Why Philippine Tech is Stuck in the “Jeepney vs. Bullet Train” Trap
The speed of global technology adoption is like a “Bullet Train” hwoever the current state of IT infrastructure and education in the Philippines is often moving at the pace of a fully loaded Jeepney 🚌—accessible, community-driven, but slow, inefficient, and often stuck in traffic.
This three-year lag isn’t a safety net; it’s a critical threat to our competitive edge. The innovations that are “fresh” abroad are the urgent necessities that our workforce must master today to stay relevant, and AI is absolutely here to stay.
The Automation of the “Jeepney” Jobs in BPO
The traditional entry path for Filipino tech talent—especially within the vast BPO industry—was built on a volume of repetitive, manual tasks. This was the reliable Jeepney Route for entry-level work.
The problem is that AI has now automated the driver, the conductor, and the maintenance crew for the Jeepney.
For Junior Developers, the need to write boilerplate code is collapsing. Generative AI coding assistants are faster and cleaner, effectively eliminating the manual, repetitive coding tasks that used to give juniors experience. The work of the Jeepney Driver—following a set, manual route—is now obsolete.
In IT Operations and back-office BPO tasks, manual ticketing, server checks, and basic data entry are being handled by simple automation tools. The work of the Jeepney Conductor—collecting tickets and tracking details—is being eliminated by basic Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI.
The crucial point is that the Jeepney is being phased out before we’ve fully established modern infrastructure. We are being forced to leapfrog entire generations of technology, and the workers who can’t make that jump risk being stranded.
The Urgent Leap to “Bullet Train” Specialization
Globally, modern architecture is the Bullet Train—highly specialized, automated, and running on robust, seamless tracks. We must skip the slow, generalist transition and aim directly for these specialized, high-value roles:
- The Platform Engineer is the one who builds the internal “tracks” (tooling, CI/CD) for fast, automated development, replacing the old generalist DevOps role.
- The Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) is the master of resilience, leveraging AIOps to ensure system stability and performance at scale.
- The Cloud Architect is the strategist, making high-level, business-driven decisions about cloud expenditure and business impact.
These specialists are the engineers for the Bullet Train. They are the only ones who can design and maintain systems at a globally competitive speed. Generic, generalist IT knowledge is no longer a valid ticket. The new baseline for a local developer or engineer is to demonstrate system design and cloud mastery—skills that used to take years to acquire.
The Education Crisis: Teaching Jeepney Maintenance for a Bullet Train World
Our educational system, from colleges to coding bootcamps, is focused on teaching Jeepney maintenance (basic programming syntax and outdated theory) when the industry needs Bullet Train engineers.
The Call for Hyper-Acceleration
- AI Integration is the New Standard: Colleges must embrace the fact that AI is here to stay. Education should pivot to teaching students how to correctly apply, verify, and secure the code and solutions generated by AI tools. The skill is moving from writing the code to critically auditing and architecting the final system.
- Mandatory Cloud Certifications: Educational institutions must partner with providers (AWS, Google, Microsoft) and make an entry-level cloud certification a mandatory part of the curriculum. If a student knows the theory but cannot deploy that code to the cloud using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), they are unprepared.
- Specialization is Survival: Bootcamps must abandon basic web development and become intense Cloud-Native and DevOps accelerators. Training must focus on the complex, integrated toolchains local companies are adopting: Kubernetes, Terraform, and deep-dives into platform engineering.
The challenge is clear: we must move our entire workforce from the crowded Jeepney to the highly efficient Bullet Train. We must upgrade our skills, or risk being left completely off the global map.