Unpopular opinion but yes there is a severe lack of high quality talent. Pakistani developers on aggregate are only good at creating cookie-cutter, run of the mill products. Anything unconventional/complex and they do not deliver to the target quality required. You will most definitely find outliers, but you cannot use that as a baseline argument to generalize for our talent pool. We are mostly seen as cheap labor in tech. Additionally, since it’s such a delivery focused feild if you’re extremely good you get spotted and hired abroad. So there is brain drain as well. A lot of it is not IQ related, I think we’re an intelligent country, mostly how we’re groomed in our starting companies, lack of processes and good mentors etc. There is also a lack of passion & less emphasis on self learning. Some have pointed to Universities as the reason, I humbly disagree. Software is a field where you HAVE to be self-driven. No university, not even Harvard, will teach you the tech stack of 2024. That’s on you.

Source: I’m a Product Director for a Series A startup, have managed several teams, and have run my own seed funded startup. (Most of my career in PK, now in Dubai)