Experience finding a job and moving to Dubai

I saw a lot of different articles on employment / work in America and Europe, but I have not seen anything about the Middle East. This article will discuss how I was looking for the work of iOS developer in Dubai, I work and live here.

Foreword

I grew up in Donetsk, received a higher education in the field of IT. When the study came to an end, in front of me was the choice to finish the magistracy or specialist. At that time I was pretty tired from studying and wanted to finish faster. In consultation with his supervisor, he persuaded me to go to the magistracy, to which I resisted and, ultimately, refused. At that moment, he told me that with the formation of a specialist, problems can arise only in Arab countries, to which I replied: "I will not go there." I could not even think that I would be here. As time went on, everything changed, and after the start of the unfortunate events that have lasted until now, it was decided to leave his native city.

Search

My wife and I arrived in Dubai on a tourist visa and the first thing I did was register on the local job site. Unfortunately, when we began to consider vacancies, there were very few (1-2) positions with a less-than-good salary, the rest were much less than our minimum. Frustrated, I began to send out my resume and try myself at the interviews. But none of them received an answer. It is worth noting that the situation with visas here is not the same as in the USA and Europe, it’s enough to prepare a not large list of documents, then within 7-10 days the employer will provide you with a work visa, and this is not worth much for them. Therefore, visitors everywhere are happy to take here.
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After a while, the employer wrote me himself, I did not see their vacancy and I don’t remember that I sent them a resume. The letter was immediately written test task, which I needed to send them in order for them to consider me. I want to say that at that time I had about 1.5 years of experience and this was my easiest test task. Even when in Donetsk I was looking for the work of an iOS developer and said bluntly that I have no experience and want to learn for a small salary, I was interviewed as if I had already done more than one application, and then it happened the other way around.

In general, I did this test in the Swift language in just a few hours and sent it back the same day. The next day I received an invitation to the office and then I began to worry. At that time I never spoke English, i.e. I knew him, could read and write, but in practice I never spoke. There was fear in front of me, what if I didn’t understand something, or suddenly they didn’t understand me, I won’t tell them to wait until I translated in the translator, what kind of work is that about?

When I came to the office, HR met me and started asking general questions, she had good English, I understood everything and she understood me, even though I stumbled sometimes. After her, I met with the technical director, who asked me about the test code and some fairly simple questions that I probably would have answered without work experience. After that I was taken to the director of the company, where he boasted of their applications and we went on to discuss salaries. They could not give me the one that I wanted, referring to the fact that I have only 1.5 years of experience, and this is the Junior developer level, but in any case, they offered above my minimum. The next day I received a contract from them, and they were ready to take me without a trial period. This whole search took me a little over a week.

I did not rush to sign the contract and took time, because This was my first interview, I wanted to try other companies, too, and I still wanted a higher salary. The next couple of weeks yielded no result, and when my tourist visa came to an end I received another invitation for an interview. After it, I received a test task, which in fact was not a test, but most likely a real project. I received application layouts in JPG and asked them to make a ready application. My questions about how I need cutting icons, services for working with the server, and so on, they just kept silent, I still did not understand the meaning of all this and did not consider them anymore.

After consulting with my wife, we decided that the payment that the first company offered to me would be small and then we took the risk. I wrote them a letter that I would sign a contract if they agreed to my price, otherwise I disagree. As a departure route, we thought that we would return to Dubai in a month and continue the search for work.

I refused.

We returned to Ukraine and waited for the next trip, simultaneously sending a resume from there. After about 2 weeks, this company contacted me again and said that they agreed to my price, so the risk was worth it. They asked to send them photocopies of documents by e-mail and made me a visa.

Job

Upon arrival in Dubai, I took the visa, but it was temporary and I had to undergo a medical examination and change it for a long-term one in my passport. The only problem that arises when moving to the UAE - the duration of a visa. After arriving in the country, it is issued within 1-2 months, and as long as you do not have a visa in your passport and Emirates ID, you cannot rent a normal accommodation, and accordingly, your hotel expenses will be large.
The company reimbursed me for the cost of the flight.

Working week here is not the same as everywhere, it is here from Sun to Thu (I still get confused and call it Thursday Friday, although it is already 1.5 years old here), but also many companies practice the work week with one day off, from Sat to Thu. In my case, my week is from Sun to Thu, but every first Sat is a half-day working month. Actually there is no sense from this Saturday at all.

Working hours here are about the same as in ours from 9 to 18, but in my case from 8:30 to 18, lunch is 1 hour. Since This is an IT company, it is a bit freer here, and if you wish, you can move the working time and take lunch at any time. Overtime is not paid, then I think you will understand why.

Vacation paid - 28 days, it can be taken after a year of work. Once a year, the company pays for tickets at 2 ends home.
Hospital is also paid (the company provides insurance). If you wish, you can take a free vacation.
Public holidays - weekends. In addition, there is Ramadan, which lasts for 1 month, during which the working day is reduced by 2-4 hours, depends on the enterprises.

Despite the fact that IT companies are famous for the fact that you can dress as you like, it does not work here. You can not walk in shorts and slippers, except for a semi-working Saturday, on this day you can. But perhaps this is due to the fact that our company works very closely with a large Emirates bank and sometimes you have to go there.

By law, when dismissed in the first 6 months, there is a chance to get a ban and a ban on working in the Emirates for a certain period, but there are a lot of nuances here, I will not go into particular details.

Also, companies here are divided into local and free-zone. There are some differences in them, but for example, having received a ban in the local one, you can work in the free zone.

So, I came to work on the first day, they gave me a place, the manager told me everything and led me to get to know everyone, then I understood where I was. Absolutely all programmers were of Indo-Pakistani origin, and even half of them are female. I have nothing against girls programmers, but everyone knows about the Hindus and their code, and here also the girls. Designers Filipinos. Management Arabic.

The first few days were introductory and I was not given a normal project. During these few days, I learned about the fact that most iOS developers have solid experience, for example, one girl had 6 years of experience in IT, was in the position of Senior and for several years already in iOS. The other guy had about 4 years of experience in iOS. Looking at this, I thought, maybe it’s too early for me to be frightened and not everything is so bad, after all, solid experience after all, and I, in my 25, company, was one of the youngest or even the youngest.

About a week later, I was attracted to the project, which at that time was burning. Having launched the project, I was surprised, to put it mildly. The street was 2015, iOS 8 is full and after a month the presentation of iOS 9, people do not use NSLayoutConstraint, and naturally the application did not display normally on all devices, as I understood they did not run it at all in the simulator on others except for iPhone 5. But the project was already burning, i.e. it has already been attempted to be transferred to the stage User Acceptance Testing. The application crashed on almost every screen, it is worth noting that this also happened because the server side (on the customer’s side) changed services without informing about it. In the code of this application was complete confusion and it was immediately clear that it was written by different people who are not even a team. The pieces of code were repeated 10-15 times, the obvious places for inheritance were ignored (not all, yet there were places where it was, that means they still knew what it was and why). In fact, the application was not ready at all, a sketch, but time was spent several months. Where managers looked is not clear.

I never got into the code of this application, I went to the technical director and told everything as it was. He asked me to put the konstrainta in the interface (because, as it turned out, no one knew how to use them properly) and that's it, my task in this project is closed and I will be given a new project from scratch, to which I agreed.

Having received a new project, I was invited by iOS Team Lead to instruct how I should write. He imposed on me the libraries that they had been using for a long time, FormKit and TableKit, and they remade these libraries to fit their needs and as it turned out, they made a lot of their mistakes. They did not fork from the current project, but simply took it and put it in SVN. Yes, and about Cocoapods there was no question, they also did not know how to use it.

Having spent a couple of days trying to keep their style, I realized that this would not bring any good. I went again to the technical director and explained that after all, it was 2015 in the yard and I had to keep up with the times, to which he agreed and allowed me not to fully comply with their rules. He was probably the only one who understood me at least more, the rest simply did not even want to think about changing something.

After some time, he asked me if I had friends who also want to work here. I offered to my friend, with whom I had worked before, and he successfully passed the interview and sent him an invitation. With the arrival of my friend, it became a little easier to resist them and we gradually began to impose our ideas, such as using Cocoapods, Git, etc.

Time passed, and the management tried to use us as teachers, they began to hold trainings, where we talked about something, but we got tired of it, after all, we did not come here to work as teachers, but according to their version to the Junior position. To put it mildly, it looked ridiculous when 2 of the most inexperienced and youngest employees were taught by those in the Middle / Senior position.

The company also did not use any system for project management, and after we poked them with our finger on it, or so it was the same, we had a JIRA.

Now we are more or less distracted from the rest of the developers, we are working on our own projects, they are our own, although far from complete autonomy.

We have not become friends with the team and still by themselves. We have no hostility, but we are not friends, we have a good relationship with the management, but not friendly, I think there still plays the role of different cultures.

You can write a lot about all kinds of battles and their incompetence, but the article is already coming out rather big, so I’m summarizing: there is a very serious issue of staff qualifications because of which a lot of money is being spent. Prices for fairly simple applications reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, because they are valued at a very long time, and customers who are accustomed to this agree. Owners of outsourcing companies are rubbing their hands, and it was not there, local people like to work locally, come to the office and discuss everything personally over a cup of coffee.

A life

I have not been to America, but from what I know and from acquaintances' stories, much has been done here in a similar way. Similar road infrastructure. Also, as there long-term rent is a contract for a year, where you need to pay by check, or the entire amount for the year, which is fundamentally different from our Ukrainian (I think that Russia is also) approach, where you throw money on the card every month, or pay cash to the owner.

Housing

Most apartments here are rented empty and you will need to buy all the furniture. The average cost of a studio apartment in a good area will cost about $ 20,000 per year. The cost of rent is high, in addition to the annual rent you must pay a lot of deposits for the connection of utilities, gas, air conditioning and the Internet. But, if you do not need an apartment, you can rent a room, or half of the room, prices range from $ 500 to $ 800 on average. Also, the distance from the metro is very important (as is actually everywhere), but here we must take into account that in the summer even 1-2km on foot will not be easy for you. Therefore, it is desirable to live and work not far from the metro stations. You can live in the neighboring Emirate and save on rental housing. For example, a flat 2-3 bedroom in Sharjah will cost you $ 15,000, but you need to take into account that it will cost you 2-3 hours to go to work one way because of traffic jams.

Basically, every house has a gym and a swimming pool, which can be used for free, the better the house, the better the conditions, but the rental price is appropriate. It can also be a sauna, a playground, a tennis court, other sports grounds ... everything is free.

Transport

City transport is quite expensive here, it is cheaper to maintain a car, the price of gasoline is about 50 cents per liter, but it fluctuates after the government has stopped subsidizing.

If you have rights from the countries of the former Soviet Union, then you will have to re-take 20-30-40 lessons, and then pass the exam, it all takes time and money. At least it will cost you $ 1000.

Driving a car here is quite simple, the interchanges are made in such a way that you do not have to cross unregulated intersections. But other drivers make life very difficult, mainly because some of them are wild and they only saw the car on TV, and once they got here they got behind the wheel, others, mostly local Emirates, who know that nothing will happen to them. . So swear driving learn notably.

Nutrition

Food here is quite inexpensive, considering that almost everything is imported here, an average of 2 people can invest up to $ 100 a week, i.e. go to the supermarket and buy everything you need for the week ahead. Food at the food court is not very expensive, $ 7 -15 $, but it is also not very useful. In restaurants, dinner will cost you a weekly supermarket price.

Entertainment

First of all, there is the sea and you can always go to sunbathe and swim, although in summer it is very warm, so you can go to the pool, which in some houses is cooled. In fact, I always thought that if I live on the sea, I will swim every day, but this is not the case, I don’t always want to.

In addition to the sea, there are many different shopping and entertainment centers where you can spend time, it is always cool there, even in the very heat. For example, there is even a skating rink and a ski slope with snow, penguins and negative temperatures at any time of the year.

Heat

It is really very hot here in the summer and it’s not easy to get from the house to the metro stop, but here everything is equipped with air conditioning, all cars, buses, metro, bus / metro stops, so if you live and work near the metro you will not notice the heat, and if there is a car, then all the more.

It rains in winter, this winter was cloudy and rainy for the whole week. They say that it is done artificially.

Connection

Here all large enterprises are state-owned, which create a monopoly. For example, you have a choice between two mobile operators (they are also Internet providers), but they have the same prices. Mobile communication and the Internet is much more expensive than in our countries. For example, home Internet at a speed of 3 Mbit will cost you $ 100, and the usual 100 Mbit for us will be several thousand.

And these companies are blocking telephony apps, so it’s impossible to chat via Viber, VPNs are also constantly blocked. Although Skype has not yet let down.

Tongue

Here, almost everyone speaks English. The difficulty in communicating you will arise only with all sorts of builders, fitters, cleaners on the streets, which are mostly of Indian origin. But if you control yourself, there are a lot of Indians who make the wrong pronunciation, for example, the word Actually is pronounced as “eksyuli”, so as not to start speaking as well. Also, it is not always clear, for example, when they say table they pronounce as cable and have to understand from the context what they are talking about.

If you know Arabic, then this is a huge plus, not only for karma, but also for salary, it will be much easier for you to find a job, even in a state institution, and here, unlike ours, they pay very well.

Attitude

When passing through the medical examination, I noticed that people of European appearance are treated better, for example, the guard could tell me to go earlier, when others had to stand.

In general, here you will be well treated. I compare the work of government agencies, for example, when I designed a visa for my wife and asked questions at the visa department, they answered me politely and sometimes more than once, but now imagine what they did for you in our passport office. We have employees of state institutions a little nervous, to say the least.

The only thing I didn’t like was the speed of work of all state bodies, they work no worse than the sloths in the cartoon Zeropolis .

Security is high and there is no fear of going out at night or forgetting something in a public place and this puts some vigilance to sleep, so there is a chance to be deceived.

Corruption

Here it is, but only at a high level. Indeed, if you offer money to a police officer or in another state agency to do something for you or, on the contrary, you don’t, then you will get into big trouble. On the example of the police, the policeman does not make sense not to issue you a fine for a bribe, because he will now receive a% for this fine.

Taxes

Officially there are no taxes. But, there are a lot of so-called “service charges” that are used everywhere. Even renting an apartment, you will pay% of the annual cost. Recently introduced to the use of the airport, for those who fly from Dubai. There is no transport tax, but there are toll roads.

In fact, while there is no VAT and tax on salary, if you receive $ 5,000 under a contract, then you will be credited exactly so much, but there are rumors that in a few years they may come up with something.

Irritation

I made it a separate point, because it really deserves. There are unreal many Hindus here and everywhere and nowhere they can not do anything qualitatively. Even they can not wash the car normally, right after washing you can walk around and see a lot of dirty places in prominent places. The Arabs themselves jokingly say that this is the United Indian Emirates.

Conclusion

As you can see, I have not experienced any difficulties with a diploma and in fact I would have been accepted with a bachelor's degree or even without it.

Am I pleased that I came here? - Yes, because I got and I get invaluable experience, and it is interesting to live here, after all, the world-famous metropolis. But I realized one thing, that here you need to develop your business, especially if you can provide quality services. Due to the fact that there are a lot of low-skilled staff you will be out of competition.