Karthik Hariharan, an engineering manager at DoorDash, has offered a data-driven rebuttal to the narrative that Indian engineers are solely the problem with the US H-1B visa system. Speaking from his hiring experience in San Francisco a decade ago, Hariharan notes that the candidate pool then was an equal split between Chinese and Indian software engineers. The dynamic has changed drastically. Today, the skew is heavily toward Indian applicants, a visibility issue that Hariharan argues has become a bullseye for anti-immigration crowds.
The divergence stems from post-hire mobility and language barriers. Hariharan observes that many of the Chinese engineers he hired ten years ago have returned to China, where they now hold Vice President and CTO roles in tech hubs like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. He suspects that better social mobility and the absence of language friction made staying in China the superior career move for that cohort. In contrast, the Indian engineers from that same era have remained in the US, climbing into Director and senior engineering manager positions. They have built lives and careers in American tech, giving them far less reason to leave.
This personal observation lands at a volatile moment for the Indian IT sector. The Trump administration recently announced a crackdown on Green Card applications for eight major IT companies, including Microsoft, Adobe, TCS, Cognizant, Wipro, HCL, Infosys, and Capgemini. The move suspended PERM filings, a critical step in the Green Card process. While the ban technically targets the Green Card pipeline rather than the H-1B visa itself, the intent is clear: to disrupt the path for Indian IT workers who enter on H-1Bs and subsequently seek permanent residency.
The debate extends beyond demographics to performance standards. In a public exchange, Hariharan pushed back against comments suggesting Indian engineers are less competent. He acknowledged that while some Indian workers may have communication or quality issues, the same trends exist among Eastern European, Latin American, and other East Asian engineers. The core issue, he argues, is not ethnicity but the consistency of hiring and performance standards in any given location. When a high talent bar is enforced in places like San Francisco, the outcomes look consistent regardless of race.
The immediate next step for affected professionals is legal and logistical. With PERM filings suspended for the eight named firms, thousands of pending Green Card applications are now in limbo. Companies are expected to challenge the suspension in federal court, a process that could take months. In the interim, Indian engineers and IT leaders are monitoring whether the administration extends these restrictions beyond the initial list of eight companies, a move that would effectively freeze the high-skill migration pipeline for the sector.