With so many qualified Indian workers coming to the US, why isn’t there more and better paying tech work in India itself? If all workers coming to the US just stayed in India, wouldn’t it have awesome tech companies? Is there just not enough money to be made there? In other words, why do so many Indians seek work in the US instead of using their skills at home? This is an honest question from an American (not too familiar with India), so please don’t take the wrong way.
The pay in India has increased drastically. Also you can hire maids cheaply to cook, clean and for child care unlike here where you have to do everything yourself or pay a large percent of your income to hire help. But the problems I see are pollution, traffic, bureaucrazy, infrastructure, population increase in large cities due to influx of job seekers etc. I dont see a big problem. Going back to India is okay for me, but my preference is to live here.
India is great to retire in a luxury villa community. Cooks, maids, drivers, nanny can all be had for less than $1k. High speed internet is available and Netflix and YouTube are also available along with all the festivals and Uber/ola make it easy to get around. You get the best Indian food in the world there. Majority of Indians love to go to India at least for 1 month a year to have fun and meet friends and family. But working there sucks due to horrible pollution and infrastructure as well as pay. If you want to do your own thing then it is a great option to make money here and go back and do your own thing
Cause tech in India is led by the same American companies like Amazon, Google etc. So, for purposes of career growth and the cutting edge work most end up in HQs of these companies which are based in US. This would have happened the same with China if they did not have the firewall. Without access to outside internet, they had to develop their own version of the companies and the revenue generated mostly stays within the country thereby giving better opportunities in home rather than having the need to move for career prospects.
Further education after Bachelors suck. There is more focus on memorizing vs actually learning in an antiquated system. Most people come here for masters then decide to stay here. 80k Indians with H1B every year is not true. Actual number is lower because they’re distributed to everyone filing. You have two categories of engineers - people with companies like Infosys who come here to work in back office/ support type capacities. Engineers educated here and decide to stay here because of the results only and research based capitalistic culture ( in most cases)
Decide to or struggle hard to stay here?
India produces 1.5 million engineering graduates each year. The H1b visa is issued to around 80,000 Indians yearly (for all fields, but primarily engineering). So just looking at that it's clear to see that the vast majority of Indians do stay in India. Some of the world's largest tech companies are based in India, however the salaries they pay are usually lower than the US and this is one of the reasons the cream of Indian graduates would come to the US. A second reason is greater opportunity. Nowhere in the world is there as rich innovation as around silicon valley. It's a fact and everyone (Indians, Chinese, Europeans, etc) want to be a part of it.
Thanks for the answer. Those numbers give some perspective I had not thought about.
"Some of the world's largest tech companies are based in India." Which ones are those?