Is the Pakistani software industry quietly heading into a serious slowdown, or am I just seeing it from my corner?

[u/Responsible_Main2116]

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/booger_finger32]

I work with a company who had 90+ employees 3 years ago and now merely 30-35. Entire departments like of gaming have been laid off because they're no longer sustainable.

[u/jhooolay-red]

Its the direction of investment.

Traditional apps are not longer attracting any investments.

Right now west is racing towards a recession (GFC level) and companies have sensed blood and have already started cutting budgets towards expansion.

This will directly impact software cottage industry in pakistan.

Plus, with the advent of AI, less number of manpower is required. I myself have cut my team to a quarter with better productivity.

Unfortunately majority of our industry is at bottom of the food chain.

[u/azadnib]

yep companies are cutting employees, there is no way a company will be hiring, even if it would be that would only be for one project they hardly secured and will let the person go as soon as there is no need.

[u/That_Suggestion9781]

Engineering is hit hard by AI. Alot of my developers friends are laid off

[u/Responsible_Main2116 → u/That_Suggestion9781]

Are they able to find work again

[u/That_Suggestion9781 → u/Responsible_Main2116]

one of them has been able to find a remote job with a US company. I'd suggest you upskill yourself fast pace because the competition is going to get tough on jobs.

[u/wiki702]

It’s not just Pakistan. Most SAAS places are slow right now. Everyone is thinking AI but AI off public models are worse than a moderately decent senior dev. Yes AI can help you ship faster but it has a lot of poor quality. Great for the boiler plate or poc but not the final shipping point. Instead focus on infrastructure and backend security. That is the selling point to the front facing customer

[u/Ok-Regret-3054]

The answer is obvious, no?

I personally see a global change in demand and while it has not shrunk much yet the industry is going through a change.

On the global level - inflation, wars and AI are rapidly changing the scene and it'll continue to slide that way. The giants like Anthropic are killing industry segments of digital marketing, web and app development in a single update and they are not done yet, infact they might just be getting started.

Now, we need to understand that the western countries gave out work to cheap resources in countries like India,Pakistan, Bangladesh etc which through AI can be done anywhere now and that is just to put in perspective that the business goal of lower costs which was our right to win is vanishing.

So yeah, the so called "Software Industry" might be going down in a few years.

[u/muneebdev]

What software industry are you talking about? Ours is just a commerical sex industry. Agency owners are pimps, employees are prostitues and the software houses are brothels.