (they are all on H1B) typically H1B offer is 10-15% less than average at software big corp such as Microsoft and Google.
Maybe the hiring salary is on par with other engineers, but later on it is easy to never touch this salary since the non-immigrant worker is bound to staying with Google or be deported.
Differences in salary are negligible? Well, then let's give a 10% raise to all engineers employed by Google, would that work?
It's not just about paying H1Bs less than American workers, it's about keeping salaries low for these very workers as well.
A result is that the leadership of these firms are worth tens of billions of dollars in the case of Google (two leaders), Microsoft, Facebook). Instead of sharing the benefit of the "monopolistic rents" the leadership hire H1-B visas and also colluded with each other to keep tech labor rates low.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
Why do people keep repeating this? It's not true. You can totally change employers on an H1 (I've done it twice). It just takes longer; 4 weeks to transfer your visa + 2 weeks notice. Your hypothetical Google H1 has recruiters contacting him/her day and night.
But having a H1B comes with a stigma, not all companies are willing to get involved with a new petition.
And let's burst the myth of the "grace period", it doesn't exist. If you're fired you have literally 24 hours to leave the country. There is no "2 week grace period" to find a new employer. So yes, it is possible to find a new job, but it makes it very difficult to fight back when you're asked to work nights/weekends for example.
The law is that the H1-B is supposed to be used in those (rare) cases where there are no Americans that can do the job. Frequently "the best person to do the job" is loaded with subjectivity. But also, it is against the law.