Increasing women’s participation in the workforce and technological spaces is remarkable progress for the entire nation. They have shown that women can become industry leaders and have gained huge fame globally.

Pakistan’s tech industry is booming. There are so many women making a huge difference in the tech world. These women have shown no limit to what they can achieve.

Here are five Pakistani women from the tech industry that you should know as the biggest inspirations:

Jehan Ara

With a critical focus on Information Technology, Jehan Ara comes on top of the list as she is the mastermind behind PASHA (Pakistan Software Houses Associations).

The company’s primary goal is to develop and protect Pakistan’s software industry. It has also partnered with companies across the borders to provide its clients with the finest quality software products and services.

Jehan Ara has worked for nearly three decades in marketing, communications and media in Pakistan, UAE, Hong Kong and the Far East. She is a well-known tech entrepreneur, speaker, motivator and writer.

Her latest project is “Women’s Virtual Network”, which would allow educated women to deal with their employers and other professional workers while providing them with a chance to explore the world of IT in the modern world.

Sheba Najmi

Sheba Najmi is one of the biggest inspirations for the women of Pakistan. She is a highly qualified and accomplished lady with incomparable experience in diverse industries.

She completed her education at Stanford University, worked as a Fellow at “Code for America”, and was a key contributor to many other projects. She also owns exceptional experience serving as a Design Lead at Yahoo Mail.

She founded “Tech for Change”, a nonprofit organisation that focuses on encouraging entrepreneurs, developers and designers in Pakistan to help eliminate the various civic problems in the country.

This, along with many other remarkable achievements, makes her stand among the top Pakistani women who can inspire others in art, tech, and entrepreneurship.

Shamim Rajani

Shamim Rajani is a well-known tech enthusiast and entrepreneur known for her unmatched efforts in launching CodeGirls along with Faiza Yousuf and Hasnain Walji. It is the best Boot Camp for almost everyone in Pakistan to explore, learn, and implement the latest in today’s high-end tech space.

Also Read: Early bird catches the worm: How these startups are warming up VC action in Pakistan

In addition to CodeGirls, Rajani is the COO of Genetech Solutions, COO of ConsulNet Corporation, Vice Chairperson at P@SHA, and Adviser at WomenInTechPK.

This highlights that she has got a lot more potential. It is also important for the government to assist such talented women of Pakistan in emerging and making a new mark for others to get inspired.

Ayesha Mubarik Ali

Ayesha Mubarik Ali is an entrepreneur, artist and designer. She is working towards empowering Pakistani women through tech, art and entrepreneurship. She is the founder of Oshii Brownie, a futuristic fashion brand centred around hyper-real imagery.

Women empowerment and brown skin have been the greatest inspirations, and she has worked on many projects that reflect her creative imagination and thinking. These include Shared Space Cosmic Collisions, Butterfly Effect, Incognito, Cosmic Fusion, Plutchick/Sentiment, etc.

Most of her work is centred around Asian cultures and traditions with a key focus on women in Pakistan. She combines modern technologies with her artistic capabilities to create art that reflects the futuristic perspectives of women soon.

She stands apart from others due to her recent work with the world’s most famous digital and NFT artists. Her work has been widely featured on Forbes Middle East, bringing her added fame and recognition internationally.

Saba Gul

Saba Gul stands among a few Pakistani women who have dedicated their entire life and career to the development and betterment of others in her country. She got her bachelor’s and master’s in Computer Science and Economics from MIT.

Also Read: Women in tech: A global evaluation

After completing her education, she started a nonprofit organisation named ‘Popinjay’. The key objective behind this initiative was to develop adequate resources and ways for the underprivileged girls and their families in Pakistan to improvise their literacy. Her focus is not just to promote basic education but skills and entrepreneurial approaches that can help women to grow and thrive easily.

Future of women in Pakistan

Pakistan is one of the few Muslim countries where women are respected and are independent.

Unfortunately, like any other culture or society, there are some weird perspectives and thoughts in Pakistan that result in severe humiliation and disgrace for the entire country. Despite all the facts, the women of Pakistan have been phenomenal in redefining how they should be treated.

With the rapidly rising sense of literacy in the country, women have stood side by side with men. Among them are the aforementioned renowned names from Pakistan.

These women have made exceptional progress in the quest to achieve their goals, but they have also shown the world that Pakistani women have got a lot of potential.

From science, technology, and healthcare to music, entertainment, and arts, Pakistani women are not stopping when it is to adapt to the changing dynamics of the world. Digital media is also playing a vital role in creating a more positive society that accompanies women’s rights.

They have shown women can be leaders in almost every industry. Due to the cultural biases of Pakistan, girls are not encouraged to pursue careers that are typically seen as more ‘for men’.

Creating opportunities for women in tech will help open up avenues for more educational and career opportunities for Pakistani women.

We should all congratulate these women for their achievements, and we should also support them in all their endeavours. Women can make a huge difference in today’s world, and they have the potential to achieve great things now and in the future.

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As the tech talent war intensifies and more companies chuck large sums of money to poach talents, it is no doubt why 65 per cent of those looking out indicated salary as the primary reason. After all, senior software engineers at the 90 percentile earn US$11,500, according to the Tech Talent Compensation 2021/2022 Report by NodeFlair and Quest Ventures.

However, not all companies are fortunate enough to be armed with a massive war chest to compete with the tech giants like Bytedance, Foodpanda and FAANG. After all, these companies pay at least 25 per cent above the market median on average.

So, how can you survive the talent war against these tech behemoths? 

I have hired the talents: What do you mean I’m not done?

Many companies spend a lot of time and money competing and recruiting the best talents. However, only a handful allocate sufficient resources to talent retention.

Non-technical leaders need to understand that talent churn is significantly more expensive for the engineering team. It goes beyond a simple one-off recruitment cost (which could amount to over US$25,000 per hire nevertheless).

More importantly, there is a hidden cost incurred from the loss in productivity in replacing them and onboarding the new joiners.

Also Read: Tech salary is escalating: How can companies survive the talent war?

Some companies have an abnormally high attrition rate and an average tenure of under a year. It raises many questions about how much work these engineers can contribute, given that it takes two to three months to fully onboard and offboard.

One of the ways to achieve this is through a strong employer brand. According to the whitepaper “Why Your Employer Brand Matters” by LinkedIn, a company with a strong employer brand, especially one that resonates with current employees, will have a 28 per cent lower turnover rate than companies with a weaker employee brand.

It’s not only about money

Besides salary, non-compensation benefits play a deciding factor when choosing which company to join. According to Stack Overflow, the top three non-compensation push and pull reasons for tech talents are:

• Wanting to work with new technologies
• Wanting better work-life balance
• Seeking growth or leadership opportunities.

Companies can re-evaluate their existing working environment based on these aspects. Some changes include getting rid of rigid working hours and granting flexibility to work from anywhere. 

The team can also be structured such that talents could learn from people beyond their immediate circle through initiatives like a weekly Friday engineering sharing.

“Sorry, you only have 9 of the 10 skills we are looking for”

We all have that dream candidate who checks all the boxes. This candidate has all the skill sets we want, everything from Frontend to Backend to DevOps to Data Engineering, and the list goes on. 

The issue: this candidate does not exist. 

Even if this candidate exists, it will likely be out of your budget. After all, software engineers at the 90th percentile are paid up to three times more than those in the 10th percentile.

The truth is that many of these requirements are not crucial. In addition, a big bulk of these skills is transferable as long as someone has experience with similar technology. 

Instead, have two separate lists: the must-haves and good-to-haves. The must-haves list should only have three to four requirements at most, while the rest of the requirements should be on the good-to-haves list.

Reject candidates only if they do not have the must-haves, and then evaluate and rank candidates based on how many good-to-have checkboxes they ticked. Doing so can widen your pool of candidates and reduce the time needed to hire the right person.

“I am interested in the role, but…”

At NodeFlair, we saw how many companies struggle with hiring by having too many ineffective interview rounds than they need. Worse of all, most of the assessments are not conclusive in determining if a candidate is suitable.

Also Read: Singapore faces talent crunch for engineering and product manager roles: Report

Instead, companies should actively reflect and remove interview rounds that are repetitive and ineffective. 

On the other hand, adding a call with HR can add the human touch and show candidates that you respect them. From experience, this increases the percentage of candidates who will complete the interview process, especially when the first assessment is a challenging technical round.

Doing so can complete the entire interview process much faster and reduce the chance of candidates withdrawing their applications. Also, it can improve the health of your hiring funnels as fewer candidates are repelled and dropped off the pipeline.

Build your engineering presence

At any time, only 20 per cent of the market are active job seekers, while 54 per cent are passive and open to new opportunities. 

The top two methods talents learn about companies are through their network and reading about news and articles about the company. Thus, invest in non-traditional recruitment methods, such as attending and meeting candidates at local meetups. 

We at NodeFlair did a poll and found out that 64 per cent say the ideal employer page should contain information about the engineering culture and rationales behind the company’s tech stacks and decisions.

After all, 45 per cent say engineering culture influences their decision to choose a job. You can show that you prioritise engineering by maintaining an active engineering blog. Use it to document technical challenges faced by the team and how you overcame them.

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In this episode, we are excited to welcome Marcello Schermer, Head of International Expansion at Yoco, a South Africa-based fintech startup helping SMEs accept payments and get data-driven insights. Prior, Schermer was Managing Director of Seedstars and a strategy consultant at Detecon Inc.

In our conversation, Marcello talks about the importance of immersing yourself in a new market to understand how trust is built, why it’s crucial to build a cross-cultural team from early on within the whole company and not just within the expansion team, as well as the growing opportunities across the continent of Africa with its fast-growing population and how Africa should be thought of as a source of innovation and not just an opportunity for market entry.

This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets.

Also Read: Ritual Chief People Officer on the importance of culture in international expansion

Find our entire podcast episode library here and learn more about our forthcoming book on global business growth here.

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The article was first published on Global Class.

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Sky Mavis, the owner of the popular NFT game Axie Infinity, has announced a US$150 million funding round led by Binance with participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm, and Accel Partners.

The round, combined with Sky Mavis balance sheet funds, will be used to reimburse all the users affected by the Ronin Validator hack, the Vietnamese company said in a statement.

On March 23, Sky Mavis’s Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised, resulting in 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC drained from the Ronin bridge.

“The attack was socially engineered, and a thorough investigation is ongoing. We take full responsibility for the breach. The root cause of the breach was the small validator set which made it much easier to compromise the network,” the firm said. “While racing for mainstream adoption, we made some trade-offs that left us vulnerable to this sort of attack.”

Also Read: a16z leads Axie Infinity parent Sky Mavis’s US$152M Series B round

SKy Mavis added that the Ronin Network bridge will open once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which could take several weeks. The firm is implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks.

The 56,000 ETH compromised from the Axie DAO treasury will remain under-collateralised as Sky Mavis works with law enforcement to recover the funds. If the funds are not fully recovered within two years, the Axie DAO will vote on the next steps for the treasury.

“Sky Mavis is committed to reimbursing all of our users’ lost funds and implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks. With the support of Binance and other industry leaders, we will be able to quickly expand the validator set from five to 21 validators to ensure the security of the Ronin network. While addressing this issue, we are also focusing on the future, starting with tomorrow’s launch of Axie Infinity: Origin,” said Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen.

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