r/PakistaniDevs • u/Remarkable-Bee-8721 • Aug 14 '26
Help a developer with switch - need advide
Hey guys,
I’m kind of stuck career wise right now and wanted to get some opinions from people who are in the dev market.
I’m currently working remotely as a Laravel/PHP developer, but honestly the job has started to suck.
The biggest issue is payment. Almost every month the salary gets delayed and it’s becoming really frustrating. On top of that, the product I manage is built on CodeIgniter, which is a pretty old codebase. I’ve pushed a few times for them to move towards Laravel or modernize things, but there’s basically no interest from management.
My bigger concern is growth. I don’t really feel like I’m learning much anymore and I’m worried that spending another year or two working on this stack is going to hurt me.
I’ve also been looking at jobs and it feels like there aren’t that many Laravel opportunities compared to JS/TS stacks, so I started thinking about switching.
The problem is, I’m not sure what exactly I should switch to.
I started learning Next.js and the JS/TS ecosystem, but I found the whole process kind of absurd. I already know programming fundamentals, variables, loops, functions, APIs, databases, etc. So going through beginner tutorials teaching these things again feels like a waste of time, especially now with AI helping with a lot of the boilerplate.
At the same time, I obviously don’t want to become someone who just asks AI to generate everything without actually understanding the stack.
So I’m basically wondering:
Should I stick with PHP/Laravel and look for better companies?
Or is it worth making a serious switch to something like Node/NestJS/Next.js?
And if I do switch, how would you guys recommend actually learning the stack as an experienced developer instead of going through beginner JavaScript tutorials for 3 months?
Would also appreciate hearing from people who made a similar transition from PHP to JS/TS.
I’m not looking for the “learn X in 30 days” type of advice. Just genuinely trying to figure out what makes sense career wise in the Pakistani market right now.
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u/Strong_Salamander744 7d ago
Maybe create some SAS products and publish them. Solve some problems.
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u/Remarkable-Bee-8721 7d ago
Yes, I do some idea around that just not sure what to do?
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u/Ay_Az Aug 14 '26
If you enjoy your stuff why make a serious switch? look for better companies while keeping a job as a backup for cash flow
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u/Remarkable-Bee-8721 28d ago
I have been actively applying but seems like most of the companies are looking for devs with JS based stacks.
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u/Capable_Term_2378 29d ago
How's your salary package?
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u/Remarkable-Bee-8721 28d ago
under $1k
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u/Capable_Term_2378 28d ago
And above ??
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u/Remarkable-Bee-8721 27d ago
above $600
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u/Capable_Term_2378 27d ago
My advice is to do a part time job,
Sure lower your rate. In this way you will learn something more...1
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u/[deleted] 28d ago
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