Career options can be overwhelming when starting out.
In Pakistan, as a fresh graduate, it can be quite a challenge to pick your path. You’ve spent years studying, maybe done an internship or two, and now suddenly everyone expects you to know exactly what you want to do with your life.
Most folks just get any job. And that is their first mistake.
Not because any job is bad. But because they don’t understand what they’re trading for that paycheck. They don’t see the path ahead. They don’t realize that where you start shapes where you can go next.
As a freshie, there are a lot of pros and cons to consider before picking a path. I’ve watched too many people get stuck in the wrong one. Too late to make a switch. Too deep in a direction they never consciously chose.
So let’s break this down.
The Two Primary Paths
In most cases, there are two primary paths that lay ahead of you as a fresh graduate:
Path 1: Private job at a Local Product or Services Company.
Path 2: Private job at a BPO, Multinational, or International Services Company.
How do you differentiate between the two?
Simple. Look at the revenue source.
Path 1: Most revenue comes from the local market.
Path 2: Most revenue comes from foreign markets.
That’s the simplest filter. But what this means for you as a professional is far more complicated.
Path 1: Local Product or Services Company
These are your local fintech apps, edtech platforms, ecommerce websites, health tools. Companies like Pakwheels, Zameen, Cheetay. Or smaller startups serving the Pakistani market. Or traditional businesses with an IT arm.
When you work here, a few things tend to be true.
You get very good networking opportunities. The local tech scene is small. Everyone knows everyone. Your manager today might be your cofounder tomorrow. Your colleague might refer you to your next job. The network effects compound over time.
You work day shifts. No vampirism required in most cases. No 3am calls with clients in California. Your life rhythm stays normal. Underrated benefit if you’ve never experienced the alternative.
These companies are mostly stable with a lower risk of layoffs. Not zero risk. But lower. Local companies tend to move slower, expand slower, and contract slower. That stability can be comforting when you’re just starting out.
It’s easy to transition between similar companies. Once you’ve worked at one local product company, other local product companies will value that experience. The ecosystem is connected. People move around.
You get exposure to the local industry and better market reputation. You understand how business works in Pakistan. The regulations. The payment systems. The customer behaviors. This matters if you want to build something here eventually.
But there’s a flip side.
If you’re lucky, these places can be goldmines for learning. You get to work on a real product, talk to users, contribute to strategy, and see how a real business is built from scratch. You’ll probably touch more parts of the stack than you should, and end up learning things you didn’t expect to.
But especially if you’re working on the startup side, there’s a high chance these product companies don’t survive long-term. And since the team is usually small, there might not be much mentorship or structure. You’ll learn fast, but you might fail sooner than you realize.
Additionally, since these products are serving the local market, their profits are limited. The size of the market here is just not that high in most cases. Few lucky ones may get funding and VC backing, but as seen in recent times, that still doesn’t help the fact that most folks are not yet willing to pay for software and tech.
Just use some Chinese OEM app and slap your logo on it. GGWP.
Path 2: BPO, Multinational, or International Services
This path splits into a few subcategories, so let me break them down.
International Product Companies with Local Teams
This is the step above local product companies. You have a product and a rich market. What could go wrong?
These global startups hire engineers, designers, and support staff in Pakistan. Sometimes through local partners. Sometimes they’ve set up a remote ops team directly. Either way, they’re building international products with local talent.
The good news? The systems here tend to be more mature. You’ll experience real sprints, clean codebases (hopefully), proper QA processes, and performance reviews. Pay is better. Expectations are clearer. And if the team is decent, you’ll grow into your role with real confidence.
Honestly speaking, if we talk about traditional employment, these kinds of companies are some of the best places to work at. I would rank them at the top.
But do understand, higher pay means higher expectations.
Because these companies still exist in the local ecosystem, demand for their roles is super high. In many roles you can be considered expendable.
One trend I’ve noticed is that these companies treat employees as true “resources.” Layoffs is a word that will haunt your dreams. These companies pay well. They know they can fire hundreds and hire hundreds back in matters of months. And yes, they abuse this fact very well.
You have been warned.
Agencies and Software Houses
Now we get to the fun category. The one where it’s a coin flip for your life as an employee.
For some, it’s smooth sailing: log hours, chill work, no pressure.
For others, it’s 14-hour shifts, impossible deadlines, and burnout with a side of chaos.
When it comes to sheer volume, agencies dominate the IT and tech landscape. They’re the ones bringing in the most foreign revenue. Pound for pound, they’re the biggest employers in the industry.
And if you’re lucky enough to land in a good one? You’ll learn fast.
Agencies throw you into the fire, in a good way. You’ll be working with multiple clients, adapting to different stacks, tools, and expectations. You’ll learn how to scope work, write proposals, handle feedback, and manage delivery pressure. Some of the sharpest freelancers I know started in agencies.
Why? Because it teaches you how to think on your feet.
But for every well-run agency, there are five that are absolute chaos.
Scams, unpaid internships, nonsensical contracts, bizarre shift timings, and toxic work cultures are all too common. Many agencies operate with one goal in mind: deliver, no matter what it costs the people doing the work.
You’ll ship projects you never see again. You’ll work behind layers of management. You’ll deliver features with no context and no feedback. After years, you might still feel like you’re running in circles. No clarity, no direction, no real impact.
And here’s the deeper trap: once you’ve spent too long in bad agencies, it gets harder to leave.
Other agencies are the only ones that value your “agency experience.” Product companies will wonder if you can unlearn bad habits.
Remote gigs will expect you to reset your workflow. It becomes a loop.
That’s why many people either go freelance or start their own agency. Because they’ve absorbed the rhythm of client work but want out of the grind.
If you can join a reputable, well-managed agency, it could be one of the best places to start your tech career. The learning curve is steep and the speed is unmatched. You’ll build resilience, versatility, and delivery muscle.
Just don’t get too comfortable. Services work is a great start but rarely a great destination. Use it as a launchpad. Learn fast. Then move on to something more sustainable.
BPO and Outsourcing Firms
Lastly, the option for the masses.
You speak English? Have a pulse? Come join us.
Call centers, virtual assistants, admin support. This is the entry point for a lot of English-speaking talent in Pakistan. If you’ve got a decent accent and reliable internet, you’re in.
These jobs are accessible. They pay better than local entry-level roles in many cases. And they teach soft skills that matter: communication, reliability, time management.
These also serve as an entry point into the international tech and IT industry for many.
But here’s the catch. Easy to get in means hard to grow.
BPOs usually have very defined roles with little or no growth. You make calls. Then you make more important calls. Then you manage people who make calls. The end.
And given the ease of entry, on my scam radar, I would rate these companies as the highest risk.
A lot of folks have fallen for the “pay us to train you” trap, thinking they will land a role only to realize they were actually paying to do the job.
Looking at you, Amazon VA scammers.
In conclusion, I think BPOs are great for those who have basically zero technical skills. Get your foot in, get started, and then figure out the path later.
But do understand, if you go this route, you will solely be responsible for your future. Don’t expect a career plan to be handed to you.
The Flip Side Summary
You can flip the lines above for cons.
Path 1’s biggest downside: it will take you years to reach a comfortable living wage. Local salaries are lower. Growth is slower. You might be making 1 lakh per month three years in while your friends at BPOs are already there.
Path 2’s biggest downside: no long-term stability. Many of these companies are small agencies or BPOs that live and die by foreign contracts. One bad quarter and suddenly there’s a layoff. Easy to get in also means easy to get out.
I’ve seen people launch companies because of network effects they built at local companies over years.
I’ve seen people struggle to find a new job after layoffs because their entire experience was at one BPO that nobody outside that ecosystem cares about.
The first year salary difference feels huge. By year five, it often evens out. By year ten, the person who built real skills and relationships is usually ahead, regardless of where they started.
Salary is a Tradeoff
I wrote extensively about this in my article on starting salaries, but let me summarize the key points here.
Your salary is a tradeoff. Always.
You’re rarely just being paid for your skills. You’re being paid based on the risk, structure, and leverage dynamics of the company you’re joining.
Take two people starting their careers in the same month.
Person A joins a well-funded, structured company at 100,000 PKR per month. The work is predictable, deadlines are stable, and pay arrives on time. After two years, they’ve gotten 10% raises each year. They’re now making around 121,000 per month. Not bad.
Person B joins a scrappy startup at 60,000 PKR per month. The systems are a mess. They end up doing a bit of everything. Some frontend, some QA, some client calls. The company starts landing clients, they help ship the first version of a product, and eventually start leading a small team. By the end of year two, they’re at 150,000 per month and have ownership of entire modules.
Neither path is wrong.
But each comes with its own costs. The first offers predictability, the second offers acceleration.
The first has structure, the second has leverage.
You just need to be aware of the tradeoff before you say yes.
The Salary Reality
If you’re starting out in tech in 2026, fresh out of university or transitioning from an internship, a fair starting range is somewhere between 50,000 to 75,000 PKR per month. That’s roughly 180 to 270 USD.
There are edge cases. Some people land 1,000 USD per month remote gigs right out of college. Others are asked to work for 20,000 PKR “for the experience.”
But for most, the starting point hovers around 50,000 to 60,000 PKR. What happens after that is what really matters.
Here’s what matters more than that number:
Is your salary paid on time? This sounds basic, but in Pakistan, it’s not a given. Late payments are a red flag for everything else.
Are you learning skills that the market values? Not just your company. The market. If you left tomorrow, would other companies want what you know?
Is your team stable and growing, or falling apart? Are people joining, or are people leaving? That tells you everything about where the company is headed.
Because your starting salary is not the peak. It’s the baseline you’ll build from.
If you’re learning well, shipping real things, and becoming harder to replace, your value goes up fast.
If you’re stuck in a dead-end role with no feedback, no growth, and no mentorship, your value stays flat. Regardless of where you started.
Ask Better Questions Than “How Much?”
Instead of obsessing over your offer letter, ask these instead:
Where will I be by the end of year two if I do well here?
How do raises and promotions work in this company?
Who else joined at my level, and where are they now?
These are the questions that reveal whether you’re stepping into a launchpad or a waiting room.
Because here’s the truth: your first job won’t define your career. But it will define your momentum.
If your manager teaches you how to think, if your team gives you problems worth solving, if your product gives you real-world feedback, you’ll grow faster than any salary line item can reflect.
A good first job isn’t the one that pays the most. It’s the one that makes you more valuable month after month.
What Matters Most to You?
This is the question nobody can answer for you.
Do you want more money now, even if the path is narrower later?
Do you want more optionality later, even if it means grinding through lower pay now?
Do you value stability, or do you value acceleration?
Do you want to build deep expertise in one thing, or do you want exposure to many things?
There’s no right answer. Just tradeoffs.
Most people would ideally want to go for more money. That’s natural. Bills are real. Independence matters. But you will soon realize that was just a short-term fix if you end up stuck in a dead-end path.
The Third Option
There is a third path. One that most fresh graduates don’t consider because it feels too risky. But it’s increasingly viable.
Go solo.
Freelance. Consult. Build something. Whatever term makes you wiggle.
I’ve written extensively about this path in my article on switching to freelancing. The short version: the internet flattened the playing field. Remote work is more accessible than ever. AI tools make getting started easier. The barrier to entry dropped.
But the barrier to standing out went up.
Think of direct remote roles not as your entry point, but as your graduation path. If you put in the reps, locally, through agencies or product teams, this door starts to open. And when it does? It can change everything.
You get paid in dollars, avoid local workplace chaos, and often start at 1,000 to 1,500 USD per month or more, depending on your skills and the region you’re targeting. The pay gap compared to local roles is huge. And the freedom? Even bigger.
But these roles are hard to land. For most people, they’re not the first stop. They’re the reward after you’ve built a portfolio, learned how to communicate well, and proven you can deliver.
You need trust signals: contracting history, client references, personal projects, or a solid body of work. And you need to know how to sell yourself, because there’s no HR team smoothing the way.
If you’re considering this path, my honest advice is: don’t start here. Not right out of college.
Get some corporate experience first. Learn how companies work. Build your soft skills. Understand client dynamics. Then make the leap.
Freelancers without any corporate experience often suffer from weak soft skills. They can ship work. But they struggle to have the harder conversations. They don’t know how to scope projects, manage expectations, or handle difficult clients.
The people who succeed at freelancing fastest are usually the ones who spent a few years in a real company first. They absorbed the patterns. Then they applied them independently.
Making the Choice
Most people don’t consciously choose their career path. They drift into whatever opportunity shows up first. Then they wake up five years later wondering how they got here.
Don’t be that person.
Understand the tradeoffs. Know what you’re optimizing for. Make an intentional choice.
If you want stability and network effects, go local. Accept the lower pay. Build relationships. Learn how the industry works. Position yourself for optionality later.
If you want higher pay now and you’re okay with narrower paths later, go BPO or agency. Learn the soft skills. Save aggressively. Use the experience to build toward something better.
If you want to eventually go solo, get some corporate experience first. Serve your time. Then make the leap with real skills and real patterns to draw on.
I personally know people who started at a call center and are now working at Salesforce. Yes, that Salesforce.
And I personally know people who landed the best product jobs and are now roaming jobless trying to figure out freelancing work.
So take all this for what it is: a map, not a mandate. These insights come from my own path and the people I’ve worked with, mentored, or watched stumble and thrive.
Your story will be different. Just make sure it’s intentional.
There’s no right answer. Just tradeoffs.
Pick the tradeoffs you can live with. Then commit fully.
Half-effort in any direction produces zero results.
Your first job won’t define your career. But it will define your momentum. Choose wisely.
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.
