Comments

1. Joey Nguyen says:

   September 4, 2026 at 8:43 am

   I’m not sure if this article is based on our earlier discussion on archaic programming languages and legacy systems, but I think the article’s premise and conclusion is the wrong take. Perhaps a misunderstanding of the core points I laid out previously.

   In order to do something it takes effort. That is the main reason why legacy apps based on archaic programming languages and legacy systems like mainframes are not upgraded, mostly because it “still works.” Changing things would introduce massive, unacceptable risk to the organization. Risk costs money. A lot of money. If the risk ends up blowing up the capability to conduct business, heads will roll, executives will resign, the organization will face economic repercussions and possible organizational destruction if it gets bad enough. No competent manager thus would sign off on stuff like this unless they absolutely had no other choice.

   The market for programmers versed in archaic languages and technicians knowledgeable in maintaining legacy systems is also shrinking at a steady rate that I expect would only accelerate in the near future when the legacy hardware that runs the apps built with archaic programming languages reach the end of the hardware’s useful life.

   Organizations are well aware of all this. That’s why they continue using the legacy platforms and apps while in parallel building the replacement one more modern platforms. That’s what happened during the so-called Y2K Problem. The Y2K “Bug” wasn’t even a bug because the limitation was absolutely known in the 1950s when 2-digit year encoding started being used (due to memory limitations). Something purposefully implemented is not a bug. Before the popularization of “Y2K,” it was known as Century Date Change (CDC) since the 1950s and no one freaked out about it — it was a known and acknowledged limitation that might become a risk 50 years into the future. There were already numerous US and EU task forces dedicated to a coordinated industry response by the early-to-mid 1990s. The largest industry coordination effort was launched until Bill Clinton. No media organization wrote about it except the niche Computerworld in one article in 1993. I still have that old magazine in a banker’s box somewhere. The general public wasn’t even aware that there was a “problem” until Newsweek published the article entitled “The Day the World Shuts Down” in late 1997. I have that old magazine as well. Mass hysteria hit by 1999 with predictions that the world was going to literally end as we knew it. It was the basis of the Heaven’s Gate UFO religion’s mass suicide in 1997. Yet at the turn of the second hand at Midnight, January 1st 2000, everything was fine. Because every major organization had already switched to 4-, 6-, 8-digit year encoding years prior. The government task forces were mostly for smaller businesses that did not have the technical capability or budgets to start earlier. It is true that the early Indian IT industry had a lot of outsourced work in Y2K mitigation. It was mostly low-level, tedious work that will now be replaced by Generative AI which is already capable of doing such tedious work.

   So my question is, given that effort and time is limited, why should the Philippines dedicate a lot of time learning, training, and putting eggs into a rapidly shrinking basket? I think there are many more productive areas to pursue than this.

   Reply
   • Karl Garcia says:

     September 4, 2026 at 8:58 am

     I tried it my way Joey but that did not mean I did not take to heart your suggestions just keep it coming. Some times I am like an old dog who can’t be taught any trick. But not that older than you so still can learn new tricks.

     Reply
     • Joey Nguyen says:

       September 4, 2026 at 9:54 am

       No worries Karl. What I said is not meant as a criticism but as a nudge in perhaps more productive areas. My belief is that while a nation can walk and chew gum at the same time thus do more than one thing at once, as they say time is the most precious commodity and effort should reflect that. To that end, while highly technical jobs should not be discarded as there is still a (small) middle class that needs those jobs, the greater effect would be to find ways to uplift the great majority of DEs which are 90% (~93% by some estimates). There are just not enough high end jobs to go around in the world. But potentially, there are a lot of good salaried industrial jobs that require much less educational and technical training suitable for DEs at their current level. Btw, India’s IT outsourcing sector could have not flourished if there wasn’t already a growing industrial base under it.

       Reply
   • Karl Garcia says:

     September 4, 2026 at 10:30 am

     DON’T TRAIN FOR THE RELIC—TRAIN FOR THE TRANSITION

     The argument that the Philippines should not put too many eggs in the basket of archaic programming languages is broadly correct—but it misses an important distinction.

     The opportunity is not COBOL itself. Legacy systems survive because they still work, and replacing them can introduce enormous operational and financial risks. Organizations therefore often maintain the old system while gradually building its replacement. Y2K demonstrated this principle: the real achievement was not that legacy technology survived, but that organizations successfully managed the transition before the deadline arrived.

     For the Philippines, the lesson should therefore not be “train thousands of COBOL programmers.” That would create a workforce tied to a shrinking market.

     Instead, train a targeted number of people who understand legacy systems and can migrate them into modern platforms—using cloud, cybersecurity, APIs, automation and increasingly generative AI.

     The valuable skill is not knowing yesterday’s technology forever.

     It is knowing how to take yesterday’s technology safely into tomorrow.

     With limited time, money and training capacity, the Philippines should prioritize capabilities that create a ladder to larger and faster-growing industries—not merely preserve a shrinking niche.

     Reply
     • Joey Nguyen says:

       September 4, 2026 at 1:44 pm

       This looks better Karl, thanks.

       Some constructive criticism, if you’d be so kind:

       1.) The Philippines doesn’t really have much ties to legacy systems to begin with, so might drop this thread altogether as the basis of a premise.
       2.) A better premise might be something along the lines of “building a broad technical base, focusing on industry and industrial enablers, creates a basis from which higher value activity will naturally develop out of to support the former.”
       3.) I find that sometimes Filipinos become defeatist when thinking of very large societies (e.g. India) or societies previously seen as “lower” (e.g. South Korea, Vietnam), so my personal analysis tends to have a heavy focus on culturally similar societies like Indonesia and Malaysia where there are plenty of lessons to learn.

       Reply
       • Karl Garcia says:

         September 4, 2026 at 3:02 pm

         Point number 1

         THE HIDDEN MACHINE: THE PHILIPPINES’ LEGACY-SYSTEMS DILEMMA

         The Philippines runs on a layer of technology that most customers never see. Behind banking apps, government portals, telecommunications services, retail systems and corporate operations are decades-old mainframes, COBOL programs, databases and enterprise platforms. They may look obsolete, but they continue to perform some of the economy’s most critical functions.

         That is why the real problem with legacy systems is not simply that they are old. It is that they still work—and replacing something that works can be more dangerous and expensive than keeping it.

         A bank cannot casually shut down the system that maintains its ledger. Government cannot simply discard decades of tax, pension or citizen records. Large conglomerates cannot easily dismantle enterprise systems embedded across hundreds of subsidiaries and business processes. Migration introduces risks involving data integrity, downtime, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance and institutional knowledge.

         This explains the Philippine preference for modernizing around the legacy core rather than immediately destroying it. APIs, middleware, cloud platforms and modern applications can be placed around proven systems, allowing a decades-old core to communicate with smartphones, digital platforms and increasingly, artificial intelligence.

         The result is a peculiar technological landscape: modern interfaces sitting on top of old foundations.

         IBM and Accenture illustrate two complementary approaches. IBM’s strength is the continuing modernization of the core—mainframes, databases, hybrid cloud and integration. Accenture is more strongly associated with transformation: redesigning processes, migrating enterprise workloads and moving organizations toward cloud and AI. In practice, however, the two approaches can coexist. A company may preserve a mainframe for what it does exceptionally well while using cloud and AI for everything around it.

         This also creates an opportunity that is often overlooked. The Philippines does not merely need people who can build the next mobile application. It needs engineers who understand how old and new systems can safely coexist. COBOL, mainframe administration, database management, API integration, cybersecurity, data migration and cloud architecture may not sound glamorous, but they represent critical infrastructure skills.

         The bigger lesson is therefore not “replace legacy technology.” It is “manage technological evolution intelligently.”

         Legacy systems should be assessed according to business risk, cost, security, scalability and strategic value—not their age alone. Some should be retired. Some should be rewritten. Some should be wrapped with APIs. Others should remain exactly where they are while their surrounding architecture is modernized.

         The Philippines’ challenge is to turn this inherited technological burden into an advantage. The future will not necessarily belong to organizations with no legacy systems. It will belong to those capable of connecting legacy systems to the technologies of the future without breaking the systems that keep the economy running today.

         Reply
         • Karl Garcia says:

           September 4, 2026 at 3:17 pm

           The Digital Paradox: Why the Philippines Clings to Its Legacy Core

           The Philippines presents a fascinating digital paradox. On the surface, it is a nation of vibrant mobile-first consumers who effortlessly navigate social media and banking apps. Beneath this modern veneer, however, lies a massive and enduring layer of legacy technology—mainframes, COBOL code, and on-premise ERPs—that quietly powers the country’s economic engine. This unseen digital foundation is a testament to both the reliability of aging systems and the immense complexity involved in replacing them. The Philippines’ legacy footprint is not a sign of technological failure but rather a strategic, risk-averse choice rooted in a unique set of economic and structural realities.

           The most critical stronghold of this legacy infrastructure is the banking and financial services sector. Tier-1 institutions like BDO, BPI, and Metrobank operate on mainframe-based cores that serve as the immutable “ledger of truth” for millions of daily transactions. While they aggressively market sleek mobile applications, these interfaces are essentially sophisticated layers atop decades-old, battle-tested systems. The recent modernization of the Philippine National Bank onto an IBM z16 platform, which slashed batch processing times from 13 hours to 3, encapsulates the industry’s preferred strategy: evolution, not revolution. Rather than risky “big bang” replacements, banks favor “digital decoupling”—building modern APIs on top of legacy data to gain cloud-level agility without sacrificing mainframe stability. Even at the grassroots level, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas recognizes the resilience of older systems, offering free cloud subscriptions to nudge rural banks off their fragile, fragmented on-premise setups.

           This enduring reliance is not confined to the private sector. National government agencies like the BIR, SSS, and GSIS are anchored to legacy systems from the 1990s and earlier. Their challenge is compounded by “archival scale”—the sheer volume of decades-old, semi-digital records that must be meticulously indexed and cleansed before any migration can even be contemplated. Similarly, the Philippines’ powerful family-led conglomerates built their sprawling retail and real estate empires on on-premise SAP or Oracle hubs. While these groups are now leading the charge to cloud ecosystems like S/4HANA, the transition is a testament to the enormous overhead they were previously managing in their own data centers.

           Ultimately, the persistence of the legacy footprint in the Philippines is a direct response to a high-stakes environment where downtime is measured in lost customer trust and national reputational damage. The primary factor is a simple, unglamorous pragmatism: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Mainframes offer unmatched uptime and security, making a system outage during a risky migration an unacceptable proposition for a major bank. This inertia is compounded by a severe talent paradox: an acute shortage of junior developers willing to learn dusty languages like COBOL, while the few expert engineers capable of safely dismantling these digital monoliths command premium salaries.

           In the end, the Philippine corporate landscape is not trapped by its legacy systems; it is strategically and cautiously navigating around them. The future is not one of quick replacement but of careful, incremental integration. The country’s path forward is to successfully bridge the divide between its reliable, transactional past—encoded in COBOL and mainframes—and its agile, digital future—built on APIs and the cloud. Surviving this transition will require a unique breed of architect, one who respects the stability of the past while building the infrastructure of the future.

           Reply
           • Joey Nguyen says:

             September 4, 2026 at 3:44 pm

             We must remember: the fact that some organizations continue to use legacy systems or apps written in archaic programming languages is not because of any special attachment to e.g. a mainframe or COBOL. A mainframe or an app written in COBOL exists to grant a capability that serves a business purpose, rather than existing just cause they exist. If the business purpose is served by another type of server such as a distributed microserver, or if the app is built in Swift instead, then that’s all fine and dandy to the business.

             The hardware and the software are not that important — the capability the hardware and software exposes is what’s actually important. Let’s not focus too much on hardware and software in a vacuum, but instead focus on what capability the hardware and software supports. The capability is the be-all-and-end-all.

             Reply
             • Joey Nguyen says:

               September 4, 2026 at 4:05 pm

               To connect to your article, I think a lot of Philippine thinking about BPO is rather wrong. There is much celebration about BPO as the main thing, but all BPO does is to enable a capability which serves a business purpose. Call centers and back offices long existed in the US before the BPO industry was even a twinkle in the Philippines eye. And before that office buildings had whole “typewriter floors” staffed with young female typists that fulfilled the same task. Where are those typewriter floors now?

               So why did BPO emerge in the Philippines? Well businesses could fulfill the same business purpose previously in their US operations in the Philippines for much cheaper. The business purpose is the key. So generative AI replacing the BPO industry is still a pacing threat. Because eventually generative AI would be able to fulfill the business purpose for a much lower overall cost than even moving human operations to a cheaper locale.

               The other day I had lunch at Jollibee. My local Jollibee now has 6 AI-powered order taking kiosks. Normally a Jollibee is rather human-heavy compared to most American fast food restaurants, with full front staff, drive through order takers, dining room staff, kitchen staff, and a dedicated janitor. Even though my Jollibee has always had only 2 cash registers, for some reason there were usually 4-6 workers at the front. I wonder how many front staff will be there soon when customers get used to ordering from the kiosk.

               Some AI casualties will be retrained. But not all will be, because why? It won’t make business sense. At a party one of my older nephews looked downtrodden and I asked him what up. He said he got “AI’d.” White collar job crunching numbers. He and his girlfriend had just bought a house a few months back, and now doesn’t know how he’ll pay for the mortgage. BPO workers might not be numerically that many but their economic output contributes to a substantial part of the Philippine economy as of now. Two legs of the economic stool that holds the Philippines up are BPO and OFW remittances. Both are vulnerable to external factors that the Philippines doesn’t control. What happens when one or two legs are kicked out from under the stool? Good to be optimistic, but I’m not so much. The more silly parts of AI, such as many people using chatbots as a validation tool will likely be lessened, but the automation parts will only accelerate. My job is AI-proof. Besides, I’m semi-retired.

               Reply
               • CV says:

                 September 4, 2026 at 11:15 pm

                 Good post, Joey. I nod and agree that AI will take away a lot of jobs in the BPO industry, not in the Philippines but also elsewhere. I also nod and agree that some will be retained….and countries like the Philippines will have to compete for those jobs that are retained.

                 Reply
             • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

               September 4, 2026 at 5:03 pm

               yes, that reminds me of SAP’s own programming language named ABAP which started of as a weird dialect of Cobol in the era of SAP R/1 (the R meant real-time, and the four IBM Germany programmers who left to form their own company in the early 1970s had ICI = Imperial Chemicals International as the pilot installation) and R/2 (what came after R/1 and was sold to a lot of companies) which both ran on mainframes.

               When SAP was ported to Unix and R/3 came to be in the early 1990s, they basically ran a simulation of host processes (I recognized some stuff I had learned in system architecture lectures at the university when I installed my first SAP systems on NT – that was basically the Unix version somewhat modified) and kept the ABAP language, telling people the abbreviation meant Advanced Business Application Programming language.

               It had actually been Allgemeiner Berichts-Aufbereitungs-Prozessor originally (general report preparation processor) and had been extended as needed by “Walldorf” (the town where SAP is based, actually the town where New York millionaire Astor originally came from) to have own SQL processing, more advanced GUI controls (basically Microsoft OLE stuff) and even later some degree of object orientation.

               Thing is, stuff built across decades keeps working. One can still see the oldest SAP tables that all have short names and are German abbreviations. One can choose when to overhaul stuff or not. Initiatives to move parts of SAP to Java were done in the noughties. Most were shelved.

               And of course there is now the HTML5 wrapper around ABAP called FIORI, even if I am oversimplifying now.

               A lot of the capabilities of SAP’s many applications are exposed to external programs using so-called BAPIs (Business Application Programming Interfaces) which can nowadays also be called as Webservices and thus can even be called by agentic AI if one wishes to do so..

               Reply
               • Joey Nguyen says:

                 September 4, 2026 at 5:41 pm

                 Thing is, stuff built across decades keeps working.

                 Yes, large organizations are exactly like this. Often the only modern part is the customer-facing front-end such as a web app (where customer may mean an internal or external customer). Non-techy types like the business side don’t care what runs beneath as long as the business is able to operate. External customers certainly don’t care as long as the website exposed by the web app looks nice and modern, even if there is data being pulled over the mainframe via a custom API wrapper somewhere behind the scenes because it just didn’t make business sense to uplift that part.

                 A lot of stuff organizations have was just the result of some weird decision back in the day which was then expanded. I am somewhat a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) specialist after doing quite a few LDAP to database conversions. LDAP and Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS, think SQL) both originated in the same decade (1980s). LDAP’s hierarchical tree structure is better suited to organizational directories while RDBMS’ flat tables better held data that could later be transformed via connected apps. Funny thing is, a lot of organizations chose LDAP as a jury-rigged database, which works fine at a small scale, then just kept expanding the directory until LDAP choked on itself. All the while databases like SQL were totally available to use or convert to. I had a lot of those LDAP conversion projects in the late 2000s and early 2010s. By then LDAP was considered archaic knowledge, with most who were knowledgeable in it in the 50s, 60s, or retired. I was in my mid-20s and had to learn LDAP by teaching myself with old technical manuals. Those who learn COBOL or other archaic languages today are usually already competent in multiple more modern languages, and basically teach themselves off of old manuals if the business need arises.

                 So yeah the business requirements are a lot more important than the solutions, capabilities, and assets themselves. The latter three only exist to support the former, not the other way around. The former typically does not change very much, while the latter three can drastically change.

                 Reply
           • Karl Garcia says:

             September 4, 2026 at 3:50 pm

             ### The Strategic Bridge: How IBM Philippines Navigates Time, Legacy, and Automation

             The global IT landscape is a complex matrix of cost optimization, technical expertise, and geographical realities. The dynamic between IBM’s vast Indian delivery hub and its operations in the Philippines highlights a now well-established strategy: utilizing the Philippines not as a direct competitor to India’s scale, but as a critical “follow-the-sun” bridge that provides synchronous, real-time coverage for North American clients. This strategic positioning hinges on three intertwined pillars: time zone alignment, legacy system expertise, and the evolving role of AI.

             The fundamental driver of this structure is the arithmetic of time. India Standard Time (IST) places a massive gap between its engineers and US business hours, making real-time collaboration reactive and taxing. The Philippines, while also ahead of the US, has built its entire IT-BPO culture around the American workday. Its professionals natively embrace night and mid-shifts, creating a live, synchronous bridge where developers and support engineers in Manila operate during the exact same business hours as their stakeholders in New York or San Francisco. For a large enterprise, this means that when a critical banking mainframe fails at 2:00 PM EST, a fully staffed, wide-awake team is available for immediate, hot-seat resolution—a service India’s time zone makes difficult to provide.

             This time-zone advantage becomes exceptionally valuable when paired with the persistence of legacy technology. Major US clients—banks, insurers, airlines, and government agencies—still run their core operations on COBOL-based mainframes. These are environments where a delayed response can mean significant financial or operational damage. While IBM India managed to host immense engineering capacity, IBM Philippines evolved into a hub for “Client-Facing Delivery Centers,” bridging the gap between back-end technical work and the live, high-stakes demands of these legacy systems. The agility to review code, manage outages, and communicate seamlessly with CIOs in real-time became a premium service that justifies a distinct geographic hub.

             However, the role of this human bridge is on the cusp of transformation. The recent breakthroughs in generative AI, exemplified by tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code, are automating the very essence of the legacy programmer’s job—rapidly translating and modernizing COBOL systems. This shift doesn’t eliminate the need for IBM Philippines, but it fundamentally redefines it. The role is evolving from “code-maintenance” to “AI-assisted system oversight.” The human-in-the-loop, tasked with validating AI-generated code and ensuring security within high-stakes environments, remains non-negotiable. In this new paradigm, the Philippines’ value proposition becomes even stronger: it offers the necessary human validation and governance over AI processes, performed during the very hours when US clients are active and making key decisions.

             In conclusion, IBM Philippines thrives not by competing on the sheer scale of India’s engineering force, but by occupying a strategic niche defined by its unique convergence of culture, geography, and technical skill. As long as American enterprises rely on legacy systems and demand real-time accountability, and as long as AI requires rigorous human oversight, this “near-timezone” hub will remain an essential component of IBM’s global delivery architecture, adapting its talent to serve the ever-evolving needs of its most critical clients.

             Reply
         • Joey Nguyen says:

           September 4, 2026 at 3:27 pm

           Great, thanks Karl. In large organizations such as the enterprise area I work in, legacy systems as well as newer systems co-exist. We may think of each system as a component within a larger system, just like a business’ organizational structure becomes more complex the larger the business is.

           Reply
       • Karl Garcia says:

         September 4, 2026 at 3:05 pm

         The Philippines does not primarily suffer from a lack of ideas, plans, laws, or awareness. We suffer from a failure to consistently turn knowledge into functioning systems.

         We have compared ourselves with Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam for decades. Social media simply made those comparisons louder.

         The recurring cycle is:

         Problem → discussion → plan → announcement → implementation gaps → symptom returns → new plan.

         The deeper causes are:

         fragmented responsibility;

         short political cycles;

         incentives for visible projects rather than maintenance and institutional reform;

         weak accountability and impunity;

         poor institutional memory;

         confusing activity with results;

         insufficient technical and local capability.

         The answer is not to talk less, but to convert talk into execution:

         Talk → Decide → Build → Measure → Learn → Improve → Institutionalize.

         Thailand’s lesson is not “copy Thailand.” It is build capability and complete systems—ports connected to logistics, farms connected to processing, defense platforms connected to industry and sustainment, flood control connected to watershed management, etc.

         Ultimately, the real national development problem is not that we don’t know what is wrong. It is that our institutions too often allow known problems to reproduce themselves.

         Knowing is not capability.
         Capability is knowing + doing + measuring + maintaining + learning + continuing.

         Reply
         • Joey Nguyen says:

           September 4, 2026 at 3:34 pm

           The Philippines faces two main problems besides short political cycles:

           1) political hyper-fragmentation, especially following devolution
           2.) a weak bureaucracy that is not sufficiently insulated from political forces

           Both problems are immensely hard to solve in my estimation and are the root of most what ails the Philippines today.

           Where national policy can stay consistent long enough to take root are in enclaves, so building up the relevant bureaucracy to tend after and defend enclaves may make sense. Voluntary groupings like M4GG are also emerging as places where at least locally, there is a continuation of consistent policy.

           Reply
2. JoeAm says:

   September 4, 2026 at 9:22 am

   The AI evolution is more dramatic than anything since Osborn made computers and I migrated our bank’s market research from paper to machine, quadrupling output and accelerating my climb up the corporate ladder. There will be lots of threads in the AI fabric, which is being knitted with billion dollar investments. Legacy code will be absorbed like trees into a swollen Nepal river, still there, but not where they used to be. The BPO industry is run by professionals who will solve their training issues because they have to. A year ago we were weeping about the likely demise of the BPO industry. Today we admire its transformative resilience. The Philippines has the critical mass to manage the transformation, I would imagine. Computers should have put people out of work but did not. They upped profitability and created the need for new skills. Which, lo and behold, appeared. My bank is still there, I would note, sold to the British, then the Japanese, then the French, and now, Canadians. The market research team is into AI, I’d imagine, and it would not surprise me if the bank’s call center, which I formed last century, is now in Cebu.

   Reply
   • Karl Garcia says:

     September 4, 2026 at 10:15 am

     Exactly.

     Reply
   • JoeAm says:

     September 4, 2026 at 11:11 am

     OT, but related to the Philippines developing an industrial base. Prediction, the air services industry centered at Clark will be as globally impactful as the BPO industry has been.

     https://business.inquirer.net/608942/emirates-signs-on-as-first-lufthansa-customer-in-clark

     Reply
3. Karl Garcia says:

   September 5, 2026 at 5:31 am

   AI, LEGACY SYSTEMS, AND THE PHILIPPINE IT-BPO WORKFORCE TRANSFORMATION

   Artificial Intelligence is changing the Philippine IT-BPO industry at precisely the point where one of its oldest strengths—maintaining legacy systems—is becoming a strategic opportunity.

   For decades, Philippine IT-BPO companies have supported COBOL mainframes, AS/400 systems, old Java and C++ applications, and legacy ERP platforms for banks, insurers, airlines, healthcare companies, and governments. The problem was not simply that these systems were old. They were often mission-critical, poorly documented, and increasingly dependent on a shrinking pool of engineers who understood how they worked.

   AI changes that equation.

   Generative AI can examine legacy code, reconstruct undocumented business logic, generate documentation, assist programmers, write tests, and help translate portions of old applications into modern architectures. What previously required teams of specialists spending months deciphering millions of lines of code can increasingly be accelerated by AI-assisted engineering.

   But this also means fewer people may be required to perform the same amount of work. THE JOB-CUT QUESTION

   There is no reliable basis yet for saying that a specific percentage of Philippine IT-BPO workers will lose their jobs to AI. However, the direction of travel is clear. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 employer survey found that 41% of employers globally expect to reduce their workforce where AI can replicate human work. In information and technology services, the proportion expecting to reduce workers with less-relevant skills rises to 49%.

   These figures should not be interpreted as a forecast that 41–49% of Filipino BPO workers will be laid off. They indicate the proportion of employers expecting workforce reductions as one component of a broader restructuring.

   For the Philippines, the more realistic scenario is therefore workforce compression rather than wholesale replacement.

   A team that once required 100 people to maintain, test, document and gradually modernize a legacy environment might eventually accomplish much of the same work with substantially fewer people assisted by AI agents. The exact reduction will vary enormously by process, client, technology and AI adoption.

   That is the uncomfortable economic reality: AI can increase productivity without preserving the same number of jobs. WHO GETS LEFT BEHIND?

   The workers most exposed are likely to be those whose jobs consist largely of repetitive coding, routine application maintenance, basic testing, documentation, data processing and standardized support.

   The workers who remain will increasingly need a broader skill set.

   They will have to understand AI tools, legacy architecture, cybersecurity, data governance, cloud platforms, APIs, automation, business processes and system integration. Instead of simply writing code, they will increasingly supervise AI-generated code, validate its results, design workflows, manage exceptions and take responsibility when the AI is wrong.

   This creates an important training question: How many of those who remain will actually be retrained?

   The global benchmark is encouraging but also revealing. The WEF estimates that 77% of employers plan to upskill or reskill workers to work better alongside AI, while 47% expect to transition workers from declining roles into other positions. Yet 41% also anticipate workforce reductions.

   In other words, training will save some jobs, but training will not necessarily save every job.

   The Philippine IT-BPO industry therefore faces a dual challenge: reskill enough existing employees to retain valuable institutional knowledge while accepting that some routine positions may disappear because their economic justification disappears. FROM FTEs TO AI-PLUS-HUMAN TEAMS

   The traditional outsourcing model largely sold FTE capacity—people and hours.

   The emerging model sells AI-plus-human capability and outcomes.

   A Filipino engineer may no longer spend days manually examining thousands of lines of COBOL. An AI system can perform the initial analysis. The engineer then determines whether the AI correctly understood the business logic, tests the proposed modification, identifies hidden dependencies and approves the production change.

   The human becomes more valuable precisely where AI is weakest: judgment, accountability, architecture, exception handling and understanding the client’s business.

   This also changes the economics of BPO. If AI allows ten engineers to perform work previously requiring twenty, the provider cannot indefinitely continue billing the client for twenty FTEs. Competition will push the industry toward outcome-based pricing, managed services and AI-enabled transformation.

   That is potentially a much more sophisticated industry—but potentially a smaller workforce. THE PHILIPPINE OPPORTUNITY

   The Philippines has an unusual advantage because its IT-BPO workforce already possesses decades of experience with international clients, enterprise processes and legacy technology.

   The country should therefore not attempt merely to protect every existing BPO job.

   It should move the workforce up the value chain before AI compresses the bottom of the pyramid.

   That means structured national and industry training in AI-assisted software engineering, legacy modernization, cybersecurity, cloud architecture, data engineering, AI governance and business-process redesign.

   The objective should be simple:

   Don’t train everyone to become an AI programmer. Train the existing workforce to become people who can manage, verify, integrate and take responsibility for AI-enabled systems.

   The danger is not that AI will suddenly eliminate Philippine IT-BPO.

   The greater danger is that AI will eliminate the lower-value work faster than Filipino workers can acquire the skills needed for the higher-value work.

   The future Philippine BPO industry may therefore employ fewer people—but those who remain could be considerably more productive and more valuable.

   The strategic question is no longer simply how many jobs AI will destroy.

   It is how many workers can be moved from jobs that AI can replicate into jobs where humans are needed to direct, verify and take responsibility for AI.

   Reply
   • Joey Nguyen says:

     September 5, 2026 at 6:21 am

     Yes, this is right. In general despite official Congressional resolutions and Presidential executive orders which exist more as messaging after the fact, the government approaches the Philippines BPO industry from a largely hands off approach. The industry is mainly market driven. What government support exists is similar to the support for OFW or seafarers, which is support around the margins for job disruption. It would be useful to have some kind of plan around mass re-training or cross-training. Certainly BPO workers have skills that can be leveraged in other industries such as what will come in Pax Silica, but future laid off workers need support to retrain before they drop off of the labor market.

     Some areas BPO workers can be retrained into leveraging their existing skills as a base, just off the top of my head:

     Robotics and automation monitoring
     Industrial monitoring
     Supply chain analytics
     Enterprise operations management
     Process and workflow coordination
     IT and IS support
     AI data annotation and data cleansing

     All these are higher on the knowledge value chain than BPO or back office work.

     It will be a big problem if nothing is done about AI-related downsizing. But also there’s an opportunity to move up the value chain.

     Reply
     • Karl Garcia says:

       September 5, 2026 at 6:33 am

       Need your input again.

       FROM EXPORT ZONES TO AI-READY INDUSTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS

       What the Philippines Got Right—and What Must Change

       The Philippines did not get export-processing zones wrong. We simply stopped at the first stage of what they could have become.

       EPZA and PEZA successfully attracted multinational manufacturers through incentives, infrastructure and access to global markets. They created jobs, exports and industrial clusters, particularly in electronics and semiconductors.

       But the model often remained:

       foreign capital → imported components → Philippine labor → assembly → export.

       The next generation must become:

       foreign investment → Philippine suppliers → engineering → technology transfer → R&D → higher-value manufacturing → domestic capability.

       This is particularly important as the Philippines enters an era of AI, advanced manufacturing and semiconductor expansion.

       Industrial zones such as those envisioned around Pax Silica should not be judged simply by how many companies, investments or jobs they attract. They should be judged by how much capability they create and how many Filipinos they can continuously move into higher-value work.

       This matters because the new industrial economy has an AI problem of its own. Semiconductor plants, logistics operations and factories will increasingly use automation, robotics, machine vision and AI. They cannot simply become repositories for workers displaced from BPO and other industries.

       Some displaced workers can certainly transition into engineering support, automation, equipment maintenance, quality control, software, cybersecurity, logistics and other technical occupations—but only with serious retraining, apprenticeships and employer-linked certification.

       The objective should therefore be an AI-ready industrial ecosystem:

       AI-displaced workers → skills assessment → paid retraining → apprenticeship → industrial employment → continuous upskilling.

       Government, PEZA, companies, TESDA, universities and the BPO sector should jointly build this pipeline.

       The ultimate test of industrial policy is no longer simply how many jobs a factory creates.

       It is what happens to Filipino workers as technology changes.

       If a multinational leaves and nothing remains but an empty factory, we captured temporary employment.

       If it leaves behind skilled engineers, Philippine suppliers, R&D capability, technology, infrastructure and a workforce capable of moving into the next industry, we built national capability.

       That is the lesson for Pax Silica and the next generation of Philippine industrial policy:

       Do not merely attract factories. Build ecosystems. Do not merely create jobs. Build capabilities. And do not promise that AI will never displace workers—build a country capable of continuously retraining them for whatever comes next.

       Reply
       • Joey Nguyen says:

         September 5, 2026 at 12:26 pm

         Perhaps “AI” is the current industry buzz word and there can be some argument that investors who are non-technical gravitate towards such words so it’s a good strategy to deploy buzz words that might work well in a “pitch deck.”

         The truth of the matter is that much of what is powering the AI scramble right now as pertains to hardware is because engineers having figured out a more efficient way to deploy machine learning clusters that doesn’t use General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU). GPUs were originally created as dedicated graphics co-processors to offload graphics-related threads from the Central Processing Unit (CPU). When GPUs shifted to parallelized raster processing, it was found that the floating point performance required for graphics rasterization could be used for floating point mathematical computations outside of generating graphics. Today’s GPUs and GPGPUs are essentially massively parallel floating point processors that are a computer-on-an-expansion-card. But GPGPUs are still generalist floating point processors that consume large amounts of resources to brute force computations.

         I’ll use the example of cryptographic co-processors. Cryptocurrency relies on very specific cryptographic computations that can run on CPUs (slowly) or GPGPUs (much faster), both while consuming large amounts of resources. Modern CPUs have in-built cryptographic co-processors that are suitable for securing an individual system but not strong enough to “mine” cryptocurrency. Before the AI Boom, there was a mad rush to buy GPUs and GPGPUs years back in the cryptocurrency craze. Eventually Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processors were able to be programmed for the cryptographic operation and do it more efficiently than a GPGPU. Nowadays cryptocurrency mining is done by dedicated Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) processors which are suited at the hardware level to perform specific operations super fast at much higher efficiency. So eventually FPGAs and then ASICs will take over machine learning tasks that power AI.

         What I’m getting at is the enabling skills and enabling knowledge is much more important than specific applications. Often I find the Filipino is really excellent at being hyper-focused on the task at hand — we may find examples of this task-specific excellence everywhere in the Filipino’s work. What Philippine culture is not that well geared towards (yet), is out-of-the-box thinking at a high level of performance. Out-of-the-box thinking is what drives American ingenuity that puts American technical prowess far ahead of even Europeans.

         But what if out-of-the-box thinking does exist in the Philippines? Those who spend a lot of time with DEs have seen daily examples of survival-based ingenuity. I’ve seen things jury-rigged that somehow work to my pure amazement. So the ability to think outside of the box does exist somewhere in the base culture even if it is largely lost among the more highly educated.

         I think what’s needed is to re-cultivate the innate ingenuity within Philippine culture that is still endemic within pockets of survival-based ingenuity, leveraging it to focusing on concepts and how concepts are applied rather than solutions. Those who understand concepts and the application of concepts will naturally be able to develop solutions. To that end it’s far more important to foster the skills needed for mineral processing chains, technology chains, logistics chains, and so on. Some of that which is fostered will enable “AI,” but once “AI” is just another ordinary tool, concepts and how to apply concepts will allow one to move onto horizontals and verticals.

         Reply
         • Karl Garcia says:

           September 5, 2026 at 1:50 pm

           Many many thanks

           Reply
         • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

           September 5, 2026 at 4:01 pm

           Eventually Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processors were able to be programmed

           my master’s degree was all about an algorithm to optimize FPGAs either in terms of space usage or speed. One of the core things about optimization is that you can only optimize in one direction. What I am doing now is so far away from what I originally planned to specialize in..

           What I’m getting at is the enabling skills and enabling knowledge is much more important than specific applications. Often I find the Filipino is really excellent at being hyper-focused on the task at hand — we may find examples of this task-specific excellence everywhere in the Filipino’s work. What Philippine culture is not that well geared towards (yet), is out-of-the-box thinking at a high level of performance. Out-of-the-box thinking is what drives American ingenuity that puts American technical prowess far ahead of even Europeans.

           the American way of doing things is often called “cowboy methods” in Europe – though American corporate bureacracy can also be something..

           ..I recall browsing a book at Barnes and Noble somewhere in NYC comparing contemporaries Thomas Edison and Werner von Siemens, probably the broad pattern if one compares Bill Gates to Prof. Dr. Hasso Plattner of SAP would be similar.

           My (not very extensive) experience with Filipino developers is that they often seem to have difficulty cross-training into other tools even if the basic concepts aren’t all too different, probably because of the rote learning base of Filipino education.

           It could also be related to how Filipino bureacracy tends to be inflexible in a certain very literalist sort of way.

           My observation (90s dated of course) was that they usually didn’t get the way Indian software professionals discuss solutions in groups. That approach also is from their British-derived educational system and usually matches well with the (continental) European approach.

           But what if out-of-the-box thinking does exist in the Philippines? Those who spend a lot of time with DEs have seen daily examples of survival-based ingenuity. I’ve seen things jury-rigged that somehow work to my pure amazement. So the ability to think outside of the box does exist somewhere in the base culture even if it is largely lost among the more highly educated.

           My example of why the Romanians have or had one of the world’s fastest Internets due to neighborhood networks akin to how Filipino informal settlers often still get electricity (of course childhood memories are unreliable but I think there was a jumper from UP Area 1 – our area – to UP Balara for quite a while) was something I harped on for quite a while here. BTW the Romani sectors of Bucharest often also had illegal electricity. I wonder if that capacity to think outside the box but upgrade to something proper (which is what the neighborhood networks eventually did) is related to what a Romanian once told me that the Romani might be those looked down upon by a lot of Romanians but “scratch every Romanian and you’ll find a bit of a Romani inside”. A bit like the Romanian office crowd of the late noughties were all into Romanian “popcorn” (the very electronic dance pop of that era) and would frown at “manele” (Romani pop with its very Turkish-inspired sound) like the Filipino office crowd frowns at budots – but often knew manele hits especially the later it got in the evening at parties.

           maybe what I have said before – a bit OA of course – that what Sylvester Stallone in his Demolition Man role told the two parties at the end of that movie – “you guys get a bit cleaner, and you guys get a bit dirtier, you’ll figure it out” does apply to the Philippines more than I thought. The present attempts to overregulate Pinoy ingenuity when it comes to solar power show that the lesson still has to be learned, I guess.

           Reply
           • Joey Nguyen says:

             September 6, 2026 at 7:48 am

             the American way of doing things is often called “cowboy methods” in Europe – though American corporate bureacracy can also be something..

             When I was earlier in my career I got called a “cowboy” all the time, by both European colleagues and by American corporate bureaucrats. Well the reason why cowboyism exists in the consulting world is because bureaucracy-induced committee gridlock often leads to months-long debates within conference meetings about minor details rather than actually working on enablement. I figure they were also resentful that us independent consultants were brought in as Alexanders cutting through the Gordian Knot, which makes them look quite bad. I recall more than one mid-level “lifer” who survived for years just pushing around a coffee mug and rearranging printouts on their desk, while attending meetings. By the way, there was an entirely different external bureaucracy, the “Big Four” (Deloitte, EY, PwC, KPMG), that corporate bureaucracies often brought in to justify slow walking.

             My (not very extensive) experience with Filipino developers is that they often seem to have difficulty cross-training into other tools even if the basic concepts aren’t all too different, probably because of the rote learning base of Filipino education.

             It could also be related to how Filipino bureacracy tends to be inflexible in a certain very literalist sort of way.

             Might be related. Have you ever read Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory? Specifically the concepts of Power Distance (the degree to which less powerful members accept unequal power distribution), Individualism vs. Collectivism, and Low Context vs. High Context Societies (direct vs. indirect communication)? Basically in the US (low power distance, high individualism, low context) organizations are flatter, lower employees are still stakeholders who are expected to show initiative. Whereas in the Philippines (high power distance, collectivism, high context) seniority reigns supreme, harmony is emphasized even if it perpetuates errors, and saving face is important. That kind of cultural difference is likely the main reason why there is literalist inflexibility. I don’t think following a Japanese playbook where everyone is called San by default regardless of actual social rank (even teachers call their students something like student-san) would work either since the base Japanese culture is rather rigid, while in Philippine culture there was always an expectation that a very low person might be able to possibly push their way to the top and become datu by sheer performance (at least subconsciously within the culture). So maybe something more similar to Indonesian or Malaysian business culture might work better.

             My observation (90s dated of course) was that they usually didn’t get the way Indian software professionals discuss solutions in groups. That approach also is from their British-derived educational system and usually matches well with the (continental) European approach.

             Your experience probably was a sign that Indian culture had already adapted from the previous high power distance, collectivism, high context default by the 1990s. My own experience in the 2000s and early 2010s as an American working with and later for Indian firms was that they were still woefully stuck in that paradigm, only fit to be “button pushers” following highly scripted steps that had to be written for them. Of course since then the Indian IT workforce has adapted even further and adopted a more American-style that pushes their innovation even further.

             My example of why the Romanians have or had one of the world’s fastest Internets due to neighborhood networks akin to how Filipino informal settlers often still get electricity

             My understanding is that Romania had a large number of diaspora come back with new ideas and new ways of doing things learned from working abroad elsewhere in Europe (many had worked in Germany or the UK), at first organically through small businesses or co-ops, but later fully backed by the Romanian government. Which is why it is sometimes appalling that the Filipino diaspora had not come back to do the same in large enough numbers to make a big difference. South Korea’s rise was powered by returning diaspora, and since the 1990s so has Vietnam’s eventual rise, in both cases organically like Romania long before there were official government policies. Taiwan took another approach which was to sponsor technical students abroad while providing incentives for diaspora to return as official government policy.

             Reply
             • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

               September 6, 2026 at 6:38 pm

               n the Philippines (high power distance, collectivism, high context) seniority reigns supreme, harmony is emphasized even if it perpetuates errors, and saving face is important.

               yep, Hofstede does explain a lot of things quite well. I know for instance why I always wore a suit and emphasized my being from Germany when I had my assignments in Turkey which is a high power distance culture. Suit plus the prestige of Almanya especially in the SAP world, and one proof of power distance I saw was the unwritten rule in one big company that no one was to be in the hallways when the boss himself was in the house, his Maybach parked outside..

               literalist inflexibility

               our Bible literalist i7sharp when he actually talked about his life mentioned two things: a near deadly accident in the 1970s at MIA (now NAIA) that made him “find the Lord” and aircraft technician trainings in Kelsterbach near Frankfurt. So he was one of the first Lufthansa aircraft technicians in the Philippines, these guys are extremely good at their job for sure, but I don’t expect the likes of him to form the core of an independent-minded middle class.

               maybe something more similar to Indonesian or Malaysian business culture might work better.

               my one and only contact with Malaysian business culture was at Petronas way back in early 1999, flying back and forth from Singapore office of my employer to KL, that flight is memorable as one barely could finish one’s coffee between seatbelts fastened for takeoff and having to fasten seatbelts for landing. They did seem results-oriented though, I wonder how the Philippine business culture could reconfigure toward that, or whether it just needs challenges outside of rent-seeking to evolve.

               Your experience probably was a sign that Indian culture had already adapted from the previous high power distance, collectivism, high context default by the 1990s. My own experience in the 2000s and early 2010s as an American working with and later for Indian firms was that they were still woefully stuck in that paradigm,

               the Indians working in New York City for UN projects that I encountered in the mid-1990s were an elite within the Indian IT community, people all on H1B visas, and the small team of offshore Indians I worked with late 2010s who were experts in my present specialty (SAP Vendor Invoice Management add-on) were highly specialized in what was still rare in Europe and even rarer in India back then, almost a decade ago. I guess every observation depends on whom one exactly is interacting with.

               My understanding is that Romania had a large number of diaspora come back with new ideas and new ways of doing things learned from working abroad elsewhere in Europe (many had worked in Germany or the UK), at first organically through small businesses or co-ops, but later fully backed by the Romanian government.

               When I had my project flying in and out of Romania in 2009, they had barely joined the EU, though I did run into some Romanians at Cognizant Germany around 2016 and later. They were indeed a different breed from those nearly a decade before, and probably the exposure to UK, French and German projects had made a difference. What I also know is that many Romanians who had worked abroad supported the likes of Pres. Klaus Ioannis, the anti-corruption reformer, to be able to form businesses at home without “spaga” (bribes) getting in the way.

               it is sometimes appalling that the Filipino diaspora had not come back to do the same in large enough numbers to make a big difference

               I wouldn’t do it, and maybe one reason is the diference between what the Romanian diaspora chose to support versus what the Filipino diaspora chose to vote for in the majority. What is most frustrating are those fellow Pinoys here in Europe who SHOULD know how a modern society works, but prefer to dance budots in front of Scheveningen ICC jail.

               Reply
               • Joey Nguyen says:

                 September 7, 2026 at 4:34 pm

                 the Indians working in New York City for UN projects that I encountered in the mid-1990s were an elite within the Indian IT community, people all on H1B visas, and the small team of offshore Indians

                 From the late 2000s to the end of the 2010s my frustration with Indian IT workers’ inability to deviate from rigid compartmentalization lessened. A lot of the Indians I worked with were on H1B, which the Indian IT industry figured out to leverage in their favor (many H1B awardees are Indian IT workers).

                 Typically until the early 2020s the Indian consulting firm (e.g. Infosys, Cognizant, Tata, etc.) would be set up something like this: The vast number of Indian consultants were legacy “button pushers” who couldn’t think outside of following plans written for them, very young (barely graduated) “architects” and “technical leads” who held inflated titles and basically were relays for offshore experts back in India, and what I called strike teams of “commandos” who were highly competent consultants who flew all over the place “putting out fires” while the former two groups “held down the fort” at the client location.

                 Big difference between the Indian IT/BPO industry and Philippine BPO is that the Indians largely transitioned to a more Western (American-style) open communication between colleagues to help each other upgrade skills, while Filipinos still are big on gatekeeping and shouldering potential rivals out of the way rather than upgrading their own skills while helping their juniors. The Indian IT culture I encountered in the 2000s-2010s was one of heavy gatekeeping so something clearly changed, which was Indian consultancies placed diaspora Indians in management roles to imbue a new culture that sidelined the old gatekeeping culture.

                 Reply
                 • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

                   September 7, 2026 at 5:03 pm

                   what I called strike teams of “commandos” who were highly competent consultants

                   at least the best among the New York Indian consultants I encountered could I think be classified as “commandos”.

                   the former two groups “held down the fort” at the client location

                   maybe the ratio of commandos to the “fort watches” was around 1:5 if I think back.

                   I also heard something similar from a German process consultant in the mid-noughties regarding “big turbans” and “small turbans” at a German customer.

                   Filipinos still are big on gatekeeping and shouldering potential rivals out of the way rather than upgrading their own skills while helping their juniors.

                   that was definitely my experience with Pinoys in UN projects, and in the end they did get their opportunities abroad, corporate or UN.

                   I could see on their faces what they thought of the Indians who discussed solutions in the corridors, translated into DDS-speak I guess it was “ang bobo nila”.

                   When I look at Cognizant which was established by some Indians who worked at Wall Street mid-1990s, looks like their “swarm intelligence” was definitely higher.

                   Reply
                   • Joey Nguyen says:

                     September 7, 2026 at 5:29 pm

                     Three other big differences:

                     1.) Indian IT and BPO may have started off organically but they are ruthlessly aggressive on expansion; Philippine BPO is basically a foreign company doing all the high value work, with cheaper Filipino labor, while the Filipino JV partner reaps rewards… a type of corporate rent seeking behavior on the Philippine side.

                     2.) Starting with the State of Hyderabad, Indian subnational governments recognized the potential of IT-BPO, but without much state-level budget decided the best support was to massively cut local red tape, subsidized land to build IT parks, but most importantly prioritized “essential service” infrastructure, roads, fiber optic lines, electricity supply to the IT parks (the States of Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune soon followed); in the Philippines LGUs throw up red tape and keep gates, because that’s how LGUs extract rent, while not subsidizing anything so the expectation is the business has to front load their investments thus not having room for human and technology investments.

                     3.) The Indian (federal) government set up Software Technology Park enclaves to insulate IT-BPO startups from rent seeking localities; the 2000 IT Act regularized the business environment and regulations, which attracted massive FDI; the clearance system was simplified, removing gatekeepers specifically for IT-BPO (later expanded to other industries).

                     could see on their faces what they thought of the Indians who discussed solutions in the corridors, translated into DDS-speak I guess it was “ang bobo nila”.

                     That’s what I don’t understand about the mentality among some Filipino elites. The pure disdain for others seen as “beneath” their self-perceived “superiority.” Do these Filipino professionals and educated individuals not know that practically every group they looked down upon at one time (often multiple times), had powerful nation states and even empires? Then the utter surprise and defeatism when those who were looked down upon race ahead.

                   • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

                     September 7, 2026 at 6:08 pm

                     That’s what I don’t understand about the mentality among some Filipino elites. The pure disdain for others seen as “beneath” their self-perceived “superiority.”

                     Ninotchka Rosca at times dropped comments on FB about the narcissism of a lot of Filipino elites and that could explain the pattern.

                     including that the pattern keeps repeating, as it is known that narcissists are incapable of learning from mistakes.

                   • Karl Garcia says:

                     September 7, 2026 at 7:12 pm

                     Add social climbing then even those in a lower level will manifest their superiority complex if they are dikit to someone powerful.

                   • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

                     September 7, 2026 at 7:56 pm

                     In Germany one can see which country a diplomatic or consular employee works with based on the plate number. In Bonn Pinoy community of the 1980s/1990s, it did feel like those with plates that identified them with the USA had bragging rights of some kind over those that “only” were drivers for less powerful nations.

                     I wonder if the sarhentos who drive for colonels/generals etc. in the AFP also have a pecking order based on the prestige of their boss.

                   • Karl Garcia says:

                     September 7, 2026 at 8:09 pm

                     Oh yes imo

                   • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

                     September 7, 2026 at 10:44 pm

                     some degree of flexing and status exists in every society, even in egalitarian Scandinavia or Holland.

                     once it becomes nearly everything – or everything in the case of narcissists – I wonder what the point is.

                   • Joey Nguyen says:

                     September 8, 2026 at 3:22 am

                     MLQ3 posted on X/Twitter the other day a netizen’s observations on lamangan (“to take advantage of [by cheating],” “to gain the upper hand [by trickery],” “surpass,” or simply “one-upmanship“):

                     https://x.com/chonggo/status/2096513732075753641

                     Regarding those Pinoy boomers hooting like a pack of monkeys at young Pinay tourists in Switzerland, it made me remember a study conducted by an American (name escapes me) back in mid20th Century Manila about road rules and the concept of lamangan.

                     Jeepney drivers would one-up (lamangin) a taxi for the road by overtaking it or by slowing down or disrupting their speed. Jeepney drivers would occasionally one-up fellow jeepney drivers, but they would form coalitions against a taxi driver.

                     Why? Because a taxi back then is a symbol of elite luxury compared to the jeep which is basically reconfigured American junk. So the kapwa here is no longer fellow Pinoys but according to class or perception of nalamangan ba ako nito? Kung oo, lalamangan ko siya.

                     This is associated with crab mentality, of course, but this is sinister because it has ill-feelings involved to those perceived better than them (one lola screamed “ay sana nahulog”), they assert it through crowd size (mas marami kami) and age (after namura “ay you’re bad!”)

                     Plus I assume the targets are young women traveling together. The older set could not have done this at their age, too expensive, or they are not brave enough, so they think these young women wearing beautiful dresses and posing woderfully ay nalamangan sila. Ergo they screech.

                     This is not just generational but also class. Not just mere economic, but taste (which is sharper and far more political). The young women CAN afford to be tourists in small groups, unlike the boomers that the more bodies, the cheaper the package.

                     Taste here is also deploying methods of changing the looks. One of the young ladies look lovely in her white dress. They had the means to change, unlike the boomers whom i assume do not have the core strength to bring a change of clothes whilst walking. Hence “WAW MOWDHEL!” jibe.

                     Taste also implies the ability to be assertive. It is considered indecent in out culture to speak out against our elders. These young women’s taste may been influenced by more progressive ideas ergo one of them yelled and you could hear a nano-second of stunned silence.

                     These oldies are not used to being confronted by whippersnappers, hence they doubled-down at the young women. What we see here is a clash of taste, culture, diaspora, media consumption (why were they there in the first place), and deceny politics amidst rapidly changing morals.

                     Re-post of the video:
                     https://x.com/jiwoniegoeson/status/2095460588831006927

                     Judging by the reaction to the young women’s pushback to being bullied, perhaps the culture is healing.

                     Btw, the study the netizen is referring to is titled Philippine Urbanization: The Politics of Public and Private Property in Greater Manila (1973) by American anthropologist Richard L. Stone. Very interesting study if one ever had the time to read it; I had read it years ago. The study observed, among other things, road behaviors and driving dynamics between fellow Filipino drivers, specifically exploring the concept of lamangan. Stone observed that Filipino motorists back in those days treated public streets and public property as their own temporary private property based on their own immediate needs regardless of the needs of others, where “winning” via aggressive manuevers to “claim” the space first justified such behavior.

     • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

       September 5, 2026 at 4:43 pm

       Some areas BPO workers can be retrained into leveraging their existing skills as a base, just off the top of my head:

       Robotics and automation monitoring
       Industrial monitoring
       Supply chain analytics
       Enterprise operations management
       Process and workflow coordination
       IT and IS support
       AI data annotation and data cleansing

       All these are higher on the knowledge value chain than BPO or back office work.

       for sure it would mean having to train the typical “Ladino” (my father once described Filipinos working in offices abroad like the UN or international offices in the Philippines as similar to the early skilled clerical workers the Spanish trained who were called that, that was before BPO but conceptually it is correct) to be more proactive and not just merely working by the script, afraid to deviate even one inch from it, but it of course can be done.

       Karl would know better than me if Filipinos working in BPO are still like that – or maybe even utilized in only such roles, even if he told me recently that it is no longer as difficult to find Filipinos who are capable of being BPO managers as it allegedly was a decade ago. Again my knowledge is very dated, I am actually more up to date on how Indian BPO/outsourcing people have levelled up from the 1990s (NYC) to mid-2010s (my Cognizant time) to the present..

       Reply
       • Joey Nguyen says:

         September 6, 2026 at 8:01 am

         for sure it would mean having to train the typical “Ladino” (my father once described Filipinos working in offices abroad like the UN or international offices in the Philippines as similar to the early skilled clerical workers the Spanish trained who were called that

         IIRC, wasn’t it your father who re-popularized the term Ladino in more recent decades? Ladino has the same meaning in Latin-American Spanish, and has a somewhat derogatory connotation attached btw.

         I don’t think there’s a problem with immersing and “converting” a Filipino into a completely different cultural operating system — a lot of Filipino elites are already like that. The hard task is to figure out a way to “bridge” cultural operating systems where the educated elite can move about in external systems while also still understanding the internal system. In the US especially in metropolitan and suburban areas this isn’t that much of a problem as Americans are so exposed to multiculturalism.

         it is no longer as difficult to find Filipinos who are capable of being BPO managers as it allegedly was a decade ago.

         This is true, but with a big caveat: Philippine BPO managers are essentially resource coordinators — they themselves are still following very rigid scripts. One has to ask, why have scripts gotten progressively more rigid the more call center and back office operations are moved to the Philippines? Whereas Indian BPO workers and their family members educated from BPO salaries are increasingly a progressive force in India, demanding economic changes that India needs to respond to.

         Reply