Highly considering moving back to India after 10 years in the US
I'm 28(M), working as a Sr. R&D Engineer at a top-10 medical device company. I’ve been on H1B since the past 5 years, PERM is being processed.
I moved to the US from India in January 2016 for my undergrad in mechanical engineering. I did three internships at the company I still work for, then joined full-time in 2020 right as COVID hit.
I spent my first two years in Indiana, and in 2022 got the opportunity to move into mergers & acquisitions as an engineer integrating acquired medical devices. That role took me to Israel for seven months supporting one acquisition, then to Boston for another, and for the past two years I've been in California doing the same work.
These past 10 years have been fulfilling and full of learning, and I'm genuinely grateful for the opportunities. But I've come to realize that spending the next 10–20 years as an employee at a large corporation isn't the future I see for myself. Financially, it feels like golden handcuffs — a comfortable salary, but I'm not building true wealth or ownership.
When I define success today, it looks like returning to India to focus on building my own business, then eventually bringing that business to the US — so I can live life on my own terms and travel in and out of the country without visa restrictions or delays, and without feeling creatively lost selling my soul to a big corporation.
The two avenues I'm considering:
- Scale my mom's company. She owns an HR agency in India that currently serves one large corporate client. I'd work on growing it from one customer to many.
- AI consulting in medtech. Use my domain expertise in medical device development and manufacturing to build an AI consulting practice in the industry.
Would love to hear what this group thinks based on the discussions that have happened here — especially from anyone who's left a stable corporate role to build something of their own.