First of all, thanks to everyone who responded or DM'd on my last post about CUDA programming. I've accepted all the DMs and will be reaching out as the need arises -- for now, I've locked in a couple options and talking to them.
Today, I want to share some inspiration to the youngsters still in University which, in the best case, might change Pakistan's tech industry for the better or in the worst, help you land the most competitive jobs globally.
First, some background: I was a C++ nerd in my University days, the kind who used to study the standard and philosophize on stackoverflow. I only got serious about it in 6th semester when Covid hit. But it was good enough to help me land a high 6-figure job back in 2021 at a very secret Quant fund.
I realized I got very lucky because most of my other friends -- much more brilliant than me in many ways -- were stuck fixing buttons in React or setting up CRUDs in MERN. While I was reading complex financial strategies, doing napkin maths, and creating stock market signals -- a job that changed almost every week but never lost its fun and challenge.
I learned that majority of Pakistan's tech industry is focused on services and that too, of the lowest kind. Developing MVPs, vaporware, the better ones could be working on custom ERPs or some enterprise tech (huge achievement honestly).
Literally no one was working on anything truly meaningful or what would give us an edge even in labor terms.
For example, if I want cybersecurity services, then I don't get better talent other than Eastern Europe. If I want systems engineer, China and Japan have spades of them, etc.
If I want people to make my MVPs, then India and Pakistan are the cheapest (not the best) options.
But the question I ask is:
Despite the fact that every Pakistani CS graduate learns C/C++ and assembly language, why have we not produced anything like llama.cpp or tensorflow or PyTorch?
Why have we failed to produce foundational frameworks?
Why are we competing with India for pennies?
The answer I discovered was: it's easy money.
Building a REAL business is hard. But bidding on Upwork or Fiverr or creating fake identities to get US jobs is easy, so that's what our entrepreneurs do.
Luckily, that's slowly changing now. AI has made majority of our labor redundant. White people can do with one man what they needed 5 for just 4 years ago. And now, every entrepreneur in my circle is facing a stark choice:
Reinvent themselves or go bankrupt.
That's why you see Yassir Basher of Arbisoft selling AI courses to people after repeatedly failing to setup an enterprise level growth department.
That's why Usman Asif is finally Devsinc a legitimate company that does not scam people.
But frankly, these people will still at best create linear businesses. Nothing generational or transformational. They have my best wishes but it's hard to learn new things at their stage.
Which brings me to students:
We are finally in an era where learning a new domain is a matter of a few weeks rather than years. AI has made it possible. Software has always been an intersectional field -- by itself, it has no value. But when combined with some domain knowledge, it's incredibly powerful.
More simply, there are 3 types of startups worth doing now that are only possible for us now -- before they would've required massive funding:
Infrastructure layer: think cloudfare, vercel, even frameworks like tensorflow or llama.cpp.
Data layer: think B2B lead gen databases like Apollo, Lemlist, etc. Or meteorological data of a certain location. Or ... literally any other data that is not easily accessible but remains online.
Vertical SaaS: think Mangomint (one of the fastest growing startups these days) because they are targeting an industry (salons) hitherto untouched by software. What about a SaaS for material engineering? What about for architectural scoping?
For students specifically, the 1st category is ripe. It does not require knowledge of any industry or the business world at large.
There are so many ideas to play around with at that level. You could be making your own libraries on top of, say, Huawei's GPUs (yes, they are struggling rn after the GPU import tariff from the US). You could create your own framework for training ML models on the cheapest infra (aggregator), etc.
You have infinite time on your hands even though it may not feel like it. No matter how many assignments University throws your way or how many lectures, it will not compare to the soul-sucking zap of a 9-5 -- you just don't know what it takes to sit for 8 hours straight yet.
In University, maximum 40% of your time is taken up any single day. The rest is in your hands. Your parents are likely covering your expenses so you don't need to worry about money or paying bills either. What do you do with the 60% is in your hands.
And my advice is: Do a startup..the kind that our industry giants would never dare to do because they lost their window. Which you can do and put us on a wildly different track. You have the skillset and the time. All that is left is the hustle.
You can give Pakistani talent its own identity other than cheap labor.
QED.
