FOBs and ABCDs:
Pichai and other Indian-born individuals in Silicon Valley are often referred to as "FOBs" (Fresh Off the Boat) by American-born Indians. FOBs return the "affection" by calling American-born Indians "ABCDs" (American Born Confused Desis). For those unfamiliar with the Indian vernacular, Pichai's first name Sundar means beautiful. All joking aside, it's a matter of great pride and joy to Indians and other immigrants for one of their own to be picked to head an iconic Silicon Valley tech giant.
 |
| Google Revenue Growth Slowing |
Google Revenue Growth:
While Google continues to generate billions of dollars in cash, its revenue growth is clearly slowing. Google's revenue growth has halved in a year-- from 22% annual growth in Q2/2014 to 11% in Q2/2015. The trend is clear: High growth can not be sustained as new social media competitors like Facebook and Twitter grow to target the same ad market.
 |
| Boston Consulting Group's Market Share vs Growth Matrix |
Cash Cow Management:
It seems that Google founders Brin and Page have decided to delegate the tending of the cash cow called Google to Pichai. This will free up the founding duo to focus on investing in new ideas to grow other large high-growth tech businesses in the future as Google's ad revenue growth continues to decline. It's a well-known concept first documented by Boston Consulting Group in a matrix with four quadrants: Stars, Dogs, Cash Cows and Question Marks.
Difficult Transition:
Other high-growth tech companies have found this transition from a cash-cow to new high-growth products very difficult. Apple did well with the PC business but almost failed with its decline until Steve Jobs returned with iPod, iPhone and Tablets to reclaim its high-growth trajectory. Intel and Microsoft continue to struggle since the growth of Wintel PCs flattened. It will be a big test for Google founders to manage this major transition.
Summary:
Major reorganization announced by Google today is a recognition of the difficult transition its founders face. With all its talent, Google probably has as good a chance as any tech company to meet this challenge head-on. Brin and Page must continue to focus on hiring and retaining the top talent to pull it off.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Indian-American Satya Nadella Appointed Microsoft CEO
Minorities Are Majority in Silicon Valley
Pakistani-Americans in Silicon Valley
Pakistani-American Shahid Khan in the Richest South Asian in America
Google, Hezbollah and Taliban
First Pakistani-American Tech Billionaire
14 comments:
Well, sir, you must be very proud of Mr. Pichhai and you would have good reason to be. You were one of the pioneers from the subcontinent in the IT industry and without folks like you, Mr. Pichhai success would not have been possible!
Regards
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33861128
Excerpts from New York Times Sept 2013 when Microsoft picked Satya Nadella:
“It is very hard to be a broad-based tech conglomerate,” said David Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School.
“It makes it harder to manage, which is a challenge for Microsoft (applies to Google as well) no matter who the successor is,” said Mr. Yoffie. Long before Mr. Ballmer announced his retirement, he and Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman and co-founder, had both quietly acknowledged that identifying a new leader for Microsoft would be hard. A person who spoke to Mr. Gates several years ago on the subject of succession recalls the Microsoft chairman saying he would support replacing Mr. Ballmer if he could think of someone who could do a better job.
------------
Mr. Sherlund has speculated that Microsoft could give Facebook, with which Microsoft has an existing partnership, control of Bing, in exchange for a share of revenue from the additional traffic it would drive to Facebook’s site. Mr. Sherlund estimates that Microsoft has accumulated losses of more than $17 billion in the search and online business.
Still, while it has sold off or spun out smaller businesses in the past — the travel site Expedia originated at the company in the late ’90s — Microsoft has shown no interest in jettisoning major products.
In its defense, Microsoft notes that its long line of products yields many synergies. Xbox uses a variation of the Windows operating system, while Bing provides search services that are tightly integrated with Windows, Xbox and the Windows Phone mobile operating system.
Further, it could be argued that Microsoft’s competitors are recognizing that, like Microsoft, they need to develop products in areas once considered outside their expertise. Google bought Motorola Mobility to help it get into the hardware business. Apple has been on a start-up acquisition binge to improve its online mapping service. And Amazon, once entirely focused on consumers, has become an important supplier of cloud services to businesses.
Even with those changes, Mr. Yoffie of Harvard said Microsoft’s big rivals are still more focused than it is. “I think the fundamental question for the next C.E.O. of Microsoft,” he said, “is, what is his vision of Microsoft?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/technology/worries-that-microsoft-is-growing-too-tricky-to-manage.html?_r=0
Why Brahmins lead Western firms but rarely Indian ones
https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/01/01/why-brahmins-lead-western-firms-but-rarely-indian-ones
what do the chief executives of Adobe, Alphabet, ibm, Match Group (which owns Tinder), Microsoft, OnlyFans (a subscription service featuring content creators in various stages of undress) and Twitter have in common? All seven happen to be of Indian origin. That is not surprising considering the abundance of subcontinental talent drifting into Western companies: in recent years Indians have been granted well over two-thirds of America’s h-1b visas for highly skilled workers.
But these particular bosses share something else, too. They are all top-caste Hindus. Four are Brahmins. Traditionally associated with the priesthood and learning, this pinnacle of the caste pyramid’s 25,000-plus sub-groups makes up just 50m or so of India’s 1.4bn people. The other three ceos come from castes traditionally associated with commerce or “scribal” professions such as book-keeping. These groups account for a similarly slim section of the pyramid’s capstone: the 30% of Hindus that the government classes as “forward” castes, as opposed to the 70% who fall among such categories as “backward” or “scheduled” castes (Dalits, formerly known as untouchables) and “scheduled tribes”
Dalit Diva
@dalitdiva
(Thenmozhi Soundarajan)
In the grand silicon valley tradition of white cismen passing the torch to Brahmin cismen Jack Dorsey is stepping down and Parag Agarwal is the new CEO of Twitter. Will he also remain silent about Caste? #casteintech
https://twitter.com/dalitdiva/status/1465358123640655875?s=20
Remember Microsoft went from Steve Ballmer to Satya Nadella & Alphabet from Larry Page to Sundar Pinchai. These companies still have caste discrimination while having leadership that is racially diverse but caste priviliged. DEI is the need of the hour. #Casteintech
https://twitter.com/dalitdiva/status/1465358125616152581?s=20
#India's #IIT professor says 'ghosts exist', claims to have driven out 'evil spirits' via chants. Behera teaches Electrical Engineering. He has a PhD from IIT #Delhi. His specialities include #robotics and Artificial Intelligence (#AI) #Hindutva #BJP #Modi https://www.timesnownews.com/the-buzz/article/iit-mandi-director-prof-laxmidhar-behera-says-ghosts-exist-claims-to-have-driven-out-evil-spirits-via-chants/849746
KEY HIGHLIGHTSProfessor Laxmidhar Behera, Director of IIT Mandi, said that "ghosts exists"In a video, he claimed that he went to Chennai in 1993 to drive out "evil spirits" from his friend's house and familyHe said that he chanted holy mantras in his apparent act of exorcism
A video of the newly appointed Director of IIT Mandi, Professor Laxmidhar Behera, talking about his apparent act of exorcism to get rid of "evil spirits" from his friend's house by chanting holy mantras has surfaced online.
In the five-minute video, Behera recalled the 1993 incident when he travelled to Chennai to help a friend who was in distress as his "family was affected by ghosts".
The professor said that he had started "practising the thoughts and wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita" along with chanting the 'Hare Rama Hare Krishna' mantra. He said that he had decided to help his friend to "demonstrate the potency of the holy name", The Indian Express reported.
"So I took two of my friends and reached at 7 pm. He was in a research scholar apartment. After 10-15 minutes of loud chanting, we suddenly saw his father, who was a very short... person, absolutely old, barely able to walk, and suddenly his hand and leg was... he was creating such a ghastly dance and his head is almost touching the roof. You could feel that he is being completely devoured by the evil spirit," Behera said in the video.
He added that the mother and wife of the friend were later "possessed by the evil spirit'. It took them around "45 minutes to an hour" of loud chanting to ward off the "evil spirit", he said.
The video was posted seven months ago on a YouTube channel named "Learn Gita Live Gita". The tagline of the channel is "Project by IITIANS who live Gita."
Behera told IE, "I narrated what I said. Ghosts exist, yes."
Behera is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He has done PhD from IIT Delhi and his areas of speciality are robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy says IITs have become victims to rote learning due to coaching classes
https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/companies/infosys-founder-nr-narayana-murthy-says-iits-have-become-victims-to-rote-learning-due-to-coaching-classes-article-95545869
As more and more students leave India for higher studies, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy proposed that governments and corporates should “incentivise” researchers with grants and provide facilities to work here. “The 10,000 crore per year grants for universities under the New Education Policy will help institutions become competitive", he said.
https://youtu.be/2vzSwExIoNg
Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy on Tuesday expressed concern over India’s education system saying that even the IITs are becoming a victim of learning by rote due to the “tyranny of coaching classes.” Murthy suggested that our education system needs a reorientation directed towards Socratic questioning.
The Infosys founder, who himself is an IIT alumnus, batted for Socratic questioning in the classroom in order to arrive at solutions to real-world issues. “Many experts feel that (in) our country, (there is an) inability to use research to solve our immediate pressing problems around us… (this) is due to lack of inculcating curiosity at an early age, disconnect between pure or applied research," he said.
As to what could be done to solve this, the 76-year-old suggested that the first component is to reorient teaching in schools and colleges towards Socratic questioning in the classroom to solve real-world problems rather than passing the examinations by rote learning. Socrates was a fifth century (BCE) Greek philosopher credited as the founder of Western philosophy.
Speaking at the 14th edition of the Infosys Prize event in Bengaluru, Murthy said that the nation’s progress on the economic and social front depends on the quality of scientific and technological research. Research thrives in an environment of honour and respect for intellectuals, meritocracy and the support and approbation of such intellectuals from society, he noted.
Neither Indian nor Pakistani universities make the top 100 world rankings.
All Indian-American CEOs here have studied in the US and earned advanced degrees in America without which they wouldn't advance.
I bet these CEOs are a lot more rational than most of the Indian grads from IIT or anywhere else in India.
These CEOs wouldn't make it to the top in America if they spewed the kind of hate and bigotry that is the norm in India.
India is about to surpass China as the world's most populous country.
India has overtaken China in terms of the US F-1 student visas issued.
Graduate programs in STEM and business fields at US universities are dominated by Indian and Chinese students.
100,000 Indians and 56,000 Chinese students have been issued US F-1 visa in 2022.
Most Chinese students go back to China while the vast majority of Indian students stay in the US for employment after graduation.
So it makes sense that some of the top Indian students graduating from US universities rise to become CEOs of tech companies.
Hiring for top positions occurs mostly from within the company.
People like Parag Aggarwal, Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai rose to these positions after working at Twitter, Microsoft and Google for many years.
All of them came to the US to study before being hired to work at these tech companies.
The probability of such promotions is a lot higher if there are lots of Indians coming out of US grad schools and working for these companies.
Currently, there are 199,182 Indian students and just 8,772 Pakistani students enrolled in US universities.
https://opendoorsdata.org/data/international-students/leading-places-of-origin/
A third of India's most sought after engineering graduates leave the country
https://qz.com/a-third-of-indias-iit-graduates-leave-the-country-1850522071
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31308/w31308.pdf
Banaras Hindu University saw a 540% spike in immigration among graduates after it was turned as an IIT in 2012
One-third of those graduating from the country’s prestigious engineering schools, particularly the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), migrate abroad.
Such highly-skilled persons account for 65% of the migrants heading to the US alone, a working paper (pdf) of the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has concluded.
Nine out of 10 top scorers in the annual joint entrance examination held nationally for admission to the IITs and other reputed engineering colleges have migrated. Up to 36% of the top 1,000 scorers, too, have taken this path, according to the paper published this month.
In the US, there is a long list of IIT graduates now leading executives and CEOs. However, most immigrants move to the US as students and eventually join the US workforce. The NBER paper found that 83% of such immigrants pursue a Master’s degree or a doctorate.
“...through a combination of signaling and network effects, elite universities in source countries play a key role in shaping migration outcomes, both in terms of the overall propensity and the particular migration destination,” the report said.
India has 23 IITs across the country. The acceptance rates at most these hallowed institutions are lower than those of Ivy League colleges, especially at the most sought-after IITs at Kharagpur, Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai, and Delhi. In 2023 alone, 189,744 candidates registered for the JEE, competing for only 16,598 seats.
Global economies are keen on highly skilled Indians
The US graduate program is a key pathway for migration, to recruit the “best and brightest,” the NBER report said.
Similarly, the UK’s High Potential Individual visa route lets graduates from the world’s top 50 non-UK universities, including the IITs, stay and work in the country for at least two years. For doctoral qualification, the work visa is for at least three years.
Fresh IIT graduates looking to move abroad are helped by a network of successful alumni and faculty already settled abroad, the report said. Some even provide access to particular programs where they have influence over admissions or hiring decisions.
The interesting case of Banaras Hindu University
In 2012, the century-old Banaras Hindu University (BHU), also India’s first central university, was accorded IIT status. The institute located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, was elevated without any changes to its staff, curriculum, or admission system.
The NBER report studied 1,956 BHU students who graduated between 2005-2015 with a BTech, BPharm, MTech, or integrated dual degrees. It found a 540% increase in the probability of migration among graduates after the grant of the IIT status.
“...the quality of education/human capital acquired by the students in the cohorts before and after the change remained constant, while only the name of the university on the degree received differed,” the report said.
Brain drain: Two in three Indian emigrants are highly educated
https://scroll.in/article/1021175/brain-drain-two-in-three-indian-emigrants-are-highly-educated
Indians have been leaving the country in droves because of better job and education opportunities.
The world’s largest source of immigrants also ranks high in terms of their education levels. And here is why that is a problem.
Nearly two-thirds of those migrating out of India seem to be highly educated, having received academic or vocational training. This is the highest for any country, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
This brain drain is a “consequence of an education system designed for ‘selecting’ the best and brightest in an economy that is still too controlled and cannot create opportunities for its best and brightest”, according to economist Shruti Rajagopalan.
Unemployment crisis
In India, unemployment levels rise with education, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. As of December 2021, one in five college graduates was unemployed. Besides a lack of jobs, there are also the problems of a skills-opportunity mismatch and corruption to deal with in the country.
Additionally, gender and caste discrimination still wreak havoc. These problems exist in the west as well but are not as acute as they are in India.
Opportunities abroad
Indians have been leaving the country in droves because of job opportunities with better pay and work hours. In the United States and United Kingdom, for instance, professionals in the healthcare and science, technology, engineering and math fields are in high demand.
Further, international students are a great source of income for universities abroad. For Indian students, it is not only the quality of courses but the diversity and holistic set-up in those campuses, too, are a huge draw.
An added attraction is the opportunity to stay on after graduation. Post-study visas, like the H-1B in the US, have mostly gone to Indians. Western countries have also etched out categories for startup founders and innovators.
No wonder then that the number of Indians studying abroad is set to grow from 7.7 lakh in 2019 to 18 lakh in 2024.
TOP TALENT, ELITE COLLEGES, AND MIGRATION:
EVIDENCE FROM THE INDIAN INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY
Prithwiraj Choudhury
Ina Ganguli
Patrick Gaulé
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31308/w31308.pdf
We study migration in the right tail of the talent distribution using a novel dataset of Indian high
school students taking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), a college entrance exam used for
admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). We find a high incidence of
migration after students complete college: among the top 1,000 scorers on the exam, 36% have
migrated abroad, rising to 62%for the top 100 scorers. We next document that students who
attended the original “Top 5” Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were 5 percentage points
more likely to migrate for graduate school compared to equally talented students who studied in
other institutions. We explore two mechanisms for these patterns: signaling, for which we study
migration after one university suddenly gained the IIT designation; and alumni networks, using
information on the location of IIT alumni in U.S. computer science departments.
------
Highly skilled immigrants make important contributions to innovation and technology in
the United States. Often, they study in elite universities in their home countries before getting
advanced degrees abroad. For example, many successful Indian immigrants in the technology
industry—including Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet Inc./Google, and Arvind Krishna, the
CEO of IBM—are undergraduate alumni of the selective Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
Similarly, Chinese students in U.S. Ph.D. programs overwhelmingly come from a set of highly
selective Chinese universities (Gaulé and Piacentini, 2013).
In this paper, we study migration in the very right tail of the talent distribution for high
school students in India, focusing on the extent to which elite universities in their home country
facilitate migration. We focus on the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The IITs are
prestigious and highly selective technical universities with lower acceptance rates than Ivy League
colleges, particularly for the original five IIT Campuses.
1 Admission to the IITs is solely through
the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), where nearly one million exam takers compete for less than ten
thousand spots. Desai, Kapur, McHale, and Rogers (2009) document anecdotal evidence related
to the role of elite institutions in India, such as the IITs and the All India Institute of Medical
Sciences, in facilitating skilled migration to the United States. IIT students have even been
described as “America’s most valuable import from India” (Leung, 2003).
Emigration is often difficult to observe from administrative datasets, and few surveys have
been conducted with a focus on top talent that are not selected on future success or mobility.
2 We
were able to overcome these challenges by leveraging the unanticipated public release of the names
and scores of JEE exam takers in 2010, combined with an intensive manual collection effort on
exam takers’ outcomes. The result is a novel dataset of high school students who took the JEE
exam, linked to college attended and later career, education, and migration outcomes. The data
provides individuals’ scores received on the exam and their national ranking. An important feature
Why #Indians don't want to be Indian #citizens anymore? More than 1.6 million Indians have renounced their Indian citizenship since 2011, including a whopping 225,620 in 2022 alone, averaging around 618 per day. #Modi #BJP #Hindutva
#chaos #anarchy
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/migrate/why-indians-dont-want-to-be-indian-citizens-anymore/articleshow/101418122.cms
"The principal reason why people migrate is economic well being. Everyone wants a better life and their hope is that they would find it in another country," Amit Dasgupta, former Consul-General of India in Sydney, told IANS.
"In sociology, this is referred to as 'the push factor'. You are pushed out to a place which offers better prospects," Dasgupta said.Many Indian students who go for higher studies abroad also end up settling there as these countries provide them better jobs with attractive pay scales.According to the latest Education Ministry data, more than 770,000 Indian students went abroad to study in 2022 -- a six-year high.
Also, many Indian students find it tough to find jobs after returning home, which is why they apply for permanent residency in their country of study.
More than 90 per cent of the students do not wish to come back to India, say estimates.When it comes to India's rich, they want to swim in foreign waters to diversify their fortune, set up alternative residencies, conduct business and pursue a better quality of life even though India continues to be an attractive environment for business activity and corporate growth.
A 2020 Global Wealth Migration Review report said that among many reasons why people make the decision to migrate to other countries is safety of women and children, lifestyle factors like climate and pollution, financial concerns including taxes, better healthcare for families and educational opportunities for children, and to escape oppressive governments.A low passport score of a country can also make individuals emigrate.
A higher passport index ranking ensures one gets better access to travel visa-free to many countries.The Indian passport registered the largest global fall in the Passport Index 2023 -- ranking at 144th position this year with a mobility score of 70.
This means Indians can travel to 21 countries visa-free, and need a visa for 128 countries.In contrast, a Greece or Portugal residency card provides Indians visa-free travel across all Schengen countries.
Post a Comment