u/AdBackground9215

There’s a lot of hype around modern design and product tools right now

But I’m curious how things actually work in real professional environments.

What does your workflow really look like when building products?

• What stages do you typically go through from start to finish?
• How do you move from problem → solution → execution in practice?
• If you had to break it down, what does a normal project lifecycle look like for you?
• Which parts are structured, and which ones are more messy or iterative in reality?

Curious about the people who jumped in early. what's your experience like?

I'm 17, come from a hot-blooded family. Nearly hit a grown man today over road rage coming back from the supermarket. He was being an idiot, I knew that, still almost did something stupid. Human anger is wild. Feels completely justified in the moment, then you sober up two minutes later. And it's mostly men. Push them far enough and they're capable of anything, completely out of their right mind.

I don't follow geopolitics closely but trying to piece things together.

From what I can tell Saudi Arabia is leaning on Pakistan for defense, UAE seems fully in the US/Israel side,

What are the chances that the US might go for a full-on ground war with Iran because I know that Yellow pig is a totally stupid person who doesn't care about people's lives

Jalal Sons used to be my go-to but the quality has really gone down lately. Fries are oily and taste cheap now. Any recommendations?

Recently got laid off from IT, picked up a contract at a small hybrid company. Seemed decent at first.

The culture was already bad. Toxic, favoritism everywhere. But yesterday was something else.

I stayed late on a Sunday around 6-7pm. Walked past my boss's office and saw something I genuinely cannot unsee. My married boss, presents himself as this senior deeply religious guy, very outwardly pious, was in his office with a female colleague. They didn't know I saw.

Feels like something out of a bad movie. I'm terminating the contract today. I don't want to be entangled with these people at all.

What's a clean excuse to exit a contract without burning bridges or raising questions?

Recently got laid off from IT, picked up a contract at a small hybrid company. Seemed decent at first.

The culture was already bad. Toxic, favoritism everywhere. But yesterday was something else.

I stayed late on a Sunday around 6-7pm. Walked past my boss's office and saw something I genuinely cannot unsee. My married boss, presents himself as this senior deeply religious guy, very outwardly pious, was in his office with a female colleague. They didn't know I saw.

Feels like something out of a bad movie. I'm terminating the contract today. I don't want to be entangled with these people at all.

What's a clean excuse to exit a contract without burning bridges or raising questions?

The IMF wants Rs15.6 trillion in taxes next year. The budget is being finalized in Turkiye on May 12th. Parliament will approve whatever they're told. And somehow, after all the structural reforms, the fiscal discipline, the painful tariff hikes. FBR still missed its target by Rs428 billion this year. We're not stabilizing. We're borrowing time with borrowed money, passing the bill to the same people every cycle, and calling it progress.

Took my friend's brand new H6 PHEV for a spin. 13 million PKR car, so I went in with high expectations.

Two things caught me off guard:

Reverse is weirdly sensitive. Barely touched the accelerator and it lunged back. Almost rear-ended a car. Not a great first impression.

Traction control is aggressive and jerky. Push throttle, not even hard and it starts this weird jerking behavior.

For 13 million it felt unpolished.

Otherwise though powerful car. Really impressive where it counts.

For background, I am a product designer who has worked with clients and companies abroad and never worked with Pakistani companies. I've been recently interviewing with local companies since I lost my job. The industry is really bad right now and a lot of remote roles dried up. I was working remotely as a junior product designer pulling around $1,000/month at just 2 years of experience, working under 6-8 hours a day on a pretty relaxed schedule.

Now I'm looking locally.

Almost every HR call goes the same way. They tell you upfront: 996, six days a week. One recent one was Vryo Imaginarts. HR made it clear the role would demand a lot of time and I shouldn't expect a regular 8-hour day. And the pay? Not even close to justifying it.

3 years in, mostly solo work. Just got laid off, took a two-month break. Back now and the market looks rough.

Barely any junior roles. AI is eating into the work we used to get hired for. The discourse is exhausting too, half say taste and judgment can't be automated, the other half say just vibe with the tools and you'll be fine. Neither feels honest.

Doesn't help that some people are out here acting like they've got it all figured out. Vibe coded a landing page, now they're a product designer.

Taste and judgment are hard to replace, but let's be honest, it's not looking great out there.

If you had to switch, where would you go? And what AI tools or workflows are you actually using day to day?

Not looking for motivation. Just real answers.

Family is selling some real estate. Total value around $500K equivalent in PKR. Want to move it abroad somewhere stable

Not looking for anything sketchy. Just want to know what legal routes people have actually used at this scale.

We've got plenty above 80 lakhs and into the 1 crore range Haval, Changan, Deepal, BYD, but the mid-range is basically empty or dominated by the same traditional options. Yaris, City, Swift. That's about it. Would love to see more variety under 60 lakhs sedans, small SUVs, even some EVs. BYD Atto 2 was a step forward but it's still on the higher side. What do you think?

I don't know how to say this, but I need to put it somewhere.

My dad is an overseas engineer. Spent decades working abroad, sending money back, keeping things together from a distance. He funded his own father's home not because anyone asked, but because he knew his siblings couldn't. They never could.

When my grandfather passed, the house got divided. Chacha, phupho, they all got their share. But never signed anything. Never showed they received there portion in cash. Just kept claim open. Nobody said a word. And somehow, every major expense on that side still comes out of my dad's pocket. Their daily bills. Their problems. He's still funding people who already took what was theirs.

Then there's chachu. Late fifties. Hasn't built a single thing his whole life. His own family is falling apart because he cannot keep a roof over their heads. My dad gave him car after car over the years. He destroyed every single one, sold them for scraps. Last one was a Suzuki Swift. Recently he asked for a BYD electric car. I don't even know what to say to that.

My dad hasn't worked since 2018. Whatever he saved, whatever he built across all those years abroad, that's what we're living on now. And it's going faster than he thinks. He has four properties, each worth crores on paper, but there's no cash, no income, no plan. And people keep pulling.

My brother is finishing his master's in Europe with no work permit and can't cover his fees alone. My dad says there's no money. My sister is almost done with her degree and her wedding is maybe five or six years away. My brother's too. These things don't wait.

Me and my brother never ask for anything. We carry ourselves. We always have. But from the outside people assume we're doing well, and we're not. We have assets we can't touch, a grandmother who inserts herself into every decision, and a family that has spent decades taking from my dad without once asking if he was okay.

The part that keeps me up at night is this. My dad loves travelling. Goes to 20 plus countries every year and I get it, he earned that. But what he made as an engineer in a single month is more than me or my siblings could earn in years combined. That capacity is still there. He just won't go back, not even part time. And so the savings keep going out to the same people who never deserved it in the first place.

And God forbid anything happens to him, his siblings will be at our door before the dust settles, claiming inheritance, acting like they built something alongside him when they built nothing.

I love my dad. But I'm scared of what happens when the money is gone and there's nothing left behind the generosity. I just don't know how to tell him that.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I genuinely don't know what to make of it.

Are we slowly stabilizing? Slowly collapsing? Or just... perpetually stuck in the same loop of economic chaos, political drama, and infrastructure neglect that we've been in for decades?

A few things I keep coming back to:

The brain drain feels irreversible at this point. Everyone with skills, money, or options is either already gone or actively planning to leave. What does that do to a country long-term?

The economy has been kept alive by remittances and IMF bailouts for years now.