Sundar Pichai will become the CEO of Google, as a parent company, Alphabet Inc., is created by Google’s founders.
“I think the fact that we have Indians now at the helm of Google and Microsoft is a statement of how Indians have become part of the fabric of tech in the US,” AnnaLee Saxenian says. Through the 80s and 90s, Indians would be involved in startups but would not get promotions or, worse, would be replaced at the point of new companies receiving major funding. In 1999, less than 10 percent of Silicon Valley startups were created by foreign-born entrepreneurs. Ten years later, more than a quarter have foreign-born founders, she says.
But it would be a mistake to focus on this narrative as proof that immigrants in America have “made it,” says sociologist Pawan Dhingra of Tufts University.
“We should find a way as a community, as a nation, to celebrate the achievements of a group in a complicated way. Not a simplistic way,” Dhingra says. “Celebrate when someone does really well, but recognize that it’s the systems and the histories that enable these things.”