[alephnerd]

In some subindustries within tech (eg. Cybersecurity), the best engineering talent is now in Eastern Europe, Israel, and India and not the Bay.

Additionally, diaspora engineers whose parents are growing old are starting to move back to the old country to be close with them.

[porridgeraisin]

I see you read the srinivas narayan article :P

He's moving back close to where I stay.

Many others from the big labs are moving back to their core EE field into stuff like optical networks for data centers and so on by the way. That is a lot of the attrition.

[alephnerd]

> I see you read the srinivas narayan article

Nope.

At his level and position I doubt that is actually the primary reason simply because at his level, a way would have been found to retain him despite family issues (eg. opening an OpenAI tech office in Bangalore, Hyderabad, or Chennai or make him GM for OpenAI in India). Something else is going on with Srinivas' departure - either pushed out by Fidji or planning on starting his own thing.

That said, in my peer group I would say around 25-35% of people left for the family reason - especially after how COVID was handled in India. At one point, Google leadership was offering to match MTV salaries for engineers and PMs who Google wanted to retain but who decided to shift back to India to care for family during and slightly after the pandemic.

> Many others from the big labs are moving back to their core EE field into stuff like optical networks for data centers and so on by the way. That is a lot of the attrition.

My hunch is he is probably leaving to work on something like this or an adjacent space, but admitting as such would leave him open to litigation. That said, given his age I'd assume family decisions are also somewhat playing a role.

Ofc, some Indian diaspora types do leave for other reasons (eg. Sridhar Vembu and his divorce).

On the EE and optical side, diaspora founders are actually serious about leaving the US for Hyderabad simply because the Indian vintages of American deeptech funds plus the RDI are giving ridiculously competitive funding terms for startups in that space.

[porridgeraisin]

Why would it lead to litigation?

And yeah that makes sense on the returning from the bay part. Many of those people ended up being fodder for startups here to poach. Work with a few of them.