Indian immigrants are tech's new titans

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It's no secret that parents in India urge their kids to excel in math and science, believing that it's the clearest path up the social ladder.
But education is only part of the reason Indian immigrants are reaching the top executive ranks at major U.S. corporations — most recently Google Inc.'s appointment of Sundar Pichai this week to chief executive. That followed Microsoft Corp.'s promotion of Satya Nadella to CEO last year.
Along with Indian immigrants leading companies such as Adobe Systems, Nokia, Global Foundries and Mastercard, Pichai and Nadella are evidence 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, according to cultural experts and Indian executives themselves.
Such traits are highly valued in the corporate suite, not just in the U.S. but at any global corporation.

Mix in India's ongoing cultural chaos, which, for those who survive it, offers real-life lessons in cooperation, teamwork and leadership, and experts say it makes sense that executives might emerge, capable of steering a sprawling workforce through rapid change.
"A very strong educational base and technical skills are key to many parts of the tech ecosystem," said Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems. "Strong entrepreneurial skills and work ethic ... and growing up and dealing with scarce resources give the Indian community an advantage."
It's not just top executives, either. There are 89,000 Indians living in Silicon Valley, according to the Migration Policy Institute, with most of the families involved in the tech industry. Another 86,000 Indians live in San Francisco and Oakland.
Many have jumped into the start-up economy. Vivek Wadhwa, who teaches at Stanford and Duke universities and has studied Indian American entrepreneurs, found that by 2012, nearly 16% of start-ups in Silicon Valley had an Indian co-founder even though Indians represented just 6% of the region's population. The figure for Indian start-ups is even higher in some areas, such as business software.
Venktesh Shukla, a venture capitalist and president of the Silicon Valley networking group the Indus Entrepreneurs, said even in the smallest of villages, Muslims live next to Hindus and white-collar professionals next to weavers. Languages, dress and hobbies diverge. Shukla said they were taught to see the "different" people as neither superior nor inferior.

There's another positive sign too. About a third of the 2 million people in the Indian diaspora in the U.S. are children of immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Wadhwa worried a decade ago whether the next generation would be as successful, but he's realizing as his son's generation nears its 30s that they are on a path to be strong performers. Success stories include Indian born but Toronto-raised Apoorva Mehta, who's grocery delivery start-up Instacart has been valued at more than $2 billion by its investors.
"The second generation has the best of both worlds," Wadhwa said. "They have my values yet all the American advantages. They can achieve the same as my generation at much younger age."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-indians-in-tech-20150812-story.html#page=1

 

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One of the reasons for Indian managers' success is that they are future oriented, a leading American financial daily has said, with Google's Sunder Pichai joining the fast expanding club of Indian-origin CEOs.
The elevation of Pichai, 43, as the CEO of Google, The Wall Street Journal reported is a reminder that the CEOs of some of the world's most recognisable tech companies share origins from India.
"Indian managers are future-oriented, and had a paradoxical blend of genuine personal humility and intense professional will," the Journal said, citing a recent study by Southern Hampshire University.
"These leaders achieved extraordinary results and built great organisations without much hoopla," the daily said as it listed out the Indian origin executives that are heading top companies in the US.
"Nowhere, perhaps, is that more starkly on display than at Microsoft. Since taking over as CEO, Satya Nadella managed to achieve what had once seemed impossible: to make Silicon Valley like Microsoft again. He did so by embracing collaboration and not treating rivals products as enemies in some ways the opposite of his often-flamboyant predecessor, Steve Ballmer," the daily reported.
While Indian managers are not in many cases the founders of the companies they lead, they are respected managers who have held numerous positions in their companies, working up the ranks, it said.
Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen, 53, according to the daily, has been described by colleagues as quiet but incredibly competitive. Since becoming CEO in 2007, he has led a dramatic transformation at the company, it added.
Sanjay Jha, the 52-year-old CEO of chipmaker Globalfoundries, had previously run Motorola Mobility and had served for years as a senior executive of Qualcomm, it said.
In another article, The Wall Street Journal said Pichai's ascent reflects his ability to create strong products, including Google's Chrome browser and later the Chrome operating system.
But it also shows his ability to identify competitive pressures, manage others and smooth over differences, both internally and with Google's business partners, it said.
At Google, Pichai showed a flair for championing challenging but strategically important projects such as the Chrome browser, which today has 45 per cent market share globally, according to research firm Statcounter, up from one percent in early 2009.

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/repor...ndar-pichai-s-elevation-as-google-ceo-2113565

 

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[h=1]US grants 86% H-1B visas to Indians: study[/h]Almost 86 per cent of the H-1B visas that the US granted for computer jobs went to Indian workers, a Computerworld analysis analysis of government data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request shows.

Most of those H-1B visa holders work for outsourcing companies, such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). China was far behind on the second place at just over 5 per cent of H-1B visas for IT occupations, and no other nation rose above 1 per cent, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

About 76,000 H-1B visas were issued to people in computer occupations in 2014. IT services companies "apparently cannot get enough Indian programmers, which has little to do with a shortage of competent natives for these types of jobs, but a lot to do with the industry's business model," said Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration.

The outsourcing companies prefer to hire "young H-1B programmers because the visa offers control over this contracted short-term workforce, it permits them to pay less than they would for experienced natives and they cultivate programmers who can better serve their clients after returning home to India", Lowell said.

The numbers are widely different when compared to H-1B visas for engineers, which includes electrical, mechanical, civil, chemical, aeronautical and other specialties.

In that category, Indian workers are still on top with 47 per cent of the visas, or 8,103, followed by China with 19.5 per cent; Canada 3.4 per cent; Korea 2.4 per cent; Mexico, 2.2 per cent; and Taiwan and Iran with 2.2 per cent each, the data shows.

The hiring of H-1B workers has raised concerns after it was reported that some US companies were using IT outsourcing companies to replace their IT shops, leaving American IT professionals out of work.

Some of the US workers had to train their replacements, who worked for IT outsourcing companies.

The issue has led to lawsuits by laid-off IT workers and prompted calls in Congress for an investigation into the use of H-1B visas. Lawyers for the outsourcing companies have said there is no requirement for a foreign company doing business in the US to employ US workers. The companies are only required to comply with immigration laws.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/494823/us-grants-86-h-1b.html