Been at your job for more than 5 years?
Then keep reading.
If you’re not in Pakistan, go read any Western career advice article about the IC vs Manager track. Problem solved.
There are well-documented paths for both. Staff Engineer. Principal Designer. Distinguished Architect. Senior Individual Contributor roles with real growth, real pay, and real respect.
e.g: https://ca.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/individual-contributor-vs-manager
But if you are in Pakistan, let’s be honest.
There aren’t many IC roles around here.
You either become a Ma-nayyy-jarr (Manager) or you sit at your current role of Senior Pro Max Developer getting paid slightly better than the Junior Mini Developer.
I’ve seen this play out dozens of times. Talented technical people who love their craft, who are genuinely good at what they do, but who hit a ceiling because the only path upward involves managing people.
And managing people is a completely different skill set.
The Trap
Here’s what typically happens.
You’re good at your job. You’ve been doing it for 5, 6, 7 years. You know the systems inside out. You can solve problems faster than anyone else on the team. You’ve earned your stripes.
But the only promotion available is “Team Lead” or “Engineering Manager.”
So you take it. Because what else are you going to do? Stay at the same level forever while watching juniors pass you by on the org chart?
You give in. You become a manager.
And there begins a long path to complacency and constant disdain with your career.
Because now you’re not doing the work you love. You’re sitting in meetings. You’re handling performance reviews. You’re mediating conflicts between people. You’re managing schedules and approvals and politics.
Some people thrive in that role. I’ve met great managers who genuinely love developing people and building teams.
But most people who end up in management didn’t choose it. They were pushed into it because the alternative was stagnation.
And that’s a terrible reason to become a manager.
The Uncomfortable Math
Let me put some real numbers on this.
In the local market, here’s roughly what career progression looks like for a developer:
Junior roles: around 1 lakh/month. Mid-tier: 1.5 to 2 lakh/month. Senior: 2 to 4 lakh/month. That’s the ceiling. Maybe 4-5 lakh if you’re at a well-funded startup or a multinational. (Read more about salary stuff here).
Now, to get past that ceiling, you need to become a manager. And even then, the jump isn’t that dramatic. You might hit 6 lakh/month as a senior manager. Maybe 8 to 10 if you’re a director at a large company.
But here’s the thing. You’re now responsible for a team. You’re in meetings 6 hours a day. You’re handling HR issues. You’re doing performance management. You’re on call for escalations.
Is that worth the extra 1 to 2 lakh/month? For some people, yes.
For many, absolutely not.
The math doesn’t make sense if you actually don’t like doing the work.
The Third Path
What if I told you there’s another way?
Go solo.
Freelance. Consult. Contract. Whatever term makes you wiggle.
I know, I know. “But Saqib, the local market is restrictive. There aren’t opportunities. I can’t just quit my job and start freelancing.”
True. The local market is still very restrictive. But here’s what changed.
The pandemic, for all its destruction, created a silver lining. Remote work became normal. Companies that would never have considered hiring someone from Pakistan are now open to it. Not because they love us. Because they realized they can get quality work at a fraction of the cost.
That’s the arbitrage. That’s the opportunity.
And it’s not just for developers anymore. Remote roles are now accessible for designers, product managers, marketers, operations folks, customer success, and dozens of other functions.
The internet flattened the playing field. You just have to know how to step onto it.
The AI Assist (And Its Trap)
The biggest blocker on going solo was always getting started.
Building your portfolio. Writing case studies. Crafting pitches. Setting up a website. Creating proposals. All that upfront work that feels endless when you’re still employed full-time and exhausted by the end of the day.
That blocker is mostly gone now.
AI gives you a major assist along the way. Need to write a case study? You can draft it in an hour instead of a week. Need a portfolio site? Tools can scaffold it for you. Need to write proposals? Templates and AI-generated first drafts cut your time in half.
If you use it mindfully, AI becomes a force multiplier for everything that used to slow you down.
But here’s the catch.
You’re not the only one with that idea.
Everyone has access to the same tools. Every other developer stuck in a job is also thinking about going solo. Every other designer tired of management is also building a portfolio with AI assistance. Every other product person is also using ChatGPT to write their pitch.
So if going solo has become easier, the game has shifted.
Now it’s about differentiation.
The barrier to entry dropped. But the barrier to standing out went up.
This is where your corporate experience actually becomes valuable. Those 5, 6, 7 years you spent in the trenches? That’s not baggage. That’s leverage.
You’ve seen how companies actually work. You’ve navigated politics. You’ve shipped real projects with real constraints. You’ve worked with teams, handled stakeholders, survived deadlines.
Most people starting from scratch don’t have that. They have a portfolio of side projects and tutorials.
You have battle scars.
Lean into that.
Before you make the leap, try to find referral work. Someone from your old company who moved somewhere else. A former client who needs help. A friend of a friend who heard you’re good.
Referral work is the fastest way to get started because it skips the trust-building phase. Someone already vouched for you.
Also look for side project work while you’re still employed. Moonlighting is tricky depending on your contract, but many companies don’t care as long as it’s not competitive. Take on small gigs. Build your client muscle. Learn how to scope, price, and deliver before your livelihood depends on it.
Starting from zero has gotten easier and harder at the same time.
Easier because the tools are better.
Harder because everyone else has the same tools.
But hey, that’s where the big bucks are.
The people who figure out how to differentiate, how to leverage their real experience instead of just their AI-generated portfolio, how to build relationships instead of just profiles, those are the ones who break through.
Everyone can start now.
Not everyone can stand out.
Why Going Solo is Actually More Secure
People always ask about job security. “But what about my stable paycheck? What about my benefits?”
Let me ask you something.
If the hundreds of layoffs over the past two years are anything to go by, do you really think your job is secure?
Companies fire people all the time. Restructuring. Budget cuts. New leadership. Market downturns. One bad quarter and suddenly your “secure” job disappears.
When you’re employed, your income depends on one source. One company. One manager. One budget line.
When you’re solo, your income depends on your skills, your network, and your ability to find clients. If one client leaves, you find another. If one market dries up, you pivot to a different niche.
Diversification isn’t just for investments. It’s for income too.
The best security is your bank account, not your employment contract.
The Fork in the Road
I used to run community office hours every week. Early career devs, mid-level folks stuck in their careers, people trying to figure out their next move. And the pattern I see over and over is this:
People are paralyzed because they haven’t made a decision.
They’re half-applying for local jobs. Half-thinking about freelancing. Half-considering a remote role. Half-building a portfolio. Half-updating their CV.
And all that half-effort produces zero results.
You need to pick a path and commit.
Path A: Local Employment
Stay in the local market. Optimize your CV. Network aggressively. Accept the salary ceiling. Find a company with good culture where you can grow into management or specialize within their system.
This is perfectly fine if you’re comfortable with the trade-offs.
But be honest with yourself about what those trade-offs are.
You’ll cap out at a certain income level. You’ll likely need to manage people to grow. You’ll be dependent on the local economy and local opportunities.
If that works for you, great. Commit to it fully.
Path B: Freelancing / Remote Work
Build a portfolio. Learn to sell yourself. Start with low rates to get traction. Grind for 6 to 12 months building your reputation. Then raise your rates as you build leverage.
This path has a higher ceiling but a harder start.
Your CV becomes almost irrelevant. What matters is your portfolio, your proposals, your positioning, and your ability to demonstrate value.
You’ll need to learn skills that employed people never have to learn: pricing, negotiation, client management, scope control, self-discipline, time management.
The first 6 to 12 months are brutal. Lots of rejection. Lots of proposals that go nowhere. Lots of clients who waste your time.
But if you push through, the compound returns are real. Two to three years in, you can be earning multiples of what you’d make locally.
How to Start
If you choose the solo path, here’s the practical sequence.
First, define your expertise. When going global, nobody cares what company you worked at. They care what you did there. What problems did you solve? What results did you produce? What can you do for them?
This is the hardest part for people coming from employment. You’re used to your job title being your identity. “I’m a Senior Software Engineer at XYZ Company.” That means nothing to a client in the US. They want to know: can you build the thing they need?
Second, prepare a project database. Document your work. Even if it’s proprietary, you can anonymize it. Change the names. Remove the branding. Strip the identifiable UI. Write about what you did without showing the code. Create case studies that describe the challenge, your approach, the solution, and the outcome.
“I can’t show my work because it’s proprietary” is not an excuse. It’s a hiding place. If you can’t show anything, build new projects that you own.
Third, create an easily accessible portfolio. A simple website. Your work. Your story. Contact info. That’s it. Nothing fancy. No over-designed templates. Just proof that you exist and you can do the work.
Fourth, prepare a pitch for your services. Not a script. A clear articulation of what you do, who you help, and what outcome they can expect. This needs to be short enough to fit in a LinkedIn message or a cold email.
Fifth, start reaching out.
LinkedIn is the obvious starting point. Connect with people in your target industry. Engage with their content. Build relationships before you pitch.
Join relevant Slack and Discord groups. There are communities for almost every industry now. Find where your potential clients hang out and contribute value before you ask for anything.
Engage with online forums and communities. Answer questions. Help people. Build a reputation.
This is not a quick process. It shouldn’t take more than 6 months for the willing. But most people give up after 2 weeks of silence.
The Proprietary Work Problem
I need to address this directly because it comes up constantly.
“Saqib, I worked at a company for 5 years. All my best work is proprietary. I can’t show it. What do I do?”
Here’s the truth: the bar is not “show the exact codebase.” The bar is “prove you can think, build, and solve problems.”
You can anonymize the project. Change names, remove branding, strip identifiable UI.
You can write about what you did without showing the code. Tech stack decisions. Architecture choices. Problems solved. Tradeoffs made.
You can create case studies. Challenge, approach, solution, outcome. No confidential details required.
You can record Loom videos walking through your thinking process on a whiteboard or blank screen.
If none of that works, build new projects. Side projects. Open source contributions. Tools you wish existed. Anything that demonstrates your capability with zero IP constraints.
The people who say “I can’t show anything” are usually the people who haven’t tried hard enough to find a way.
The CV Won’t Save You
One more thing.
If you’re going the freelancing or remote route, your CV becomes almost irrelevant.
The dev market globally has a brutal supply-demand imbalance. There are far more developers at the junior-to-mid level than there are roles. Your CV looks identical to hundreds of other CVs in the market.
Getting a good role without a referral is increasingly rare.
The CV is a hygiene factor, not a differentiator.
What actually matters:
A strong portfolio that shows real thinking. Not just screenshots. Case studies that demonstrate how you approach problems.
A personal site that tells your story. Who are you? What do you do? Why should someone hire you?
Active presence where decision-makers can see your work. LinkedIn. GitHub. Relevant communities.
Direct outreach with tailored proposals. Not mass applications. Specific, targeted messages to specific people.
If you spend all your time polishing your CV and none building a portfolio, you’re optimizing the wrong thing.
Execution is Everything
Here’s the uncomfortable truth.
Everything I just described is not complicated. It’s not secret knowledge. It’s not a hidden hack.
It’s work.
Consistent, boring, unglamorous work.
Most people won’t do it. They’ll read this post, nod along, maybe save it somewhere, and then go back to complaining about their job.
The people who succeed at this are the ones who actually execute. Who spend their evenings and weekends building their portfolio instead of watching Netflix. Who send 50 cold messages and get 48 rejections and keep going. Who treat this transition like a second job until it becomes their primary income.
That’s the barrier. Not knowledge. Not opportunity. Execution.
In the End
You will either become a Ma-nayyy-jarr. Or you will be a, well, not a Ma-nayyy-jarr.
There’s no shame in either path. Management is a legitimate career. So is staying technical. So is going solo.
What matters is making an intentional choice instead of drifting into whatever happens next.
And if you say “but what about job security and perks?” I’d encourage you to reread my other post on that topic.
With or without my help – I wish you the best.
The Wandering Pro is a quiet, steady corner of the internet for people figuring out their next move in tech.
Whether you’re a freelancer, a junior developer, or someone building something for the first time – this is a space for showing up, learning, and making progress at your own pace.
If that sounds like what you need, come be a part of it.
See, at the heart of it – I love solving problems for people using tech, it doesn’t get simpler than that.
I am known for constant experimentation and relentless execution.
Right now – my focus is to help everyday folks of Pakistan understand tech, career, and business better with everything I do.
