Indian-origin engineering manager says H-1Bs included equal Indians and Chinese 10 years ago: They went back to China

An Indian-origin engineering manager offered a fresh perspective of the H-1B row in the US and the huge burden Indians have to shoulder because of the controversy and shared his experience of hiring H-1Bs 10 years ago. Karthik Hariharan, engineering manager of DoorDash, said that when he was hiring software engineers in San Francisco 10 years ago, there was an equal split a,ong Chinese and Indian engineers. But now it's heavily skewed towards Indian engineers, he said, adding that it is so visible that Indians have a larger target on their back from the anti-immigration crowd. Karthik explained that many of those Chinese engineers that he hired all these years ago went back to China for better opportunities. "Many are VPs and CTOs in places like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. I suspect that due to language barriers here, they had better social mobility back home," he pointed out. But Indian engineers who joined the US workforce 10 years ago are settled in the US and have become directors now. "In contrast, many of the Indian engineer are still in the US and are now in higher level engineering managers and Director roles. They've enjoyed far more mobility and have less reasons to go back home," he said. The observation came as the Donald Trump administration announced an unprecedented crackdown on Green Card applications of eight major IT companies, including Microsoft, Adobe, TCS, Cognizant, Wipro, HCL, Infosys, and Capgemini. The administration suspended PERM filings of these companies, which is a crucial step to get a Green Card. Though the ban has nothing to do with the H-1B visa program, the target is clear: Indian coming to the US for IT roles on H-1B visa and then filing PERM to get a Green Card. "There are a lot of fantastic Indian engineers. There are also a lot of Indian workers who do sub par work but it's so cheap that companies use them even though the work is done twice many times because of communication problems, bad programming and offshore hours issues," one commented. "Agreed. But you could apply these numbers to any ethnic group of engineers and see similar trends. I have seen the same phenomenon with Eastern European, Latin American, and other East Asian engineers. I think it’s less about ethnicity and culture, and more about being able to consistently apply hiring and performance standards in a location. Stick all these ethnicities in SF together with a high talent bar and things look consistent regardless of race," Karthik replied.