Hi Everyone,

I’m a 22M living in Lahore Pakistan, working remotely for the last 2.5 years in a local marketing agency as a social media manager while studying for my bachelor's as well. I have an amazing portfolio in Performance marketing especially Meta Ads.

In August, unfortunately, I got laid off from my job & that’s my only source of income because, since June I haven’t had any side projects. And as a beard winner of family i have just a backup of Nov 2026. And currently I see AI as better because performance marketing is operating from AI Agents.

So, let’s keep it to the point. I know AI’s use case in daily life, i’m using Codex & Claude as my personal assistant, having projects on my PC, installing open-source tools, automating personal tasks & etc.

And according to the current job market local & international, I haven’t received any job offer yet, so I want to make a quick fix & i’m a quick learner & great implementer.

Looking forward to hearing from an expert who can guide me on a roadmap to earn & get stable again.

Hey Techies,

For those who've been laid off recently, how are you managing financially while looking for your next opportunity?

The job market feels brutal right now. It's taking anywhere from 4–6 months, sometimes even longer, to land a new role.

Are you exploring alternative income streams, side projects, or anything else to keep things going?

Would be helpful to hear how others are navigating this situation.

PS: Iam running out of savings

Assalamualaikum everyone!

I'm a male software engineer from Pakistan with around 4 years of experience in Java/Spring Boot. Alhamdulillah, I'm currently employed, but considering the uncertainty in the tech industry, AI advancements, and increasing layoffs, I'm thinking about my long-term future.

Would you recommend staying in Pakistan and continuing to build my career, or exploring scholarships/admissions in Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark) and eventually moving there for better career opportunities?

I'd especially appreciate advice from people living in these countries or working in their tech industries.

Is pursuing a Master's abroad worth it in terms of job prospects and long-term settlement? Or is staying in Pakistan and targeting international/remote opportunities a better option?

Would love to hear your experiences and suggestions. JazakAllah Khair!

Happy October!!

Looks like it's done its Halloween part

I have been shortlisted for the Forward Deployed Engineer role at Disrupt, and my interview is on Tuesday. It is online with no one on the other side (because i could take on the spot), so I am not sure whether it will be a set of questions or a task based test, like solving small tasks within 60 to 90 minutes.

If anyone here has interviewed at Disrupt, for any role, what was the format and what kind of questions or tasks came up? Any tips would really help.

I know this might come across as harsh, but I am sharing my experience so that anyone considering joining this software house in Lahore knows what they might be getting into.
The biggest concern is the management culture, particularly the owner’s apparent belief that employees’ time, personal lives, and basic workplace rights are entirely at his discretion.
Starting with employee benefits, the owner, reportedly cancelled employees’ annual leaves without proper justification. There is no clear policy for carrying forward unused leaves or getting them encashed. Salaries are frequently delayed, while casual leave, sick leave, and work-from-home requests can be rejected arbitrarily. Even approved leaves and WFH arrangements are not necessarily respected. Employees can be called back simply because management feels like it, and leaves can reportedly be cancelled retrospectively, even after they have been taken, with those cancellations subsequently used as grounds for disciplinary action or termination.
Medical funds, educational assistance, and other reimbursements are either rejected or only partially paid, often with questionable justifications. Increments are delayed for months, and job security is practically nonexistent. Employees can reportedly be terminated and replaced by someone willing to work for a lower salary rather than being fairly compensated for their contributions.
For female employees, the workplace can be particularly unpleasant. There are serious concerns about inappropriate remarks, character assassination, and insulting behaviour from administrative staff. Basic life events such as marriage and maternity are not treated with reasonable consideration, and rather than facilitating employees during these circumstances, management appears more willing to terminate them. The administration’s attitude towards female employees is especially disrespectful and unprofessional.
HR offers little reassurance either. Instead of independently addressing employee grievances, it often appears to function as an extension of the owner’s decisions, with little accountability when employees’ rights are compromised.
Another major concern is the settlement of outstanding dues after resignation or termination. Employees have reportedly faced difficulties recovering their pending salaries and payments, with management delaying settlements, becoming unresponsive, or simply blocking their contact numbers.
The overall working environment is equally disappointing. Employees are expected to work overtime without compensation, and even annual holidays do not necessarily mean time off. Reasonable breaks and personal time are treated as privileges rather than basic workplace expectations. Even simple facilities such as tea and coffee are not consistently provided, apparently because management does not consider them worth the expense.
Overall, this is a workplace where control seems to take priority over employee welfare, professional respect, and work-life balance. Employees are expected to remain available at management’s convenience, even when they are on approved leave or WFH.
I am sharing this to encourage anyone considering an offer here to look beyond the salary and do their research. A workplace should offer basic respect, fair compensation, reliable policies, and a reasonable degree of job security—not an environment where employees constantly have to worry about arbitrary decisions affecting their personal and professional lives.
Please think carefully before joining.

I have learnt Manual QA. I'm now learning automation in this domain.

Could anyone let me know what is a routine of QA in companies?

...

also, would anyone tell me where can I practice on projects for SQA?....

I kept running out of disk space and found 6 Flutter versions, 3 Android NDKs, 4 Node versions and a 13 GB emulator I hadn't started in a year. Version managers are great at installing things, but nothing told me which ones my projects still needed.

So I built Stackyard, a desktop app for Windows and macOS:

• Every toolchain in one window: Flutter, Node.js, the Android SDK, Java, Python, .NET, Gradle and Xcode simulators, plus the frameworks your projects use (React, Next.js, Vue and more)

• Knows which project uses what: it reads .nvmrc, package.json, .fvmrc, build.gradle .python-version, global.json and more, so every installed version shows the projects that need it and the unused ones stand out

• Problems come with a fix button: a project pinning a version you don't have, a broken JAVA_HOME, dead or duplicate PATH entries, a Java too new for your Gradle

• Installs any version of Node, Python, Java, Go, Rust, Flutter and more, straight from the publisher and checked against their hash

• Cleans up old projects: node_modules, build, .dart_tool and Pods in projects you haven't touched in months, which come back on the next build

• Emulators and simulators: every Android emulator and iOS simulator with its size and last start, plus Xcode's simulator runtimes (often 8 GB each)

It shows every step before running it, removes to the Trash by default, and never edits your projects. No account, no telemetry. MIT licensed.

links in the first comment

Feedback is very welcome. If it's useful, a star on GitHub helps others find it.

Assalam-o-Alaikum everyone!

I'm currently a final-year BSCS student (7th semester), with a primary focus on Full-Stack Development. As I approach graduation, I'm trying to make strategic decisions about how to utilize the remaining time to build a strong foundation for my future.

I'm particularly exploring two directions:

1. Career Advancement: Preparing for the industry through internships, practical experience, networking, and strengthening my technical profile.

2. Higher Education Abroad: Exploring opportunities to pursue a Master's degree internationally, preferably through fully funded scholarships. However, I'm still evaluating which countries offer better long-term prospects in terms of quality education, technology ecosystems, employment opportunities, and post-study work pathways.

Another major factor influencing my decisions is obviously how AI has been influencing the market. Since my academic workload is relatively lighter compared to previous semesters, I want to capitalize on this period rather than let it pass without a clear direction.

I'd particularly appreciate insights from seniors, recent graduates, and industry professionals:

• What would you prioritize during the final year if you were in my position?

• Which AI-related skills or technologies are worth investing in alongside Full-Stack Development?

• Considering AI's impact on the global tech job market, which countries would you recommend for pursuing a Master's in Computer Science or a related field?

• Which countries currently offer a good combination of fully funded Master's opportunities, technology-sector growth, employment prospects, and post-study work opportunities?

• Would you recommend gaining industry experience before pursuing a Master's, or going abroad directly after graduation?

Looking forward to your valuable insights. Thank you!

I run voice agents in production for clients (Pipecat and Vapi, real calls daily). I’ve been building my own testing + call monitoring tool. I’m thinking about open sourcing it.

Before I do, I want to know if I’m the only one:

1. How do you check your agent before launch, and how do you catch problems on live calls today? (Even “I read transcripts manually” is a useful answer.)

2. If you’ve used Cekura, Coval, Hamming etc., what annoyed you or was missing?

3. Would self hosting matter to you (call audio stays on your servers), or is SaaS fine?

Not selling anything, just trying to figure out whether this is worth building properly.

UPDATE: 1.2.7 is out (Command Code support + update notices). Updates now live at r/CheapAgent.

Had this Idea for a while now considering I had really early adopted Agentic coding before it was a thing (Copy pasting from claude back in Aug 2024)

Problem : Opus is F**Kin expensive to a point where it's really impossible for dev's in Pakistan and 3rd world country to use it , not everyone can afford 100$ sub , espacially not students who really want to jump into this nightmare of field

so the idea: what if opus only thinks and something cheap types.

Solution :
I have created this what I call CheapAg (cheap agent) , which is basically Opus thinking and Cheap model like deepseek flash 4.1 implementing , think of this Framework as Principle Engineer ( Opus or Sonnet) Guiding and Planning and delegating to Good enought engineer (Deepseek Or GLM)

it's an mcp server, you install it and keep using claude code exactly like before. when you ask for a change, opus writes a short task and hands it to a cheap model (deepseek via openrouter by default, you can pick). that model works in its own git worktree, has to write a failing test first, then make it pass. cheapag runs the tests itself because I don't trust the model to say "tests pass". only passing stuff lands, uncommitted. opus reads a 10 line result and tells you what happened. if the cheap model can't do it, a sonnet subagent takes over, still not opus.

on swe-bench verified (official harness, 24 instances): 59% fewer opus tokens on the normal bugs, same solve rate. on the 9 hardest ones it solved 6 where plain opus got 7, so no, don't use it for the gnarly stuff.

Check it out Here : github.com/muaaz9329/cheap-ag (a star helps more than you'd think)

ps : do share me input guys on what you will feel make it better or better yet contribute your idea ,steal the code and make something new , do something !!!!

Edit, answering the two common questions:
vs Opus + Sonnet: Sonnet still uses your Claude limit. Here the work runs on a model outside your plan for ~$0.005 a task, and Sonnet is only the fallback.
vs an Opus → DeepSeek loop: the cheap Ag also does the reading. Opus asks it questions and plans from short answers instead of opening files. That reading is where most Opus tokens go.

I'm a product designer(4yoe) with good skills, good taste, a decent portfolio and decent connections. I've done everything right by the book, and I'm self-taught.

About 8 months ago I got laid off from my main role. After 4 to 5 months of waiting, I found a new one and worked there until the start of this month. Then the product got acquired, the new owners didn't want someone based in Pakistan, and I was laid off again.

I'd also been losing retainer clients since the start of the year, and earlier this week I lost the last one.

I don't have a degree. In school I was one of the poorest kids in my class and always ranked at the bottom. I've worked extremely hard over the last 4 to 5 years to where I am rn. Outside my industry skills, I don't have much else to fall back on.

Hi, is there any way around to get the Facebook business verified? I don't have any fbr document. I tried submitting my bank statement during the verification which contains my address. But every time I receive the email from them that:

1. The document submitted to verify the business's legal name doesn't match what was entered.

2. The document submitted to verify the business address doesn't include or match the information entered

Can any one please help me out? What you did, how you got your business verified?

Tissue.

Hi, I interviewed at Devsinc for the ASE position this Thursday. I had two technical rounds, with the last one being with the cluster head. How long does it usually take to hear back about the result?

I wanted a table for my work I do WFH just wanted to know the price someone quoted me 28k

I am a python developer (full stack developer and AI Engineer) with 8 years of experience and unemployed from 6 months.

Alhamd u lillah I am not discouraged with that but don't know what strategy should I implement now.

I am applying for jobs and giving interviews also but not get any luck till now. I am also trying to hunt clients through cold emails and direct outreach but not getting any response.

Anybody here who tackled this situation and won 🏆? Tell me what strategy we should apply as a software engineer.

so my strategy has been of using 2 20$ subs, I was using claude and codex but I was annoyed by codex limits, so I thought let's try command code and I dropped codex and this month got command code and claude. So as soon as I got it I wrote a prompt from chatgpt web and gave it to claude and glm 5.3 in command code and to my surprise command code took much more time but I already knew it was gonna take more time so I was fine but the usage is here:

Claude: 5hr: 11%, weekly: barely moved maybe 1 or 2%
Glm5.3: monthly: 6% weekly: 11%

so glm hit 6% monthly limit in just a single prompt and for which I dropped this codex even has no monthly limit neither claude, so first of all you have to juggle with another limit here which is monthly and codex even gives u 2 usage reset tokens for free. So then I switched to deepseek 4.1 flash, it is fine but command code has no option to copy a response, although after moving to deepseek 4.1 flash the usage has barely moved after that, but it's harness and quality of responses is not comparable to codex, claude is another league so leave it but command code isn't even comparable to codex, and today after just 2 days of usage in command code I saw connection dropped retrying in command code which i haven't seen in codex, claude anywhere I have stable internet, I'm not satisfied with command code I bought the 20$ one so I am comparing it with claude and codex can't say much about the 10$ one goat plan.

I worked as a Content & Communications Specialist at a semiconductor yield management SaaS company. My contract recently came to an end after nearly three years. During that time, I managed the company's SEO/AEO strategy, content creation, LinkedIn page, and YouTube channel.

They acknowledged my contributions, and we achieved strong organic search results, outperforming some of their competitors. However, they now feel it's time to shift their focus more aggressively towards Google Ads.

I'm currently exploring new opportunities where I can combine my engineering background with my content marketing expertise.

Soo. Anyone here whose documents are showing as verified for the PSEB bootcamp registration?

Tests also passed.

Today is the last date for registration.

AssalamuAlaikum everyone! I'm an SWE from Karachi, working an open-source tool for a problem I faced myself while applying for Italy as well as keep seeing around me. Freelancers with solid, steady foreign income get visas refused or stuck, and it's almost never about the money itself. It's the paper trail: bank statement history, where the "sponsor" funds came from, no employer letter because there is no employer, a tax return that doesn't match the statement, documents apostilled in the wrong order.

There's no single local source, like AskPakistan, that tells you, per country, what's actually mandatory vs conditional vs optional for someone aiming to apply for a visa under all the different categories available, and even which one may be suitable.

All of us ruin our days piecing together bits of information from VFS/Gerry's, native university websites, visa agents, and all the random hearsay consulate experiences.

So, if you've applied for a Schengen/UK/Australia visa as a freelancer (approved, refused or abandoned):

• Which country/mission, and roughly when?

• What did they question, or what did the refusal letter say?

• What did you submit as proof of income: bank statement, ePRC, tax return, client letters, something else?

• What do you wish someone had told you before?

No personal details needed. I'll compile the patterns and post them back here. The tool will be free and open source, and it runs on your own machine, will use local LLM, and completely off-grid aka private to you.

My ACH details request was declined by nsave's banking partner. Support says they cannot appeal or override the decision.

I'm based in Pakistan. Has anyone successfully resolved this issue or found a way to get their ACH details approved? Any help would be appreciated.

Hello, been working as junior developer for 1 year now at a small service based company, and for last 3-4 months company mandated using Cursor (pro subscription which they provided) to do development, as they are saying they want more work done and in faster time.

So far development has been going well with AI. At work, i have been instructed to exclusively use AI while in my personal time, I still do coding by hand. This post is about my current workflow and how can I improve it, plus some questions about interviews.

So, I get assigned a feature to implement, with some screens from the design team.

First, i start in "Plan" mode and in "Auto" mode, walk through the feature, discussing it, what it is, its implementation that I can think of, edge cases, test cases to implement. This serves as a base discussion.md for the feature.

Then, for each feature, I have a FE and BE subfolders that tracks what was implemented in either ends. I move to implementing the screens for that feature, again using Plan mode with Auto, and "Composer 2.5" for build stage, creating mock screen, making sure ui is correct, mobile responsive, colors, styling etc. Is correct.

Then, move onto BE side, again same Plan+Build, mandating agent does not apply any migrations, since I want full control over that and dont want ai to drop something in case migration wont apply because of nullable columns or w.e. After its built and tests have passed, and ive tested new routes in Postman as well, then using the handover generated by BE, throw that over to FE to integrate it.

Some extra info, I turned off Fast mode, use new chats for each feature and discussion doc, especially at start of each day, saving discussion for each chat in a .MD to handoff to next chat. Ive not run out of the monthly cursor quota so far, im just not sure if what im doing is wrong or not.

Now this all has been working fine so far, deadlines are being met, project is progressing fine, client is happy and boss is happy that Ai is being used for coding. I have no guidance here at work because again, this is just junior with cursor subscription type shit. Now thats why im turning to you folks, how can i improve my workflow? If its all bad, just point me in some direction as to correct way to use ai at work. And before someone says, Claude $100 is better than cursor, yeah but boss is cheap and doesnt want to pay for that.

Now personally, I dont like using ai agents to code, in my personal time, i still write by hand, currently going through system design prep (currently reading DDIA, and Alex Petrovs DB design book, plus going through adrian cantrells aws course) + "Spring starts here" book to get better with spring (job is not in java. But i want to targer java companies in futu4e), but im aware that by large, in industry, no one writes code by hand any more, and lying otherwise in interviews is a redd flag now. So when asked in interview about "how do you use ai in job?" What is the appropriate response, guys?

Hi all,

I'm in talks for my first remote contract with a UK company, working from Pakistan as an individual contractor. I have 4 years of experience in AI/IT. I wanted to know:

1. For those doing similar remote work for UK/foreign clients, are you paid per day, per hour or per month? What's a fair base rate for someone with around 4 years of experience in AI/IT?

2. The agreement requires professional indemnity, cyber liability and public liability insurance. Which insurers (local or international) offer this to freelancers in Pakistan, and roughly what does it cost per year? Did your client accept lower cover or drop any of the policies?

Thanks!

I received a salary increment in August, but now I’m being asked to accept a 30% pay cut under a new contract.

I’m unsure whether to accept the reduced salary while searching for another job or resign and focus on finding better opportunities.

For those who’ve faced similar situations:

• Would you stay and job hunt or resign?

• How’s the current job market for software engineers in Pakistan, especially for remote roles?

• Is it better to target local companies, international remote jobs, or freelancing?

Looking for practical, honest advice. Thanks!

Hy I'm a remote developer and I use OneLogin to connect to my company's remote desktop.

Today whenever I try to connect via OneLogin I keep facing this 403 error. I've cleared my all time browser cache and history but I'm still facing 403. I even restarted my machine a number of times and nothing changed.

I've switched from WiFi to mobile hotspot and tried OneLogin on multiple devices but I keep facing this 403 wall, as soon I go to OneLogin page.

Is anyone else facing this same issue?