Indonesians, programmers, and Nasi Padang

Where are Indonesia’s talented programmers? Why aren’t international technology companies overrun by Indonesians? These questions bring forward the problems that are  affecting the lack of recognition of Indonesian IT talents internationally. Indonesia does have talented programmers but almost all of them are hiding in the country. They shy away from the spotlight.

The next question is why. Why are they hiding? Why aren’t they working for American or other international companies? Well, some of them do, but not necessarily in a position that would put them in the spotlight. Most don’t hold executive positions. I have a theory that may just be the very reasons why Indonesians aren’t that well known overseas, so hear me out. This is long so those who don’t want to read too much, scroll down to the last three paragraphs to read my theory.

Whenever we hear about Indonesians making it big, it’s always a local company operating primarily locally. Indonesians have very little reach in places like Silicon Valley but we do have reach.

One of the few Indonesians in such a position is Sehat Sutardja, co-founder, president and and CEO of Marvell Technologies, makers of microprocessors used in every BlackBerry device in the market. He even has a building at University of California in Berkeley named after him But where are the others?

A Googler who shall remain nameless recently said that Google (at that time) doesn’t see Indonesia the way it sees India where there is plenty of potential talents to further Google’s research efforts. Indonesia is a nation of consumers he said, so its plans for the country only involves selling AdSense and AdWords.

I don’t blame the person for having that view. He may or may not represent the view of the company but it’s very understandable. More recently however, it’s obvious that this view has changed since Google now wants to establish presence in the country.

Indonesians in general don’t seem to jump at the chance to change the world, to explore new possibilities, to leave behind families and friends to discover possibilities overseas. Those who do move overseas tend to end up back in the home country instead of settling.

Look at International patent filings in the past decade and tell me how many are from Indonesia. It’s no more than a handful. This partly contributes to the view that Indonesians don’t create or innovate. Indonesians consume. Another is the lack of publicized research by Indonesians or Indonesian companies about the market.

As a media outlet, it’s frustrating to discover that there is a lack of publicized independent research for Indonesia’s information technology and telecommunications sector. This is changing but not fast enough.

In discovering Indonesian IT talents, it’s surprising that many aren’t concerned about innovating. Most simply use or modify existing technologies to create their projects. There are very few contributors to open source technologies from Indonesia. There’s a strong push to use open source technologies but hardly anyone contributes back and submit their codes to the respective projects.

Indonesians in the technology world are just not seen, everyone is too spread out or in hiding. Most companies are too busy to dig through and discover Indonesian talents so they need to come out and show themselves. Those who have been hired internationally probably should try and bring their friends over, get them to migrate.

Novistiar from Jakarta Founder Institute said that, “in every university course, Indonesians are actually rather smart but they stay quiet in class while Americans kept talking and putting their hands up.”

Of course, plenty of talk doesn’t necessarily mean they’re smarter but they end up getting noticed and those who get noticed get the jobs. Nobody knows how good you are until you show them.

The problem with a lot of Indonesians, and this is where my theory comes in, is that not enough Indonesians settle overseas and because of this, very few get noticed. The Chinese and Indians migrate in massive numbers to as many countries as possible. Indonesians return home after their study and yes, I’m also guilty of that after 11 years abroad, but in my case, it’s not entirely by choice, I couldn’t get my permit extended.

I think the problem why most Indonesians who go abroad tend to return is that there’s a distinct lack of Indonesian food. Indonesians are proud of their food, especially Nasi Padang and other street food and this is why they don’t hang around.

Wherever you go in this planet you’ll almost always find Chinese or Indian food, but Indonesian food is a scarcity. Those who are already abroad say spices and other ingredients are expensive. Well, how about getting more Indonesian cooks and chefs to places like Silicon Valley and open more Indonesian restaurants?

It’s probably difficult to replicate the street food experience but the making the food itself shouldn’t be too difficult. I say get the Nasi Padang out there, and you’ll get Indonesians to stay abroad and eventually get noticed.

[image by wynnie on Flickr, used under creative commons]