No I was told the only staff member who moved to the US with his family was Anup, and I think someone posted that he has since
left our operations at Laguna Hills.
Milind is definitely in Perth from my understanding and has an office back in India, he has a number of patents with other inventors
and is very passionate about AI.
Lets hope the closing down of our Perth offices wasn't a mistake in the long run.
Yes, according to his LinkedIn profile, Anup Vanarse moved to the US at the end of February and - since then based in Irvine, CA - continued to work for our company until August.
However, he is now “open for work” and actively looking for a new role.
The fact that he left what looks like a secure job without another one lined up (except for his ongoing side hustle as a remote AI/ML Advisor for NZ-based Scentian Bio, which presumably doesn’t pay the bills) suggests to me he was unhappy in his previous position, possibly due to personal tensions? (Or someone wasn’t happy with him and asked him to leave?)
I cannot imagine it was a decision taken lightly, especially for someone on a US work visa - which I assume he is on - as it means he is now probably under severe pressure to seek new employment under his work visa portability provisions, as otherwise he will soon have to leave the United States. (Just my speculation. Of course, for all we know, he could also be a natural born US citizen in no need of a work visa whose parents moved (back) to India after he was born - at least that is where he did his Bachelor of Computer Sciences and Engineering degree from 2009-2013, at Visvesvaraya Technological University.)
An interpersonal issue seems far more likely to me as a reason for Anup Vanarse quitting his job without a follow-up one in sight than an issue with our company as such - if he had generally not been happy working for BrainChip after having done so for more than 3.5 years in Perth, would he have taken the plunge and relocated to another continent, apparently uprooting his family, too? (Unless he were a scheming guy intent on securing a US work visa by any means, with the intention of switching employers after arriving on American soil, which I believe is highly unlikely.)
And I reckon he would also have worded his LinkedIn farewell post differently.
I had the same gut feeling when I noticed Nikunj Kotecha had suddenly left BrainChip end of last year and temporarily relocated back to India (he has since returned to California, but has not come back to work for us).
https://thestockexchange.com.au/threads/brn-discussion-ongoing.1/post-423978
By the way, someone else from our now closed-down Perth Research Institute recently relocated from WA to CA - right into the heart of Silicon Valley:
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been waiting for Vi Nguyen Thanh Le to come out of stealth by posting the customary LinkedIn message
“I am happy to share that I am starting a new position as …”
Santa Clara is of course the heart of Silicon Valley, where tech giants such as AMD, Intel and NVIDIA are headquartered, but also lots of smaller semiconductor companies and start-ups:
en.m.wikipedia.org
And then there is a plethora of further potential employers in the surrounding cities of Silicon Valley, there is also Stanford University nearby etc
It will be very interesting to see who hired Vi Nguyen Thanh Le - as her LinkedIn profile says she is now based in the US, her work visa must have already been approved (once again, assuming she is not a US citizen). I am pretty sure she wouldn’t have updated her location on LinkedIn if her California stint was just a tourist or family visit.
What this reveal likely won’t tell us, though, is:
Was our company not able to offer her a US-based job after closing down her former workplace in Perth, did she consciously choose to switch employers or will she be working for a company hiding behind an NDA with BrainChip…