Day: August 17, 2025

• Surbhi Madan, a Google software engineer, has been on an H1-B visa for 12 years.
• While the visa has enabled her to grow her career, it also leaves her with a sense of instability.
• The visa has affected everything from the leases she signs to whether she will freeze her eggs.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Surbhi Madan, 30, a senior software engineer at Google. She lives in New York. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her employment and visa details.

I came to the US in 2013 to pursue a bachelor’s at Brown University. I was inspired by my older brother, who went to the US for his master’s and liked the teaching approach.

College was a big cultural adjustment, and I wasn’t prepared for how cold the East Coast got. Still, I loved building an independent life, finding new hobbies, and meeting people from all over the world.

During my four years of college, I didn’t think seriously about my long-term future in the US.

I interned at Google’s New York office one summer and landed a full time offer with the company a semester before I graduated. I kicked off the process for my Optional Practical Training and received my H-1B visa in the lottery on my first try.

While the one-third probability of getting picked in the lottery remains the same since I applied in 2017, the job market when I graduated felt better. Companies were hiring and willing to sponsor H-1B applications. I feel like I got really lucky when I compare it to the situation for recent graduates now.

Long-term stability

I’ve been with Google for eight years and have grown to become a senior software engineer.

I’m in a phase of my life where I’m thinking about long-term stability. I’m looking for leadership roles and have considered a career change.

In college, I was a teaching assistant, and I still volunteer for teaching opportunities, especially for women in tech causes. I’ve thought about pivoting into a teacher career or pursuing teaching opportunities along with a full-time job, but a work visa like the H-1B doesn’t allow for either of those options.

I enjoy my work, but there is an internal expectation to do well because my performance is the only thing in my hands. I cannot control the economy or the layoffs that have been sweeping tech.

I’m not putting down roots

I’ve been living in the US for 12 years. My challenges feel very different from my friends who are US citizens.

I have friends involved in activities like bike lane advocacy in New York. I refrain from volunteering because it means contacting my immigration lawyer to make sure it’s safe to get involved.

I’m anxious about making mistakes when I drive or file taxes because I don’t want anything to threaten my stay in the country.

Because of the visa, my life in the US feels temporary.

I have friends who are buying apartments. I find it hard to put down permanent roots. I have an option to renew my apartment lease for one or two years, and I always choose one year because I never know how long I’ll be allowed to live in the US.

One time, I was returning to the US after traveling abroad. At immigration, a US border officer asked me about the purpose of my visit, to which I replied, “I live here.” I remember him saying, “You don’t live here; you work here,” which left a mark on me. I remember thinking: “It’s true.”

My visa has become a consideration in my family planning, too.

I’m 30, and I have been looking into egg freezing as an option. While researching the process, I thought about what would happen if I no longer had working rights in the US and wanted to retrieve the eggs.

I had this vision of rolling into the US on a tourist visa with a suitcase to pick up my eggs, and I thought: “It’s not worth it.” I also can’t imagine having a person depend on me while I’m on a temporary status tied to having a job.

Once a year, I sit down and have a check-in with myself. I take into account the last few years, and the anxiety I feel about the future, and ask myself if this is still worth it. The answer has been yes — so far.

On the days I feel anxious, I try to refocus on the things in my control. I also have a decent financial cushion by now, which is another benefit of working in tech in the US for eight years.

This story is part of a project on the experiences of Indian H-1B holders working in tech. Read the full story here.

• The White House AI advisor discussed “AI psychosis” on a recent podcast.
• David Sacks said he doubted the validity of the concept.
• He compared it to the “moral panic” that surrounded earlier tech leaps, like social media.

AI can create a diet plan, organize a calendar, and provide answers to an endless variety of burning questions. Can it also cause a psychiatric breakdown?

David Sacks, the White House official spearheading America’s AI policies, doesn’t think so. President Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar discussed “AI psychosis” during an episode of the “All-In Podcast” published Friday.

While most people engage with chatbots without a problem, a small number of users say the bots have encouraged delusions and other concerning behavior. For some, ChatGPT serves as an alternative to professional therapists.

A psychiatrist earlier told Business Insider that some of his patients exhibiting what’s been described as “AI psychosis,” a nonclinical term, used the technology before experiencing mental health issues, “but they turned to it in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it supercharged some of their vulnerabilities.”

During the podcast, Sacks doubted the whole concept of “AI psychosis.”

“I mean, what are we talking about here? People doing too much research?” he asked. “This feels like the moral panic that was created over social media, but updated for AI.”

Sacks then referred to a recent article featuring a psychiatrist, who said they didn’t believe using a chatbot inherently induced “AI psychosis” if there aren’t other risk factors — including social and genetic — involved.

“In other words, this is just a manifestation or outlet for pre-existing problems,” Sacks said. “I think it’s fair to say we’re in the midst of a mental health crisis in this country.”

Sacks attributed the crisis instead to the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns. “That’s what seems to have triggered a lot of these mental health declines,” he said.

After several reports of users suffering mental breaks while using ChatGPT, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed the issue on X after the company rolled out the highly anticipated GPT-5.

“People have used technology, including AI, in self-destructive ways; if a user is in a mentally fragile state and prone to delusion, we do not want the AI to reinforce that,” Altman wrote. “Most users can keep a clear line between reality and fiction or role-play, but a small percentage cannot.”

Earlier this month, OpenAI introduced safeguards in ChatGPT, including a prompt encouraging users to take breaks after long conversations with the chatbot. The update will also change how the chatbot responds to users asking about personal challenges.

• Jad Tarifi founded Google’s first generative AI team and is now the CEO of his own AI startup.
• The race for AI talent has seen companies like Meta dangle huge signing bonuses to attract recruits.
• But Tarifi says people should not go back to school for a Ph.D. just to cash in on the hype.

The cutthroat race for AI talent has seen tech giants like Meta dangling exorbitant bonuses in the hundreds of millions to lure talent.

But Jad Tarifi, who founded Google’s first generative AI team, told Business Insider that he would not encourage people to get a Ph.D. just to cash in on the AI hype.

“AI itself is going to be gone by the time you finish a Ph.D. Even things like applying AI to robotics will be solved by then. So either get into something niche like AI for biology, which is still in its very early stages, or just don’t get into anything at all,” Tarifi said.

Tarifi, 42, got his Ph.D. in AI from the University of Florida in 2012. He joined Google in 2012 and spent nearly a decade with the search giant. In 2021, Tarifi started his own AI startup, Integral AI.

Tarifi said doctoral studies are an ordeal that only “weird people” — much like he was — should undertake, because it involves sacrificing “five years of your life and a lot of pain.”

“I don’t think anyone should ever do a Ph.D. unless they are obsessed with the field,” Tarifi said.

And now, with the world advancing as fast as it is, you can achieve a lot more outside school, he added.

“If you are unsure, you should definitely default to ‘no,’ and focus on just living in the world,” Tarifi said. “You will move much faster. You’ll learn a lot more. You’ll be more adaptive to how things are changed.”

Degrees that take a long time to complete, like law and medicine, are in trouble, too, Tarifi said.

“In the current medical system, what you learn in medical school is so outdated and based on memorization,” he said, adding that people might end up “throwing away eight years” of their lives for their advanced degrees.

Tarifi said people who want to thrive in the age of AI should develop social skills and empathy. This is because while the hard sciences can be learned, expertise at prompting and using AI involves “emotional attunement” and “good taste.”

“The best thing to work on is more internal. Meditate. Socialize with your friends. Get to know yourself emotionally,” Tarifi said.

Tarifi said that when it comes to AI, one does not need to master every single detail to work in the industry.

“I have a Ph.D. in AI, but I don’t know how the latest microprocessor works,” Tarifi added. “For example, you can drive a car, but you might not know every single thing about the car. But if you know what to do if something goes wrong, that’s good enough.”

Tarifi isn’t the only one who says that leaning into one’s passions will become critical when navigating a world disrupted by AI.

Paul Graham, the founder of startup incubator Y Combinator, said in an X post on August 5 that low-level programming jobs are “already disappearing” because AI is “good at scutwork.”

“So I think the best general advice for protecting oneself from AI is to do something so well that you’re operating way above the level of scutwork,” Graham wrote.

“It’s hard to do something really well if you’re not deeply interested in it,” he added.

• Coline Aguirre bought a traditional house in the Japanese countryside when she was 24.
• She left France and moved to Japan alone to restore the property and start her own real-estate consultancy.
• “It’s been three years now, but it still feels like a dream,” Aguirre said.

Coline Aguirre first began to imagine her future during a high school exchange program in Japan a decade ago.

Aguirre, who was born in Paris but moved around a lot as a child, spent a year studying in Kanagawa, a prefecture about 40 miles outside Tokyo.

During a visit to her host family’s grandparents in the countryside, she discovered that they lived in a traditional Japanese house built in the ’70s, with elegant wooden beams and beautiful tatami rooms.

“That was the first time I slept in a tatami room. Before that, I had only been in really modern city houses in Japan,” Aguirre told Business Insider. “I fell in love, and in that moment, I knew I wanted to own a traditional house in Japan.”

Fast-forward to 2021: Aguirre was back in France and working as a freelance photographer. Over the years, she and her mother had nurtured a shared hobby of scrolling through real-estate websites and window-shopping for homes.

“At the time, I was discovering the real estate market in Japan and noticing the really low prices,” Aguirre said.

In France, a countryside home could easily set her back by 200,000 euros. In contrast, some houses in rural Japan can go for as low as $500.

The contrast was striking, and it got her thinking about the possibilities.

“In France, if I wanted to buy something new with the money I had then, it would be a car or a garage. I don’t want to live in a car or in a garage,” she said.

‘A hundred years old, minimum’

Thus started her hunt for a “kominka,” or a farmhouse, in the Japanese countryside.

Aguirre was looking for a large property, with enough room for a photo studio. She also wanted an old house because she felt that they were built with materials meant to last.

“My criteria was like, a hundred years old, minimum,” Aguirre added.

When she chanced upon the listing for a 3,200-square-foot property in Uda, a small town about 50 miles south of Kyoto, she knew she had found the one.

“It matched all my expectations. It was huge, maybe a bit too huge, but it had an inner garden, two bathrooms, two kitchens, and a lot of bedrooms,” Aguirre said.

It was also a 15-minute drive to the train station, and about an hour and a half from the ocean.

With the help of a consultant on a real-estate portal — who sent her a 20-minute video tour of the listing — Aguirre bought the two-story house remotely, without seeing it in person.

Aguirre says she paid about 4.9 million Japanese yen for the property in 2022, and at the age of 24, achieved her dream of buying a traditional house in the Japanese countryside.

Her husband, who is in the French Army, knew this was her plan soon after they first got together.

“From the moment we started dating eight years ago, I already told him I’m going to be a house owner in Japan one day. And it eventually happened,” Aguirre said.

She officially moved to Japan alone later that year. “I had no plan. I was just trusting the universe,” Aguirre, now 27, said.

Her parents were also supportive of her move. It helped that they were already familiar with Japan: Her father had spent a year working in Tokyo, and her mother had been to the country multiple times on vacation.

Growing up, she was used to her parents buying and fixing up old houses in France.

“I had no perception of what was scary or not,” Aguirre said. “We’ve been doing that so many times, it just felt normal for me to buy a house.”

Restoring the house

Aguirre’s house sits on a street where the old market used to be.

The street reminds her of Kyoto, with its shops and old houses. “The post office is in front of me, while there’s a bank at the end of the road,” she said.

When her house was first built in the 1920s, the front section facing the street served as a soy sauce shop. Before she bought it, the previous owners had used it as a summer home whenever they visited from the city during the holidays.

In terms of restoring the property, Aguirre, who now runs a real-estate consultancy, says she has tried to keep as much of the original structure as possible.

The main thing she’s changed so far is getting rid of the septic tank and connecting the property to the public sewage system.

“I haven’t really destroyed so many things besides everything that was added during the ’70s,” she said.

There’s plenty left to do, including remodeling the kitchen and removing the fake ceilings on the second floor. Considering the size of the property, it’s been a slow process.

“I try to do all the DIY I possibly can,” Aguiree said.

Local contractors were often more accustomed to working on newer homes with modern materials like plastic insulation, which wasn’t what she envisioned for her own space.

“I started to learn a lot of DIY stuff, like making tiles and waterproofing the shower. But it’s fun. I really enjoy it and I like power tools a lot,” Aguirre said, adding that she dived into online tutorials, read books, and got advice from her father.

These days, between managing her business and working on the house, Aguirre also runs an online boutique selling vintage kimonos and accessories. On the side, she offers kimono photography sessions, too.

Living the dream

Aguirre is part of a growing wave of foreigners who are relocating to Japan.

The number of foreign residents in Japan reached a record high of 3,768,977 at the end of 2024 — an increase of 10.5% from the previous year, per data from the country’s Immigration Services Agency.

Four Americans who spoke to BI in 2023 listed Japan’s safety standards and relative affordability as reasons for their move. Others told BI they were drawn to the idea of renovating one of the country’s 8 million abandoned homes.

Though much of the experience has been rewarding, Aguirre says the hardest part of her move was staying focused on her goals.

“It is super challenging to own that kind of big house that needs constant attention, while also starting a business from zero in a new country with a new language,” she said.

She hopes to improve her Japanese language skills, but hasn’t found the time to take lessons.

“For now, my language classes are me talking to my neighbors,” Aguirre said.

Most of her neighbours are between 50 and 90 years old and have been living in the area for decades. Many of them once attended the local elementary school, which has since been transformed into a maple park.

That said, meeting new people hasn’t been difficult. A fairly large group of foreigners — mostly from the US and the UK — are living in Uda, she said.

“When you go grocery shopping and you see someone else who is a foreigner, you basically go and talk to them because it’s so rare,” Aguirre said.

Over the years, she’s been introduced to new people, sometimes even on the street.

Aguirre lives in her house in Japan full-time, and her husband comes to visit her whenever he can. Regarding what is often a long-distance relationship, Aguirre said, “It’s challenging, but I mean, he said yes eight years ago.”

Looking back on her journey, Aguirre says it feels like she’s only begun to scratch the surface.

“Three years is just a trial,” she said. Sometimes, she added, you’ll need to wait for the thrill of the move to die down before you know if it’s really for you.

That said, Aguire knows she made the right choice. She hopes to continue growing her real estate business, now a team of three, and eventually connect traditional Japanese homes with buyers seeking homes and spaces for their creative projects.

“It still feels like a dream,” Aguirre said. “I just added more layers to my dream.”

Do you have a story to share about building your dream home in Asia? Contact this reporter at agoh@businessinsider.com.