Are Indians taking power in Silicon Valley?
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal with company founder Jack Dorsey.
Text by: Thomas Bourdeau Follow
5 mins
New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who takes over from founder Jack Dorsey, is from India.
Many heads of companies of Indian origin, in the United States and in particular in Silicon Valley, take the head of prestigious American companies.
Arnaud Auger, who heads an innovations laboratory in San Francisco, explains how this graduate diaspora competes for talent and success in new Californian technologies.
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"
I decided to quit Twitter because I think the company is ready to cut the cord with its founders,
" said Jack Dorsey, chief executive and co-founder of the microblogging site. He is replaced by the group's technological director, Parag Agrawal, from Ajmer in southern India. The latter grew up in Bombay, the commercial capital of the country, graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, then emigrated to the United States in 2005, to do a thesis in computer science at the prestigious Stanford University. , in Silicon Valley.
He is not the only one of Indian origin to take the direction of an American company: we find Sundar Pichai at the head of Google - Alphabet, Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Ajay Banga at Mastercard, Shantanu Narayen at Adobe, Arvind Krishna at IBM, Anjali Sud at Vimeo, Nikesh Arora at Palo Alto Networks ... The list is long and as this tweet from Patrick Collison, founder of Stripe underlines, "
immigration is an opportunity for the United States
":
USA benefits greatly from Indian talent!
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 29, 2021
“
The United States is taking full advantage of Indian know-how
,” adds boss Elon Musk (Tesla, Space X) to the conversation:
What is the origin of these Indian successes in California?
#ThankYouJack pic.twitter.com/zDwtHXltg3
- Parag Agrawal (@paraga) November 30, 2021
"India is a pioneer in training engineers with IITs"
“
I worked in India for two years to manage teams there,”
says Arnaud Auger, who now lives in Silicon Valley
.
I wanted to see the world of new technologies from a global point of view.
I grew up in Africa and the experience of an emerging country was important to me.
In India, I saw the take-off of a start-up ecosystem.
"
And this is happening at university: “
India is a pioneer in training engineers with IITs.
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are ranked among the world's top technology schools.
In 2005, the United States Congress passed Resolution 227 to honor the graduates of these Indian institutes of technology for their contribution to the American economy.
“
These are competitive schools,”
emphasizes Arnaud Auger
.
We must not neglect the pressure typical of Asian families: a culture of education and excellence, quick to export.
The Indian diaspora is 27 to 28 million expatriates.
"
"A third of Apple engineers are Indian"
“
Indians have a reputation for fitting in well,” he adds: Indian at home, they are Americans outside.
There are disparities in India with the caste system, but overseas they feel Indian wherever they are from India.
Their arrival in the United States transcends differences.
Tech becomes a social elevator that allows the caste system to be overthrown.
"
Back to California.
“
Initially, they came in as engineers, the tech workforce, developers… They were asked to code and the business, in a way, was left to the Americans.
A third of Apple's engineers are of Indian origin.
"
But that has changed.
“
Some members of the Indian diaspora wanted to be more than just engineers and become entrepreneurs.
They decided to come together and help each other.
Thus was born the TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), one of the most powerful entrepreneurial federations in the world, in particular in Silicon Valley and of course in India.
But it is also mathematical that this mass of engineers take up management positions.
"
"The objective of companies is diversity"
The numbers speak for themselves. Four million Indians live in the United States, with more than 500,000 in California alone, a 50% increase in ten years. In Silicon Valley, unsurprisingly, it is in Fremont (just in front of Palo Alto) that they are the most numerous, overtaking the city of Los Angeles. More than 20% of the population living in Cupertino (Apple headquarters) are of Indian origin. Nearby San Ramon has seen its population of Indian origin increase by 500% in ten years. "
And yet in India, it is complicated for visas
", underlines Arnaud Auger.
Ethnic statistics are prohibited in France, but in the United States it is very different.
“
It's almost the other way around.
Here, when you apply for a job, you are asked for your ethnicity (you can choose not to answer), but the goal of companies is diversity.
There is a principle here that can be translated as follows: we cannot change what we cannot measure.
So they measure everything.
Result: ethnicity is not taboo, but rather assumed naturally.
"
“
Representativeness is symbolic for these companies which see themselves as global,
weighs
Arnaud Auger
.
Paying someone who has lived in an emerging country who knows the reality of the world, its challenges, that makes the difference with an American employee who has not left his home.
There is obviously also an issue of representativeness and openness to the rest of the world, because these companies do not want to be perceived as too American, with an American-centered vision.
"
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