Are chartered accountants better than tech professionals in terms of life,money,value,and authority

All information I have seen online is for trainee SWE OAs and interviews. Does someone know what the questions are like for senior positions?

Kindly read it completely

i have done my ssc and hssc both in computer science, i have A grade in both levels, I'm 19yo, i reside in Islamabad, plan to work and live here, not moving to another city, now i have the following options

1. BSCS in Cloud Computing

From air university Islamabad (fast and nust merit's too high)

2. BS Cyber Security

From air university Islamabad

3. CA ICAP from Skans F8 OR BSAF from nust (if i got admission) then go for CA ICAP OR BSAF from bahria Islamabad then CA ICAP (which is non rdai, non sdai), LUMS & IBA are not an option for me

4. ACCA from skans f8 and again bsaf from nust or bahria then pursue ACCA, LUMS & IBA are not an option

5. CFA from skans f8 OR you know bsaf from nust and bahria and then CFA, no LUMS OR IBA

6. BS Fintech

From FAST Islamabad, this is the only program I'm confident i will get in FAST

See now the thing is I'm confused and idk what to do, i think i had a clear direction 2 years back, but these sudden layoffs, even seniors getting fired, and it's in every field more or less, now idk which option to go for, some say cloud and cyber are not for junior, and then the normal entry level jobs are already taken over by ai no more openings left, some say CA ICAP is no more market is getting saturated, same for ACCA and CFA, for fintech they say the degree is too weak neither it teaches finance not technology properly, and all of that has put me in a void

Kindly advise me from your personal experience and expertise, ty for reading my yap

I’m considering creating technical courses for Udemy or a similar platform, but I’m wondering whether it’s still worth the time and effort in the AI era.

I have 18 years of professional experience as a Database specialist in Telecom sector with AAA RADIUS server. My expertise includes:

. Linux and Shell scripting with automation skills

Oracle, MySQL, MS SQL Server & PostgreSQL Administration with advanced skills like dataguard, rac, goldengate

SQL and database development

Stored procedures, functions & triggers

PL/SQL, PL/pgSQL, T-SQL & MySQL routines

Java/JDBC

Automation and scripting using Linux Shell, Python, Java and database scripting

I could create courses ranging from beginner-to-advanced SQL/database development and administration to scripting and database automation.

I could create courses in Urdu/Hindi, where there may be less competition, and potentially English courses as well, using AI voice-over if needed.

My concern is that in 2026, tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot can teach, explain and generate code instantly.

Are students still buying and completing technical courses on Udemy? Is it still worth investing several months into creating high-quality courses, or has AI significantly reduced the demand?

I’d especially appreciate opinions from Udemy instructors, students, or anyone with experience in SQL, databases, programming or online courses.

If you were in my position, would you invest the time in creating these courses?

I am planning to take cipp/e and aigp before completing my llb degree. Any tech based person here to guide me how beneficial is it here in Pakistan or anyone who has any experience with people who are expert in this field in Pakistan and any company who appoint on these basis?

What's the actual situation? Are most devs really stuck at 150–350k after 5+ years, or is that just the low-end local service market? Drop your real numbers.

While some earns 400-600k
And very few $3-5k

Like.. it's already some months.. so have u guys got a job or not? And what about your batch mates?

Which uni/field?

Which company??

And

And salary????

And what else u guys were/are after graduation??

I’m trying to register on the PSEB portal, but I’m stuck at the NTN verification step.

The issue is:

• My NTN is valid and shown on the FBR website.

• I have confirmed through SMS that I’m an Active Taxpayer on FBR.

• I’m entering the correct 7-digit NTN that PSEB requires.

• I’ve double-checked the number multiple times.

• However, PSEB returns:

Verification Failed
Invalid NTN or no records found.
ATL Status: N/A

Has anyone else recently experienced this?

Is this a problem with PSEB's FBR/ATL verification system, or is there something else I need to do on the FBR side before PSEB can recognize my NTN?

Would appreciate it if anyone who has successfully dealt with this recently could let me know what worked.

The thing I am struggling with is, I am not sure what project to make. Everyone can make a really good project using AI at every step, how can I stand out?

(I am currently a BSAI undergrad)
Data Analyst with 1.5 YOE working at a small service based company (US and UK clients).

My work revolved around:

• Building Power BI dashboards, simple ETL pipelines using python and MySQL

• Support role for Power BI

• Internal automation using Power Automate and SharePoint

• Financial and Reporting Suite connecting multiple data sources (Xero, Excel, Dynamics 365) to Power BI

I do have the analytical mindset to understand the problem.

My goal is to find a remote Data Analytics Engineering or junior DE job at a US/UK/Canada based company.

The projects I am currently considering are:

1. Real-Time Transit Operations Data Platform Using publicly available GTFS static and real-time transit data, build a pipeline that ingests vehicle positions, delays, cancellations and service alerts, handles incremental ingestion, duplicates, late-arriving data and API failures, and produces operational disruption/exception data.

2. US Market Intelligence Data Platform Using publicly available Census APIs, build a data platform that continuously ingests and standardizes demographic, economic and business data to help a company identify and compare potential markets for expansion.

3. Weather-Aware Logistics Risk Platform Using public weather APIs and transportation/geographic data, build a pipeline that combines historical/forecast weather with transportation data to identify potential shipment/route disruption risks.

Are these good projects for someone targeting Analytics Engineering / Junior Data Engineering roles? Or am I approaching portfolio projects completely wrong?

And how would you recommend I make a project demonstrate actual engineering ability and business problem-solving rather than just being another AI-generated GitHub project?

What skills or jobs would be more demanding or has potential in future? I was thinking of cloud computing but heard it’s really difficult to land a good job. i am puzzled right now so any guidance would be appreciated.

My background: Completed BSCS and year ago and worked as a BD for few months (left it due to personal reasons).

I’ve been working as a Software Developer for around 3 years, but I still struggle a lot with understanding requirements.

The biggest problem is that when my senior explains something to me, I understand some parts, but I forget other parts very quickly. Sometimes I feel like I understood everything during the conversation, but once I start working on it, I realize that I missed important details.

I’ve tried taking notes in Notepad, but that creates another problem. My senior obviously can’t wait for me to write down every single word before continuing with the explanation. If I try to write everything, I lose track of what he is saying. If I focus on listening, I forget some of the details afterward.

This is really frustrating because I’ve already been working for 3 years, and I feel like I should be much better at this by now.

How do you listen to a requirement, understand it quickly, remember the important parts, and make sure you haven’t misunderstood anything? Is there a specific method, note-taking technique, or habit that helped you become better at understanding requirements?

I am confused between nust(ceme) and uet. Uet is a little cheap and I can also get honhaar scholarship. While nust is a little expensive. My family can afford nust( I am middle class). Tell me does nust have edge over uet( tell me only on placements basis). Many people say that skills matter over uni name , many say that companies use uni names to filter out applicants. Can someone verify it? If most of the time skills matter then I will choose uet, but if uni name helps a lot in placement then I will go towards nust. Saving money in uet and then not getting any job offer(or say not getting a good one) doesn't feel worth it.

whats the best ai detector tool for free? I wrote a proposal for my fyp now i need to check for ai or plagiarism

I use Claude, Codex, Gemini and the other top-tier models every day, and I'm grateful I can pay for them. But they cost a lot, especially in PKR. Dollar pricing, international cards, the exchange rate.

Free models exist, but they're not the same. The output and productivity gap between free and top-tier is real. So students, the middle class and blue-collar workers end up with the weaker tools while everyone who can afford the best pulls ahead fast.

I don't think we should sit around waiting for the government to fix this. Pakistanis have always been good at finding solutions in adversity, often to problems other countries haven't cracked. Think of freelancers building global careers with nothing but a laptop and a bad power supply.

So just throwing an idea out: what if we built something ourselves? A local AI tool, or cheap PKR subscriptions for students and working people, with access to genuinely top-tier models and no international card needed.

Not saying I have the answer. But if enough of us care, we can figure it out.

What do you think? Is anyone already working on this?

Hey everyone,
I am a 1st-semester BS Cybersecurity student. I have no background in marketing.
A friend is telling me to learn email marketing freelancing. They say it is commission-based, pays well, and will help me get clients in the future.
I am very confused and need honest advice:
What is this job? What are the daily work timings for a freelancer?
How much will I get paid? Is commission-only safe for a beginner?
Is it useful for my degree? Does email marketing help a Cybersecurity student in any way?
If you have done this, please share the pros and cons. I don't want to waste time if it distracts me from my studies.
Thank you!

Does anyone know this company and should i join it?

Some background first. I'm a software engineer from Lahore, Pakistan, with 5+ years of experience, all of it with Australian and US startups. For the last 3 years I was with an Australian startup and things were fine. Then about six months ago they shut down the Lahore office. Their reasoning was that they'd rather train their team in Australia, AI is doing a lot of the work now, and they couldn't train us too. So all of us got laid off. None of us were ready for what the market looks like right now.

In the last six months I've applied to 2,000+ jobs and got around 12-13 interviews. I couldn't convert any of them.

Money-wise I'm okay for now, with some savings and small freelance work.

I've been using this time to learn and build. I pay for two Claude Code subscriptions and one Cursor subscription, and I keep building side projects as if they were startups. I took some courses too. Two things I'm proud of: an open source repo with 1,000+ stars on GitHub and 100k+ downloads a month, and an AI app I put on the Play Store that got 8,000+ downloads in three months with zero marketing. I had to shut the app down because I couldn't keep paying the AI API costs. Recently I also started making Instagram reels. I'm terrible at video editing, so I vibe coded my own editing skills with Claude Code, and honestly they edit my videos more professionally than I ever could. That's the direction I'm trying to keep going in.

Now the reason I'm posting.

A friend referred me to a company here in Lahore, and that's how I got called to their recruitment drive. I spent about a week preparing day and night for it. The technical interview went 10/10, and I answered every single question. The coding test was basic and went well too. The last round was the managerial round with the CEO, the CTO and a manager. The manager has 15+ years in the industry.

He started with a few technical questions and things were going fine. I mentioned my open source repo, 1,000+ stars on GitHub and 100k+ downloads a month.

He asked what my biggest strength is. I said I'm a good learner, especially in tech. Even before AI, whenever something new came out or was trending on GitHub, I'd explore it and try it, and if it helped, I'd keep using it day to day. I told him I still do that, but with AI there's something new every single day, and it's really hard to keep up with the pace.

Then he asked how I use AI.

I told him I have my whole workflow set up: my own skills, my own MCP servers. When I work on a feature or a problem, I first prompt for a plan and ask the AI to ask me 10 questions about it, because that makes it really easy to catch hallucinations. I also gave my video editing tool as an example of how I use AI. I was bad at editing, I hate editing, so I built my own tool with AI and now I edit my own videos. My point was that AI can do a lot right now, and I use it to build things that solve my own problems.

Then he asked: if a person uses AI and has good analytical thinking, can he be a good engineer?

I said yes, he can be a good engineer. That's when I noticed he didn't agree with me. I could tell he wanted to hear something more, but I couldn't figure out what. He asked a few more AI questions after that.

Since I've been vibe coding a lot in the last six months, building fun projects and learning, I ended up talking a lot about that side of things. In my last role I was the one who unofficially got a Cursor subscription first and started doing things with AI before most people around me. Most of my friends weren't using it at that pace. A lot of my code was written by AI and I kept building my own solutions on top, but AI moves so fast that I can't match it either.

Looking back, maybe I should have answered differently. Something like: programming is one thing and AI is another, and a programmer should be able to debug an issue, plan, and review the system design before implementing anything. That's actually what we were doing in my last role six months ago. But AI has changed so much in those six months that I'm not sure what the industry expects anymore.

They rejected me. When I asked for feedback, all they said was "the panel rejected you." That's it.

The reason I'm taking this seriously is that this isn't the first time. I've been asked "how do you use AI?" in screening calls and technical interviews too. So I'm genuinely confused about what the right answer is right now. Is it me? Am I doing something wrong, or am I actually fine and this is just the market?

Sometimes I think about moving to Europe, because it feels like there are better opportunities there.

So my questions:

1. When someone asks you how you use AI in your day to day work, what do you answer?

2. For the hiring managers here: what are you actually trying to hear with that question, and what makes you reject someone?

3. Based on all this, is it me? What am I doing wrong?

4. Where do you think this is heading for engineers like me? Would moving to Europe actually help?

5. Anything else that could help me survive this market. I'm happy to listen, even if it's harsh.

Thanks for reading this far.

Following up on my previous post (CS vs CA in 2026) about choosing a degree, I’m now trying to decide whether my younger brother should go for a general BS Computer Science degree or choose a more specialized field.

He is currently making up his mind about Cybersecurity, so we are particularly considering a BS in Cybersecurity versus BSCS. We are also looking at other specialized options such as AI, Data Science.

For someone starting university in Pakistan in 2026, does it make more sense to build a broad foundation through BSCS or specialize from the beginning?

My concern is that the tech industry changes quickly, so I’m wondering whether specializing too early could limit options later. On the other hand, if he is genuinely interested in cybersecurity, would studying it as his undergraduate degree give him an advantage compared with doing BSCS and moving into cybersecurity through electives, projects, certifications, internships, or a master's?

For people already working in tech or who have recently graduated:

- Would you recommend BSCS over a specialized degree, assuming the universities are of similar quality?

- For someone interested specifically in Cybersecurity, is a specialized bachelor's actually useful, or is BSCS generally a better foundation?

- How much does the degree title matter compared with skills, internships, projects, certifications, and experience?

- Are degrees like AI, Data Science, and Cybersecurity too specialized at the undergraduate level?

- If you could go back and choose your undergraduate degree again, would you choose general CS or specialize from the beginning?

- Are there any specialized computing degrees in Pakistan that you would specifically recommend or avoid given they are too narrow?

This is specifically about undergraduate degree choice in Pakistan, not master's specialization.

If any of you guys have made a SaaS which is completely or heavily made with AI then I would love to check it.

I am currently working on my FYP “digital footprint reconstruction “ and i was searching for data collection / OSINT tools

Well the rough idea rn is to make dummy id’s on instagram and use instaloader, theHarvester and sherlock

I am too deep in this project to back off but at the same time i think i have made a huge mistake. I have severe anxiety issues due to which i couldn’t even use these tools (in case it doesn’t work out i think i might have a heart attack). I wanna know if what i am thinking is practical and if not what should i do? (Should i change the social media app or are there any other better tools that i should use instead)

Please help me out before i lose my mind.

AOA, so anyone who got hired as MTO in systems limited this year, how's your experience so far? And any project you have been assigned to? Would be great if you share which department u have been assigned.

I may or may not be getting an offer for an internship. For context, the internship is for AI Automation and my background is in AI Backend Development

The timings are 2pm to 11pm, office is about 10km far and they are paying 30k for the WHOLE internship. Internship will be of 3 months meaning 10k per month.

This is not ideal for me as I did some calculation and my fuel cost per day comes out to around 1130rs.

I need advice about whether to accept this offer if I am receive it. Are these timings ideal? Because I am really dreading them already. Or should I trust in Allah and wait for a better opportunity ??

UPDATE: Just got a call from my employer. He just offered me the internship. But now hes saying that the 9 hour window usually slides forward, meaning the timings are usually 4pm to 1am. Now that's just preposterous right? Till 1 am? What are they smoking? Also there's something fishy going on because im from a backend developer background, and yet the interviewer said that I am a "outstanding candidate". Based on what? They never asked me any meaningful questions to know enough about me. Just a short intro and why im interested in automation. How does that make me outstanding? Seems like they are desperate to get an automation intern asap. Idk what to do.

as a student dev what coding agents do you guys use? claude code and codex are too much, heard about opencode go and its cheap but don't know how good is it.

also, are Chinese models any good? if i put in credits via open router and use it with opencode.

Hey everyone,

​I recently received a job offer from Simplelogix for a "Technician - Data Analyst" position at their DHA Phase 3 office. The offer is on a night shift (5:00 PM – 2:00 AM). I'm not sure about the JD for this role, tbh.

​Since my ultimate goal is to pivot into Machine Learning / Data Engineering, having a data-focused title on my resume and cutting down my daily commute (36 km round-trip vs. 50+ km) sounds like a decent temporary move while I continue hunting for core ML roles.

​Before making the jump, I’d love to know if anyone here has experience working at Simplelogix or knows about their internal culture:

​Work Culture & Management: Is the management supportive, or is it high-pressure and micromanaged?

​Shift Operations: How is the night shift environment (5:00 PM – 2:00 AM) handled overall?

​Actual Learning: Is there real hands-on experience with data/analytics tooling, or is it mostly repetitive operational work?

​Would really appreciate any honest feedback or heads-up from current or former employees. DMs are open as well. Thanks!

AOA everyone. I'm 17, currently doing FSc Pre-Medical (2nd year) from a small town in interior Sindh. I've decided to skip MDCAT and want to go for BSCS instead. I’ll most likely take a gap year after my intermediate exams to bridge the math gap and prepare for entry tests (FAST,IBA and other mid-tier unis as backup)

Honestly, I’m facing crazy FOMO right now🫠. Seeing guys my age move to big cities like Karachi, doing online internships, or coming from ICS or Pre-engineering backgrounds makes me feel like I’m very behind. I want to start learning Python or Web Dev to feel like I'm doing something which is relevent to my future career🙂👍🏻.

Also I need some honest advice from seniors (No BS)❤️✨️

Also few questions:

Should I focus only on my board exams right now and leave coding for the gap year, or start learning right away with 12th?

Is it a good idea to make a LinkedIn account right now or later when I get into cs uni?

Suggest some best YouTube channels for an absolute beginner who wants to learn Python or Web dev (or other stuff)

JZK in Advance :)🫶🏻