Following Jack Dorsey’s resignation as Twitter CEO and the appointment of former CTO Parag Agrawal as his successor, many people on Twitter pointed out that several of the world’s largest and most well-known tech companies are now run by Indian-born CEOs. In appointing Agrawal, Twitter joins Alphabet, Microsoft, Adobe and IBM, which are just the most obvious examples of tech companies currently run by an Indian-born CEO.
Considering the vital role that high-skilled immigrants have long played in the U.S. tech sector, it doesn’t come as a surprise that some of them would end up in prolific roles. The fact that so many Indian-born executives made it to the very top is still as noteworthy as it is impressive.
According to data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Indian talent is in high demand in the United States. With roughly 75 percent of all H-1B visas approved in fiscal year 2020 granted to Indians, specialty workers from the world’s second most populous countries are the main beneficiaries of the program that many tech companies have come to rely on for IT talent.
