Freelancing as an alternative Market for software Professionals in Pakistan

Abstract

Researchers have already shown that job satisfaction of workers is highly associated with motivation, performance and satisfaction of workers/professionals. Conventionally workers in software industry are employed in software companies or organizations and get regular salary for their services to organization in regular office hours; however the growing use of communication technology has generated a new type of online workers, which work on project basis without affiliation with any specific software organization are known as freelancers and are continuously growing in most of the developing countries like Pakistan. This work has quantitatively analyzed the freelancers and traditional workers based on the factors already associated with job satisfaction and growth opportunities present in the field of freelancing and traditional employment in organizational setting such as company office in Pakistani context. We used online survey to collect evidences from both fields. The descriptive analysis of the evidences has shown significant differences between the two groups of workers regarding the factors such as work environment, work hours management, and job security that contribute to the job satisfaction and dissatisfaction of workers, however no significant difference has seen regarding a number of factors such as average work hour and earning amount. The resultant information of this study may help new computer graduates of Pakistan to find their way in selecting their career type and work life in the software industry of Pakistan.