Pakistan is UTC+5 and does not change its clocks. That one fact decides how every overseas project is organised. Here is the overlap with our main markets, assuming a 9am–6pm day on the client's side and a flexible 7am–8pm day in Islamabad.
| Client city | Islamabad is | Overlap, client's local time |
|---|---|---|
| London | 5h ahead (4h in BST) | 9am–3pm (6h) |
| Sydney / Melbourne | 5h behind (6h in DST) | 12pm–6pm (6h) |
| Perth | 3h behind | 10am–6pm (8h) |
| Dubai | 1h ahead | 9am–6pm (9h) |
| Johannesburg | 3h ahead | 9am–5pm (8h) |
| Toronto / New York | 10h ahead (9h in DST) | 9am–10am (1h) |
| Los Angeles | 13h ahead (12h in DST) | none live; async |
The UK, the Gulf and South Africa are easy. Australia is good if you use the afternoon. North America needs a routine.
The routine that works
One scheduled call, same time every week or every day. For Australia it is their early afternoon. For the US East Coast it is their 9am, our 7pm. For the UK, anywhere in their morning. Everything else is written.
Written updates at the end of the Islamabad day. When a client in Sydney or Toronto starts work, there is a note waiting: what shipped, what is blocked, what we need from them. This is worth more than any call.
Recorded sprint demos. Every two weeks we demo what was built. We record it, so the client's colleagues who could not join can watch at lunch.
A shared tracker. Linear, Jira or GitHub Projects, whatever the client uses. If a question is not in the tracker, it did not happen.
Decisions have a deadline. When we ask the client something, we say when we need the answer to stay on schedule. Time zones add a day to every unanswered question; stating the deadline removes most of them.
What we refuse to do
Work overnight in Pakistan to cover US daytime. We tried it; the code was worse and the people were miserable. Clients who need full-time coverage in Pacific time should hire in Pacific time. For everyone else, the morning call plus overnight progress is a feature: you ask in the morning, it is done when you wake up.
For the client: three habits that help
- Batch your questions into the written update rather than sending them as they occur to you.
- Pick one person on your side who can make decisions; two decision-makers in two time zones triples the delay.
- Accept the demo as the unit of progress, not the daily message count.
The per-country details, including currencies and the clients we already serve in each market, are on the hire-by-country pages.