Sridhar Vembu Profile picture
Sep 21, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read Read on X
1/ We have been very running a skills training program in one of our rural centers for the past 2 months, with the goal of hiring people who do well in it.

We have not required a college degree to enroll but most people who show up are people with degrees and no jobs.
2/ What is surprising is the number of fancy sounding degrees such as "MBA in HR" we see.

One person with that degree dropped out of training after 3 days because he said "I want a job relevant to my degree". He didn't even want to try.
3/ His mother - having spent her savings on the MBA in HR degree for her son - approached us again because she wants him to get a job and she cannot understand why he dropped out.

These degrees are doing active damage, not just waste time and money.
4/ What India needs are maker jobs, not paper jobs.

The investment made to create that MBA in HR program should have built a factory instead.

We need apprenticeship programs, not fancy degrees.

This has to start in rural India first because there is vast surplus labour here.

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More from @svembu

May 13, 2023
1/ Very interesting thread on Colombia (pop. 52 million) wanting to restore basic industries and jobs and restore balance in their external trade.

Is it possible? Yes. There are some trade-offs (!) they would have to make but their goal is doable. Let's look at the trade-offs.
2/ The most critical trade off is this. Consider the iPhone, which I will use as code to represent "goods with the most sophisticated tech available". If Colombians want to buy a lot of iPhones, they may not have enough exports to pay for them and achieve trade balance.
3/ The trouble is no combination of basic industries (food, fertilizers, textiles etc) whose technology is easily and cheaply available will allow Colombia to export enough to achieve trade balance *while freely importing technologically advanced goods*. That is the problem.
Read 6 tweets
Mar 31, 2023
1/ I will summarize my concerns about AI. I won't focus on the technology itself but on the economic consequences.

First of all, if AI were to eliminate all jobs, it means AI is able to produce all the goods and services humans need and want without human labor.
2/ The air we breathe is free and we don't complain about it, so if a future magical AI were to produce all the goods and services free of human labor, it need not be bad for us. The real question is "how do we pay for those goods, because there are no jobs and hence no income".
3/ That question really comes down to "who owns the magical AI" - are there monopolies that extract rent? Indians get practically free digital payments because UPI is a common digital good. That analogy applies to AI well.

Public policy has to ensure that no one monopolizes AI.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 16, 2023
1/ The Credit Suisse crisis demonstrates yet again the extreme fragility of the global financial system, caused by decades of central bank madness, with endless QE distorting financial markets & the real economy beyond recognition, causing massive inequality & other social ills.
2/ This hyper-financialized regime of debt driven "growth" cannot be sustained. The problem today is that global policy makers, particularly central bankers in the developed world, know no other play book than yet more QE and curing extreme debt with yet more debt and bailouts.
3/ Inflation is the inevitable consequence, and as long as inflation was confined to asset markets (stocks, bonds, real estate) it all seemed to work. We have now reached a point where the real economic distortions of decades of ultra-easy money have led to loss of productivity.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 14, 2023
1/ With vicious personal attacks and slander on my character, it is time for me to respond.

This is a deeply painful personal thread. My personal life, in contrast to my business life, has been a long tragedy. Autism destroyed our lives and left me suicidally depressed.
2/ My wife Pramila and I were in this fight against autism for over 15 years. She is a super mom and her passionate cause is curing our son of autism. I worked hard along with her. To ensure his safety I also took some of his treatments so I could know what they did to him.
3/ As our son got older (24 today) I felt the endless treatments he was under were not helping much and he would be better off in rural India, closer to loving people and helping to lift up people. She felt I was giving up. Our marriage collapsed under that stress.
Read 12 tweets
Jan 14, 2023
1/ Rural Hindu society increasingly runs on the shoulders of overburdened women. Alcoholism among men and loan sharking are causing enormous suffering. Men feel trapped in these vices and all too often choose suicide in despair.

These problems have to be addressed holistically.
2/ As a first step, our media and elites should not promote a drinking culture.

I have emphasized to our employees that drinking may be their private choice but as a company we frown upon public displays. I frequently warn our people that public drunkenness will get them fired.
3/ We also must recognise the deep despair in rural areas arising from structural economic changes caused by agricultural hardship and the decline of rural craftsmen and artisans - weaving, pottery, vessels, local machinery, vehicles, all of those self employed have disappeared.
Read 6 tweets
Dec 28, 2022
1/ How can India produce globally competitive companies like Apple, Google, Pfizer, Samsung, Honda, Boeing, Siemens, TSMC or Huawei?

Why are these companies so important to their host nations?

Is India on a path to producing these companies?

I will explore these quesrions.
2/ First let me answer the "Why" question. These companies are extremely important to their host nations because they embody within themselves the advanced know-how and R & D capabilities essential for modern life and nationhood. Most critical R & D happens within such companies.
3/ These companies enjoy a disproportionate share of economic value added as well as profits (compared to their direct effect on employment) and also pay heavy taxes to their host nations both through their well-compensated employees and directly as corporations. That's the why.
Read 7 tweets

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