Couple who worked at Meta and Google in US moved back to Bengaluru because…

Hemant Pandey and Vaashu Sharma quit their lucrative tech jobs in the United States and moved back to India in November 2024.

Every year, millions of people dream of moving to the United States in search of better job opportunities, higher salaries and the promise of a better life. For many, the US symbolises growth and success. Yet, not everyone who makes it there chooses to stay.

Why one couple quit their lucrative tech jobs in the US and moved back to India (Representational image)

Hemant Pandey and Vaashu Sharma quit their lucrative tech jobs in the United States and moved back to India in November 2024. In a conversation with Business Insider, the couple explained their reasons for wanting to move back to the motherland.

Meeting in the US, moving to India

Hemant and Vaashu met during their master’s programme in New York’s Stony Brook University in 2016. In 2020, they decided to get married. Both of them knew that eventually, they wanted to move back to India.

“After we graduated in 2017, Vaashu went on to work at IBM, Meta, and then Google. I worked at Tesla, SAP, Salesforce, and Meta. We got married in 2020,” Hemant told Business Insider.

The couple picked 2024 as the year they would move back. “I had so many reasons for wanting to move back — some logical and some emotional. I felt happier whenever I visited India for holidays,” said Hemant.

In their conversation with Business Insider, the couple highlighted five major reasons behind their decision to move back.

Being closer to family

For Vaashu, the biggest reason for wanting to move back was so that she could be closer to family.

“My biggest reason was that our family is based there, and I felt closer to the social and cultural values I was brought up with,” she explained, adding that she was tired of missing out on important celebrations like her mother’s retirement, cousins’ weddings and Indian festivals.

Changing tech scene

Both Vaashu and Hemant saw opportunities for growth in India’s rapidly-changing tech scene. Vaashu explained that in the eight years since she left India, much had changed. Many Big Tech companies had expanded in India and were offering competitive salaries.

“I saw a huge difference in the opportunities India had to offer, in terms of the number of teams Big Tech companies had in India, the products they were building, and the salaries they were offering to employees,” she said.

A safety net

In the United States, Hemant worked with prestigious companies like Tesla, SAP, Salesforce, and Meta, while Vaashu was similarly employed by big named like IBM, Meta, and then Google.

The couple managed to build a safety net that gave them the confidence to move back.

“We had built a safety net in the US that we would be able to leverage in India. Knowing we won't have a financial crunch because of our savings gave me a lot of confidence,” Vaashu explained to Business Insider.

Visa challenges

Vaashu and Hemant fell in different cycles of their H-1B visa renewals – “which meant there were good chunks of time where we were unable to leave the US,” explained Hemant.

Their visa challenges also played a major role in their decision to move back. Besides the fear of not being able to travel if they received any bad news from back home, the couple was also aware of how restrictive their H-1B visa was.

“We were making good money and our careers were growing, but there was never an opportunity to pursue any projects or side hustles because H-1B holders are not allowed to have secondary sources of income,” Hemant said. At the same time, having an H-1B visa also meant they could not take a career break.

Fear of deportation

Finally, it was the fear of being deported for minor infractions that led the couple back to their homeland. “There was also this back-of-mind anxiety that we could get deported for the smallest things going wrong, even if it wasn't our fault,” said Vaashu, adding that the immigration situation has gotten more unpredictable in the last year.