u/Logical-Mail3534

Assalamualaikum,

I’m a 7 semester CS student from Multan Looking for some honest career guidance and a bit of a reality check.

This is how it happened Eight months ago, I was one of the first devs to join a new tech startup with an American CEO. I accepted 30k PKR/month initially because I wanted the experience. Honestly, the team has been incredibly kind to me. They once invited me out to a trip, they send Eid bonus as wel, and the overall environment is very positive.

Because of the fast pace, I worked long hours (8-12hr) sometimes even during my university exams and helped build their core backend foundation, database architecture, and project structure from scratch.

About six months ago, my friend and I asked for an increment from the CEO directly He said that they were managing expenses carefully out of pocket and that we are all building this together as a family, and he bumped us up by 7k (making it 37k PKR).

However, we recently learned that the main team based in a major city is being paid around 150k to 300k+ PKR/month, then spending even more on expenses and some newer hires are making even more. While I like the company culture and the kindness they've shown me, the reality of this salary gap has made me realize I need to think about my long-term future. I don't want to be in this exact same financial position 8 months from now.

I want to start looking for new opportunities, but I have a major block I’ve become very reliant on AI tools to push out fast startup features, and my manual coding confidence has tanked. I’m terrified I’ll fail a live technical interview. (For context: I used to do a lot of DSA and solved around 400 LeetCode problems, built a lot of Fullstack projects,made a project used currently by more than 15+ government department before this job, but I feel incredibly rusty now).

I’d appreciate your advice on how can I renegotiate my current salary or if I have to switch how should I start preparing for interviews?