(Post made better using ChatGPT. Ignore if this feels robotic)

Hey guys, hope everyone is doing well.

I wanted to make this post for people who are either starting out or are still young and trying to figure out how to get hired.

Yes, the job market is messed up. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But there are still ways to get hired locally, and eventually land a good remote job if you put yourself in the right position.

Everything I'm saying here is based on my own experience. I've applied to 1,500+ jobs, interviewed with around 20 companies in Lahore and another 10 remotely, and I even came pretty close to landing a $10k/month remote job.

I've wasted a LOT of time figuring things out, so hopefully some of this saves someone else that time.

A little background

I'm 22 and graduated in February this year from what I would consider a pretty bad university in Lahore. To give you an idea, I literally used to give my lab exams on a piece of paper lol.

I did an internship in 2025 that paid 35k/month for 4 months.

I'm now working part-time for a remote company where I make 172k/month, with my salary continuing to increase along with other perks.

So here's what actually helped me.

1. University

I honestly don't care which university you go to.

If you want to succeed, you have to take responsibility for yourself.

In my opinion, university can help groom you and give you some fundamentals, but you cannot rely on it to build your career for you. A lot of what is taught is outdated, and you need to learn things yourself.

University ke sahare na betho.

I wasted around 3 years of university thinking that the degree itself would somehow prepare me for a job.

Start building your skills as early as you can.

2. Pick ONE field

This is probably one of the biggest things I'd recommend.

Pick something you actually like and lock yourself into it for 3 months.

It can be:

• Data Analytics
• Data Engineering
• AI Engineering
• Software Engineering
• Cybersecurity
• Whatever else interests you

Don't spend 3 months jumping between 15 different technologies.

Spend the first 2 months learning the fundamentals and slightly more advanced concepts, then use the final month to build projects.

You don't need 20 projects.

3 good projects are much better than 20 garbage ones.

I personally started with Data Analytics. My projects were honestly pretty basic, but they were enough to help me land my internship and get started.

And don't choose something just because you think it's "hot" or because everyone else is doing it.

Pick something you actually enjoy.

People are still getting hired. AI hasn't eliminated every job. You just need to become useful at something.

3. Build projects

Please don't fall into tutorial hell.

This was another mistake I made.

You can spend months watching YouTube videos and feel like you're learning while never actually building anything.

Use ChatGPT, Claude, documentation, Google, whatever you need.

Ask AI to help you create a roadmap, learn the basics, and then start building.

If you don't know how to do something, figure it out while building.

You don't need to know everything before starting.

Also, make your GitHub clean.

You don't need 50 repositories. Have a few good projects that are easy to understand, with readable code, a good README, screenshots/results where relevant, and clear explanations of what you actually did.

And please don't put technologies on your GitHub/resume just because you touched them once.

4. Your resume

Only put things on your resume that you actually know.

I see people listing 30 technologies and then getting destroyed in interviews when they're asked basic questions about half of them.

Don't do that.

Keep your resume short, clean and focused.

And when describing projects, focus on what you found or achieved, not just what you did.

For example:

❌ "Analyzed a dataset containing 14,000 records using Python, Pandas and Matplotlib."

That's okay, but it doesn't tell me much.

Instead:

✅ "Analyzed 14,000 customer records and identified the main factors driving customer churn, presenting the findings through an interactive dashboard."

The second one tells me what the work actually accomplished.

Obviously, don't make up results. Just communicate your real results better.

5. LinkedIn

Use LinkedIn to show people what you're actually doing.

Posting twice a week can help with visibility.

You don't need to make those cringe posts

>"Job market is bad. How will I as an intern get a job if I don't have experience" Blah Blah

Just share your projects, something you learned, an interesting problem you solved, or something you're currently working on.

The goal is simply to make it easier for someone to look at your profile and think:

"Okay, this person actually builds things."

6. Applying for jobs

Now for the fun part.

If you're looking for remote jobs, my advice would be:

Local first → experience → remote.

I'm not saying you can't get a remote job without experience. You absolutely can.

But it's much harder when you have nothing to show for yourself.

For finding remote jobs, I used filters like:

Remote + EMEA

Then I'd search for the specific role I wanted and look at smaller companies, agencies and startups.

Don't only apply to huge companies.

There are a LOT of smaller companies hiring internationally, and some of them are much more willing to take a chance on someone who is ambitious, learns quickly and can actually do the work.

That's essentially how I got my current remote job.

Different job shave different names so look into that as well.

7. Rejections and ghosting

You're going to get rejected.

You're going to get ghosted.

You're going to apply to 100 jobs and hear back from 5.

That's normal.

Don't take every rejection personally.

Use it as feedback.

Maybe your resume isn't good enough.

Maybe your projects aren't strong enough.

Maybe you're applying for roles you're not qualified for.

Maybe your interview skills suck.

Figure out which one it is and improve it.

I applied to 1,500+ jobs. Trust me, I know what rejection looks like 😂

8. Reach out to recruiters

If you find a position you genuinely want, don't be afraid to reach out to the recruiter or hiring manager.

Keep the message short.

Don't send them your entire life story.

Something as simple as:

>Hey, I saw you're hiring for X. I've been working on X and have experience with Y. I applied for the role and would love to be considered. Here's my profile/GitHub.

That's enough.

9. Interview + Communication

Keep the message short. For remote jobs you need to communicate in English. For people that can't talk properly in english its going to be tough. But you just need enough to communicate fluently. During interviews answer to an extent and just show them that I am someone willing and I am someone who can work. That's it.

Lambi chorne ki koi zarrorat naho

Finally: give yourself 3 months

If you're currently lost, pick ONE thing.

Give yourself 3 months.

Learn → build → apply → improve → repeat.

Don't spend those 3 months constantly worrying about what everyone else is doing.

Don't constantly switch fields because you saw someone on LinkedIn making $20k/month.

Don't spend all your time researching the "perfect career."

Start building.

I'm currently going into my own next phase and learning AI Engineering. I want to use it to improve my current work and eventually build SaaS products as well.

I'm confident that if I actually lock in and spend the next few months consistently working on it, I'll understand a huge amount by the end of the year.

You'd be surprised how much you can change in 3 focused months.

At the beginning of this year, I didn't have the job I have now.

I didn't have the skills I have now.

And honestly, I didn't even know exactly what I wanted to do.

I accidentally found something I enjoy by trying different things.

So make mistakes. Build stupid projects. Apply to jobs you're probably underqualified for. Get rejected. Learn from it.

Just don't sit still.

And most importantly:

Allah ko mat bhulna.

That's probably the most important thing out of everything I wrote.

Take care, and Allah Hafiz.

P.S. Only DM me if it invlove's anything I haven't mentioned above. If I've missed something, feel free to ask in the comments. I'll try to help where I can.

So a lot of software companies here have relied on staff augmentation for years. Basically, the main selling point was that you could get developers from Pakistan for much cheaper than hiring in the US or Europe.

The bigger issue is that we're mostly a services-based industry. We provide development services to foreign companies instead of building and owning many of our own products. So if our main advantage is being cheaper, AI was always going to put pressure on that. Now a company can hire locally and use AI to get a lot more out of a smaller team. That makes the whole “offshore developers are cheaper” argument a lot less convincing than it used to be.

Another thing is that a lot of companies seem to depend heavily on Upwork for getting clients. We haven't really invested enough in building our own brands or finding other ways to bring in clients, because those things take time and don't give you instant results.

So I don't think it's simply a case of “AI is taking developer jobs.” It's putting pressure on a business model that was already heavily dependent on providing cheaper services.

I honestly feel like we need to move more towards building our own products instead of mainly selling development services.

Otherwise we're actually doomed.

I have had this idea for a while, but I think we're pretty lacking in terms of real locally made mobile apps. We certainly have the engineers for it.
E.g. Indrive, Foodpanda, yango, airbnb, OLX; these apps sell local services, but they're not made in Pakistan.
We have bykea but, bykea sucks, tbh
Now, I don't have a particularly good argument for why we should have good quality Pakistani versions of these apps, but something about local services + local app just feels right
What do you think about this

Curious about small software houses with around 5–20 employees, especially those working from coworking spaces.
How much do these companies actually make and profit? What kind of clients do they usually have, and how much are employees typically paid?
More importantly, why do so many stay small instead of scaling? Is client acquisition the bottleneck, management, margins, or something else?
And with AI changing software development so quickly, are these smaller companies feeling pressure or becoming more profitable by operating with leaner teams?

Hi, I'm a Full Stack Engineer with 4 years of experience also worked in production Fintech environment and systems like accounting, invoicing, finance operations with banks. Been unemployed for 5 months now. Nothing is working. LinkedIn jobs? Dead. Glassdoor? Seems like social circle for unemployed. Cold emails? No response.

Skills don't work anymore. I've had offers in the past say 1 year ago but now I'm even ready to settle for less.
I'm also open to jobs than come under the subset of Full Stack Engineer like QA Engineer, and others like that. Also expanding my skills towards being an ML/AI Engineer.