Thought Garage

Last year, Thought Garage topped Google Search for "H1B 2008". And this year, Thought Garage did it again. Thought Garage topped Google results for H1B 2009.

When you search for H1B 2009 on Google, Thought Garage appears on the top with the post I have written on 24th January

Thought Garage » H1B 2009: Will ‘2007 H1B Rush’ repeat in 2008?

In this post, I have analyzed whether the same rush continue in 2008 for H1B 2009 and many readers sent emails thanking for a great analysis without distorting or exaggerating the whole H1B story.

As I mentioned last year, there is no reason for my blog to appear at the top of Google search results for information regarding H1B visas, without your turning to my blog to get the updates and sharing your experiences for the benefit of other guests. I understand for some of you, getting a H1B and working in US will be a turning point in your careers and I am quite thrilled that you considered Thought Garage as one of your sources of information

A Big Thank You to all my readers.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, I could not answer all questions asked by you on posts concerned with H1B 2009 Visa process, particularly certain legal aspects.  But I am sure that I shared my experiences that might provide you with some pointers.

I understand that many of you are still considering the option of H1B to come to US to work despite the tough economy,  I wish all of you All the Best. I will post any updates as and when available.

Thank you all, once again.

New Push to Raise the H1B and Green Card Quotas
On October 23, 2007, sixteen members of the New Democrat Coalition, led by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, requested that "the House take action this year to resolve the immediate talent crisis that is facing U.S. employers." The group is pushing for reform that would increase H1B and employment based permanent residence, or "green card" quotas, before Congress adjourns this year. The New Democrat Coalition is comprised of 59 Democratic members of Congress who are interested in modernizing the Democratic Party and the entire country.

The New Democrat Coalition is urging Congress to pass the new reform this year, before the Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 H1B filing season opens for the filing of new cap-subject H1B cases on April 1, 2008. In addition to requesting more H1B visas and employment-based permanent residence, the group is pushing for modernized student visa programs.

Source: Murthy.com

IT Outsourcing, a couple of years back, literally meant  shifting Product Development, Software Implementation and most of  back office management to India (from US and major European countries). But when Nandan Nilekani of Infosys said ‘The World is Flat’, he did not mean moving work to Bangalore alone or India in general.  In fact he was hinting about  the future of Outsourcing, the out sourcing 2.0.

"Any thing can be outsourced to anywhere in the world." (Following  the same tenets of outsourcing : price, time and knowledge)

Facing serious problems of attrition and salary increases and increasing competition all over, Indian IT companies are fast expanding to rest of the cheaper and better world: Mexico, China and a few other third world countries. Time is fast approaching for Indian IT engineers to start discussing about  loosing their jobs to their cheaper counterparts in the rest of the world. 

While expansion to Mexico, China and few other third world countries seems to be a rational choice, I am little confused with the rationale of American graduates in choosing outsourcing firms. Having spent most of my time in one of the top three IT firms in India, I have no clue why American College graduates turn down Google and join Infosys. The following story in NY Times says that it is happening.

Many of them are recent American college graduates, and some have even turned down job offers from coveted employers like Google. Instead, they accepted a novel assignment from Infosys, the Indian technology giant: fly here for six months of training, then return home to work in the company’s American back offices.

India is outsourcing outsourcing.

Outsourcing Works, So India Is Exporting Jobs – New York Times

Times are fast changing. Businesses and markets world wide have tasted outsourcing and its price advantage. It will never stop. Weak Dollar and alarming attrition rates have started forcing Indian IT firms to go for job cuts and expand further into new cheaper destinations. This, I believe,  will increase exponentially in the next few months.  The saga of outsourcing continues. For businesses, it doesn’t matter. Infosys may not care whether they do it from India or any part of the world. They also need outsourcing to rest of the world for the same exact price advantage.

That would,  in general change a lots of things for the Indian economy, that has been riding on the high tides for a while. And  these are definitely quite an Interesting and very tough times for typical Indian IT engineer, who have already deeply in debt trying to reach out booming and mostly hyped up real estate and western lifestyles. Can they afford to loose their jobs at this juncture to rest of the world? 

A recent report by  Kauffman Foundation infers that there is a strong correlation between educational attainment and entrepreneurship.

A report released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation that tracked the educational backgrounds of immigrant entrepreneurs who were key founders of technology and engineering companies from 1995 to 2005 shows a strong correlation between educational attainment (particularly in science, technology, engineering and math) and entrepreneurship.

Click image, above, to read Education, Entrepreneurship and Immigration: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part II.

Click image, above, to read America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs (part 1 of the study).

But before jumping to ‘any’ conclusions about  role of Educational Attainment to Entrepreneurship, (which I believe is construed and a misquoted wisdom), consider the following points from the report itself:

• The report  studied only Technology and Engineering companies.  It would have given a much better picture of Entrepreneurship if it had included all kinds of Entrepreneurship activity by these immigrants.  If the report had shown that educational attainment is a key factor in every Entrepreneurial activity, I would have bought it flat.
• Most of these Tech-Entrepreneurs (as per report about 93%) came to US for work or study. As everybody already know, this is the primary reason for Indians to come to US.  US Immigration is not that easy to tackle, if not impossible,  for a highschool dropout to come to US and start a business. If we see Indian immigrant population per se, these numbers will stay the same.  Almost all came for either study or work. So I would rule out their educational background in high tech as a factor for their entrepreneurial ventures in US. If they had come to US for ‘any other damn reason’ , they would have started their own companies.
• If education attainment is such a key factor for Entrepreneurship, why don’t we find similar Entrepreneurship activity in India where the rest (a majority) of the High Tech Indians still work or study.
• It is the same case with most other Immigrants (from china etc). They all came to US for either work in high tech or study in US. Whatever they do, you will find a strong correlation to their High educational attainment. For example, barring a small portion of these Entrepreneurs, rest of these high tech Immigrants work throughout their lives as employees of some firm. That is a strong correlation between High Educational attainment and mind blowing lifestyle.
• The % of these Indian Immigrant Entrepreneurs that came from IITs is only a 15% as per the report. That number itself tells a lot more than I can argue. IITs only take the brightest of students. But they represent only 15% of the Entrepreneurial activity, despite all the hype, investment and high action networks. It clearly rules out you don’t have to be at IIT to become an entrepreneur.  IIT background helped these guys to come to US and work or to study and provide an easy access to lots of resources for sure. Whether their ‘belong to IIT’ has anything to do with their entrepreneurial spark is still debatable. 

I believe, your engineering excellence has nothing to do with Entrepreneurship. It is altogether a different mindset. A different perspective of looking at an opportunity and the market. If you say, if you can cook a better burger you can become an Entrepreneur at making burgers and probably beat McDonalds, I would try to believe then that your engineering excellence would make you a better Entrepreneur. And, I will learn my lesson.

Isn’t there a strong correlation between starting your company in a ‘Garage’ and its success? 

Isn’t there a strong correlation between ‘living on the streets’ and becoming ‘a rock star’?

Isn’t there a strong correlation between ‘dropping out of high school’ to ‘building an empire’?

And one more final question,

To become a successful entrepreneur and start a Technology or Engineering company, do you want to study an MBA? or MS in Computer Sceience? or …. drop out of high school? or … ??

Correlations are good for reports, books, seminars, yeah, ofcourse blogs and I believe good for nothing. Many Americans tend to assume that every other Indian is a software engineer or a maths graduate or a high tech graduate. And yet 99% of Indian entrepreneurs that actually built India and making a difference  to India as you read have unfortunately never studied any of them. Those who studied are mostly working in IT and many of them in US or working for US based IT companies.

I never intend ‘Thought Garage‘ to be a source of information on H1B visas. But regular readers of my blog and frequent visitors made it a prime source of information for H1B visas this year.  One of my colleagues left a message that Thought Garage tops Google search results for H1B 2008 ahead of the most famous immigration portals including Murthy.com. I looked it up on Google and below was the screenshot of the search results.

There is no reason for my blog to appear at the top of Google search results for information regarding H1B visas, without your turning to my blog to get the updates and sharing your experiences for the benefit of other guests. I understand for some of you, getting a H1B and working in US will be a turning point in your careers and I am quite thrilled that you considered Thought Garage as one of your sources of information. 

Thank you all.

I could not answer all questions asked by you on posts concerned with H1B 2008 Visa process, particularly certain legal aspects.  But I am sure that I shared my experiences that might provide you with some pointers. When I get some time, I will post all questions I received in emails as a blog post so that all other readers can benefit from our discussions.

I understand that still quite a few of aspirants are waiting for their final confirmation on their petitions,  I wish all of you All the Best. I will post any updates as and when available.

Thank you very much.