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H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

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Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#301
post #26

In the early 1990s when I came here, the prevailing wisdom was that its categorically better to immigrate to the US from India if you get a chance. India was too far back in the tech space, too much bureaucracy, corruption, red-tape etc etc... In the 2020s, the consensus is quite mixed. A lot of people I personally worked with, who successfully got their visas and green cards, have given it all up and gone straight b…

Let’s not forget that all of this only applies if you’re of the “right” religion. There’s a thick glass ceiling in vast majority of Indian professional world if your name sounds a certain way, no matter how good you might be. We like to ignore this facet but on the ground level, this is the obvious reality. Around election time one has to worry whether their family member who has gone out for an errand will return in one piece. Yes I know you might’ve not have to worry about this particular aspect (HN crowd is generally a lot more privileged), but it’s the ground reality for a large number of people. Families will literally take out loans against their entire sum of generational wealth for a mere chance to leave India, that takes pretty strong push factors than just “status” within community. In summary, outside a handful of big cities, and if you belong to the “right” religion, life is incredibly rough for the majority. There is simply no comparison when choosing to plant one’s roots in India vs a western country. It’s great to visit, but not to build a family life. Yet.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#302
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sure, let's go ahead and facilitate the 2nd biggest decision of your life (country you work in) by compromising on the biggest decision (marriage) of your life. While dating across cultural groups to find the one, is rewarding in its own right , being that materialistic with your choice in partner is probably going to make for shaky foundations of a relationship.

> by compromising on the biggest decision (marriage) of your life. I don’t see how that’s a compromise though? The cultural expectations are just different for folks from India: no parent from France is expecting their kid who decided to move to another country to be with a French person, and 90% of immigrants from India end up marrying another immigrant from India, even if they more to the US in their early twenties…

I don't think this matches standard wisdoms.

Culturally, 'Western Europe + USA' are more similar to each other than Indian sub-cultures among themselves. In most cases you are interacting with other white people coming from christian cultures. Even the People-of-Color that white people do date tend to be deeply integrated into western culture to the point where they're more culturally white than Indian.

In terms of cultural exchange, most of the effort to integrate is being put in by the Indian. (replace Indian with any non-western cultural group). The extent to which the cultural exchange is unidirectional isn't even funny.

There isn't a lot of great data on this, but limited dating data tells us that it is actually white people (esp men) who have strong intra-race-dating preferences as compared to Asians or Latinos. [1] [2 Table 3]

[1] https://imgix.bustle.com/inverse/be/92/f8/14/fb8b/44a7/9f63/...

[2 Table 3] https://www.mit.edu/~6.s085/papers/racialPreferences.pdf

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapdeal revenue (not profit, just top-line revenue) in 2021 (after 11 years in business): $64 million USD Is that Amazon -like? Amazon was founded in 1994 and AWS was created in 2006, 12 years later. Did Snapdeal launch their own Indian AWS competitor in 2022? How's their revenue growth holding up compared to Amazon? For comparison, my own 4 person e-commerce startup had ~$6.4 million in revenue in 2021 with gross m…

Are you converting currency?

According to this: https://groww.in/ipo/snapdeal-ipo That's correct... just under $64MM in top line revenue. I don't think this counts as a unicorn.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#304
post #26

In the early 1990s when I came here, the prevailing wisdom was that its categorically better to immigrate to the US from India if you get a chance. India was too far back in the tech space, too much bureaucracy, corruption, red-tape etc etc... In the 2020s, the consensus is quite mixed. A lot of people I personally worked with, who successfully got their visas and green cards, have given it all up and gone straight b…

be careful generalising india because anything that one can claim, the opposite is also true. A major reason countries like the USA and the UK flourish is stability. Stability is not something india has and that is a very difficult thing to put a price on. Indian capital markets are not transparent though that is less of an issue for startups. What should be telling is the number of "Indian" startups that are registe…

> The US healthcare system - for all its flaws - has some of the best outcomes provided you have enough money to access it.

If you're going to use the qualifier "provided you have enough money to access it", then Indian healthcare is equivalent or better depending on the illness.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#305
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 500+ LC. Kids just stay at home grinding LC all day. There are dedicated youtube channels in Hindi & other regional lang telling you how to dynamic program, backtrack, div & conquer, two pointer....its a whole different scene. That's because it is a deeply rooted culture/attitude of the people in India (or other developing countries): intellectual one-upmanship (i.e.: my "brain" is bigger than yours). Nobody wants…

How exactly does an American keep up with this level of intellectual one-upmanship ? This was on my linkedin timeline today - https://imgur.com/a/dLpo9G7

Why do Americans have to keep up with that?

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#306
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

be careful generalising india because anything that one can claim, the opposite is also true. A major reason countries like the USA and the UK flourish is stability. Stability is not something india has and that is a very difficult thing to put a price on. Indian capital markets are not transparent though that is less of an issue for startups. What should be telling is the number of "Indian" startups that are registe…

> their healthcare system is cheap but kills millions every year due to medical negligence. This is a problem money can solve though. If you have the money, you can get pretty good medical care in India. "cheap but kills millions" isn't really a problem faced by most people who have the money to afford it. > The US healthcare system - for all its flaws - has some of the best outcomes provided you have enough money to…

90%+ of Americans have health insurance of one form or another

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#307
post #287
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sponsoring an employment based GC takes considerably more time than filling for an H1B. We're talking at best less than a year for an H1B (filling in April and you receive it in October of the same year) vs 18 months minimum for an European (10+ years for an Indian). I actually got my H1B at my 2nd try. I did not get pick at my 1st try and had to wait until next year but it went quite smoothly. However for my…

I'm not an immigration lawyer but you don't need to have the GC in hands to start working for your employer. You usually get a work permit quickly after the petition is filed. I used to work with someone whose visa was about to expire so the company just filed a GC to keep her. That being said, I feel like these things change all the time. When people describe the current H1B process it always seems completely differ…

The work permit (I-765) does not allow you to enter the US, only to work when already legally in the country (for example, via an H-1B). And neither does the re-entry permit / advance parole (I-131) let you enter, unless you obtain it while in the US.

And those documents can anyway only be applied if already in the country, and once your I-485 is current and I-140 is approved, which for Indians/Chinese/Filipinos means a >10 year wait, and for everyone else means a >1 year wait while PWD, PERM and I-140 process. Large companies can shorten the PWD/PERM wait a bit, but that does little for the backlogged countries and those not already inside the US.

There is no _realistic_ employment based path to a greencard that does not go through a non-immigrant visa.

Also, the work permit processing times have been extremely backlogged over the past year. It is getting better, but I have personally seen a greencard arrive after about a year recently, and the corresponding work permit arrive a week _later_ (useless, by then).

And if you look at large scale statistics available in immigrant communities, you can see approvals are all over the place, with no rhyme or reasons - some people get it in months, for some it takes years. There is no predictability.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#308
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

O1 visas are for skilled workers without getting tied to a company. But you have to be really skilled!

You don't have to be all that skilled (depending on the field). You do need the money to self-petition though. Many pretty average people use the O-1.

I don't know of a single tech worker who could get an O-1 without a top PhD.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s tough because many of our societal problems are only exacerbated by population growth, especially in the areas where these types of workers tend to congregate. Highly skilled workers don’t go to the Midwest or the deep south. They go and drive up rental prices in New York and San Francisco, where the jobs are. Well the first order effects of having a more skilled in competitive work for us are good, the second o…

There are enough immigrants in Des Moines to have a Hindi temple. Immigrants go everywhere, nnot just your little corner

Obviously there are immigrants everywhere the US is an immigrant nation.

Re: H1B rejected – builds unicorn back home

#310
post #26

In the early 1990s when I came here, the prevailing wisdom was that its categorically better to immigrate to the US from India if you get a chance. India was too far back in the tech space, too much bureaucracy, corruption, red-tape etc etc... In the 2020s, the consensus is quite mixed. A lot of people I personally worked with, who successfully got their visas and green cards, have given it all up and gone straight b…

Aside from the same far right nationalists making headway in authoritarian, it probably would be great

I haven't tracked Indian politics, but they are comparing India with the US here. After Trump, you think India could be doing worse? That's saying something.
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