The Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
Many in India are proud that people educated in India are now heading the biggest tech companies in the world. A couple of months ago, when I met the Ex IIT Palakkad Director at his IIT Madras office, we had an interesting chat, which I will recount below.
Times have changed:
The world where these folks graduated does not reflect today’s India. Arvind Krishna graduated in 1985 from IIT Kanpur in EE, Satya Nadella in 1988 from Manipal in EE and Sundar Pichai in 1993 from IIT Kharagpur. India, at those times, was in a pathetic state. Nehruvian economics, socialist distrust of the private sector and a quota-driven “license raj” model had wrecked the economy. The GDP then was 270 billion dollars. For any student graduating in those times, there was no future in India. There were no high-paying jobs and no private sector worth speaking about. The socialist government were making everything from bread, cars and jam.
In 1991, the country was close to bankruptcy because of failed policies. Fortunately, the Congress government, then under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, rescued India from the primrose path their own party has taken India in the past. The economy of India had touched 1 trillion dollars in 2007 and is at 3.6 trillion dollars now. It is projected to double in the next few years to become the third-biggest economy. In this process, India will surpass Germany and Japan. For people wondering whether this is time to be in the US or India, I encourage them to look at India, at least in the long term. India is supposed to be close to 30 trillion dollars in GDP by 2050 and overtake the United States by 2075.
It is rare to be living in a country that goes so quickly in one’s lifetime. The choice is to either spend your life hidden away as an engineer inside a big MNC company in the US or try to grab a slice of the expanding economy and the opportunities as India grows. The next set of billionaires will be Indians who stay in India and do something in India. The US is also a good option, but do not bet on being super rich by working in any company there.
Inside all the IITs I have visited in the last couple of years, less than 5% of students are leaving India for further studies. Twenty years ago, nearly 80% of IIT grads went to graduate school in the US. As opportunities increase in India, more people will stay back. This trend has happened in China and will only be replicated in India. Hence, do not follow the examples of the Indian CEOs mindlessly. Look at the world, times and context when they graduated. What made sense for them may not make sense for you. Choose options judiciously because they make sense for you, without unthinkingly copying what other people have done in the past.
I will post tomorrow Part 2 of this article.
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