Hemant Pandey, the former Meta techie who decided to return to India after living in the US for eight years, reflected on his life decision and said both he and his wife are happier in India because of the social circles. In a podcast with career coach Pritesh Jagani, Pandey said he decided to leave the US because he did not like the H-1B restrictions, and though there is a huge pay gap between the US and India, Pandey said he will always choose India and not any other country, like Canada or any European country. Pandey said the US is the best for a career, as one can earn and save a huge amount of money, but the second preference would be India -- though he said he misses blue skies and blue oceans.
Pandey said he started making content apart from his tech job in the US but he was not allowed to monetize his content because he was an H-1B, which was one of the reasons for them to leave the US.
How much money does an NRI need to come back to India?
Pandey said he came to the US in 2016 to do his master's in Computer Science. His first job was at Tesla. He was lucky enough to get picked up in his first attempt at the H-1B lottery but he was laid off from Tesla. He got another job where he also got selected for H-1B visa and the company was also processing his Green Card application.
In December 2024, Pandey went back to India and continued working remotely for a few months for Meta. Then he took a career break, went on vacation, and now he has been working for LinkedIn for the last few months -- out of Bengaluru.
On 'return to India' fund, Pandey said it will depend on individual cases whether they have parents in India, whether they have kids but one should not chase a figure and don't be fixated on a certain amount. Pandey said for some NRIs even a corpus of Rs 5 crore would not be enough if they have children who will have to attend international schools in India, or who are planning to buy a villa in India. Pandey said he had a figure in mind and they went back to India after they reached the figure. Without disclosing the figure, Pandey said he set aside money to buy property in a tier 1 city in India. Plus, neither he nor his wife was going to retire so the corpus fund was in addition to their Indian income.
Pandey said earning one-third of US earnings in India is good enough money to consider if NRIs are planning to come back to India.
Pandey said instead of chasing a specific amount of money, NRIs who are planning to go back to India should fix a date when they should make the move because this part is harder.
Life in India vs US
Hemant said life in the US seems boring as people do not know their neighbors there. The work culture is as such that colleagues don't hang out after office unlike in India. People are doing the same thing every day, which leaves a lot of room for self-improvement, introspection etc. In India, life is chaotic, but there is house help, 10-minute delivery, which saves a lot of time, and that time gets spent in reaching the office. But he's happy because he does not have to apply for a visa to meet his parents.
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