Nearly 40 years ago, an Indian-born boy began his educational journey at a government boys' high school in the town of Cheyyar, Tamil Nadu. He then embarked on an ambitious journey to secure an engineering degree from a higher-education institution that has long laid the foundation for many engineers and scholars. Located in the heart of Chennai and widely recognised as Asia's oldest technical institution, the College of Engineering, Guindy (Anna University) is believed to have been a significant turning point in the life of the engineer-turned-Microsoft VP making headlines this week. That man is Kesavan Shanmugan, VP of Engineering, Excel Copilot and Agentic AI at Microsoft. Beyond his life-changing tenure at the Satya Nadella-led giant, Shanmugam's tech career spanned companies like i2 Technologies and Hewlett-Packard, accumulating over 30 years of contribution. After dedicating over 23 years to the US Big Tech firm in multiple roles, the Indian-born engineer has not only parted ways with the company, but also decided to retire from the industry altogether, according to his LinkedIn profile. Years after starting his education in Tamil Nadu and becoming a software engineer, Kesavan is now returning to a life once left behind-a path increasingly being chosen by many like him in the US tech field. ALSO READUK study visa demand plunges to ‘5-year low’: How it could be a multi-billion economy blow Although currently based in Redmond, Washington (USA), where Microsoft's main corporate headquarters are located, he plans to return to India. The University of Oregon alum has since made a public confession online that the simple yet heartwarming reason spurring his "homecoming" decision is that he wants to spend time with his "aging parents in India." Climbing the ranks as a software engineer to Microsoft VP After securing his MS degree in Computer Science from the University of Oregon in 1995, Kesavan Shanmugan listed his role as a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard as one of his first jobs on LinkedIn. As part of his apparent race to the top, the Tamil Nadu native gradually climbed his way up. His next professional stop was i2 Technologies, where he spent five years after starting out as a senior member of technical staff and supply chain planner. A Microsoft VP announces retirement and returns to India. (Image: Kesavan Shanmugam / LinkedIN) Once he left that job in 2002, he pursued success, joining Microsoft the following year as an engineering manager for an "early incubation project to get .net running on Unix platforms." Slow and steady, he switched positions through the professional hierarchy, jumping from posts such as Group Engineering Manager (Forefront Security Management), Partner Director of Engineering (Visual Studio Client Tool), Partner Director of Engineering (Azure Developer Services), Partner Director of Engineering (Office Extensibility Platform), and more until the VP of Engineering, Excel Copilot & Agentic AI title finally latched onto his identity in April 2025. According to his LinkedIn profile, the Washington State-based tech veteran made significant contributions to the role for over a year before announcing his retirement in October 2026. As one of Microsoft's top AI executives, he led engineering for artificial intelligence platforms, agent systems, and model-quality infrastructure that power Excel Copilot and a growing portfolio of agentic experiences across Microsoft 365. Microsoft VP shares farewell note In what has since shaped into not only his goodbye to the US tech giant but also America in general, the ex-Microsoft veteran wrote on LinkedIn: "After 23 years at Microsoft, I am retiring today to spend more time with my aging parents in India." Calling it a "difficult" decision, he fondly looked back at the exciting work in Excel Copilot and his "amazing" company colleagues. And yet, he ultimately accepted it as the "right tradeoff" for himself so that he can now focus his energy on family and friends. "I am deeply grateful to Microsoft for making it possible to even make such a tradeoff. And a huge thanks to everyone at Microsoft, past and present, who made my journey at Microsoft fun, exciting and fulfilling," he signed off, sharing a image of his Microsoft ID. 'Reverse migration' of Indian-born techies In similar decisions, Gowri Shankar Ravindran, the director of engineering at Adobe, and Srinivas Narayanan, the Chief Technology Officer for B2B applications at OpenAI, also recently chose India over the United States. Ravindran announced in August that his family had decided to move to Bangalore, India to be closer to family after spending what he described as a "wonderful decade in the Bay Area." In the meantime, Narayanan said in April that he was resigning from OpenAI to spend more time with his aging parents back home.  While senior executives like Kesavan Shanmugan, Gowri Shankar Ravindran and Srinivas Narayanan bid farewell to the United States on a happy note, other Indian-origin or Indian techies haven't necessarily been as lucky. The ongoing wave of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has forced many professionals to return to their countries of origin, with reports and surveys arguing that the American Dream is fading. In June, a report by specialist staffing firm Xpheno showed that the share of returnees from the US could exceed previous years, as tech professionals coming back to India year-to-date (YTD) have reached 7,300. Yearly comparisons analysed in the report further revealed that the share of returnees had gone up from 9,800 in 2024 to 15,100 in 2025. ALSO READ‘H-1B is not a business model’: Trump admin defends US Green Card crackdown on IT firms Meanwhile, the share of professionals making the US is also declining, according to the Xpheno report, as around 9,100 people moved to the US (YTD). On the contrary, 2025 saw 21,200 professionals going to America, as opposed to 17,600 in 2024. The Xpheno survey of 1,276 professionals further found that 53% of the respondents blamed visa-related uncertainty for returning to India. US President Donald Trump swiftly set out right after starting his second term in 2025 to make shocking policy overhauls to clamp down on immigration programs, particularly the H-1B visa program. The non-immigrant work visa category has largely been dominated by Indian nationals in recent years, according to official US government data, with Indians receiving over 70% of the annually reserved work visa approvals. The situation has taken a turn for the worse recently. The Republican leader's government continues to ramp up efforts in a bid to apparently phase out the work visa program, motivated by the argument that US employers are "abusing" the visa program to replace American workers with "cheap foreign labour." In addition to proposing a hefty $100,000 fee on new H-1B applications (and a separate fee of more than $103,000 as the former one faces legal setbacks), the Trump government openly red-flagged eight companies this month. Most of these are either India-based or have their major operations set up there. As part of the latest aggressive offensive, firms such as the Chennai-founded Cognizant and Indian IT giants Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro and HCL have been suspended from the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) program. It allows employers to sponsor international employees for US Green Cards (permanent lawful residence in the US). Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, immigration, or tax advice. Immigration laws and government policies are subject to frequent change without notice. 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