Back to India

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.<p>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 &#x2F; bad tech regulation &#x2F; gambling. VCs are pouring money here because where else can they go? China? Middle East? How long will it last? Who knows.<p>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.<p>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.

<i>&gt; the insane opportunities available in India now [3].</i><p><i>&gt; India’s rising startup and tech wave</i><p><i>&gt; Massive switch from wealth accumulation mode to wealth creation mode.</i><p><i>&gt; And the amount of VC funding in India combined with the startup ecosystem’s energy here is absolute fire </i><p><i>&gt; The collective risk appetite has never been higher. </i><p><i>&gt; The step after the ‘American dream’ is the ‘Indian dream’.</i><p>This is great to hear about India. The more developed and economically successful the world’s largest democracy is, the better for the world in general. The US, Europe, and allies should be doing whatever we can to support this.

I just wanted to point out I loved the fact the op used expat to describe his status in the US and not immigrant. I’ve always hated we had two different words to describe the same thing.

If solving problems create opportunities for new ventures, that is what the smart people should do instead of piggy backing on technologically stagnated big corporations. Developing countries may have significantly less quality of life in general, but there have always been a class of people enjoying life no less than anyone in the &quot;first world&quot;, probably more. Simply put developing countries also need amazon, paypal, EV as they develop and adaption of long existing technology is more important than innovation there. So, entrepreneurs from technologically advance (and competitive) countries have even more opportunities to play bigger roles and create significant impact in a society.

Fuck the H1b visa. Yes I understand that we have created a huge GC backlog by immigrating here in large numbers but that doesn&#x27;t mean we should be dragged around like a toy. This is sadly the impression I&#x27;ve formed these days. Our entire lives here revolve around that visa and we could basically be holding on to it for 30 to 50 years before we can get a GC lol. In the meantime, maintaining our driver&#x27;s licenses, being able to enter&#x2F;leave the country, being questioned at the airports, having to constantly renew crap, waiting for eons to change employer, staying disconnected from the family are all common things to expect.<p>To add to this, there are no appointments for Visa Stampings back in the home country because of which many people dropped their travel plans; and USCIS doesn&#x27;t give a damn about it. Life is more or less crippled at this point. Now, would all this still be outweighed by a First World living quality? In the beginning when I was young I used to think &quot;yes&quot;. But I&#x27;ve realized lately that it&#x27;s a big &quot;no&quot;. Days are making me think about my plan to move back out to home country or our peaceful northern neighbor.

It is time real innovation has started in India. India is embracing tech for new fields like agriculture, India&#x27;s fintech is thriving, Indian govt is investing a lot in semiconductor fabs.<p>A lot of people i know moved to US because of huge salary gap. Now that gap has reduced a lot and you can save more in India maintaing same lifestyle.

I&#x27;d imagine moving back to India after being successful in the US gives you lots of leverage and status, in the sense of being a big fish in a smaller pool (what a beautiful irony, thinking of <i>India</i> of all places as the smaller pool, heh).<p>But lets be real, isn&#x27;t the quality of life <i>much</i> worse? I&#x27;ve never been there (or in the US, for that matter), but I&#x27;d imagine that things like infrastructure are far worse in India. Also, the country seems so... chaotic, the cultural shock must be crazy.

My cousin made the same move, though in his case he kept the same employer (for a few years). He’s much happier (in Mumbai, not Delhi).<p>His brother, however, has been in the states for decades and I’m sure will never move back. So there is no magic answer.<p>I keep telling myself I will move back to the country of my birth, but haven’t yet. The work here is too much fun.

Many more folks will be moving to India due the H1B visa regime, and we already are seeing lots of Indians moving in to Berlin Fri the USA.<p>However it becomes harder to move back once you’ve school going kids and want them to have access to world class universities like TUM, MIT, OxBridge etc.<p>Balaji Srinivasan is definitely a big India proponent and his latest session with Shane Parrish was really illuminating.

I returned to India after close to a decade in the US, during which I got a PhD. Loved living there and was fully integrated. But felt like I could make a much bigger impact in India. So, joined IIT Delhi. Good to know about your journey. Drop me an email (in my profile) if you want to catch up over coffee. :)

It continues to be a very exciting time in the pacific. The GDP figures suggest that the mythical &quot;average Indian&quot; almost earns enough money to start accumulating capital and from there building a large middle class.<p>Assuming that India can navigate through the next 20 years peacefully and with sensible economic policy. They&#x27;ve got a much better foundation than China for sustained prosperity; as far as I can tell they have a saner political system.

As a fellow NSIT alum who came back home as well. Welcome back. It been known for a while, that the best place for an Indian to be an entrepreneur is in India, even if your target market is outside the country. Running the gauntlet of immigration regulations is an entirely unnecessary hurdle if you want to do a startup. Just skip it. To be honest the quality of life isn’t notably different for me. Just stay away from Bangalore traffic. I would strongly recommend Kerala to anyone considering returning I live in Chennai, but both Trivandrum and Kochi are excellent places to do a startup. Excellent infrastructure. A reasonably good talent pool and need I mention the sun, sand, and beaches?

&quot;Before I came to America, I thought the streets were paved in gold. When I came here I learnt three things: The streets were not paved in gold, the streets weren&#x27;t paved, and that I was expected to pave them.&quot;, is often shared in context on American dream. No place is perfect, but grass is always greener on the other end.

A friend of mine sent me a link to this article and said<p>&gt; Yugal Raj Jain. He’ll be fine in India.<p>Indians will understand what my friend meant by that.

Okay so I did the same thing in 2012 after being frustrated working with the H1B system for 2 years. In 2013 however I moved to the netherlands for a job and in 2020 I became a dutch national (Actually spent the whole of 2019 in colombia). Now after 2 years of travelling (mostly living in spain) I am moving back to India again and will try Mumbai. I work with us companies remotely and will probably keep doing so and make trips to the US every few months. Cheers and good luck OP :)

This person is definitely very successful in his chosen realm. I would say I personally enjoyed moderate success in US after moving from an academic field to Tech. I moved to India before Covid as there was no realistic pathway to Green Card for me even after so many years (in reasonable timeframe) and I wanted to take a break from typical work and focus on personal life.<p>I actually miss the US a lot and would&#x27;ve loved running a small business instead of some hyper successful startup. Alas not possible in a realistic sense because only way to be there is on the work visa. The reverse cultural shock is real and true even if you work remotely as I do.

I think the author took some good decisions. First going in a different country, learning and getting to know a different culture. Second, going back to his own country and participate in a rising industry, thus laying another brick at the well being of his country.<p>It&#x27;s exactly what I would have done if I were in his shoes. Now it&#x27;s kind of late for me to go work and study in another country. Many of my fellow countrymen do suffer of self hate and at the first chance they go to study or work abroad with the intent of leaving their homeland, even if the economic situation is not bad here. I feel sorry for them.

Actually the place does not matter if you have dreams bigger than the place. Pursue them wherever it makes sense. If your dream is to build a startup go build it. If it should be done in India or Timbuktoo, go do it there. Just because you stay in the US or Europe, doesn&#x27;t mean you can have better dreams. You may be among those who are able to dream better. It may give you better clues as to how to dream compared to India. But hey, in a flat world, you can dream sitting anywhere and go for it wherever you are. It may be a bit harder to do things in India. But without a doubt, the number of problems you can solve in India is far greater than developed countries. In that sense, if you are done with all the Education and stuff and you are reasonably good on finances, India is a lot cheaper to sit and dream and make things happen.

Dude was in MIT, and made a ton of money in Tesla. I dont think moving anywhere is a problem fir this guy.

If someone with this much experience is going back to a third world country leaving it all back then you should know the pathetic state of US immigration.<p>US immigration is not flawed but carefully designed to benefit corporations to have enslaved foreign labor force available on their terms to keep their local labor workforce in check.<p>There is no other interpretation of it. Especially targeting those who born in countries like India who are ready to pay the price to stay in the US.<p>Living in the US is not as great as they make you believe.<p>Subpar experience for anyone from other developed country. So target US as a market never try to live there.<p>Note: I have worked in the US, had enough opportunity to live there but never bothered about it.

Are there ways to solve for this H1B limitations issue? I guess there&#x27;s something called an EB-5 visa if you invest a large amount (around a million) for a business that will hire American workers?

India is great, but the pollution is big cities is intolerable.

The speed at which things are improving in India combined with the restrictions in the covid lockdown has made many rethink their current situation.<p>The lockdown has forced people to their homes with limited opportunities for outdoor activity especially in the winter. Things start to look very different pretty quickly.<p>While it is definitely hot in many parts of India, one can have access to round the year gardening, house help is affordable.

I have always wondered this. In US left wing groups are always outraged about treatment of illegal&#x2F;undocumented immigrants. Why is there no outrage how legal immigrants are being treated in US?

I only lightly scanned this at the moment, but I appreciate the human stories and how our personal development paths and our coding paths interact.

I can relate so much so much with this post, but not because of lack of opportunity. Quite the contrary, I actually won a green card lottery, came from SEA, work as a SWE with FAANG salary. Now I live in NYC, married to a wife (also not from US, but also not from my country), sponsored her to live here with me.<p>Now I am torn, or specifically, we are torn. Our heart is in 3 different countries. These two countries (non US ones) do not recognize dual citizenship, so if we do get US citizenship so that we can leave US and live in other countries, we have to be extra careful.<p>Even when these 2 countries do dual citizenship, the challenge still exists. First, I do speak my wife&#x27;s country of origin language, though not fluent. My wife doesn&#x27;t speak my country of origin language. We both speak English fluently though.<p>What should our kids learn? We currently don&#x27;t have kids but are trying to. We would need to prioritize language learning for our kids more than anything else. We want our kids to be born here, in the US, and they will have automatically 3 citizenships at birth, until they have to choose when they turn 18. I wonder how they will feel if we constantly move around like this? I know military kids and missionary kids feel the same way.<p>On the other hand, if we live US, and work in my country, my salary probably won&#x27;t be as good as US salary, but if in the future our kids want US education, I won&#x27;t be able to afford it. Same with my wife&#x27;s country as well.<p>The reason why I am pondering all of these now, and I&#x27;ve been living in the US for 10 years is because, once an immigrant, always immigrant at heart. US has its good things of course, but other countries as well, and most importantly, family. Family, friends, in which we both still have strong ties with our origin country. Time passes, our families and friends aren&#x27;t getting younger. Money is useless to us, having combined household income of around $500k, but we don&#x27;t enjoy our money. What&#x27;s use is money if we can&#x27;t enjoy it with our friends and families. We live modestly, never go into lavish vacation or lavish things.<p>My wife country is a 1st world East Asian country. My country of origin is a 3rd world SEA country. I&#x27;ve seen that my country is getting better and better, and there are many many, many opportunities back there. Even people from 1st world countries are retiring and creating companies here. 3 years ago I visited, I&#x27;d never imagine in the middle of nowhere while I was eating random street food, 2 foreigners spoke in their foreign language next to me. How, when did this happen. So much growth has happened.<p>I don&#x27;t know, I&#x27;m just sharing here. I think our plan is, we want to make as much money as possible now, and see in 5 years what will happen.

What limitations is the author actually talking about? I don&#x27;t understand