AI will redefine what it means to be an IT worker

The View From Twenty Years Inside

Muzamil opens the episode by welcoming back a repeat guest who recorded a conversation in Dubai that never aired due to technical issues. The conversation centers on one question: in a world where AI commoditizes code, what does an IT career mean.

the guest’s origin story is specific to a generation. Born in Karachi, schooled at home for much of his childhood, he went through the Quran in Madrasa, then chose an unconventional path to Turkey for university in the 1990s. He speaks fluent Turkish, emerged bilingual from his studies in business and technology, and had three job offers when he graduated. He returned to Pakistan anyway, staying only three months before cofounding Ten Pearls with his brother.

“We started from a small apartment,” the guest recalls. “Two used computers, cable net. We didn’t know what we were doing.”

When AI Stopped Being a Library

For twenty years, Ten Pearls pivoted whenever the market moved. They began as a web development shop, pivoted to app development when the iPhone launched, won global competitions, became known for game design, and adapted again and again. But the guest argues the AI shift is different. It is not a new tool. It is a new category of work.

“Five years ago, we had AI at that time,” he says. “We had a library of YOLO. We could identify a car, movement. If you are selling that today, what value have you added. You have to see where it implements in your business.”

Customers, he argues, are no longer asking for developers. They are asking for AI implementation partners. “An AI developer doesn’t need AI,” the guest observes. “Customers are not looking for dumb developers. They are looking for where AI fits.”

Pakistan’s Talent Paradox

Muzamil asks why Pakistan’s IT sector has not scaled the way India’s has. The answer is structural. India has 50,000 IT graduates a year. Pakistan has 2,500. Of those, only about 2,400 are employable. The raw material is not there.

“In India, the private sector came in,” the guest notes. “Plaza after plaza, IT training centers, English language centers. Where there were gaps, the private sector jumped in.”

In Pakistan, the government has not created scale, and the private sector has fragmented. Small vendors hire people at 1,200 to 1,500 dollars a month. The real margin is in the jobs that go to the big vendors. The pie is being targeted at the wrong end of the market.

the guest’s own company, Ten Pearls, runs a free university. Anyone in the world can log in and take courses for free. The instructors are industry practitioners, many of them professors. But even that model does not solve the scale problem.

The Incentive Collapse

What keeps people is not what keeps them in other industries. A Pakistani developer earning 1,200 dollars a month sees a remote opportunity paying 3,000 dollars a month, often without showing their name or location, and takes it. Retention plummets.

the guest’s company offers something different: stock options, equity, long-term payoff. But most Pakistani IT firms do not. “Loyalty has to be compensated,” he says. “In Pakistan, there are new models. Some say if you stay so long, we will give you an apartment.”

Without incentive structure, the only rational play is to get out. The market has created a churn machine.

The Arbitrage Window is Closing

Remote work created a temporary opening: hire a Pakistani developer, pay them in dollars, let them work from home, pocket the margin. the guest does not think it lasts.

“This is a transitionary period,” he says. “From COVID to AI. I would call it a transition period. People are not sure what is going to happen.”

Big companies want security, IP protection, cultural alignment. Direct hiring of remote workers is an interim solution. “All you need is a few cases,” the guest argues. “If you have a few cases of IP theft or competing products, then you will know this is happening.”

The Only Question That Matters

As the conversation ends, Muzamil returns to the premise: is this the end of your IT career. the guest’s answer sidesteps the provocation. The question is not whether IT careers end. It is what IT means.

“The future,” he says, “is problem solving, critical thinking, arts, humanities. AI is going to do all the technical work.”

Musikamil nods. The typewriter did not kill the writer. It changed what a writer had to be.