Dil da maamla or Bill da maamla?
Dil da maamla or Bill da maamla?
Date: Friday, November 15, 2002 6:29 PM
H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
www.ZaZona.com
Indian web sites are rife with articles like the second one on this page.
The general theme is usually that Silicon Valley wouldn't have survived if
it wasn't for the brilliant Indian programmers that came here to save
America. Despite the obvious bias this article has some very useful
information as well as some of Microsoft's history that is never reported in
the US.
After you read the quote "From that point on, Microsoft became a haven for
Indians", you will understand what we mean when somebody says "H-1B
Inside!". Although most of the US public will be duped into believing that
Bill Gates wears a halo, the Indian press understands that the $500,000,000
that Gates spent in India is because he likes it's abundant CHEAP LABOR!
The development centers that Gates is building will be ideal places to
outsource more development work to India so that his higher priced American
workers can "re-deployed" to Wal-Mart. Even more important these Indian
offices can be used to bring more L-1 visa holders into the U.S. by
intra-company transfer. L-1s flooding into Seattle will create Gates' vision
of utopia - it will look just like Bangalore.
http://www.aipt.org/downloads/articles/AreaDevelopment.htm
A Two-Way Street
Large corporations like Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Sun Microsystems have
created international training programs to broaden their employees’
horizons. Through the J-1 visa, many companies are increasing their
international exposure. Typically, this little-known but powerful tool is
utilized in the private sector. The J-1 visa allows international trainees
to gain experience in a U.S.-based company over an 18-month period while
offering their sponsors a window into a different culture — and a potential
market.
The J-1, officially classified as a cultural-exchange visa with the
U.S. government, is intended to encourage both public and private exchanges
for the purpose of developing links between cultures. It was designed to
encourage private institutions in the United States to develop their own
exchange activities and showcase the benefits of democracy in a very
personal way. It also allows citizens from various nations to visit the
United States and explore how they can benefit from American institutions
and practices.
There are 12 categories of J-1 visa, each with its own set of
regulations and requirements. The various categories may bring in students,
short-term scholars, business trainees, teachers, professors, research
scholars, specialists, foreign medical graduates, students working or
traveling for the summer, au pairs, and others, including international
visitors, government visitors, and camp counselors. The permissible period
of stay depends upon the category of visa the visitor is issued.
The J-1 has benefits for both domestic and foreign companies. It
allows American businesses to enter overseas markets, strengthen or create
partnerships abroad, or evaluate students from overseas colleges and
universities for a position at an international location. Likewise, foreign
businesses can send employees to U.S. subsidiaries for training, and U.S.
multinationals can train international candidates at domestic headquarters.
Visiting U.S. Headquarters
For multinational corporations, the J-1 visa is the most flexible visa
category for training international candidates at U.S. headquarters.
Sometimes, this exchange can also be accomplished with the L-1 (intercompany
transfer) visa. However, not all overseas employees qualify for this type of
visa, which in part hinges on their experience or tenure with the overseas
offices. Basically, the J-1 allows the multinational corporation to include
a broader scope of its operations abroad when considering training of
overseas personnel.
For small businesses, the logic of employing a trainee depends on the
specific industry. When an 18-employee natural-foods company based in
western Kansas felt it had an opportunity to export its products to Europe,
its size limited its options for expanding there. The company’s solution was
to hire a 22-year-old German woman who had just completed a business degree
in her home country. At the U.S. headquarters she was trained in the company
’s product line, business philosophy, and the American specialty-food
market. She returned to Germany and is representing the firm throughout
eastern Europe.
Similar scenarios have occurred with many U.S. businesses and
consulting firms working in Russia. Companies there have found that training
in the United States is a vital tool in preparing their local staff to carry
out business objectives internationally.
Companies that are based outside of the United States look to the J-1
visa to support initiatives that send their employees to U.S. subsidiaries
or partners for training. German and Swiss tool-and-die firms that operate
businesses in the U.S. often utilize this training visa. For instance,
European industrial training is conducted in the metric system. Therefore,
if a business is trying to export to the United States, its designers and
engineers benefit from training and spending time in the country where their
products will be purchased.
The J-1 in Operation
For more than five years, IBM has utilized its International Management
Trainee Program to develop, educate, and evaluate a pool of talented people
to become future managers. Participants from all over the world train in IBM
’s California and New Jersey locations. The program provides an excellent
opportunity to learn and incorporate the practices of different locations
while gaining insight into the U.S. headquarters’ business methods.
When GE Enter Software, a General Electric company specializing in
advanced engineering software, saw dramatic increases in its European sales,
it brought in European trainees to provide its staff with the needed
perspective. Trainees completed software projects while providing a daily
lesson in other cultures.
Sargent & Lundy, a global leader in professional technology services
for the electric power industry, emphasizes effective intercultural
communication and understanding. For the past five years, the company has
utilized the J-1 visa to help improve international understanding through
its training programs — training more than 100 foreign engineers in its
Chicago office. International trainees are educated in state-of-the-art
power-plant design processes and given the tools to prepare for engineering
projects in their own countries.
Hosting trainees from abroad has enabled the company to better
understand engineering methods and methodologies used in the trainees’ home
countries. When trainees return home, the company continues relationships
with them on joint-venture projects.
Many other industries use the J-1 to evaluate foreign employees
before extending a job offer at an international location. Human resources
departments are well aware that recruiting and hiring talented foreign
employees and obtaining work permits for them can be an expensive and
arduous process. With the J-1 visa, U.S. businesses can get a preview of how
an employee fits into the company culture. This is often a consideration in
fields such as IT, where global human resources necessitate a constant pool
of qualified, new staff.
A well-kept H.R. secret, the J-1 visa is a tool that is easy to use
and offers invaluable experience and knowledge transfer for both company and
trainee.
AIPT is one of the largest U.S. State Department-designated sponsors of the
J-1 visa in the “trainee” category, and one of the foremost providers of
worldwide on-the-job training programs for students and professionals
seeking international career development and life-changing experiences.
Founded in 1950, AIPT celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2000 and is
based near the nation’s capital, in Columbia, Md. For more information,
visit www. aipt.org.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=28160072
Dil da maamla or Bill da maamla?
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2002 02:23:57 PM ]
What makes Bill Gates, who was never known for his generosity, spend
millions on charity? In a series of articles, The Times of India Foreign
Editor Chidanand Rajghatta digs deep to find out the reason behind the
world's richest man's love for India.
SEATTLE/WASHINGTON: Long before his munificent visit to India, the world's
richest man was not known to be the world's most grateful or humblest or
most generous man.
The story goes that when a Microsoft counsel got Bill Gates out of a tough
situation in the anti-trust case, the bounteous billionaire did not as much
as send him a thank you note. The attorney was a Microsoft employee and it
was part of his job. But when the same lawyer, after he left Microsoft,
testified in his former boss' favour, Gates called to thank him.
So it came as something as a surprise when Bill Gates lavishly praised his
Indian employees in an interview with this correspondent in Seattle on a
late October morning, a fortnight before his third trip to India, a visit
that has now redefined private aid and philanthropy. He attributed his
rising interest in India to the "amazing" contribution his "great" Indian
employees had made to Microsoft, and suggested that it was payback time.
But was it so simple? And why now? This is the story of Bill Gates' affair
with India.
My interview with Gates occurred rather fortuitously and suddenly. Two years
back, researching the story of India's info-tech rise for a book, I had put
through a request to Microsoft mandarins to meet Gates. The buzz in the
industry was that Microsoft was the repository of some of the finest Indian
engineering and programming talent and I was keen to hear his take on this,
as also his views on India. But the interview never came about although I
spoke to a number of other officials who validated the Indian angle.
In early October this year, when I first heard about Gates' impending visit
to India, I renewed my request for an interview. Instead of Microsoft, it
was the Gates Foundation that reached out. Yes, he would meet me, but would
it be possible to focus on the activities of the Foundation rather than on
Microsoft, on health care rather than software, they asked.
Fine, I said, knowing pretty well that it would be impossible to discuss
Gates Foundation without talking about Microsoft. It was oldest hack rule in
the book. Say yes -- and see how it goes.
Bill Gates is a charismatic man in a geeky sort of way. In his presence, you
don't feel you are talking to a rich man or a great man. The thing you
notice most about him is his intensity and passion. When he gets excited
about an issue, he rocks back and forth while talking. He is not
particularly articulate. He can be repetitive and his syntax can be pretty
mangled. He trips over words.
He is no more a boy billionaire, although he is still boyish. When I met him
in Seattle, it was a day after his 47th birthday. He wore a suit and tie –
and, dare I say, a terrible haircut. Two years back, he had stepped down as
CEO of Microsoft to make way for Steve Ballmer so that he could concentrate
on the nuts and bolts, giving himself the designation of Chief Software
Architect. So I had expected him to be dressed casually. Apparently, he was
to meet the President of South Korea later that afternoon.
"You've got to remember Bill is also a world statesman now," a Microsoft
honcho told me later. "He's got to shake hands with world leaders and sell
Microsoft."
As we began to talk, Gates rocked back and forth rhythmically on his seat.
He spoke passionately about the Foundation, its origins and his views and
plans on health care.
Midway through the interview, I slipped in my question. Is it possible that
his interest in India is spurred by the large number of Indians in
Microsoft? Had he heard about the e-mail that spoke of Indians constituting
32 per cent of Microsoft work force (of course, I knew the number was
exaggerated)?
To my surprise, Gates immediately and readily acknowledged the Indian angle
to my story. He used words like "amazing" and "great" in describing the kind
of word the Indians had done. As for the 32 per cent, that was a tad high,
but certainly in Microsoft's engineering department, it was about 20 per
cent, he said. Yes, that was huge.
Gates' candour surprised me. When I was working on my book, I had actually
sought to know from several major corporations, including Microsoft, a
break-up of their Indian employees. I had gathered, anecdotally, that at
large corporations such as Cisco, Intel, Sun Microsystems and Oracle,
employees of Indian origin constituted anywhere from 5 to 15 per cent of the
work force. But uniformly, the companies declined to provide the figures
based on ethnicity or nationality.
The Times of India Online
Printed from timesofindia.indiatimes.com > Intl Business
Dil da maamla or Bill da maamla? Part II
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2002 02:27:46 PM ]
Bill Gates' high regard for Indians, and through them for India, runs deep.
It also goes a long way back. In fact, it goes all the way to 1981, when
Microsoft was just another tiny start-up with less than 50 people, and not
the 50,000-strong behemoth it is now.
The man through whom Bill Gates first saw India was a slight, gauche chap
named Rao Remala, then 32, who had just joined Microsoft as its 39th
employee – and the first Indian on its rolls. A graduate of IIT Kanpur,
Remala had worked for five years at DCM Data Products and its offshoot HCL.
He was a contemporary of Indian tech pioneers Arjun Malhotra and Shiv Nadar,
and as a young programmer and developer, he had done some projects for the
upstart American company.
Remala had come to the US in 1981 to do some contracting work when Microsoft
hired him full time. IBM had just introduced its personal computer with
Microsoft's 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0, and it was thought Remala's
experience in writing code could be handy. As he signed up, Remala was
offered stock options in the yet unlisted company. Yeah, right, he told
himself, not having a clue of history the company would make. He had heard
about stock options in HCL for five years and never seen a scrap of paper.
Remala was not the kind of guy who would voice such a though publicly. Gates
liked Remala. A Telugu bidda born to a peasant family in Kotaplam village in
Andhra Pradesh, he was a quiet, unassuming Indian who simply went about his
work with metronomic precision without ever tiring. Bill himself worked on
some projects with Remala; the boss of the firm showing technological
felicity the two of them designed an extended memory architecture.
In 1982, Bill Gates visited Las Vegas Comdex, looking for, and looking at,
advances in geekdom. The story goes that he stopped by at a booth run by a
company called VisiCorp's and watched a demo of its graphical interface
named VisiOn. Remember, in those days, computers were all about alphabet and
numerals, with none of the point and click features -- GUI, or Graphical
User Interface -- that make it so easy now. Over at Apple, Steve Jobs was
already using such stuff to peddle a much smarter computer and the
Microsofties were afraid they would get run over. Gates feared that his
competitor in the applications space would use the product to jump into the
operating systems business.
On his return, Gates conveyed his nightmare from VisiOn to his colleagues
Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer. Around that time, Rao Remala and fellow
developer Dan McCabe were also studying Xerox PARC's Star System, which too
featured icons such as folders and in-baskets. They were called in and told
to get started on the new project. "It was heady," Remala recalled in an
interview on Tuesday. "I was hauled out of nowhere and given something only
the best in the company got – a room with a panoramic window."
It also signaled the birth of Windows – then called by the unattractive name
"Interface Manager."
Remala in fact wrote the first code for IM and put together the first demos
for the project that was initially managed by Scott McGregor, who had been
lured from Xerox. But McGregor could not deliver the first version in time
and he was replaced by Steve Ballmer, now the CEO. "It was exhilarating. And
exhausting," says Remala, "There was tremendous pressure on us to get the
product out asap. Steve has promised it would be out before the first
snowfall of 1985 and it had begun to snow early in some parts." Windows 1.0
was finally released at Comdex 1985. It had Remala's code all over it.
Remala was just settling into his job when Microsoft hired its second Indian
employee in 1983. Strictly speaking, Vijay Vashee was only of Indian
descent --an East African Indian. His family had migrated to Rhodesia
generations back. But Vashee had returned to India in the 1970s and secured
admission at IIT. Five years in Powai made him as Indian as they come. He
was working in a tech company called Mentor Graphics when Microsoft hired
him.
Unlike the low-key Remala, Vashee was a more flamboyant character. In a
Microsoft career that lasted some 18 years before he quit last year to
pursue other interests Vijay Vashee is credited with major contributions to
Windows, Mouse, Works, Win, Excel and other MS products. By the time he left
his position as one of the firm's General Managers, he had helped make
PowerPoint the number-one choice from its previous third place and grew the
business from $100 million to $600 million.
For reasons that we will come to soon, it was an achievement that would be
instrumental in enhancing Gates' India interest.
Remala and Vashee were followed by a trickle of other Indians – Pradeep
Singh (who also left a couple of years back to found Aditi and Talisma in
Bangalore), Suresh Ramamurthy, Anil Goel, Shirish Nadkarni, Deepak Amin,
Chandan Chauhan, Paddy Mishra were some of the earliest Indian Microsofties
who made fundamental contributions to Microsoft and helped it grow. But even
up till 1988, when Microsoft was about 1000-strong, there were only a couple
of dozen Indians.
But their work was impressive, and the word out of India was there were many
more smart people there. Around this time, Nathan Myrhvold, who would later
become CTO of Microsoft, proposed that the company go out headhunting to
India. "It was inevitable," says Somasegar, a Microsoft vice-president now,
who had just joined the firm then. "We were just a handful of guys in
Redmond, but word had gone around about the talent from India."
The first batch of Indians (numbering around 40) recruited by Microsoft
directly from India – and mainly from Wipro, itself a tech firm of MS
vintage --came to Redmond in the summer of 1988. Among them was
Suryanarayanan, an ubergeek who would go on to become Microsoft's exalted
Engineer Emeritus by 2000, before burning out and taking a sabbatical in
India.
"Initially, there was a culture shock," recalls Vashee, who took the first
group for an acclimatisation course with fellow honcho Jon Shirley. "They
had to be told about the Seattle weather, about driving, about e-mail
etiquette..."
But soon, the Indian geeks began to make an impression. Like Remala in the
early days, they were tireless workers. They learnt fast and soon began to
make a mark. "The spigot opened," says Vashee. "From that point on,
Microsoft became a haven for Indians."
In fact, the Redmond campus became such a desi adda that sometimes whole
families worked for Microsoft. Having joined MS in 1989, Somasegar soon saw
his younger brother come to work at Redmond heading a Windows server team.
He met and married Akila, also a Microsoft employee, and her sister Priya,
who did some contracting work for Microsoft, in turn married Soma's brother.
Dil da maamla or Bill da maamla? Part III
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2002 02:28:38 PM ]
By the late 1990s, Indians had put a definitive stamp on Microsoft. Redmond
was readily a curry campus. Cricket teams sprang up in the area and new
Indian restaurants opened. The Indian influence was so significant that when
Microsoft made a bid to acquire Sabeer Bhatia's Hotmail in 1997, almost the
entire process involved Indians from the Microsoft end.
Bhatia himself joined the company after selling Hotmail for $ 400 million,
and worked in Redmond briefly before heading out again.
In 1997, at the urging of his colleagues and underlings, Bill Gates made his
first visit to India. By now, Microsoft employed thousands of Indians,
including an elite few who had made their way to the higher echelons of the
management and division heads. Gates' deputy Steve Ballmer, who had visited
India many years earlier, and Mike Maples, the executive vice-president,
were both evangelical about the country. It was now beginning to produce the
largest pool of engineers, programmers and developers in the world and
Microsoft had to get a footprint in there.
Gates's first visit was a rousing success. Indian tech leaders and
politicians treated him reverentially. But of all the meetings, there was
one that stood out most in Gates' mind. It involved a chief minister who had
declined an invitation to attend a party Gates was throwing and insisted on
a one-on-one meeting. Given a ten-minute appointment, Chandrababu Naidu held
Gates spell bound for half an hour. It wasn't what he said that impressed
the Microsoft maestro. It was the PowerPoint presentation Naidu made.
Unbeknowst to Naidu, he was using the ubiquitous MS product promoted by
another Indian. Was India a market or what?
Gates returned to the US also impressed with the quality of the people in
India and the work they were doing. By now, the firm was already contracting
out work to Indian firms such as Satyam and the experience had been
uniformly good. Within weeks, Gates gave the go ahead to establish a India
Developmental Center, its second outside the United States (the first, In
Haifa, Israel, was opened in 1991).
The center was opened not in Bangalore, India's Silicon Plateau and home to
the biggest tech companies, but in Hyderabad. It was a tribute to Naidu's
persuasive powers and also what is jocularly called the "golt" influence in
Redmond, where Telugu could well be the desi lingua franca (Redmond's first
envoy to the Hyderabad IDC – Srini Koppulu, as Telugu as they come).
But it wasn't till 1999 that the IDC began humming. Famously, Microsoft has
a well- earned reputation of not being first off the mark or quickly off the
mark. "They always get it right the third time," is the tart remark one
often hears in the industry. The corporation struggled to define a game
plan. "We had to get the mission, the location and the leader right," says
Somasegar, who oversaw the project. "One reason for growing it slowly was we
wanted to do strategic work there, not outsourcing."
Meanwhile, back in Redmond, the company began to lose a number of Indians in
the top tier of management. Sabeer Bhatia left as suddenly as he had
arrived. Pradeep Singh and Naveen Jain had already left to start Talisma and
Infospace respectively. Others like Vijay Vashee, Deepak Amin, Raghav Kher
were also beginning to chart out their own start ups at the height of the
Internet boom.
However, even as the top tier crumbled, the Redmond campus ramped up with
Indians. With the H1B visa cap raised from 65,000 to 195,000 over three
years, Microsoft became one of the biggest hirers of Indian talent.
According to insider estimates, at least ten per cent of the company's
50,000-strong work force is of Indian ethnicity.
But over in Hyderabad, the IDC spluttered to a start. Across in Bangalore,
General Electric, Philips, Sun, Cisco and host of other companies ramped up
quickly hiring hundreds of top-notch talent. Once again, Microsoft was
getting left behind. It was the same old story. Microsoft had played catch
up all its life. With the operating system, with the principle Internet
application, with practically everything else.
Central to the Redmond philosophy was having all its development teams close
to the headquarters. But that paradigm was changing. Every other company was
going all over the world, especially to India, looking for cheaper talent
and new markets. Could Microsoft afford to be different?
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