People like to say Thai tech talent is on par with the US.

Say that confidently, with evidence.

This is not self-hate. This is not anti-Thai. This is basic honesty.

Thai people are capable. Often more capable than outsiders assume.
But technical depth at scale is a different question, and that gap is real.

Pretending otherwise only guarantees we never close it.

Capability vs density

The US does not win because every engineer there is a genius.
They win because they have massive density of technically serious people.

In many US universities, students:

• Compile their own OS in early years
• Build compilers, runtimes, or kernels later
• Treat systems programming as normal, not exotic

In Thailand:

• Year 1: Hello World
• Year 2: Hello World, now object-oriented
• Year 3: Hello World, now with a database

That is not an insult. That is a curriculum reality.

You do not close a gap by denying it exists.

The root problem is not talent, it’s avoidance

When I was in college, the majority of people I knew hated coding.

Not struggled with it.
Not found it hard but interesting.
They outright hated it.

They would do anything except code.

Why were they there? Almost always, “my parents told me to study this.”

That is not weird in a high-collectivism culture.
But the downstream effects are brutal.

Do anything except the hard part

This mindset repeats everywhere:

• Do anything except coding
• Do anything except math
• Do anything except systems
• Do anything except responsibility

Not because the subject is impossible.
Because changing direction requires courage, and avoidance is easier.

So people stay in careers they dislike and optimize for escape routes.

Slides.
Presentations.
Buzzwords.
Process.

I still remember forming a group for a term project.
One friend said, without hesitation:

“I’ll do anything except coding.”

That sentence explains a lot.

Fast forward: our tech job landscape

Years later, many of those avoidance patterns persist, now institutionalized through new titles.

Tester.
Business analyst.
Project manager.
System analyst.
AI engineer.
Even architect.

Not all.
But often.

The result is familiar: people directing implementation without having to carry the cost of executing it.

And the cycle feeds itself.

These are also the people pushing cargo-cult narratives:

• “Developers will be replaced by AI”
• “Just use AI”
• “Coding won’t matter anymore”

We are not San Francisco.
We are not even close.

Compare this with the US reality

In the US, many managerial roles are held by people who:

• Can execute the project themselves if needed
• Have shipped real systems
• Know exactly where things break
• Give concrete, implementation-level guidance to avoid known failure modes

In Thailand, not always, but often, direction stops at “go do [buzzword].”

Testers often code.
Architects are battle-tested engineers.
AI engineers are top-tier developers who moved into a specialized domain.

I recently saw a US AI engineer post this:

“I wish I weren’t an AI engineer.
The pay isn’t much better than dev,
but the job is still dev + ops + ambiguous requirements.”

That tells you everything.

AI engineering there is not a shortcut.
It is a tax on already-strong engineers.

Thailand’s AI illusion

In Thailand, “AI engineer” often means:

• Studied abroad
• Good English
• Excellent slides
• Fluent in buzzwords
• Weak fundamentals

They create milestones they do not understand, validated by LLM output they cannot evaluate.

This is not innovation.
It is theater.

And management loves it, because it looks modern and requires no technical accountability.

Reality check

Even if AI eliminated all coding jobs in San Francisco tomorrow,
it would not eliminate them in Thailand for years.

Why?

Because we already lack enough people who can:

• Debug deeply
• Own systems end to end
• Take responsibility for failure

AI does not replace absence.
It amplifies capability that already exists.

If we want to move forward

We need to stop lying to ourselves.

This is not about nationalism.
It is not about pride.

It is about admitting that:

• Our education system discourages technical depth
• Our culture rewards avoidance over mastery
• Our leadership pipeline filters out people who can actually build

Until that changes, no amount of “Thai talent is world-class” posts will make it true.

You do not close a gap by denying it.
You close it by naming it, then doing the uncomfortable work.