Microsoft’s Nadella, Google’s Pichai, and now Twitter’s Agrawal: Why Indian-born leaders dominate American tech’s top ranks

The challenges of coming of age in India and then starting from scratch in America help forge CEOs who can implement cultural change.

BY
VIVEK WADHWA

December 03, 2021 1:01 PM EST

Twitter’s new CEO, Parag Agrawal, is the latest Indian-born leader to rise to the top spot at a U.S. tech company. The traits that enable Indian immigrants to succeed in the U.S. are also “the traits that enable a CEO to transform company culture,” writes Vivek Wadhwa. Courtesy of Twitter



When Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft in February 2014, he inherited a toxic culture in a company considered a tech dinosaur. Bill Gates, its founder, had been known for berating employees, and Steve Ballmer, who succeeded Gates, continued the hardball business tactics that partners loathed. Microsoft had lost the battle for smartphones, and the technology platform its technologies were built for, the desktop, was giving way to the cloud.

As I explained in my book From Incremental to Exponential, Nadella chose to focus first on changing Microsoft’s culture. Indian by birth, and with Buddhist beliefs, he was determined to transform the company into one that embraced what he called “learn-it-all” curiosity, in contrast to its then “know-it-all” worldview. And he made clear that the old, aggressive behaviors were no longer welcome. Refusing to tolerate anger or yelling in executive meetings, never raising his own voice or showing overt anger toward employees or executives, never writing angry emails, he constantly worked to create a more comfortable environment.

As a result of the cultural shift and the strategy changes it enabled, Microsoft’s market capitalization increased from roughly $300 billion at Nadella’s ascension to $2.5 trillion today, making it one of the two most valuable companies in the world.

Sundar Pichai, too, inherited a company with cultural problems. Google was known for having a permissive workplace culture, where sexual relationships between top executives and employees generated internal tensions. In his gentle, humble Indian manner, Pichai navigated the company into calmer waters. He attained extraordinary success—as did Indian tech CEOs such as Shantanu Narayen of Adobe and Jayshree Ullal of Arista Networks. Beyond the tech sector, other Indian-born CEOs too have left their mark, including Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo and Ajay Banga at Mastercard.

But how do Indians come to be even considered for such senior positions? What accounts for their success as tech-company founders?

I came to the U.S. in 1980 and observed the evolution of the Valley’s leadership firsthand while founding two technology companies and taking one of them public. Later, at Duke University, I researched what had given Indians like me such an advantage.

According to research by University of California at Berkeley professor AnnaLee Saxenian, as of 1999 immigrants accounted for one-third of the scientific and engineering workforce in Silicon Valley, and Indian CEOs were running 7% of its high-technology firms. In 2006, my research team collaborated with Saxenian to update her work and found that the percentage of immigrant-founded startups had increased to 52.4%, with Indian-born executives having founded 15.5% of Silicon Valley tech firms—though they constituted only 6% of the Valley’s working population.

We found that 96% of the immigrant entrepreneurs involved in engineering and technology had completed a bachelor’s degree, and 74% held master’s or Ph.D. degrees. Within that group, Indian founders had been educated in a diverse set of universities; the famed Indian Institutes of Technology, for example, accounted for only 15% of the company founders.
Culture, as much as education, is key

There is no doubt that education gave the Indians an advantage. But this does not explain why the boards of companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Twitter would choose foreign-born technologists over equally qualified Americans. The answer may lie in cultural values, upbringing, and struggles.

In a land of more than a billion people, most of whom are hampered by rampant corruption, weak infrastructure, and limited opportunities, it takes a lot to simply survive, let alone to get ahead. Indians learn to be resilient, battle endless obstacles, and make the most of what they have. In India, you learn to work around the problems that an unjust state and society create for you. Entrepreneurship, along with the creativity and resourcefulness required to deal with all the obstacles, is part of life.

In the absence of a social safety net, family values and support are everything, and the family takes on a very important role, family members providing all kinds of aid and guidance to those in need.

Indians have many ethnic, racial, gender, and caste biases—as do people all over the world. Yet in order to succeed, they learn to overlook or adapt these biases when necessary. There are six major religions in India, and the Indian constitution recognizes 22 regional languages. Every region in the country has its own customs and character, and people accept differences in attitudes and beliefs, especially in the context of business.

Then there is the humility that comes from moving to new lands. Talk to almost any immigrant, regardless of origin, and he or she will share stories about leaving social status behind in their home country and working their way up from the bottom of the ladder in the adopted land. It’s a humbling process; you learn many valuable lessons when starting from scratch and working your way to success.

These are all traits that any board would recognize—and value—especially when the alternatives are arrogant company founders who believe they are entitled to their jobs. And it’s these traits that enable a CEO to transform company culture. This is what I believe has given the Indian CEOs the advantage.

This may be why Twitter’s board unanimously approved the recommendation of Jack Dorsey to appoint Indian-born Parag Agrawal as his replacement. And it is such a cultural transformation that Twitter may need above all else.

Twitter has received a barrage of justified criticism over a toxic work culture and insensitivity to abuses on its platform. Plus, Jack Dorsey was a part-time CEO, also running payments company Square and championing blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Dorsey’s predecessor, Dick Costolo, is someone I personally tangled with when I noted that there was a problem with the company’s chauvinistic culture and all-male board. As many tech CEOs do, his response was to publicly attack me, rather than listen to criticism.

It’s a response that none of the Indian CEOs that I know would make—and that is why they are being chosen to run America’s leading technology companies.

 

Vivek Wadhwa is the coauthor of From Incremental to Exponential: How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation, a new book on how companies can thrive in this era of rapid change.


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Migrants from all over world cross southern border in record numbers

By Anna Giaritelli

December 4, 2021 - 7:00 AM


Migration to the southern border of the United States from far-off countries spiked in 2021 as economic turmoil and the Biden administration’s eased immigration policies prompted droves from other continents to traverse to America.

The number of people encountered at the southern border from countries other than Mexico or the three top countries of origin in Central America was seven times greater over the past 12 months ending in September than the previous year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. One-in-5 people, or 378,000 of the 1.7 million, who were encountered at the southern border in the government’s fiscal year 2021 were from nations other than those four.

The biggest change in 2021 was the rise in arrivals from South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. In 2000, 97% of the migrants Border Patrol encountered were Mexican citizens. By 2014, more people apprehended at the southern border were from the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — than were from Mexico, data show. In 2019, nearly two-thirds of people encountered at the border were from one of the three Northern Triangle nations.

In 2021, more than 4,100 Russians were encountered compared to fewer than 500 the previous year. Apprehensions have spiked further in October, with more than 1,500 Russian citizens apprehended.

More than 48,000 Venezuelans were intercepted at the border in 2021, up from fewer than 2,800 in 2020.

While the Border Patrol historically has encountered small numbers of people from more than 100 nations every year, the number from some of those countries are rising significantly, as are the numbers of countries. Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas, announced this week arrests of people from around the world, including Eritrea, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Lebanon.

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The United Nations International Organization for Migration’s World Migration Report released on Wednesday concluded that the U.S. is the top destination for migrants globally for several reasons.

People across Latin America, which comprises Central and South America, have taken a harder hit economically than any other region, according to Michael Clemens, director of migration, displacement, and humanitarian policy at the Washington-based Center for Global Development. While the coronavirus pandemic chipped away at 2% of the economy in the developing world, it erased 7% of the entire Latin American economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“That has meant skyrocketing unemployment and economic anxiety all over the region, amidst red-hot demand for some kinds of labor in the United States," Clemens wrote in an email. "This partially explains migration pressure from several parts of the hemisphere."

"That pressure has particularly impacted people in Latin America who are already migrants from other countries in the region,” Clemens said. “In very bad economic times, countries often restrict migrants' access to lawful residence, jobs, and benefits. Countries across Latin America have done this with migrants from Haiti, who had spread across the region years before the pandemic, pushing them northward.”

How migrants are getting to the southern border

The IOM in November reported that the pandemic prompted a sharp rise in migrants transiting from South America to North America via a strait of land known as the Darien Gap, which connects Colombia to Panama. People who live in South America or who fly into the continent from the Eastern Hemisphere began increasingly trekking through the jungle to get to Mexico.

More than 125,000 migrants passed through the Darien Gap over the past year, more than the entire 2010-2020 decade combined. More than half were Haitians. On the U.S.'s southern border, more than 45,000 Haitians illegally crossed the border, 10 times as many as in the previous year. Three-quarters of the Haitians entered the U.S. near Del Rio, Texas, where tens of thousands crossed in a matter of days in September and set up an encampment under an international bridge.

The U.N. organization found that migrants from the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and the Americas have been crossing through the Darien Gap for a decade, but far more are coming due to the pandemic wreaking havoc on their home countries.

Other migrants opted to fly directly from their home countries into Mexico because the Mexican government does not require a visa for dozens of countries whose citizens are visiting for up to 180 days.

“They seem to be coming primarily to take advantage of a better economic situation in the United States,” said retired federal immigration judge Andrew Arthur.

“Some potential migrants are choosing the US for economic reasons. There is very high demand for some kinds of labor in the US right now, at a time when jobs remain hollowed out in several key Latin American countries,” Clemens wrote. “That push and pull, in the presence of extremely restricted channels for regular migration, is a recipe for high irregular migration pressure.”

Arthur pointed to the Biden administration’s handling of the border over the past 11 months as another leading reason people from all over the world have chosen to migrate to the U.S.

“People view this as the time to come to the United States,” said Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy for the conservative Center for Immigration Studies. “The Biden administration undid many of the policies that President Trump had. ... They really haven’t substituted those for any that would impede people from coming to the United States.”

For example, the Biden administration rescinded the Trump administration's Migrant Protection Protocols, known as the Remain in Mexico program. Under the program, asylum-seekers who crossed the border illegally or presented at a port of entry would have to remain outside the U.S. for months while their claims were processed. The program was rolled out to deter people who would otherwise make an asylum claim and be released into the U.S. The Biden administration was forced by the Supreme Court over the summer to restart the program and is in the process of reimplementing it while also trying to end it through a process that will hold up in court.

That half a million people who illegally crossed the border over the past year were released into the country is also a factor in why so many are coming, Arthur said, referring to numbers that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas shared during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in November.

Given the influx of people coming from around the world and the emergence of the omicron variant, recently retired U.S. Border Patrol Chief of Staff Salvador Zamora was wary of the U.S.'s ability to handle both.

"There are no new measures in place that have stemmed the flow of people into the U.S.," said Zamora. "When you have large volumes of people migrating from Africa or from Europe to Central and South America into Mexico and then into the care of Border Patrol personnel now without any slowing efforts in sight, it's extremely concerning.

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Victor Davis Hanson: Fauci is acting like a 'monarch' with 'legislative, judicial and executive power'

Published December 02, 2021

President Biden joked on Thursday that Dr. Anthony Fauci is so involved in White House affairs that it feels like he is the president

By Yael Halon | Fox News

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson slammed Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday for acting more like a "monarch" than the president, as Biden recently suggested.

During an address on the White House's latest strategy to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Biden opened by applauding Fauci, who Biden said he sees more than his own wife. Biden went on to joke that Fauci is the real commander-in-chief.

"In his befuddlement, Joe Biden can be very clear," Hanson said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight." "When he said he was the president, i.e. Dr. Fauci, he is more like a monarch. He has legislative, judicial, and executive power all in one."

Hanson denounced Fauci for his treatment of the public throughout the pandemic, telling Carlson that "Fauci from the beginning could not talk about the damage the lockdowns was inflicting…economic, social, medical, spousal abuse…"

Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks as Dr. Rochelle Walensky looks on during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Nov. 4. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Hanson went on, "He just could not say natural immunity acquired from prior infections might be as effective as the vaccines. He couldn’t do it….his information was weaponized."

Biden announced at the press conference that he would be issuing a series of new policies to combat the spread of the Omicron variant, which appeared to originate in South Africa.

Fauci also appeared to be cracking down, when he advised viewers of a CNN town hall to wear a mask indoors even if they've been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus and received the vaccine booster in contrast to CDC guidance.

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Is It OK to Claim a Religious Exemption to the Covid Vaccine?

The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on weighing religious commitments against civic responsibilities — and more.

Credit...Illustration by Tomi Um


By Kwame Anthony Appiah
Nov. 30, 2021


My daughter, a toddler, started day care this fall. We were told that her new assistant teacher was not vaccinated. This person was supposedly “considering” vaccination but also claimed to have religious reasons for refusing it. However, those she chose to work with are especially vulnerable: They cannot wear masks, cannot currently be vaccinated and are still forming their immune systems. When we pressed the owner of the school, she said she could not find qualified vaccinated individuals to take the job. We see vaccination as a public duty, not a personal choice, especially when working with vulnerable populations. I don’t consider even a religious exemption to be ethical. Is there another way to look at it? Kalie Z.

In a democracy with a great diversity of faiths, we should do our best to accommodate the seriously held religious beliefs of our fellow citizens. This is, in part, the counsel of prudence. Religious difference can tear societies apart; accommodating difference can help people live in harmony. Nor should the state heedlessly trespass on personal autonomy, including people’s projects and commitments, which often are religious in nature. Now for a few critical caveats.

Some people seem to think that merely uttering the words ‘religious exemption’ obliges us to let them do whatever they want.

Free-exercise claims may be denied when they clash with other exigent considerations, including other forms of liberty. Even when exemptions are granted, they may come with consequences. For public-health reasons, we may decide we must limit the freedom of vaccine-exempted people to do things like eat at restaurants or participate unmasked in indoor events, perhaps even to hold specific jobs. People who say that they should be exempt without cost are refusing to take their responsibility to the rest of us seriously: They can hardly expect us to burden ourselves for their sakes if they aren’t inclined to reciprocate. We also have reason to doubt the weight of their religious commitments, given that such commitments typically entail accepting the reasonable burdens of living up to them.

And this matters because people who demand religious exemption are not exempt from having the sincerity of their demands scrutinized. The military has, for generations, made inquiries into how conscientious a conscientious objection really is; immigration officials may make similar inquiries into a green-card-conferring marriage. Vaccination saves enormous numbers of lives. It’s fair to ask those requesting exemptions to give a meaningful explanation of why receiving the vaccine contravenes their creed; it’s fair to inquire if they are consistent in applying the pertinent tenets.

It matters, too, whether religious claims against the state or an employer are backed by a community of faith. (No major religious group has asked members to abstain from vaccination, though individual congregations may go their own way.) That’s relevant in two respects. First, we have some reason to try to accommodate a community of faith precisely because it is a community; and second, such membership increases our confidence that the profession is sincere. When conscientious objectors are asked to establish their bona fides, the fact that they belong to a tradition with pacifist commitments — such as Quakerism — may be taken as a useful proxy.

Our assessments of faith-based claims will be imperfect, no doubt. But allowing people to assert a religious exemption with no questions asked is an obvious invitation to abuse. Some people seem to think that merely uttering the words “religious exemption” obliges us to let them do whatever they want. That way chaos lies.

A final point about your specific case: The direct risks Covid poses to children remain extremely small. Toddlers represent a minuscule fraction of severe Covid cases. But they can spread infection to others whose risks are higher. I hope this day-care employee’s considerations take into account all the people her decision may affect.

Several family members who were not eligible for Covid booster vaccines under C.D.C. guidelines this fall said they were immunocompromised in order to obtain a booster. At least one was a wink-wink situation — the pharmacist knew the truth. I am torn about the morality of this. I am very uncomfortable with lying. But the restrictions on who qualified for a booster were immoral. The boosters were effective, and surplus doses were being thrown away. In my view, the restrictions increased the risk to one group (those who want a booster but weren’t allowed to have one) without increasing the benefit to another. Lying in order to circumvent that system could be seen as an act of civil disobedience, couldn’t it? Lucy B.

Not by my lights. Standard theories of civil disobedience tend to focus on cases in which people break the law publicly in order to draw attention to an injustice. And a defective policy isn’t necessarily an unjust one. That a queue could have been better designed doesn’t, by itself, give you permission to cut it. Getting a jab under false pretenses, even with the knowing cooperation of the pharmacist, hardly amounts to an act of protest. Rosa Parks didn’t try to pass for white so she could sit in the front of the bus.

Travel restrictions and lockdowns. As more Omicron cases emerge globally, countries are responding in varied ways. Japan joined Israel and Morocco in barring all foreign travelers, and Australia delayed reopening its borders for two weeks. Here’s a list of where U.S. citizens can travel right now and what to know about travel restrictions.

A new type of treatment. An expert panel voted to recommend that the F.D.A. authorize a Covid pill from Merck for high-risk adults, the first in a new class of antiviral drugs that could work against a wide range of variants, including Omicron. The pill could be authorized within days, and available by year’s end.

Economic impact. Stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, driven by the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will hasten the removal of its supports for the economy just as Omicron has begun to spread. Meanwhile, analysts expect the markets to face weeks of uncertainty and increased volatility amid the new variant’s arrival.

My young nephew has been undergoing treatment for cancer. He is severely immunocompromised. His parents are apparent Covid deniers and have repeatedly exposed the child to crowds. They posted photos to Facebook of him being held by nonfamily members, just days after he was released from the hospital. Nobody in the photos (which have dozens of people in them) is wearing a mask. There have been two events for this child: each was held outside, but each involved a lot of close contact. Nobody in the extended family dares say anything because his family will just explode in anger. But as a former medical worker, I find it deeply upsetting to remain silent. (The child almost died recently from a mild infection.) I would like to report the family to the child’s oncologist. Would this be unethical of me? I know these parents love their child, but if they will not listen to me, they might listen to his doctor. What do you think? Name Withheld

You say these parents will explode in anger if you mention the issue? Oh, dear. They may be among those people whose aberrant views about Covid have become a measure of their commitment to an identity. People in that frame of mind are quite willing to do things that put their lives — and those of their children — on the line. So I’m not terribly hopeful that they’ll shift course on a doctor’s advice. In fact, I’d be surprised if their oncologist hasn’t already explained to them that their child needs protecting from immunological challenges.

But you should certainly feel free to tell the doctor, who can make sure to reinforce the medical considerations here. The behavior you’re describing isn’t something you were told in confidence; it’s visible on Facebook. Your nephew’s parents regard these ill-advised interactions with pride, not with shame — alas.

My employer is a small, disorganized nonprofit. Recently, I received two direct deposits in one pay period, one right after the other. One was my regular paycheck amount, and the second was about $100 more. I was essentially paid twice. It’s likely to be a mistake, even though last year a “bonus” appeared in my account without warning. I don’t want to be ungrateful, but my boss is a terrible manager, and my bitterness about other things makes me feel that it’s not my problem if they can’t get paychecks right and that I should just keep the money. Can I do so and leave my integrity intact? Name Withheld

I’m afraid not. Alert your employer and find out whether the extra deposit was intentional or not. Too many organizations could more aptly be termed dis-organizations, and lofty aims are no excuse for slipshod execution. But taking advantage of those circumstances isn’t helpful. Managers don’t improve when slip-ups aren’t called to their attention.

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