Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

I see a large number of bright Indian developers now staying back in country because its almost impossible to get H1B visas (that was actually the case even without Trump and now its getting much worse). This has started interesting trends in India. All of the sudden, now there is VC culture shaping up and I'm seeing lots of Indian developers doing their own startups. Indian newspapers frequently are putting spotlights on these young trailblazers and writing stories of their struggle and triumphs. There are startup events, meet ups and conferences going on virtually every week somewhere. And in fairly short amount of time, India has racked up some huge successes like Ola, Gaana, Oyo, Flipkart with stories to match with their SV counterparts. This scene is very different from what I had known 5-10 years ago where India held massive number of IT professionals but top 10% of talent pool kept getting drained out of the country. Despite having largest number of IT professionals, country was without its top talents and consequently without any products and startup vision. The scarcity of H1B visa had been magical for Indian startup scene and if this trend continues, US software dominance should have contender in future.

As an Indian CSE student, I agree with this. But there's more. The downfall of IT industry, and general decrease in need of IT engineers, is finally decreasing the amount of students joining engineering.

Admissions on avg are 50% of capacity, with many colleges having less 30%. This will lead to closure of many sub-par quality colleges, which I hope will improve overall quality of Indian IT engineers.

This is great to know! I hope this ends up cleaning up the bad colleges, and improving the quality of engineers!

There are still plenty of H1Bs in tech in the US. It is true though that applications from India are very hard now, but that’s mostly because there was a lot of fraud and corruption in that space with Indian outsourcing firms up to no good. When you consider that the excess scrutiny is more than justified.

As for higher end work being done in India, I don’t think anyone doubts there are highly skilled people in India or that there are examples of successful startups, but that’s not where the Indian economy is in regards to tech (hence why the jobs are shrinking). The question is if the Indian tech economy can shift its export product away from low value-add work and that’s a very hard move to make—both because, today, the momentum is in the wrong direction and western firms have had very bad experiences with Indian outsourcing and thus even if they do outsource higher-end work it will likely go to other more up and coming countries in tech.

Your narrative has some flaws. Startup events have been happening in India since past 10 years or so. Ever since Google won the war with Microsoft.

Flipkart was founded in 2007. Ola soon after. This H1B visa issue is more of past 2-3 year issue. Admittedly it will have some impact. But definitely not the narrative you paint.

I know one example: http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/02/news/india/snapdeal-india-ku...

He was denied h1b visa in 2007, came back to India, started a company that created jobs in India.

Thanks for that link, I didn't know that. But in any case, my point is not that H1B can't be an issue for any case. But that Startups scene in India got a boost around 2005-2007, when many companies started, and it was nothing to do with the H1B visa issue. Some failed as well. Guruji the Indian search engine.

H1b visa issue is extreme for immigrants from India, and the rules over the last 15-20 years are to be blamed. Trump administration is only making it worse (for immigrants and crooked employers) by plugging every loop hole and interpreting the laws to the strictest extent.

The last 2-3 years it feels like its become extreme because: 1) Too much noise in media about new POTUS being hard on immigrants 2) A rising US economy means more demand for engineers. So there's more need of engineers, H1b or not. Hence more companies are getting effected by lack of access to such talent.

At the risk of being downvoted until my comment is dead like below, I have to say I agree with muninn_. This is a great thing for India, and it's really unfortunate that the US has been poaching academic and technical talent to their own advantage, and the disadvantage of less well off countries for so long. The brain drain of the US (and the UK and Germany to a much smaller extent) is a real phenomena, and it's especially damaging for developing countries.

It's not like Indian developers are being kidnapped and shipped over on a boat to the U.S. Everyone who comes to the U.S. does so on their own volition, jumping through crazy immigration hoops. It's a free market for jobs, and if in the past Indian (or for that matter Chinese and other countries with a brain drain) companies couldn't complete, well that's their own fault.

Your position seems to be based in an assumption that the issue is competitiveness alone. Another factor is Indian companies like wipro and reliance are buying operations outright in North America.

The ship and kidnapping reference to slavery is in poor taste, It might be easier to get your point across and help people be more open to exploring your perspective if you weren't so easy and loose with colloquialisms that are rooted in something that likely doesn't represent you.

I'll add that the threat of H1Bs have been used as a threatening tool to US employees by US companies.[0] Can't work longer hours for less pay? Reasonably expect your wages to increase with each year? Fine! We'll hire someone from outside.

And generally, when someone takes a criminally low level of pay for their high skill labor, all workers, domestic and international, suffer.

[0] This is the other side of the coin, career American engineers being fired and "forced"(for their severance) to train cheaper Replacements https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff... And Disney is just one example - tons of US companies "clean house" when they get frustrated at a high operating budget.

I hope such hardball tactics will set up those companies to fail at their digital transformation they are undertaking anyways.

All labor, skilled or not, local or not, deserve basic dignity and respect.

The reality sadly is some groups have to work much harder for much less and it is leveraged against not only them, but other groups too.

Seeing freelancer rates worldwide slowly creep up may be a significant of things to come. The cheaper labor is getting g more specialized and expensive.

> All labor, skilled or not, local or not, deserve basic dignity and respect.

I fully agree. I hope these rates increasing will help the talent in this entire industry price itself better.

It has been surprising me how much easier it has been to find remote talent solely on mutually being developers and starting with a foundation of respect (and clear specs). Communicating and working together well is needed especially for remote work.

The problem is that the US has capita available that other countries simply don't. If we follow this trend to it's extreme conclusion we end with a world where one country has all the capital and imports every smart, skilled, or otherwise top percentage person in terms of economic value, to the detriment of the entire rest of the world.

Other countries can obviously incentivize people and startups like the US does, and that may slowly close the culture gap, but the US is already way ahead in capital. It's also hard to justify incentivizing an industry which already makes more than most of a country does via capital injection. When half the country is food insecure, the 2-10th percentile of the country getting handed government money doesn't go over well, anywhere.

Its not a free market for Indian developers coming to US on H1b. Its just high paying shackled visa.

As someone who worked for a long time on H1b (at startups in US), I realized only later how shackled I was compared to even high skilled immigrants from other countries!

I think with tighter immigration restrictions in US and EU, its been amazing to see many product companies popping up in India (instead of just the IT services industry).

US is sitting on a golden egg (of H1b engineers in US). If US makes it difficult for Indian immigrants, sure the immigrants will lose in the short term, but long term it is good for Indian and Indians.

It's interesting you bring up this point.

When I went to college in North Dakota, there was a similar feeling with kids from North Dakota getting technical degrees (computer science, engineering, medical) and then moving to Minnesota and getting jobs there as opposed to keeping that knowledge in state.

There was a real push to try and keep these people from moving to Minnesota. At the time, my three best friends and teammates were all from various parts of rural North Dakota. All ended up with engineering degrees. All said the same thing, "Why would I stay here and get paid $40K when I have a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering, when I can take a job in Minnesota and make $80K?"

this works for every level in India. People from villages move to nearby big towns, cities. and from there to state capitals or tech/business/finance hubs. If ND has no thriving tech ecosystem, whats the point staying there?

I concur. I feel that these H1B restrictions will help India in the long run. Instead of doing some mediocre coding job in the U.S., the same people can stay in India and change the face of the country.

I had also heard that many companies were moving contracts out of India due to the inevitable rise in cost and the existence of other regions willing to work for less. I've no clue how prevalent that is, though. It makes sense and should have been expected. Once a region handles anything (IT, manufacturing, whatever) for awhile, they get more experienced and skilled and start demanding higher rates, so if the low cost was the attraction in the first place, they eventually price themselves out. It is good to hear that India is responding in the right way, by forging their own path rather than relying upon contracts from foreign business. I look forward to see what develops personally (as a US developer)!

This may raise freelancing industry in India as well.

All of the startups started before Trump.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com