PAF has built a fair bit of local talent by sending people overboard for their PHDs and dictorates. A lot of these people come back and contribute to the nation's development. It is true that we have a built in pool.
With regards to foreign companies you have to understand that a lot of these enterprises are private enterprises. They have mmutliple projects ongoing and employ people from all over. However do they have the same leniencies when employing for the "skunk works"? I think they would vet their work force very carefully.
A friends so went on an interview post masters in encryption to IBM. A Brilliant lad, he was offered a job straight away.Salary was a blank six figure sum of his choice. However he was told that the nature of his job meant that he would never find work with any other organization if he resigned from this job. He chose to proceed ahead with his PHD and joined a Uni in Islamabad. Did a lot of work for the Pak Government but I think is now back in UK.
A
Hi Araz,
I have a phd and years of work experience in a number of fields. I also teach and am an administrator at a university. I personally feel that people in the Third World don't understand that getting a university degree is not the same kind of value as having serious work experience in the field. These two different kinds of experiences are worlds apart.
I would go so far as to say that they are not comparable. People in countries like Pakistan, India, etc tend to think that getting a degree (after a ton of memorization, which is a different issue) is somehow making them technically competent. It is not.
To understand the operational modus operandi, to have specific skills, to understand how to integrate the vast number of disciplines that one person cannot master. I'm not being able to explain it to you - there is no comparison. And the idea of saying "we have talent" borders on the childish.
The example I was giving - Pakistan has talent in cricket, incredible talent. But how does the national team perform? What kind of thinking, attitude, culture, skills, technique, philosophy, methodology,.... does a winning team need?
And with all the talent in cricket, available in every neighborhood, Pakistan still lacks and looks sometimes like an amateur team. That gap, is even wider when we talk about aeronautical engineering, metallurgy and the host of other technologies.
This is why, for instance in the software development field, one has to have "business analysts" to work with programmers, and bring things together. Why different methodologies get developed and tested, like RUP, Agile.
And when we talk about metallurgy, one simply can't be a good metallurgist by studying in a class-room. It takes an eco-system of talent management, it takes a large number of metallurgists who have genuine interest in their field and are constantly experimenting, and collaborating, and sharing. Something Pakistani culture, attitude and mindset cannot even dream of.
We have right now a very rudimentary understanding of managing technology. We seem to think it is like making a biryani. Put all the ingredients - the Masters degree, the PhD, etc and viola! You'll make an F-22.
What innovation, competitiveness, the ecosystem of evolving tech management requires is far more complex than this. No asian country has truly been able to crack this issue. Singapore tried in the most ridiculous way - they saw that intellectuals and thinkers, and scientists and engineers, and what not, hang out, sit at Starbucks and create their intellectual eco-system in California.
The Singaporeans, desperate to be innovative, tried to replicate everything down to the Starbucks coffee shop. They still failed.
You see, it was never about memorizing information and sitting in an American university, chilling with the other Pakistanis eating bengun and roti, getting an "A" grade with nights of studying. There was a big element missing. The biggest element. Malek Bennabi, an Algerian engineer-cum-philosopher, called it the other side of the West which we in the East failed to appreciate.
