Posted on 03/29/2022 1:37:20 AM PDT by Cronos
Chalk up another for an Indian-American – and for the IIT brand. The Thiruvananthapuram-born, IIT-Mumbai-educated Raj Subramaniam has been named CEO of FedEx, the storied American transportation services company, taking over from the company’s founder Fred Smith. This makes him one of half a dozen PIOs to have crashed through the global corporate glass ceiling in recent months, joining the likes of Arvind Krishna at IBM, Parag Agrawal at Twitter, and Leena Nair at Chanel.
Any report about a person of Indian origin becoming CEO of a global company produces two extreme reactions from readers. One is an over-the-top, rah rah celebration that yet another Indian has become head of a multi-national company. The other is a sullen, resentful view that there is nothing “Indian” about such people who have given up their Indian citizenship. Some readers see the very fact that these people have chosen to live abroad and take up foreign citizenship as a betrayal.
The fact that so many IIT graduates leave India is not a poor reflection on them, but on India, which does not make it attractive or compelling enough a case for them to stay back. Joe Biden recalls an encounter with China’s President Xi Jinping where the latter asked him to define America in one word: Possibilities, says Biden; America is defined by its possibilities. For the longest time, India has been defined by impossibilities. Unless that changes, IITians and other young graduates will continue to decamp from India.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofindia.indiatimes.com ...
Another notable Indian-American/IIT-ian who has smashed through the glass ceiling in the traditional sector in recent months: Vivek Sankaran, who became CEO in 2019 of Albertsons, America’s second-largest supermarket chain after Kroger, with 2200+ stores and 300,000 employees.
On effect of this India esodus is that we can buy authentic curry spice and nan in just about any grocery store.
Alu Gobi is now becoming an America Kitchen word alomng with Basmati.
The only issue is whom is this CEO going to hire for positions just under him or are Americans going to be condemned to the lowest available positions?
It’s been said that they come to learn how to run companies and then they go home and start up companies to compete with American companies.
[The USA is NOT in decline. It is still the shining light on the hill and still offers opportunities unheard of in the rest of the world ]
I will say that I’m a little more worried about this appointment than with the Google and Microsoft ones. The latter companies had practical monopolies. Fed Ex is in a competitive environment, and Fred Smith will be a hard act to follow.
Yes.
Basmati and jasmine rice make other varieties seem inedible to me
He is American. Been in the USA since 1987, that makes it 34 years.
“It’s been said” by whom?
There haven’t been any Indian CEOs of American companies who have set up competitors in India. They seem to consider America as their home.
Satya Nadella has been great for Microsoft.
They have focused on their products and not on making noise or being woke.
The nee guy has been with FedEx for 30 years. I think he’ll mostly continue Fred Smith’s work.
Just because he’s been in America for 34 years does not mean that he exercises a blind eye to whom he hires.
It’s a common practice among many groups to hire a disproporate number of their own.
The CEO of my current $100million dollar company is Indian-born. So is our chief QA/regulatory officer.
Don’t know them so well but they are doing the best darn job possible in these difficult times—Pharmaceutical/International imports is NOT an easy path to navigate even in the best of times.
and Modi is one of the few actual “leaders” left in the civilized world.
We've failed to identify the Communists who've subsumed the Democratic Party. ("The Party").
I don't understand how Americans "benefit" from scores of introduced foreign foods, when perfectly good American chicken and beef products are available at American restaurants.
Everywhere, threads so often end with gaining weight, sushi, tacos, discarding "blemished" foods (in the face of starving homeless), dining out, chocolate-chocolate chip, and the unsafe swelling of our collective bellies.
Wow - me, too! I could never pronounce where I was born, though.
I’d rather not have these people in my country in general but I’m sure this guy will do a decent job.
For me, the issue is tribalism. Western white people are almost the only people in the world who are culturally untribal, willing to treat everybody as equally as we can on this side of Heavern.
However, nobody else seems to have that mindset or value system and and they will unhesitantly hire their own. Can white people avoid being third worlded in their own country with those competing value systems of one side willing to give up some for the sake of equality with the other side unhesitantly taking advantage of the equality but not offering equality in return?
What on Earth is going on with them? The only way to get the cost down to anything even approaching what FedEx overnight used to cost was to send it via FedEx ground, and to take nearly a week. It seems their entire original reason for existing is now gone.
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