To give some background, the USCIS requires that for most work visas the process be initiated and managed by the employer. Typically, the employer has to prove inability to find American talent and then make a case to hire immigrants. This is applicable for various temporary visas (H1B, L1) and also for permanent visas (employment based green cards). And there is a legal requirement that employers pay immigrants on par with Americans so that an American worker is not disadvantaged when competing for the same job with an immigrant.

Now this system could have worked had the visa processes and timelines were transparent, trackable and consistent. But the quotas on these visas run out so quickly resulting in a huge backlog for many of these visas. Consequently, employers get disproportionate power over their employees.

Here are some specific ways in which it screws employees who are at the mercy of their employer to file their visas and green cards.

* Negotiation tactic: HR often uses the argument of immigration paper work as a negotiation tactic. “We can only offer you this because we also have to bear the costs of your visa”. Now this argument is illegal and can get companies into severe trouble. But.. it still happens all the time. Consequently immigrants often end up with a poorer compensation or job grade during negotiations. Further, it also hurts American employees as employers find it attractive to hire immigrant workers for cheaper.

* Arbitrary rules: Employers start setting arbitrary rules requiring immigrant employees to wait for 6 months or 12 months before applying for the green card. This is great for the employer because no matter what happens the immigrant is likely to stick around waiting out for their green card to get started.

* Unfair promotions and pay raises: Now that the immigrant employee is locked-in there is not much incentive for the employer to promote them or adjust their pay according to their contribution. I have personally witnessed this on various occasions. It doesn’t seem there’s a law protecting the immigrant employee on this. And even if there is a law, given there’s no objective way to track this, it’s quite easy for an employer to manipulate by saying ‘they are only performing at a lower level’.

* Conservative approach: HR often forgets that they have a dual role. While they are supposed to protect the company, they forget to be an ally for the employee. As a result, they end up taking the most conservative approach when filing for any visa just because there’s a 0.001% chance that the company might get into trouble. This results in further delays for employees.

* Severe layoff impact – scenario 1: And let’s say the employer is going through tough times, nothing stops them from laying off immigrants. The problems for immigrants are now lot more complicated. Simply put, they have to leave the country. The visa rules are very fuzzy about the legal duration one can stay in the country after being laid off. So they are left with little or no time to find another job. And don’t forget that the new employer has to agree to file for their visa again!

* Severe layoff impact – scenario 2: Even if the immigrant does not lose his/her job, layoffs can impact visa processing quite seriously. Generally, employers will often stop any visa paper work. The argument is that if we are laying off, it’s risky to file for a visa or a green card. The missing point is that the person laid off can not potentially fill this job for technical and practical reasons. Could you tell an immigrant employee ‘Hey Joe (American) is getting laid off, but you are an immigrant so stop doing what you are doing and let Joe take over’?

* Affects employee motivation: As a result of the above lock-ins, employees are sometimes stuck in jobs they don’t enjoy. They end up with low motivation levels, hate their job and their bosses. This impacts productivity and surprisingly employers don’t seem to notice. And honestly, bosses hate to deal with employee’s immigration stuff, it’s quite unrewarding.

* Improper treatment: Finally, employers often make us literally beg for any immigration paper work even if it’s a completely required activity (e.g. H1B refiling, green card filing). Employees tend to be very careful not pissing off HR fearing that they can play hard ball when the time comes to renew visas or file the green card. This is quite demeaning and my self-respect has been hurt on more than a few occasions by having to put up with some bureaucratic BS.

Overall this is a very unfair system for the immigrant employee. Employers have disproportionate power and they end up screwing up immigrants all the time. The more effective system would be a point-based system that is in place in the UK, Canada, Australia and some other countries. Employees are qualified based on the number of points they can accumulate either because of their advanced degree or years of experience or their specialty. This system is a lot more objective and evens out the power imbalance between the employer and the employee.

I have personally been impacted by this and am still waiting in the green card queue even after 12 years in this country! And to put it mildly, it’s extremely frustrating.

I had taken a course at MIT on China which focused mostly on all the success stories of its rapidly growing economy. But this book viewed China from a different angle, from the east going to west.

The author goes through a soul searching trip from Shanghai on the east coast to all the way Urumqi on the western end where it ends into Kazakhstan. He spends most of his time on Route 312 traveling by cabs, buses and other local commute options. And in true journalistic fashion interviews random people he meets on his road trip, with the simple purpose to learn from the stories of common Chinese people. It is brilliantly crafted and has a very personable reading style.

The book touches on various topics in the context of modern day China. Some of these are:
History: Rob gives a snapshot of the various dynasties from Qing, Ming, Tang and many others that ruled for several years followed by the modern era which ended the imperial rule. While the Republic of China tried to drive industrialization and modernization, there were several internal disputes that resisted significant change. Finally it culminated with the Sino Japanese war and the formation of a separate, smaller ROC, now Taiwan. This resulted in the formation of PRC under Mao Zedong who drove the socialistic transformation of PRC. 1979 was the inflection point when Deng Xiaoping embarked China on the road to economic reforms and a decent balance with Communism was achieved.

Communism: Rob seems like a die-hard believer of democracy. So while he still loves China for various reasons including its history, culture and people, he is unable to give in to the ideological differences he has with the country. There are numerous examples from the lives of common Chinese that support his standpoint. He goes further to explain why Chinese people have never been able to develop checks and balances on state power which he attributes to political, ideological and social reasons.

Rural China: Across rural China, there are millions of stories about lack of water (due to dried up or polluted rivers), lack of women (due to the one-child policy that made couples favor a son) and lack of opportunities. The road to the east is the only hope to a better future for most of them.

Chinese dilemma: The nation needs to empower its people to become strong but its Communistic roots can’t let the people be too empowered. The government wants advanced education without encouraging people to think. The tension is between the need to enforce orthodoxy in order to retain unity and the need to allow freedom in order to encourage creativity.

Tibet and Islamic China: He also makes a stop in Tibet and Islamic China. The Buddhist monks are afraid to lose their identity. Beijing is encouraging hordes of Han Chinese to migrate to these areas to keep communal tensions at Bay. For many Tibetans, sticking to the rules of the Chinese government is their best hope for their future generations so they put up with it. Similarly, while Uighars and other indigenous Islamic people are clinging onto their identity, the great wall in the minds of Muslim Chinese and the Han Chinese stands very firm. Beijing is trying to buy off the Muslim peoples with economic opportunities, education and transportation to the West.

China is a complex country with many socio-political tensions at various levels. There is a lot of subliminal unrest in people. But the rapidly growing economic opportunities are keeping any revolutionary tendencies at bay. Beijing is therefore frantically working hard to keep the economic pace as brisk as possible.

When I had started on this path, the objective was to create a seed fund for campus which students could utilize to launch their startup. However, I discovered through my early interactions that the real need is for formal mentoring and not money.

So we created this program in the form of a course where students are selected through an application process, come up with their team and idea, are assigned a mentor. They spend the entire semester then creating their startup by working on the nuts and bolts.

You can find a more detailed overview about the program on the CEL website along with the list of mentors and speakers.

We learned three main things through this program:
1) Huge demand: Students previously felt a void to learn the ropes of creating a startup. They have a center of entrepreneurship but it doesn’t teach nuts and bolts of business. But this program meets their needs very well in a practical manner. The program has 14 startup teams from two years and some of them had to be turned away because we couldn’t run such a large program.
2) Gap in industry connect: A unique aspect of learning is through industry connect. Students need to learn and interact with experienced entrepreneurs and professionals in order to learn the real deal about building a startup. There’s a big gap in this area and being 6 hours away from Delhi doesn’t help a bit. The way we are bridging this gap is through virtual lectures and mentoring, an integral part of this course.
3) Unlimited enthusiasm: I can distinctly recall my time at BITS, Pilani when it felt that everything was within my reach and I would conquer the world. That same enthusiasm and confidence is beaming through these kids and they are filled with ambition and passion to create the next big startup. Their risk appetite is much higher at this age and they are willing to learn and try new things quickly.

Last year, one startup from 5 teams stood out and was awarded a small seed fund, lots of mentoring, access to personal networks and incubation space. They went on to win their first customer within 6 months and just recently have been short listed in the top 20 finalists out of 16,200 applications in Economic Times’ Power of Ideas competition. The team has decided to pursue their startup after graduation instead of taking up a job in some large company.

This year we have 9 teams and they all have very interesting business ideas and we are confident that 2 or 3 teams will emerge with the ability to pursue this as a real startup.

I wonder about the potential of such a program in surfacing the best startup talent. If we conduct a similar program across the hundreds of engineering colleges in India, we can easily bring out hundreds of young entrepreneurs each year. Similar programs/courses in American undergrad colleges help bring out startup talent there and should be replicated more aggressively by Indian colleges too.

I know several great ‘idea people’ who amaze everyone by their innovative ideas for the world they live in, the companies they work for and for themselves. But many of them are just not able to execute or actualize any of their plans and ideas. As a result ideas remain just that – ideas! And that’s how I believe the phrase came about – ‘ideas are dime a dozen’.

One needs to have energy and execution to be able to make meaning of ideas. The ability to put thought into action and the motivation to drive things to fruition and generate measurable results are critical aspects for producing real, tangible success. Jack Welch’s 4Es also include Energy and Execution as two key factors behind successful business leaders.

People who give too much credit to ideas waste too much time in perfecting their ideas as a result wasting too much time in getting started. I see tons of people at work creating pretty slides and sitting in countless meetings to perfect their ‘ideas’. The counter intuitive thing is to get started. If one starts executing quickly, they will not only encounter potential problems sooner but are also able to solve them more effectively because there is a real context.

There’s just a small catch though. It’s not sufficient to run fast and get things done, you also need to run in a fairly right direction. Otherwise you achieve results but they are not sizeable and meaningful.

The reason I am typing this post is because I am seeing a lot of poor execution around me these days. These people and the companies they are in are unable to execute and are continuously attributing it to a wrong strategy or a bad idea. My simple answer to them “stop analyzing too much and get things done!”

When I started it was just me driving this business. We are now a team of 15 of which 9 were hired and 6 are from an existing team. We hired 1 product manager, 1 technical lead and 7 contract engineers.

Engineers need room to be innovative
Large IT firms are the starting grounds for many fresh engineering graduates. These firms are bustling with neophytes who have had little exposure. The IT services model encourages engineers to write code according to well defined specs and are incentivized by how many KLOC are written. We had a tough time time finding people who had real-world experience building mobile Internet services. We finally decided to pick individuals who we thought we could mould. We encouraged the hires to think innovatively and have an opinion on the stuff they were working. The net-net is that if you want to build standard stuff with a well defined process leave the entire thing to the outsourcing firm. If not you will have to manage the engineers on your own.

Hiring a Product Manager
It was quite difficult to come across candidates with the right blend of experience and innovative thinking. We sifted through several resumes and had a difficult time even shortlisting candidates. Most candidates could not even articulate PM responsibilities. We often ended up with candidates who were more project managers and less product managers. We filled this opening with a candidate from Yahoo! Lucky for us, many people were leaving Yahoo! and we got our hands on one of them. Realistically, referrals are your best option to fill non-technical managerial positions.

Specialized tech skills are difficult to find
I thought it would be quite straightforward to hire a tech lead given all the brouhaha about Indian IT firms. However, I was surprised that it was not so. While we received lots of resumes, most of them didn’t have any practical experience managing and leading teams. Many were aspiring to leave hands-on work and become ‘managers’. We finally found someone in Singapore through a head hunter. We are now on the look out for an operations engineer to setup and scale our Internet servers. Let’s see how that goes. Your best shot for specialized tech skills is looking through head hunters.

Over emphasis on experience
Generally speaking there’s too much emphasis on ‘years of experience’. Throughout our hiring process, I didn’t see a single resume that was less than three pages. In fact one HR person who I complained to told me that they filter candidates based on the length of the resumes! This culture leaves little room for meritocracy. Therefore you often see the smart kids chasing MNCs that don’t merely focus on experience or join startups where they get more latitude.

Finding talent is not that easy here. In my opinion there are two main reasons. One is that people don’t stick to a single job long enough which is required to develop professional depth. Second, there aren’t sufficient role models. For example you need good product managers around you to become a good product manager yourself.

In spite of all this, the trend is very positive. One consistent theme is that people work really hard! They’ll stay as long as it requires. That’s a very positive thing. And as they start to realize that to differentiate hard work alone is not enough, they’ll start focusing on learning new skills to differentiate themselves.

Unlike his previous books, this one starts with stories of people (Bill Gates, Bill Joy and Steve Jobs) whose stories I am generally familiar with. So it was quite interesting to learn about the events and situations that made them Outliers.

His stories about ethnicity of pilots and how it relates to plane crashes is quite eye opening and, to some extent, hard to believe. However, the chapter of rice paddy fields and it’s relevance to the Chinese math prowess is simply a stretch.

The key point of his book – the impact of timing, family and cultural history – is something I can personally relate to. I grew up in one of the ‘inner-city’ areas in Chennai and it seems quite surprising how I was still able to get all the education and exposure. But its quite obvious now that there were specific things that happened in my life for the way things turned out. 

My maternal grand father, who was a lawyer, was educated in the UK at a time when it was not that common among Indians. Given his global exposure, he encouraged and supported my mom’s education. My mom also became a lawyer, which was quite unusual in the ‘marwari’ community which does not generally encourage women to study and work. And because of her passion to educate me, I ended up in a top school in Chennai in spite of the not-so-educated neighborhood and society. Now this school had all the ingredients to prepare me for a professional career that I now have. 

I have always believed that more than half your life’s path is determined in the context you are born – time, place, family, economy, culture, religion etc. Still there is quite a lot that is not predetermined and is left to the choices one makes in their lives. Those choices determine whether you live a happy life or not. Outliers does a great job of putting facts and research behind this belief.

It’s been just one week here, but it feels like a lot more as I have seen so much in so little time. So much positive change has happened in India, it’s unbelievable! I had heard about many things but what I saw just blew me away.

Youth Power: The first day when I walked into my office on Outer Ring Road, I saw a sea of people working on a sprawling work floor. They were occupying a previous call center and were all sitting arms length away from each other in really compact work spaces. And when I looked more carefully I was having a hard time spotting anyone over the age of 25! It’s amazingly empowering to know that half of india’s population is under 25. Although we have come a long way in the last couple of decades, I just can’t wait to see how this demographic will transform India in yet another decade.

Startups: I met several startups in just three days. They were doing a variety of interesting things in the mobile world. From Babajobs to Ziva and several others. And so many others mentioned in all kinds of mainstream media from The Times of India to India Today. The Indian entrepreneurial spirit often talked about in the US and elsewhere is easily visible here.

Diversity: Another thing that I witnessed for the first time was a lot more diversity. There are quite a few folks from all over the world doing full-time or part-time stints in India. Even more interesting was the CEO & Founder of Babajobs. This guy is an American who moved to India with Microsoft Research and then quit to found his startup that helps Indian employers find employees for household jobs ranging from drivers to ayyahs (maids). It is amazing to witness this kind of diversity arrive in India.

Retail: This is one area where there has been a dramatic shift. Sprawling malls and giant stores that are filled with people from a broad economic spectrum. Department stores, movie halls and restaurant chains that are available all over the city, not just in one part of the city as it used to be 10 years ago. Global retail chains like Staples and several others in the food industry have made presence here. Talking about cars, there are SO MANY makes available wih each brand offering upwards of 5 models. (Another reason behind all that traffic!). The Indian consumer is finally benefitting from the massive growth that the country is witnessing.

Infrastructure and Real Estate: While there has been good progress, there’s a lot left to be desired. The positive signs are the magnificent Bangalore airport, several new fly overs, lot of new real estate for commercial and residential needs. However, the fly overs under construction have worsened the traffic situation. The roads are terribly crammed, buildings that are 2-3 years old look like they have been around for years. Roads and other properties need a lot of better maintenance. Lots more work to be done in this area.

Chaos: Something that I had expected to encounter was chaos; and the country didn’t let me down a bit!! Finding a quiet spot is extremely hard around here. And once you are on the road, chaos goes to a completely new level. Jam packed and excruciatingly slow traffic. And I had forgotten that there is no concept of personal space :) You walk into a mall and there are LOTS and LOTS of people. Buses and airports are packed more than ever! But to my surprise the chaos extends into all aspects of life. My onboarding was a good example of how it creeps into professional world. There was nothing prepared to get me started at work. I had to chase down everyone from getting an access badge to a phone line. And it was common for people to pass the buck to someone else. It’s typical for people to not return calls. And when someone says ‘it will be done in 5 min’, it still means an indefinite amount of long time in India :)

There’s so much excitement and buzz all over the country. Progress is happening on so many fronts. And, of course, there are problems that come with that progress. But in short, all I can say is India has finally arrived!