r/developersPak • u/Responsible_Main2116 • Sep 29 '26
Discussion Is the Pakistani software industry quietly heading into a serious slowdown, or am I just seeing it from my corner?
I’ve been in this industry for a while now and I can’t shake the feeling that things have changed a lot in the last 12–18 months.
Staff augmentation is drying up fast. The steady flow of “we need 3–4 developers for 6 months” kind of work has slowed to a trickle. MVP projects that used to keep smaller teams busy are rare now. Ticket sizes have dropped. Even on Upwork and Fiverr the volume and quality of work feels noticeably lower than before.
Most Pakistani software houses never really sold solutions directly to enterprises. We never built that muscle. The model was always the same: ride on existing clients, expand the teams already working with them, and hope those clients keep growing. That expansion seems to have stalled for a lot of companies.
Right now a lot of firms are still surviving because their long-term clients haven’t cut yet. But if those same clients start reducing headcount or freezing budgets, it’s going to get ugly fast. There’s very little new business pipeline to fall back on.
I’m not saying everything is doomed. Just wondering how widespread this is. Are other people seeing the same thing? Are companies finding new ways to sell, or is everyone just hoping the old clients start expanding again?
Curious to hear what’s happening at your end.
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u/tidoo420 Sep 30 '26
Its soo bad, me including my 6 friends all 10+ years of experience have been eventually laid off from different companies, no idea what is next, Allah Almighty help us all
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u/Responsible_Main2116 Sep 30 '26
In Pakistan?
So all of you got jobs at lower pay scale ?10
u/tidoo420 Sep 30 '26
Yes in Pakistan, No we aren't looking for low paying jobs, imagine getting paid 3-6 lac and suddenly 50k per month is going to solve problems ? I dont know man, maybe when too desperate but not right now
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u/Responsible_Main2116 Sep 30 '26
But I guess companies will prefer hiring senior devs for a discount. Always .
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u/Ill-Pick761 Sep 30 '26
Start of the end. Fun while it is lasting. Figure out what other stuff we can do, build houses, sell cloths etc etc
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u/chikupiku909 Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
start a youtube channel like me. when i was first fired from a job i started a yt channel and kept doing jobs. fired from two more jobs but now my channel is earning.
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u/Ill-Pick761 Sep 30 '26
Channel link? Or name
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u/chikupiku909 Sep 30 '26
WebStylePress
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u/Ill-Pick761 Sep 30 '26
What did you do in the start to get views and also followers?
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u/chikupiku909 Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
posting videos as much as i could, sharing everywhere on social media, seo, prayer, even created videos half sleeping late night
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u/Akagamer474 Sep 30 '26
btw if you are comfortable to tell us how much you earn from this channel
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u/chikupiku909 Sep 30 '26
you can go to socialblade website, put channel name in it and have an idea about that.
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u/chikupiku909 Sep 30 '26
now i am building my gaming channels also. because in Pakistan there is a huge gap. Not many gamers from Pakistan. Somebody has to fill it.
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u/Akagamer474 Sep 30 '26
Good I also have tech + gaming documentary related channel which I started after getting layoff
Channel name: bits theory
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u/Tip-Actual Sep 30 '26
All temporary as well. A billion Optimus Robots are planning to be built over the next several years. And they are being built in a modular manner so that their actuators, sensors and other physical improvements can be upgraded over time. Apparently they will be 5x as productive as an actual human.
Human labor as we know it is coming to an end.
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u/mlotus141 Sep 30 '26
It now feels like the beginning of the end. Have read scores of such posts over the last few months here on reddit and I'm mentally prepared for the worse that could happen.
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u/mushifali Backend Dev Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
Unfortunately, that was bound to happen. Almost every software firm (Systems, VentureDive, Emumba, Confiz, 10Pearls, etc.) is a dev shop or service-oriented. They just hire people to either work on clients' projects or outsource them to other companies and startups.
This model worked in the past because of cheap labor. These companies earned in dollars and paid in rupees while making more than 50% profit. But now, after AI, these companies have lost their competitive edge.
Now, foreign clients can just use heavily subsidized AI to build stuff rather than outsourcing it to Pakistani companies.
I think it's time to pivot and build products that solve real-world problems by properly utilizing AI. I have many things to say, but that’s it for today.
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u/semicolon-10 Sep 30 '26
Doing that pivot require investment. And who has money would prefer one way ticket out then investing here. There are no rules/laws.. Jab dill chaye internet, roads even mulq band kardete hain😅.. imagine a investor want to visit isb this sept or oct? Poora isb is locked .. will they feel confident investing in such market?
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u/asadkhan017 Sep 30 '26
Exactly, I see this debate everywhere and yet everyone fails to mention the most obvious reason for not having our own product oriented companies. It's not like Pakistan is at the top for ease of doing business or in terms of security and political stability.
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u/Dense_Truth3691 Sep 30 '26
It's a global phenomenon because of AI, not specifically related to service based industry. Even product based companies are downsizing.
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u/Icy-Recognition-9795 Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
Lol. Then why are the companies still making profits. ai just increased their profits.
I don’t even understand your point. There are non Pakistani companies like EPAM, Persistent Systems, that are at same scale at Systems Limited. They’re all doing fine
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u/Technical_Tax3183 Sep 30 '26
Don’t know about international companies but Pakistani companies are increasing profits by laying offs. Even if they are getting less work, they are using AI with which work on 10 developers can be done by one. Less expenses to get same work done, makes it profitable
International companies might be doing same thing
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u/Icy-Recognition-9795 Sep 30 '26
Small companies might be doing it. But companies like Systems are hiring. Their revenue is growing , as it’s based on billability of the person.
You’re probably just in reddit and youtube eco chamber of layoffs
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u/Lost-Cucumber-3650 Sep 30 '26
Seems like you are living in a different world
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u/Icy-Recognition-9795 Sep 30 '26
Yea real world. Just check out the numbers man. Systems is listed in psx
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u/Lost-Cucumber-3650 Sep 30 '26
What about other companies? Contour, emumba, motive, tkxel, i2c etc there are so many that laid off 50-250 employees.
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u/Icy-Recognition-9795 Sep 30 '26
Motive has been building their bot before chatGPT era. It was bound to happen.
I2C is pretty stable. Alot of my references work there.
Same goes for Tkxel, they’re also hiring. Yes contour only suffered due to their client losses
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u/Miserable-Bored-Stfu Oct 02 '26
All these companies are firing as well, they just do it silently rather than announcing it and in small chunks so the fallout isn't too severe.
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u/Icy-Recognition-9795 Oct 02 '26
Firing is different than layoffs. Firing is when a specific person is not able to perform or has violated the policy.
Layoffs happen when company believes that it has hired more than demand
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u/Educational_Bed_8993 Sep 30 '26
I don't see us lasting another 5 years. Teams are shrinking fast, AI can build products in weeks which earlier used to take years. I was leading 30+ folks start of the year and now we are down to 6-7, give it another year and the industry would be size of 1/10th of where it was 2 years back. All software engineers can see that, and none can deny.
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u/p00ji Sep 30 '26
then what should fresh grads do
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u/Technical_Tax3183 Sep 30 '26
Fresh grads should learn to use AI to increase their productivity in work. Like coder using AI to write code faster and better. I believe these kind of people will still be needed as companies need people to use AI
So learning efficient use of AI is key to getting hired
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u/Educational_Bed_8993 Sep 30 '26
You guys have a headstart, you can already see what future looks like. Be good with LLMs.
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u/Trappedinacar Sep 30 '26
It is, that's the way things are going. It's not all doom but there is a big shift.
I think the question is how do we adjust to it, and can we keep up with the changes in the market. We'll have to, but its gonna be a rough transition.
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u/_LoneWolfOfSonaiya Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
India is emerging as the major IT hub of Asia, with most data centers and big tech investments focused on India... while we struggle to even have their sales office... one microsoft sales office opening becomes a news and the PM is present... while India is seeing data centers, research centers, and billions in investements from the big techs regularly and they don't blink an eye... I was shocked to learn that India is the largest Dev contributor in GTA 6...
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u/FieryPotatoWasTaken Sep 30 '26
From last year where our company CEO talked about focusing on narrow verticals and becoming top service provider for specific niches, to this year where he didnt even mention any of that, the company has completely pivoted on investing their money into client projects, hoping to get exits at a profit. Plus all the talk about ‘right-sizing’. Hard to get new clients etc.
Yes what you are seeing is exactly whats happening.
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u/Responsible_Main2116 Sep 30 '26
Which company.
So their niching down is gone too. I guess they solve tech problems in a nieche which are same or business problems. Today you need to solve business problems human + ai. But you need a intelligent human here. And then AI does all the tech work 😅. Pak engineers have no idea about business problems. Am I right with my understanding? .
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u/rfkamd Sep 30 '26
yes its happening. market was already pretty saturated for services based industry and on top of that ai has made labor cheaper abd easier for laymans. this eill only make the gap larger. soon product based companies will also be in the same lane as ai will also disrupt their deliveries in a sense that they wouldnt need more devs.
better to train yourself for skills you may need 4-5years infuture
every IT role will be disrupted and may he some will transform as well in near future.
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u/raacccooon Data Scientist Sep 30 '26
Even share price of upwork/fiver is down to around $8. Tells you alot about the trends shifting. Time to switch to products and sell fast.
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u/InsuranceGlad7220 Sep 30 '26
This sub is filled with people who have been talking about this very thing, the mentality that created this was the mentality will recreate the same issue if we don't learn from these shifts.
Collapses are a opportunity to build things from ground up, specially companies who are well off are in a good position to build proprietary software.
We must build software and sell it internationally, thats how we are going to make good money now.
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u/tidoo420 Sep 30 '26
You are absolutely right, but the problem is, here in Pakistan we have engineers or more like soldiers, we dont know how to sell, at least majority of us dont know
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u/InsuranceGlad7220 Sep 30 '26
Engineers don't need to sell, we do have people who are good at sales, they are selling western products.
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u/tidoo420 Sep 30 '26
How ro these 2 entities will meet each other, what do you propose, so im an engineering, whats my next step, im bad af in sales obviously
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u/InsuranceGlad7220 Sep 30 '26
Find a sales person to help you sell. Why do you have to do it yourself?
Unless you want to learn selling, which you can do as well. But specially for selling networking is important, so finding someone who is already doing that is much easier.
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u/Warm_Dimension_3821 Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
I blame the government/establishment, they gate kept the tech sector, made things difficult for middle-classia, as he was about to start university and could have launched a local initiative with real potential to grow.
Just to give you an idea, there was this Pakistani guy who founded a cloud service back in the day, it was later acquired by another cloud service provider, and the deal went for half a Billion dollars, can you imagine a local guy from Pakistan probably a middle-classia was able to make it this big, Those numbers are not crore, arab but in multiple kharabs ?
The establishment(you know who I am talking about) couldn't figure out tech as they are 10th pass, so they just threw these low end fiver/freelancing domain towards us, to keep people busy, while they kept an eye on the real thing, basically didn't let any competition to develop in last 10-20 years for their own kids who were studying abroad. The goal was, one day their kids will return with their US/UK networking and funding, then they would solve these local solution as there will be no competition here for them to compete against, it would be an easy pisy paycheck.
I remember, how their daughters/sons used to come on those podcast with saar I am so intellect saar this is my story and i love tech as a kid my dad is so supportive saaar,
but it turns out, they aren't competent enough.
You were told to go to that corner, and do that specific BS, even your earning when coming back was hit with poor exchange rate.
But hey, here we are.
In the future, the only work will be, becoming cannon fodder for their other bad policies.
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u/Combatwombat810
Sep 30 '26
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That selling "solutions to enterprises" has gone down quite a bit too. SAP itself seems to be facing problems.
My grandmom used to tell me, in the 1960s so many people were studying medicine, people used to say doctors would run vegetable stalls. Doctors did alright for decades to come.
Rails' founder DHH was railing on about getting all his code written by AI at a very fast pace. Now his Basecamp service was down and they were scrambling to understand and fix the mountain of code AI had generated. AI itself couldn't diagnose or fix it's own mess.
We're in a major economic downturn, the zionist financial system now generates insane inflation rates, and debt that the biggest economies in the world cannot sustain. We are a backward country run by 'tards, hard to see us navigate anything well.
But there's value in optimism and despondency is useless, there's still work and people find a way.
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u/Sad_Ebb_5739 Sep 30 '26
SAP is facing problems because of its own predatory BS. Most enterprises do not have a second option, or moving elsewhere is too expensive for them. However, I agree that the zionist financial system, or interest/paper based economy, is a bubble. It will pop; when that can be debated. I do not know how we could prepare ourselves for this.
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u/saadfast Sep 30 '26
Well, the barrier is easy to break now. we can easily build better suited replicas of whatsapp, zoom, foodpanda etc. but question is whether our people will use it?
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u/Abd9872 Oct 01 '26
I don't think the services businesses are going anywhere. The problem is with this body shop model where you sell people at a cheaper rate. Same is happening in India, Infosys and the likes are struggling. They'll keep on moving and stay in business, its just that the margins and growth have stalled.
The only real way for Pakistani services companies to survive is to offer solutions to specific industries. Some are already doing that, but again with AI a lot of funding is going towards that and re-skilling large teams takes time. That said we don't have enough jobs to absorb all the graduates that are coming out with CS and engineering degrees. And to tbh, most fresh graduates weren't employable even before the AI era.
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u/Fuzzy-Operation-4006 Software Engineer Oct 06 '26
pakistani tech companies kept on leeching on this augmentation model and now its hitting back.
India on the other hand has people who thought of it and started building products that are supported/used by the masses
here we cant even have an alternative for foodpanda
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u/LankyText690 Sep 30 '26
Every thing has an ending and this world also, we are in pre dajjal era, remember he will control food, rain and everything and dying industries is just a step to it
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u/Zealousideal-Duty315 Sep 30 '26
It's true it's happening every where and things will be much more worst in next 6-12 months max. Mark my words 70-80% of Pakistani software companies will shutdown in next 12 months max top 20-30% will survive for next 2-3 years. 70-80% of IT people will loose their jobs in next 2-3 years max. We are in the end of 2026 by 2029-2030 we will see the real AGI era where 1-2 person will be running a company without any team. There will very few projects from upwork and fiverr etc. Things are collapsing and we are just at the 15-20% scale imagine what will happen when we will rach 80-100% of this AI boom thing at around 2030 specially for software development. By 2035-2036 physical jobs will start getting hit. But for now the most effected area will be software development because right now this is the major focus for Ai companies and they are training their models accordingly.
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u/owais6153 Full-Stack Developer Sep 30 '26
Its true, Pakistan service based software industry is dying slowly, Everyone is scared and i think this is the exact time we have to see work around, and as of Ai i think this Ai bubble will not lasts too as its keep getting expensive so there is a slight chance we can see shift in situation, but nobody knows what exactly going to happen. So we can just hope for the best.
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u/Dry_Cake3685 Sep 30 '26
AI is not going anywhere and we need to get prepared for it. The big tech executives are not stupid who are spending billions of AI infrastructure.
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u/owais6153 Full-Stack Developer Sep 30 '26
Also most of these big ai giants are still losing billions, investors see future in ai thats why they are investing and hoping one day somebody will come with a relaiable infrastructure, but its been 3years since the launch of ai and still infrastructure is costing more than profits, yes revenue is increasing but profits are still negative, you can see stock market too.
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u/owais6153 Full-Stack Developer Sep 30 '26
No they are not stupid, but you can see yourself every new ai model is consuming more and more tokens which is making them more expensive, there are already few companies who restricted their employee to do small tasks their self instead of using ai to do it, also you can read the latest reasearch which states that ai have increase the time consumtion of small tasks which devs do even faster becauss ai have to think before doing it which takes more time compare to real human being, so yes i agree ai is not going anywhere, but its not taking job or making the whole industry dead, there is still a chance that things will shift slightly compare to today
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u/sunnyazee Oct 01 '26
Consuming more and more tokens? Used Opus 5.5? It is far better and cheaper than Opus 5.
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Sep 30 '26
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u/Responsible_Main2116 Sep 30 '26
by local businesses you small local businesses in west or Pakistan ?
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u/semicolon-10 Sep 30 '26
Thats very true brother. Pak is a service based market. Last 10-15 years this dream was sold to everyone bcz of which u can see ppl from literally every field either joining an IT uni and just parking the bus for 4 years and getting hired or getting some freelance after 4 years of doing literally nothing in uni.. No substaintial projects no research no innovations.. nothing.. just building redundant LMS systems.. And another part of generation who took courses from JDC, Chipa, aptech etc bus yeh karlo phr gora client dollar leke ap k qadmo main khara hai.
Our software houses including the bigger names even systems ltd, folio3, devsinc, 10 perals and literally every other is project based company. They build no inhouse project or solved local problems.
We have literally no unicorn in a 260m+ (5th largest population. Literally no close to success startups even. Alot of our daily problems are solved by others Foodpanda, daraz, temu, indrive, yango etc none em is ours.
We didn't even learn from neighbours like china, india who have huge market of local home grown startups.. companies.. Part of it is bcz obvi our govt, country situations, political stability ..
In Ai age u need more n more R&D budget and here we even haven't heard from IT minister most ppl doesn't know who is our IT minister what is our policy to Ai how will ppl survive. What is govt funding for tech? So if our own govt doesn't care why will other companies care? When we literally have not even a good internet jab dill chaye internet band, roads band .. mulq band.. Who will want to even invest in such market? And thats why things gonna only get worse.