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Just the right question at the right time for me to answer! Beware, this is going to be a really looong read! I have never shared this with anyone, and I guess this is going to be a “coming out of the closet” feeling for me and also, for me, writing this answer marks the start of a new life- one that sheds away the sorrows and downs of the life I have lived till now and after the last full stop of this answer i shall consider that today is the first day of the rest of my amazing life to be!Why should you read this – I was a state topper in my matriculate exams scoring close to 99%. I was the quintessential Sharmaji’s son in my schooldays, the Best outgoing student and the best in quizzing student. My school didn’t want to award me the best in academics as well because the second guy was just 6 marks below me and the school authorities felt that I had already got too many awards. I have appeared on national television once for my quizzing. Been a fairly decent quizzer having been atleast a regional finalist on all major quizzing leagues in India. I have also travelled solo to quite a few Indian states and 2 countries abroad as well. All this sounds like the best recipe for an IIM aspirant. But the best part- I FAILED in Engineering. NOT ONCE, NOT TWICE, BUT THRICE AND THAT TOO THE VERY SAME SUBJECT AND BECAUSE OF THAT I HAVE GOT A YEAR BACK DESPITE COMPLETING MY COURSE. And I have my exam exactly a week from today. I am confident that I ll pass this time wish me luck! So go ahead and read this if you think its going to make you challenge the status quo and change your life too.You can skip to the “Current Back” paragraph if you just want a straight forward answer to this question, but I really want to get all the bad poisonous stuff that’s been hiding in me for years now. So I ll be telling my background as well. Please excuse me for bad English , typos and other grammatical errors, Its going to be a long post and also I dnt have much time, but I want to write it today itself!BACKGROUND:1) SCHOOL DAYS: In a phrase , I was the Sharmaji’s son! Not boasting but that was how it was. Every parent used to tell my mom that she/he wanted a son like me. My parents were even asked if they wanted to sell me to a childless couple. I was a quiet, hard working guy, in love with my academics, more so because I knew I was not smart and had to work twice than a normal person to be as good as them. So all I did was study and study , so obviously great marks and then I enjoyed quizzing thanks to the malyalam manorama that helped me win my first quiz and so started my happy life at school. There were some ups and downs too, but on the whole I was liked by all- friends, parents and teachers. I played TT for the school team, didn’t achieve any great heights there though.2) Pre Univ : having scored really good marks in my 10th, I was quite sure of getting into any good college for pu, but I happened to join a college that had a lot of CBSE and ICSE students and I felt that I had to challenge myself to compete at the highest levels if I had to be successful in my acads, and that’s where I started faltering, I really coundnt keep pace with those from the other streams. Being from state board, i had just been a maggu and I was slow in grasping the application part of things, but somehow I just tried pushing myself, scored a 94%in my 11th. But I couldn’t really keep pace the next year, I felt ridiculed and started worrying too much about it instead of working towards it. My bad performance in subsequent tests put even greater pressure on me. I couldn’t handle it. I bombed my PU, with around 78 in my 12th and my entrances weren’t any great. 5 digit ranks don’t get you a good college. Engg was a default option because I really didn’t know what I wanted to study. I had lost my self, my confidence, people made fun of me, I just didn’t know. My parents were kind enough to pay a hefty fee and got me into a good engineering college in the city.3) Family Background: We are a normal middle class family. My father was the only one amongst his siblings to study. In economic terms we don’t have any problems post 2010 , but life was quite harrowing in terms of emotional stability pre-2010 and that was mostly fueled by monetary differences between my mom and dad. My mom earns more than my dad and this was always a cause of fights between them. I am the 4th child to my parents, the previous 2 were lost due to physical fights between my parents, my dad hit my heavily pregnant mother during those routine fights and she suffered two miscarriages. The first child died because of jaundice. I have seen my father hit my mother because she refused to have sex with him. Emotionally my childhood was a drain, I grew up at my relatives place as both my parents were working. I do have a sister though, but she isn’t any source of happiness. She is violent.She attempted to murder my mother twice. She has her own emotional turmoils and its too long to be described in this question.I sometimes have a hearty laugh reading all those answers to questions like “ what does it feel to have a sister/ Indian mother/Father?” I really don’t know why I don’t have any such nice stories. I am not saying I don’t like my parents, they are good in their own way, they are supporting me in a lot many ways, but it really isn’t all rosy like the answers here on Quora. This is the tip of the iceberg, I shouldn’t be writing too much here about it anyway, so you do get my situation. But things are way more peaceful now.4) LOVE LIFE: Fell in love with a girl in my school days, she was a topper amongst the girls too…just like the typical middle class love story, it was perfect in all ways, but once we left school it became tough to maintain contact ( we were in early 2000s, it was a sin to talk to girls in front of parents) also her parents hated it that I was from a lower caste, and hence there was no way we could keep in touch without our parents getting to know ( landline phones were the only option or sometimes Gtalk)… all that lovely things aside, during my first year in engg, i happened to have access to one of her online accounts and that’s when I realised that she was sexting my best friend. And this “best friend” of mine behaved as if nothing had happened. Serious backstabbing. Messy life. There’s more to it, but you get the feel right? It took me close to 4 years to make peace with it.5) ENGINEERING LIFE: after all that mess – PU debacle and break up, I decided to make myself better. But- I still hadn’t found myself- I really didn’t have the confidence. I had quite a few friends studying in NITs and IITs – and seeing them do wonderful projects, I decided to immerse myself in practical projects related to my field – I wasn’t very successful but I did gain a lot from them and lost a lot too – more on that later. I even tried applying for internships at all major companies – but failed miserably- unless you know an insider or you are from a branded college no one’s gonna smell you! No one!The CURRENT BACKIt was in my 6th sem that I had to missed one of my internals as I ws busy with my project and was travelling to different states. I performed poorly in one of the subjects in the internals but I neglected thinking that I can make up for it in the externals. I had 8 in the internals. Needed 42 to pass. 6th sem exams, I failed that subject. I got 36. I was still knee deep in my projects and didn’t give much heed to getting it cleared in my 7th sem either. Got 28. Failed again. Placements were happening too. All companies specified “no current backs”. And I am from mechanical, so I completely lost out on my placements. Somewhere I did feel that I had some good skills that I had developed because of the interactions I had during my projects. I have an aggregate of 72%.I entered my 8th sem, this time I really wanted to get it cleared. Worked for it, even attended classes for that subject. But one thing I had failed to develop was a right mindset. I saw people around me getting placed and I stated ridiculing myself. Every tom dick and harry had a job, not me! It feels horrible. The party chick in college got a job despite low attendance. I had worked quite hard on my projects but no, it doesn’t add to anything when it comes to exams and passing out of college. I got an 82 in my finl sem. but I failed to clear the back subject. I got very nervous while writing the exam. Thoughts of “what if I don’t pass” clogged my brain and then I just gave up . I failed again. Thrice.I know I am not that bad, but this was a really stupid thing on my part. I am slowly gathering myself and working towards being a better peson and building myself holistically. I know my answer is not very refined and still needs a lot more info, but I just wanted to give my 2 cents to quora as a thanks to the many inspiring stories that have been the building blocks in the new me. Even while I write this answer I am very skeptical of how people are going to ask me to move the answer else where.The FEELING :Failing and getting a year back is the worst possible feeling, or the worst low in ones academic life. But its upto that person as to what he learns from it. Like its said its all about getting up after the defeat. I used to snuggle under the blanket and cry about it all. Even the least interested guy in class has a job today. I , who was so interested in getting into core mechanical, and hence pursuing projects in the field couldn’t manage to even be eligible for a job. Just think in my shoes. I just needed 6 more marks to pass. The internals marks are always in the hands of the teacher. My teacher didn’t want to be considerate to me, may be he was right. Though many teachers are considerate enough to give a 15 if the student hadn’t messed around much. No I didn’t mess around in college, I was justo to involved with my projects which pissed off a few teachers for reasons best know to them. So 6 marks quite ruined my life. Its even more horrible to tell anyone that I failed. Half of them wouldn’t believe me, and the other half would snigger. Its like almost becoming non existant.But here's what you can do – Wake up. Get out of the rut and get back to your studies. Finish it coz a degree opens doors to a lot more exciting things. Work on yourself. Utilize the year back time to develop your self. Read a magazine and newspaper religiously, Wake up before sunrise, exercise and stop slacking around. There are times when its smart to follow the crowd, be intelligent enough to understand that and how much ever intelligent you think of yourself, keep it aside and work towards your degree with utmost focus. You can also take tests like GRE or toefl, coz you will have a lot of free time and it will b intelligent of you to utilize it constructively. I did and got 320 on my GRE. A little happiness in these times of despair. Don’t ever think about suicide. Suicide is not the solution , its not gonna give you anything at all. You have got to live life and experience it. One of my seniors did suicide, he was a gentleman in all terms but he couldn’t cope with failure. He taught me a really good lesson. No one in this world is gonna give a damn about you. Respect your parents and work only for yourself. Don’t ever make them hang down their heads in shame. And failing in an exam is not a shameful thing. Open the window and look outside. There are people of all walks of life – a cart puller, a driver, a street vendor, a businessman in a suit, a frail old man buying medicines….just everything…and they are still living… all of them have hope that life can be better, when so many do, why don’t you?So get started on working towards your degree. Do wake up early, go for a run, keep fit, and take it slow. Stop looking around for motivation – this is one serious problem with us Indians in particular- we look for motivation around us. The motivation you find elsewhere is fleeting. True motivation comes from inside. Talk to yourself. Accept your shortcomings and decide to make your life better. And once you do stand up and start walking towards that life you want. Like I am doing now!I shall edit this answer and make it more reader friendly when I get the time. I have my exam in a week’s time. I am sure I ll pass. My future plans, I am quite not sure- but I do want to make someone smile because of me. I do know that somewhere some one wouldn’t mind giving me a job and oh, I am sure I can meet his expectations too. Hope this answer atleast urged you to get up and walk away from the rut.Have a great life ahead! And from today I shall live.

This answer has been completely re-writtenOver the past several years, drop shipping has emerged as the ‘go to’ strategy for most e-commerce retailers. This method has become the de facto standard for most of the uber-successful e-commerce startups from the last several years including:Everyone here at Brightpearl talks with customers and new prospects dozens of times per week about drop shipping, but we definitely found that there really wasn’t a great overview of the process to give growing retailers a detailed analysis of this process as part of a lower-risk vertical expansion strategy.For a how-to guide on shipping & fulfillment, please check out: Matthew Carroll's answer to How do e-commerce startups, like One Kings Lane, Manpacks, and Dollar Shave Club handle the inventory fulfillment side, without a lot of initial investment? Are there drop-ship suppliers they work with, or manufactures outside of the US?What is drop shipping?Let’s start out by getting a good general definition of drop shipping to make sure that we are all on the same page:Drop shipping is an inventory management technique that enables a retailer to sell a product for which the retailer is not currently holding in inventory. The retailer is able to do this because they have have setup a drop ship arrangement that allows the retailer from the product manufacturer's inventory of Available To Sell* products.There are three primary drivers for employing this methodology are:Positive Cash Flow: Once the drop shipping agreement has been arranged, the retailer is in a prime spot - they have product to sell, but they are not financially obligated to purchase any of it. When a customer places an order, the retailer receives the cash for the transaction and then enters into a financially binding relationship with the brand / manufacturer / supplier for transferring ownership rights of the product.Reduces Inventory Risk: We all remember how scary and painful the Great Recession was and it actually becomes one of the most significant driving forces to widespread adoption of this technique. Drop shipping provides the cash flow flexibility to the retailer (only paying for what you sell) without the shackles of inventory from pre-packs or case-packs (pre-defined assortments that most of the time sticks the retailer with odd sizes or odd colors). Additionally, the manufacturer retains ownership of the product, so it reduces much of the apprehension and risk from consigning goods.Reduces Transportation Expenses: The theory of drop shipping is brilliant because it cuts out the retailer’s Inbound Shipping (the amortized cost for the shipment from the brand’s / manufacturer’s store to the retail shop) - this figure is about 2.75% to 4.25% of Retail Price ( for a $100 Retail Price item).[* Available to Sell is a report of the available inventory from the brand / manufacturer that is currently not allocated to orders (i.e. Qty. of Medium Green T-Shirts - Sum of all future orders with a Medium Green Shirt Currently remaining to be sold = Medium Green T-Shirts Available to Sell. Basically, the report tells the retailer how many units are able to purchased by the retailer - not necessarily how many are on hand at the warehouse. This is an important difference because, as you’ll see, sometimes drop shipping can get a little messy - so that distinction could potentially be of use to grease the wheels to make your customer happy ]Three primary implementations of drop shopping?For purposes of explaining the different the different drop shipping models, we are going to define just a couple of terms to make sure that we are all on the same page:Customer - the person who has engaged in the transaction with the retailerFashionSite.com - the retailer who is selling the product that the customer has purchasedBrandXYZ - the brand / manufacturer / supplier of the product to our retailer, FashionSite.comThis process is designed to feel completely painless with the customer never knowing that FashionSite.com never took physical ownership of the goods. This process is designed to be efficient and reduce the considerable transportation costs and inventory risks associated with FashionSite.com holding the inventory while enabling the brand, BrandXYZ, to sell more product in more venues.This process generally takes anywhere from 4 - 12 business days:Until a brand reaches about $20m in top-line revenue, it does not make financial sense to own your own warehouse and manage the shipping and fulfillment process yourself - we are all over-worked and over-stressed, handing the actual order fulfillment is something that we simply do not have time for nor physical ability to do (well... some of you do and my hats are off to your supermen … or superwomen - we are gender inclusive here at Brightpearl). This is all by way of saying that the majority of brands / manufacturers will be working with a 3PL (third-party logistics) or outsourced warehousing & fulfillment company (i.e. a vendor that warehouses the inventory and whose sole job it is to manage inventory and ship orders that are submitted).Hence, the two numbers that are probably making you raise an eyebrow are:BrandXYZ Warehouse Fulfills Order: After working with five different 3PLs or outsourced warehouses over the years, pretty much every contract that I have read and signed stipulates that the warehouse has a one (1) to three (3) day ship window from when the order is “received” by the warehouse to be fulfilled (i.e. out the door the shipping company - usually DHL / FedEx / UPS).Shipping to Customer: FedEx / UPS Ground service in the US will take approximately 2 - 5 days depending on where you are shipping from - If BrandXYZ’s warehouse is in Los Angeles (LA) and the customer is in New York City (NYC) that is a Zone 1 to Zone 5 timeline and it’s 5 business days. This is essentially not an issue for the UK, but certainly an issue that many of you are facing in shipping to Western Europe.Figure 1: Model 1 Drop Ship from Brand to Customer2. Drop ship to retailer on a per-item basis and then shipped onto the customerNow this may appear inefficient, because FashionSite.com is basically incurring all of the same transportation costs. However, for retailers who are hyper-focused on customer experience need to control the product risk and make sure that every customer receives their box with branded by the retailer.Adding this extra node to the link will obviously add some time, this process pushes back the delivery window pretty significantly:This is the logic for how these types of relationships can work - hence why this method has become so popular with the Private Sales phenoms like Gilt Groupe and Fab.com. The customer receives the “Private Sales Price” (i.e. a large discount on designer goods) in exchange for longer delivery windows, where the discount is designed to compensate the customer for the lengthy delivery window.The three windows that we should explain are:BrandXYZ Warehouse Fulfills Order: Same explanation as above, the warehouse’s contract states that the warehouse agrees to ship the order in one (1) to three (3) days after the order is received. Now the interesting little detail that I am going to add to that is: most 3PLs / outsourced warehouses will only accept orders for fulfillment that are submitted before 10am local time. Let’s take a look at how this can start throwing wrenches in the machine:Shipping from BrandXYZ to FashionSite.com: This is the same logic as in Model 1 - BrandXYZ’s warehouse is in Los Angeles and the order needs to travel to FashionSite.com who is in New York City - this is a 5 day window. Now maybe the Retailer will tell BrandXYZ to “Ship the order on the FashionSite.com’s DHL / UPS / FedEx Account.” BrandXYZ is generally going to try and avoid that because we generally add a 20% markup on shipping to cover the cost of outbound warehouse fees. Hence the shipment is going Ground-service to FashionSite.comShipping from FashionSite.com to Customer: FashionSite.com is in NYC and the Customer is in San Francisco, California - this is another cross country trip that takes 5-business days via DHL / UPS / FedEx Ground service.As retailers grow into larger companies and their inventory needs grow this process becomes more and more refined with better integrations with systems, agreements, and vendor compliance on shipping times that reduces the majority of these concerns.Figure 2: Model 2 Drop Ship from the Brand to Retailer and onto Customer3. Large orders are drop-shipped from factory to a major retailerThis version of the drop shipping model involves FashionSite.com placing a large order with BrandXYZ pre-season - roughly about six to nine months before the product is scheduled to be available to purchase by customers at retail. Considering the large quantity of the order, BrandXYZ instructs the factory to break their order up into two shipments - one explicitly for FashionSite.com and the other part for the balance of BrandXYZ’s customers.This model applies to when you are doing business with a large retailer that - most likely an Special Makeup Unit (SMU - a special color way or model that is designed & produced especially for a particular retailer). When a brand like BrandXYZ is doing significant business with a retailer like FashionSite.com, picking the order here in the US is too expensive (about $1.30/unit at standard 3PL rates) - hence BrandXYZ issues special instructions to their Chinese factory to cartonize the FashionSite.com order (where the FashionSite.com’s order is put into specifically delineated cartons) and then in a specific FashionSite.com container so the shipment can be easily separated at the Port and shipped to FashionSite.com.Figure 3a: Model 3a Drop Ship from the factory in China to retailer’s distribution centerFigure 3b: Model 3 Drop Ship from the factory in China to StoresThis approach is a more common approach to drop shipping when BrandXYZ is dealing with retailers with physical stores. The drop shipping agreement is setup to drive down the costs associated with fulfillment in the mannerWhat are the advantages of using this model?Positive Cash Flow:Once the drop shipping agreement has been arranged, the retailer is in a prime spot - they have product to sell, but they are not financially obligated to purchase any of it. When a customer places an order, the retailer receives the cash for the transaction and then enters into a financially binding relationship with the brand / manufacturer / supplier for transferring ownership rights of the product.In order to emphasize the biggest advantages of drop shipping, let’s use the hypothetical example of a product that:Retail Price: $100.00Wholesale Price: $50.00In this simple example, we are ignoring Sales Tax / VAT and Shipping Expenses (Inbound & Outbound).Reduces Inventory Risk:We all remember how scary and painful the Great Recession was and it actually becomes one of the most significant driving forces to widespread adoption of employing drop shipping as an inventory management technique..Drop shipping provides the cash flow flexibility to the retailer (only paying for what you sell) without the shackles of inventory from pre-packs or case-packs (pre-defined assortments that most of the time sticks the retailer with odd sizes or odd colors). Additionally, the manufacturer retains ownership of the product, so it reduces much of the apprehension and risk from consigning goods.Reduces Transportation Expenses:The theory of drop shipping is brilliant because it cuts out the retailer’s Inbound Shipping (the amortized cost for the shipment from the brand’s / manufacturer’s store to the retail shop), an example of which, we see below:In practice, the process of drop shipping - saves time & money to your organization.What are the disadvantages for using drop shipping?Uncertainty on Inventory AvailabilityDrop shipping relies on open and robust communication lines between the retailer and the brand. When you are working with a fully integrated system like Brightpearl, this process becomes infinitely easier as the Brightpearl API ensures that your retailers can have accurate up to the minute information about stock levels - in short, Brightpearl makes drop shipping a dream!However, most e-commerce retailers and brands / manufacturers / suppliers are just coming into the modern age of technology and as much as we would like the entire retail world to be flourishing under Brightpearl-enabled systems - this is not always going to be the case.In the US, there is only about 55% - 65% accuracy into the actual supply levels of retailers and brands at any given time in the country - in other words, the stated inventory levels of retailers and their suppliers (brands) will be inaccurate by 35% - 45%. This presents significant risks to the drop shipping model that we want you to be aware of and cautious in protecting your brand against.Brand Value RiskWhen employing a drop shipping model for your retail shop or e-commerce store, these inaccuracies can cause significant turmoil for your brand and do considerable harm to the customer experience that you are looking to cultivate. For example, if there are not appropriate inventory accuracy safe guards in place and a customer places an order for a “drop shipped” product then the retailer must manually contact the customer and inform him or her of the mistake. This process is always messy and involves a lot of time and frustration for your staff and your customer.In the age of Twitter, you can destroy any social traction by virtue of screwing up one order. Think about it - the prevailing theory for employing social tools is that it is supposed to market a brand effectively by virtue of communicating the fact that one member of the social group “likes” something and thereby his/her social network is more receptive to it being applicable to them.Do you want to know how pissed off a customer gets if they have executed a transaction, transmitted funds, and established an emotional expectation for the product - and it DOESN’T come? You can destroy any social traction & eliminate a large segment of potential users. In addition, you are competing in the age of Zappos & free overnight shipping. Even under the BEST timelines, you are still between a rock and a hard place.Now we are going to run through a couple of scenarios that underscore this risk:Scenario 1: Drop Ship Orders Compete with Brand Wholesale SalesDrop shipping relies on one inventory set from which the retailer has arranged to be able to “drop ship” orders from, but it is also the pool from which the Brand / Manufacturer / Supplier is selling to other customers from. To illustrate this point, the following example should offer some clarity as to the risks of this scenario:FashionSite.com has an existing drop ship arrangement with BrandXYZAt the beginning of every week, BrandXYZ forwards an inventory report to FashionSite.com to update their inventory levelsDuring the week, a customer places an order on FashionSite.com for 1 Medium Green T-ShirtOn that same day a major retailer like Nordstrom places an At Once order with BrandXYZ that pulls all of the stock of Green T-ShirtsFashionSite.com submits the order to BrandXYZ who is hyper-focused on the Major Retailers order and does not respond promptly to FashionSite.com about the unavailability of the inventoryThis creates a big problem for FashionSite.com - the odds of a prompt response to FashionSite.com are unlikely and FashionSite.com’s customer is the one who is adversely impacted by the relationshipThis major retailer, Nordstrom, most likely represents a large strategic interest for BrandXYZ that will be a launching pad for future growth. BrandXYZ will bend over backwards to fill every possible piece of this Major’s order leaving the drop shipper, FashionSite.com left out to dry.Additionally, BrandXYZ will generally send out the inventory reports one time per week - pushing the responsibility for inventory accuracy onto FashionSite.com, who understandably has no control over the situation. Furthermore, BrandXYZ will be frantic to hit jump through the hoops that major retailers require, meaning that it will be one (1) to three (3) days before the new inventory levels are sent back out to FashionSite.com. An information discount that can adversely impact sales and customer experience during the state of inventory availability flux.Scenario 2: BrandXYZ’s Competing Sale for Sale InventoryWhen dealing with drop shipping relationships, the retailer needs to be careful about protecting themselves. Most Brands / Manufacturers / Suppliers have explicit goals of driving 15% - 25% of revenue through consumer direct channels - meaning that your suppliers will come into competition with you more and more.Let’s use our favorite Medium Green T-Shirt example that we have been working from this entire series - both FashionSite.com and BrandXYZ.com receive orders for 1x Medium Green T-Shirt - the last one in stock. Both orders hit the system at the exact same time - when you take a look at the numbers, BrandXYZ simply cannot fulfill FashionSite.com’s order:BrandXYZ is seeking to build their e-commerce presence and it is in their best interest to fulfill the order to BrandXYZ.com’s e-commerce order. Simply put, FashionSite.com is in no negotiating position to command priority over BrandXYZ’s e-commerce orders - FashionSite.com’s customer suffers by virtue of this example.Vendor Risks1. Credit Risk WAY beyond your controlLet’s assume that we are talking about a 3PL model for warehousing & fulfillment and subsequently the 3PL warehouse is a vendor of BrandXYZ. As you know sales in Consumer Products are highly seasonal (Spring/Summer & Fall/Winter) and cash varies widely (i.e. BrandXYZ have HUGE cash outlays at the beginning of the season and gradually recoups them during the cash build cycle leading up to the end of the season when we dump it all back into the next season’s product).Think about the risks that you are taking on by virtue of not controlling your inventory and the fulfillment process. For example, let’s say that it is 1-mo into the season - I have just spent all my cash on buying the product, my revolving credit line is max’d because of just paying my suppliers, and my US Customs duties are scheduled to ACH my account. At this point, 70% of my product has already shipped to the stores, and BrandXYZ owes the warehouse $155k for receiving inventory and then shipping to all 300 retailers in the US. It is still a little early for reorders, so the 3PL is one of lower items on the Accounts Payable. It would not be uncommon to allow the 3PL to freeze BrandXYZ’s account for exceeding credit terms for 5-10 business days.The drop-ship person is screwed in this case as a 5 unit direct ship order is not going to incentive me to to deviate from my “Cash Expenditure Plan.” Cash Expenditure Plans are detailed analyses that every CEO/CFO knows about the most effective use of crucial cash that will be spent at the exact time that it needs to be to ensure the effective functioning of the brand.[Note: One of the main reasons that this happens for brands under $75m in Revenue is that a Major Customer’s (e.g. Nordstrom) invoice becomes un-factorable, meaning that I cannot sell the invoice to a bank and generate cash. This can destroy your cash management and is something that smart CFOs are constantly preparing for.]2. FedEx/UPS will only deal with the shipper (e.g. BrandXYZ as the owner of the shipment)One of the biggest problems with drop shipping is the use of shipping accounts for the actual fulfillment of the shipment from BrandXYZ’s warehouse to FashionSite.com’s customer. There are three main problems with this:BrandXYZ Insists on Using BrandXYZ’s FedEx Account: BrandXYZ is trying to aggregate as much business with FedEx to gain purchasing power that will be used to drive down rates for the entire company. More importantly, it is common for Brands / Suppliers / Manufacturers to “mark up” shipping - meaning that I always add 20% to FedEx Posted Rates to achieve the amount that I bill FashionSite.comFashionSite.com MUST use the FashionSite.com FedEx Account: None of the shippers will speak to anyone that is not the registered shipper on the account. Meaning that if the drop ship order for FashionSite.com gets screwed up, lost, or the customer needs to make a change - FedEx / UPS / DHL simply will not take to FashionSite.com. In a world where customer service is do or die and the lynch-pin for all retailers - this is a major risk that can significantly hurt customer experience3rd-Party Logistics (3PLs) / Warehouses Want in on the Action: After having worked with 7 different 3PLs (outsourced warehouses) in 3 different countries for 5 different brands - these people see shipping fees as part of their revenue model. Many of them will force their clients like BrandXYZ , for example, to use the 3PL’s FedEx Account - since they will be handling all the shipments and the warehouse pools the discount, it will be in every one’s best interest - WRONG!This seemingly simple shipping issue can cause huge problems for drop shippers and something that we want you to be aware of and protected against.Based upon Model 1 illustrated above, the order will most likely be fulfilled via BrandXYZ’s FedEx/UPS account. This means that I own the customer data & the shipment. What happens if the customer needs to change the shipment? FashionSite.com has no authority to act on the customer’s behalf. FashionSite.com cannot call FedEx/UPS to change delivery details or the order. Here would be the process:Customer Calls FashionSite.comFashionSite.com has cannot solve the customers problemFashionSite.com must place a call to BrandXYZ - who is under no obligation to respond in a timely mannerBrandXYZ will maybe get to it later today or tomorrowFashionSite.com’s customer experience suffers as a result3. Return ErrorsWhen an order is drop shipped from BrandXYZ’s warehouse to FashionSite.com’s customer - the order usually doesn’t look pretty. You know what I am talking about when you receive an order from ASOS / Gilt Groupe and it’s in the stylish Retailer packaging that makes you feel all good to open it.Traditionally brands like BrandXYZ have been hyper-B2B focused - meaning that making shipments look good was a distant second level priority to getting the shipment to the retailer as quickly and cost effectively as possible. However when you employ the Model #1 method of drop shipping, FashionSite.com’s customer is going to receive a packing list from BrandXYZ and most likely a packing slip from BrandXYZ’s 3PL / warehouse.Returns are a fact of life, but having the documents in the FashionSite.com shipment for BrandXYZ’s warehouse creates a huge level of uncertainty. About 70% of the time when I have shipped orders in this method - the order goes back to BrandXYZ’s warehouse and not to FashionSite.com - creating a whole world of headaches for BrandXYZ and FashionSite.com.Customers ALWAYS make mistakes and don’t understand how the business works. When BrandXYZ drop ships your order, BrandXYZ’s return details are included in the packing slip. FashionSite.com’s customers will most of time ship back to BrandXYZ. BrandXYZ will not have created a RA for the order and it will most likely get lost. BrandXYZ has no liability in this case as it’s FashionSite.com’s customer and order.You might be sitting there thinking that we spent an awful lot of time talking about problems that arise out of Model 1. Ironically enough, Model 2 arises to popularity in most e-commerce circles circa ‘08 / ‘09 when I started seeing the Privates Sales startups like Gilt, RueLaLa, and Hautelook almost universally adopt Model 2.Model 2 was created to provide retailers like FashionSite.com with the same drop shipping capabilities without the risks that we have described in detail here.For more specifics about shipping & fulfillment, check out: Matthew Carroll's answer to How do e-commerce startups, like One Kings Lane, Manpacks, and Dollar Shave Club handle the inventory fulfillment side, without a lot of initial investment? Are there drop-ship suppliers they work with, or manufactures outside of the US?

DISCLAIMER: Individual experiences in various job 'micro-markets' and companies vary a lot. So this comment may be statistically incorrectWARNING: If you are from a moderately wealthy family and immigrated here when you were just 4 years old, your experience probably is going to be a lot different. A wealthy background can shield you from all sorts of discriminations including the racial ones.CONTEXT: Have robust software product engineering (& entrepreneurial) background, with experiences of working in Couple of US/SV product companies. PR-holder. Living in Sydney for last couple of years.Australia is wonderful country with beautiful beaches, great pub culture, fantastic outback adventure journeys, warm & friendly 'mates', great food diversity & restaurants, tropical weather (Melbourne weather is a bit mercurial :), great transportation (For example, Sydney has four modes of transportations) and road networks etc. I find Sydney as a wonderful city to live in (we'll come to macro-economic aspects of housing affordability in a minute). For people with entrepreneurial & creative bend, Melbourne may be a better option.However, IT culture and recruitments prevailing in Sydney seems a bit depressive. Yes, there are some fantastic companies (Atlassian is a great workplace), but I've seen enough bad ones. Successful immigration to a new country like Australia (esp. if you are married w/o kids) is not just about it's IT-environment. It's a complex interplay of following aspects -1. Local Experience: 'Cultural Fitness' is important for employers, but I think this whole 'Local Experience' thing have been played a bit too much. Without any racial connotation, I've seen this rule being bent often for people with European descent. While attending an interview for SDE position (from a pan-Asia recruitment) in Seattle, Microsoft never stressed on having 'local American experience' as a criteria to see 'cultural fitness'.As a fellow Quora-reader correctly pointed out, there exists an issue about quality of English spoken or practised by Asians. To some degree the complaint is justified. For example, I've observed extremely poor English (both spoken and written) standards while working with an Asian colleague holding Masters in IT from an Australian University. Again this observation mayn't be statistically significant enough to represent the entire Asian population (don't have data to justify). Understandably, Australian universities are under immense "selection pressure" as majority of the talented Asians typically choose US for their higher education due to a multitude of reasons, forcing most of the local Universities to keep the selection bar low enough to remain sustainable. Even then, at the very least, they should raise the minimum requirement (for students) of IELTS to 7. Although this suggestion may have a huge economic impact on Universities (difference between IELTS 6.5 to 7.0 may be few million dollars) and may crush dreams of many Asian students, this will certainly help to ease the communication gap, paving the way for better Cultural Integration.But unlike the innate IQ, English skills can be improved quickly as long as you spend enough time with native english speakers. Unfortunately, due to greater socio-cultural integration issues and subsequent asian-clique-formations, English skills do not improve for many Asians (even after a decade of residency).On the other side, I've worked with a Python (programming language) developer from one of the Eastern European countries. Though an excellent team-member, he didn't possess very good spoken English skills. And without having any "local experience", has been absorbed straight into a technical leadership role demanding expertise in a completely different technical stack.Technical folks (unless it's a client-facing IT consultancy or sales engineering or senior executive leadership role) typically works at back-office. And worldwide, programmers and technical folks are known to be introverts, focusing more on technology as opposed to human interactions. So quality of English doesn't matter too much as long as you communicate well in technical terms (in GitHub/BitBucket comments, algorithms, optimisations etc.) within the team. Interestingly, on average (there are outliers always), I've seen more extroverts dominating the tech-scene here as compared to other tech-hubs across the world. This dominance of extroverts in tech-scene, poor English skills observed among Asians (on average) and cultural stratification perpetuates that "local experience" requirement, perhaps.2. IT Market (Macro Economics): The overall IT market (dominated by service companies, consulting corporations) is shrinking and I know several 'Aussies' who are sailing for greener pastures elsewhere (Singapore, Valley etc.). One of the main reason for this dilapidated condition is lack of start-up funding (esp. in the Angel region of 1-10 million $) and increased tendency of bigger/mature Australian businesses to outsource IT to Asia. As a consequence, job creation (or opportunity creation) has been stalled.3. Work-Life Balance (WLB): With this economics, it's not too difficult to see why many businesses or business units have skewed the 'work-life balance' to the other, more "stressful" end of the spectrum (This again may depend heavily on the specific company or the group you are employed with). If you are into Enterprise Systems (Adobe CQ, BizTalk, Oracle etc.) WLB should be lot better as compared with roles in Application Development (.NET, Ruby Rails). But it's important to remember that too-much-WLB and tendency to "laid back" work culture serves as a fantastic breeding ground for "Mate-o-cracy" (reverse of Meritocracy)4. Recruitment Practices: Barring some exceptional companies & startups, I found the technical recruitment process has a long way to go to catch up US (& even in some cases - Asian [Flipkart, Infosys, Baidu etc.]) standards. Believe it or not, many times recruiters conduct the 'First Round' of technical interviews with an understandably rigid structure. A joke often goes like this -One door never shuts down for an unsuccessful bloke - IT recruitment in Sydney :)Most of the companies will not ask any algorithms/puzzles as part of tech interview, as the popular belief is - "Anyway you are going to develop some Web apps with some stack/framework. Why bother?", as meritocratic practices are often limited to pedantic topics like - TDD patterns, design patterns, OOP etc, number of Github repositories etc. Just because you've spotted a suitable advert in SEEK, it doesn't necessarily mean you will be given an opportunity to appear for the interview, based on merit alone. It's all about the credibility of the channel through which you are approaching to the recruiter who will represent you to the company. Except few companies like Google Australia, recruiters often have deep relationships with your future direct manager or L+2 manager. Some companies have 'preferred' staffing vendors and only way to get a 'call' for an advertised position is to get represented by a recruiter from one of those preferred staffing vendors (ex. Robert Walters). The prevalent practices rest highest faith on the maxim - "It's who you know matters more than what you know". This poses new challenges in the form of "Cultural Integration" (see below - #11) issues.May be a bit sweeping generalisation, in Australia, especially at big corporations, jobs often do not end up at company's public job portal only to be manipulated by a section of managers who have their own 'preferred' recruiters and 'preferred' candidates without actually conducting interviews - pretty horrible recruitment practices. Also racial discrimination is pretty common in recruitment (over the years racism has moved from being explicit to subtle) industry. Checkout - The confessions of a Recruiter MUST READA recruitment agency's definition of screening is.... hit "delete" with Indian / Asian applications. Sad but true!For a more quantitative approach to labour market discrimination -‘After completing TAFE in 2005 I applied for many junior positions where no experience in sales was needed – even though I had worked for two years as a junior sales clerk. I didn’t receive any calls so I decided to legally change my name to Gabriella Hannah. I applied for the same jobs and got a call 30 minutes later.’...To get as many job interviews as an Anglo applicant, an Indigenous person must submit 35% more applications, a Chinese person 68% more, an Italian person 12% more, and a Middle Eastern person 64% more applications (Source).Ref: http://andrewleigh.org//pdf/AuditDiscrimination.pdfBesides racial discrimination, according to interactions with multiple recruiters there exists another perspective which may be a bit uncomfortable to digest. It's about quality of asian students opting to study here. If you are talented enough, on average, it's hard to justify an expensive Australian university degree (There are exceptions as always. ANU, UMELB, USYD ranks pretty high. Sometimes high CoL plays a decisive role) over a quality US one. During the absorption of these students into local workforce, thus, an obviously biased impression gets formed - which in turn feeds into the prevailing racial discrimination issue, making it particularly challenging for other asian (mature-age) immigrants (especially for those having a darker skin and without an Anglo-Saxon-looking name. In fact, have been made specially aware of my darker skin-tone multiple times, since I landed here).5. Minimum Jobless Tenure: Because of the mix of above and other factors, often MJT is random. Expect it to range anywhere from 20 days to a year.6. High Tech Market Maturity: Although 'hard'-engineering is highly paid (at least through the mining-boom days) and respected, software/tech market is yet to reach to a acceptable level of maturity. Without big successes (Atlassian is an exception rather than rule) at home (successes which are also scaled to other parts of the world), software engineering is often viewed as just another commodity expenditure, unlike Sales & Marketing. In fact many multi-national companies (Including Microsoft and others) has only sales & marketing front-end here without any significant software development.7. Attire: This is strange, but attire culturally plays a strong role in schmoozing the recruiter / hiring manager, ultimately getting a job (esp. in big companies), sometimes even in career progression. As long as meritocratic practices are not completely abandoned, this is probably an 'interesting' experience. This poses specific problems for software engineers who usually rests more weight on algorithms, coding, system architecture & performance as opposed to extrinsic attire.8. Business Culture: Business Culture usually represents a microcosm of the society in general and Australia is no exception. Here, it's a deeply class-based, un-meritocratic, discriminatory culture with a gigantic display of Peters Principle, utterly ignoring any modern management practices. Interestingly the prevailing business culture affects not just immigrants (by a greater degree), but pro-innovation local talents as well. Fuelled by mining-boom-driven complacency, singular focus on "leave office by 5" and "how to avoid office work" gestated a toxic work-culture with an alarming level of corporate politics, analysis-paralysis, stupid and convolutional policies, multi-layered decision-making, nepotism and an unfounded fear towards innovation-driven technological disruption. I've heard some corporate folks here literally whingeing - "Evil Google AdWords is killing our 'golden goose' - classified business - where we used to rob our users by charging an exorbitant price. 90s, where are you ?". With total sympathy for workers who have lost their jobs, I rejoiced when many un-innovative and arrogant local businesses (talk to Sydney people about how happy they were when they discovered Uber to dodge highly arrogant and unionized local Taxis) have to give up at the advent of ruthlessly meritocratic American capitalism and entrepreneurship. It will be much more fun when the oligopolistic Australian banking sector have to forgo a substantial part of their lucrative brokerage revenues (brokerage fees are unbelievably expensive here like pretty much everything else) at the face of brilliant execution from Robinhood (Loyal3 on its way as well. Although brokerage arms of big banks are lobbying against Robinhood in order to continue to rob retail Australian investors with insane brokerage charges). Another example of encroachment - Google and Fairfax playing a different tax gameThe paradox is that Fairfax shed so many staff that it found itself sub-letting the entire second floor of its Darling Island headquarters to none other than Google.A leading bank reported following concerning statistics regarding their Directors’ credibility -less than 3 per cent of our directors have a technology background and only 19 per cent have operational experienceSomebody or something has to wake up undeserving Australian corporate leaders (and plutocratic boardroom incumbents) that world has moved on since Office Space and corporations can no longer be run by an elitist group of bankers, lawyers and privileged class (Why Australian workplaces need much better leaders). Innovators, engineers and DO-ers rule now ! It's an age of technological innovation and entrepreneurial thinking (both intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship). Much-touted Australian Work-Life balance has to have its cost, after all. Yet, focus is still on cost-cuts and BAU (Business As Usual) as opposed to new value or business creation.In a risk averse socioeconomic setup, crowded by an army of institutional and individual consultants, it’s not surprising to observe the feeble presence of production or manufacturing segments (As a Blackmore shareholder I was taken aback when some investors toured the Blackmores facility on Sydney’s northern beaches — all they could see was packaging rather than manufacturing. “It’s just a bottling operation,” one investor told The Weekend Australian) of the economy (as the massive economic dependancy to China continues). Interestingly, among these consultants, I’ve observed a strange form of institutional collusion usually seen only at the upper echelons of management or executives. Before immigration to Australia, never heard (never encountered in US directly or through various casual interactions with numerous friends and contacts) of the term - “milking company X together” - a reprehensible practice where a ‘gang’ of consultants all hired as contractors (often high value, 800$-1000$/day) to the company X, intentionally defer a specific project by months in collusion with a management executive, against the interest of the company X. Without a whistleblower this type of corruption is extremely hard to catch and particularly flourishes in a ‘laid-back’ culture where almost everything is contracted out (see. agency problem) without giving much importance to transparent corporate governance, meritocratic recruitment and fair capitalism (and it’s usual motivational bells and whistles like - Employee Stock Options Plan etc.). In fact, based on my subjective observation, ESOP seems like a “mystical” remuneration here unless you belong to the Executive Management or C-suite.9. Housing Price: With Rent-to-Income ratio close to 50%, and Affordability Ratio (median house price divided by median income) close to 12x (unaffordability is defined at 6x), Sydney housing market is in a bubble. When it will burst, no body knows. (Housing 'severely unaffordable' as Sydney price to income ratio worsens) It's difficult to bear CoL expenses with your income alone, unless you have a partner/spouse/wife working. Raising kids is a whole different story altogether. My heart goes to many middle-class Australians who can't afford houses/units of their own, without taking staggering amount of debt for a house that have a high chance of being depreciated, if the bubble finally bursts.Median US house price is almost half of median Australian house ! (even after accounting for currency conversion).At past, many had purchased multiple investment properties with LVR (Loan-to-Value ratio) as high as 90% (and above) before government made a change in regulation. Government deserves accolades for this. Sydney house prices have surged 50 per cent in just three years, sending Australia’s total real estate assets to GDP upwards to 3.8 times. This is higher than experienced at the peak of the Ireland and Japan housing bubbles. Australia now have the highest level of household debt to household disposable income in the world and the country is expected to lose more jobs and opportunities as it prices itself out of the global market. It's too expensive to take risks and too unaffordable to build startups or buy apartments. Big 4 banks of Australia are neck-deep in their exposure to property loans (Australia's banking regulator is worried about the big four's level of exposure to property). Many greedy (and rest of the bystanders are trembling under FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out) investors are still banking on the demand fuelled by steady inflow of international immigrants like you to defer the inevitable - Great Australian Property Crash.Australia needs to diversify its economy, boosting services exports - primarily tourism, education and health - rather than continuing to depend on resources and debt-fuelled property growth10. Career Progression: Compared to US, xenophobia here runs deeper and manifests often in career progression (especially higher management) subverting meritocratic practices. Barack Obama (President of US : 2009-2017), Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google), Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), Indra Nooyi (CEO of Pepsi), Shantanu Narayen (CEO of Adobe) - all are glorious examples where meritocratic practices has been honoured dismissing any discrimination based on race, look, cast, creed or religion. I will be interested to know how many big Australian corporations or companies have a CEO with an Asian origin (preferably 1G). Overall statistics portrays a dismal picture -Australians of Asian cultural backgrounds account for nearly 10 per cent of the country’s population but they only account for 1.9 per cent of executive managers, 4.15 per cent of directors and 1.3 per cent of federal parliamentarians.Forgot to mention that, for a majority of cases, your previous Asian (technical/IT) experiences and job-seniority will be discounted no matter how relevant or awesome those experiences were. Most probably, you have to literally start from scratch or accept a demotion at the least. One smart way would be to have a - "test the waters before you sail" strategy. Conduct a reconnaissance before leaving that secure job back home.Keeping racial discrimination aside, there is another interesting aspect of career progression - 'Mate-o-cracy' - where meritocratic practices are completely disregarded. Without passing a judgement on their unfathomable diverse skill-sets, I've observed a journalist promoted as Director of Software Engineering, a successful real-estate salesman working in a High Tech Patent Firm sifting through technical RFPs (Request For Proposals) and many such blatant labour market aberrations.11. EducationOne of the obvious ways to rise above discriminations and attain greater social mobility is Education. Australia has some top-class Universities (ANU, UNSW, USYD, UMELB - to name a few) with world-class research facilities and faculties. But the problem is - absorption of these students into the mainstream local industry utilising their massive talent-pool, focusing on innovation and job-creation keeping all sorts of discriminations (which cost a lot of money to the country, BTW) at bay. Over-focus on mining and few other ancillary industries, did not help to flourish other areas of the economy especially the High Tech market. This makes talent absorption difficult (a far-cry from US). In general, based on my observations, historically education had NOT been perceived as important (social aspect of "tall poppy syndrome" is partially responsible for this) by the local industry (ignore super-niche areas like Finance and Medical Research - which are tiny in size) focusing more on work-experience and on-job-learning. Although this seems meritocratic at first glance, because of rampant discriminations and 'Mate-o-cracy' syndrome described earlier, it hinders social mobility. Although some initiatives by government (National Innovation and Science Agenda) are indeed encouraging, social perspective will take longer time to change.12. Cultural IntegrationUnless you love to stick to your own specific Asian community, it will going to be extremely challenging to integrate or "fit in" (An example - Jason Yat-Sen Li: Being Australian is not about the colour of your skin ). Probably it will take an entire generation. Children of 1G immigrants suffer more to "fit in" compared to what I've seen in US. Bullying is like an epidemic here at school level (Schools 'should be ranked on bullying' to prevent mental health problems, psychiatrist says). Of course, like everywhere else, you can teach your kids to be tough on such circumstances. A good portion of those school bullying is racial in nature and let's accept that sustained bullying is pretty bad for kids.It's shocking to discover people, psychologically, still living in the Victorian era basking in the glory of mining boom days, ignoring all sorts of disruption and democratization technology is creating. Irrespective of endless denial (denying racism is a form of racism - which is pretty common here) institutionalized by public media, you will be repeatedly judged according to your British dining etiquettes, your attire, your skin-colour, your name, your origin etc. Australians place high importance on "humour" (which is great), but often the boundary is pushed too far, bordering with the tradition of "British dark humour" and "racist funny jokes".Chronic underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in public media has justified the existence of NITV (Home | National Indigenous Television | Australian TV | NITV). However, this is not unexpected from a country which upheld highly discriminative policies like White Australia policy till 1973. By the enforcement of Racial Discrimination Act 1975, there has been an effort to declare racial discrimination unlawful, but since then it has morphed into a "subtle" form (ex - police treatments, career progression, social interactions, faux interviews, property renting etc.). Hopefully scenario will gradually improve over time. Empirical evidence validates this. Based on my own Data Journalism study (data from: http://data.gov.au/dataset?q=discrimination), here is a heatmap of the trend in racial discriminations complaints as received by Anti-Discrimination Board NSW. Even though things are getting better holistically, much more improvements are needed in the crucial Employment and Good & Services sector.(Please keep in mind that these are just numbers of complaints serious enough to be reported to ADB-NSW, a tiny sample compared to the unreported ones).BTW, Sydney is the most multi-cultural and least racially discriminative city. Melbourne < Brisbane < Perth < Adelaide is my own subjective ordering (ascending) by racial discrimination. In general, smaller population and high crime-rate do correlate with increased racism. http://alltogethernow.org.au/racism/Observed strong Intra-Asian racism especially from my 2G (second generation) or 1G (immigrated at their early childhood with predominantly wealthy parents) Asian brothers and sisters. A little bit of forgiveness, empathy and tolerance can do wonders against all such hypocrisy. Intra-Asian racism is significantly stronger in comparison with US. Because of lack of importance of meritocracy at the foundation of the society, many racially diverse but talented folks regularly gets evicted out of the country perpetuating some kind of ‘Artificial Selection’, strengthening the myth of white supremacism. Akin to the social dynamics of colonial days, you may observe many (more than what I’ve seen in US; it may change now under Trump) situations of unjustified (and downright foolish) ‘worship’ of Caucasians and exploitation of Asian folks by their own elites. This, IMO, stems from the same root issue of lack of collective belief in meritocracy.The funny part is - all these silly discriminations are causing the country a lot of money - the economic impact of this is massive, especially when Australia is standing at the edge of an impending multi-year recession. As Haas Institute has found out -Of course, you can ignore all these with a typical banter. Unfortunately you will be overpowered (depends on your sensitivity OR how much you care about cultural integration beyond Asian cliques), unless you are lucky or retract back to your Asian community. Many asians dodge these discriminations with a combination of - clique-formation, "fair" skin, wealthy background/entrepreneurship and an Anglo-Saxon-looking name. Darker-skinned asians with a non-affluent background (including me) are not so lucky.US has it's own racial discrimination issues, but over the years it has been structurally weakened by a combination of - Civil Rights Movement (1954–68), "economy-of-scale", meritocracy, diverse job opportunities, true free-market capitalism, top-notch universities, vibrant StartUp culture etc.Update:Motivated by Brexit and resurgence of other extreme (far) right-winger parties across Europe, in the aftermath of Trump’s election, right winger parties are gaining traction here as well. So, it remains to be seen how the drama unfolds across the spectrum of world politics. Interestingly people here with strongest denial of racism are turning out to be biggest supporters of Trump. Hypocrisy unveiled ! It’s extremely frustrating to observe that the repackaging of old colonial technique of “Divide & Conquer” is winning.Overall ImpressionThough Australia (executives, entrepreneurs in particular) believes - Asia and an appropriate strategy for Asia is of utmost importance to its future economic growth prospects, there exists various invisible "glass ceilings" & "glass walls" (some of them are insurmountable) thwarting career progressions of Asian people (mostly 1G, less for 2G) residing here. Check this forum thread - http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1936071If Australians, on average, would have embraced meritocracy and capitalism more than racism & socialist-tendencies, the economy could have been much much more prosperous as opposed to the current state of affairs. If you are of European descent, have an Anglo-Saxon name and suffering from winter depression this is a great country to build your career.It may be possible to focus on your hourly pay-rate while ignoring the entire spectrum of socio-cultural issues described above. Personally, I've decided to go back. Thanks to Australia, I've attained a renewed vigour to combat racial discrimination and social inequality back in my home country. Slightly digressing: we all can do better than our hunter-gatherer ancestors by declaring a crusade against racism. This Human Migration map is so unifying and inspiring -Source: The Human Journey: Migration RoutesBottom line: If you have a H1B, go to US. But having travelled to Bangalore & Singapore recently, I believe, as long as you handle the smog and congestion, the best place to be during 2015-2020 would be Asia, especially in Bangalore (lots of startups, lots of opportunities including social entrepreneurship, massive consumer-base hungry for innovative products and solutions, lots of funding from Asian and American Venture Capitalists/HNIs. Please refer to this excellent Quora answer - Siddharth Pathak's answer to What is going to be the next "big thing" in the next 5-10 years? ). West had their time; It's time for the East :) Anyway that's the content for another post.