BROAD TALENT GAPS
Although major technology companies have plans to train millions of people across the region, there is consensus about a looming digital talent gap.
“It is still very difficult, challenging to find a really, really great tech talent. The gap is always there,” Kanggrawan said.
This remains the case even as the industry shed tens of thousands of jobs amid the so-called “tech winter”, a sector downturn of mass job losses and hiring freezes in the past two years.
Khuong said that countries with ageing populations like Thailand and Singapore will have an even “more severe” problem finding manpower.
He said education reforms were necessary regionally and tech firms should be incentivised to help.
“I see the gap everywhere, because the technologies actually progress so rapidly, so everyone has to play the catching up game here to train their people.”
In Thailand, Benja Bencharongkul is running a technology application company called Brainergy, which is parented by Benchachinda Group, a telecommunications group that runs its own data centre and cloud services.
He said the country is facing a major shortage of talented workers, a situation exacerbated for now by the entry into the market of tech giants offering career opportunities and high wages. Local players are left struggling to compete.
“When Google or Microsoft come in, I just see a huge demand increase with, at least in the short term, the same pool of supply (of talent),” he said.
“We are hunting in this same small pool and what we see in the last three years is the 100 per cent or 200 per cent increase in the cost of talent with no significant increase in skill.”
He is concerned that Thailand, which has continued to prioritise economic diversity, will not be able to keep up with its neighbours like Vietnam, which has developed a powerful technology industry.
“In the old Asian mindset, when you ask people what they want to be, a majority might say they want to be a doctor, for example, right? Not in Vietnam anymore. They want to be in tech,” he said.
As digitalisation makes its mark on many aspects of society and business, technology leaders like Benja are worried about countries, especially his, trying to be all things at once.
“We only have 70 million people and we’re producing less and less people for the workforce,” he said, referring to Thailand’s declining birthrate. “So, to please every sector is going to be a lot more demanding.
Governments may have tough decisions to make now and in the years to come. Trying to compete on AI development with global superpowers may prove a fruitless exercise, Kanggrawan said.
Looking for market fit or niche areas to leverage technology could bring more benefits to citizens, he argued.
“And if we can leverage that, even in Southeast Asia, companies or service providers can be global players, but we must be realistic,” he said.
Technology and training programmes have, however, created opportunities for some people with disabilities.
Jidapa Nitiwirakun, 21, was just a toddler when she was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, a disease that has caused her to lose muscle strength year on year.
As she grew up, she started thinking about jobs that would be suitable for her.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/focus-southeast-asia-data-centres-ai-hot-market-investments-limits-4816111
