My wife and I gave up $1 million in Big Tech pay to move from California back to India. I couldn’t find purpose in the US.

• Nithin Hassan moved from California to Bengaluru in 2023 to launch his startup.
• Hassan left a high-paying job at Meta to address urban greenery issues in India.
• He enjoys building solutions that are close to home for him.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nithin Hassan, who moved from California to Bengaluru, India, in 2023 to launch his startup. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment history.

I grew up in and around Bengaluru, India, in the late 1990s and 2000s.

I moved to the US in 2006 for a master’s in computer science. After graduating, I worked at AT&T, Cisco, Amazon, and Microsoft for the next 13 years. In 2021, I switched to Meta, where I helped build data centers for the company…

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