Strat Consulting life in Dubai

Hey, I think these are pretty easily Googleable. Dubai is 80-90% expat, mostly from Western countries (Continental Europe and UK) and the MBB offices are English speaking. 

Dubai office is fully English speaking. Arabic speaking is an Asset but no way a requirement. I am not an Arabic speaker either. I'd say 99% of projects are in English with some Saudi ministry projects preferring to work in Arabic. A lot of people from UK/US backgrounds. Usually UK backgrounds are Junior Associates/Associates who have done their undergrad or master's in UK. US backgrounds are Junior Associates or Consultant who have done their undergrad or MBA in US. Easiest way to break in would be to reach out to people who are coming from your path (that is what I had done). People were surprisingly kind with my coffee chat hit rate greater than 80%...

Personally, it's being amazing. I had never been to Dubai before so I took a leap of faith coming here but so far no regrets :) I found the people to be very like-minded, "work hard play hard" mentality where from Mon-Thurs everybody is working hard and on the weekend everybody is socializing boat parties, boozy brunches, beach clubs etc. If you are a person who likes to indulge in luxuries and hang out with people coming from different cultures, you are very likely to enjoy Dubai. June-September weather is awful so you mostly hangout indoors but also you make a boatload of money so in the summer everybody is usually traveling. Quality of life is unrivaled. You'll be living at the best buildings, eating at top-class restaurants etc. Extremely safe place and your money goes a long way when it comes to services (house cleaning, laundry etc.)

Professionally, it's been okay. Due to the nature of the region's economy, projects are mostly centered around Public sector (help ministries function), Energy (now more increasingly Green energy), Real Estate (they are building cities from scratch). I have friends who have spent 2 years and never done a single projects in any of these 3 fields. Projects are largely based in KSA, second place is UAE (Abu Dhabi), and then Qatar. Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain projects are a very small percentage. Staffing is usually very random when you're a junior so it is difficult to generalize. If you want to move back to the West internally, that is not a problem. For example, my office transferred 20 people to the New York office last year. If you want to go from MBB Dubai -> industry X in West, I think that will depend on your nationality (can you work in that country without requiring sponsorship) and how you sell your project experiences.

Hope this honest review helps, feel free to DM if you want to talk more about your considerations for taking/not taking the offer.

Work/life balance: To be quite frank on the lower end compared to Europe (ex-Italy) and US (ex-NY).
Average work hours: difficult to give an average because of the variability from week to week, project to project but I'd say (M-Th 9-10, Fr 9-6) 60-70
Weekend work: 99% completely free, if in fact you need to work on a weekend, you get credited 1 day back

Target Schools: nice thing about MBB Dubai is there are no strict set of schools they recruit at, people come from all around the world. That being said, there is a good representation from INSEAD, LBS, American University of Beirut, Bocconi, LSE, and so on.

I agree with all of the above, apart from the fact that I am not American 

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I think you need to check how they treat Asians and Black people (particularly the dark skinned ones). I think you also need to check the verified apps they have on google store and apple store to find these "slaves". Modern day slavery is a thing there but I am not sure why people don't admit it. One of the worst places is Kuwait. They even have salary laws where they'll pay a White person the most for the same job a South Asian or Black person would do. There's a clear hierarchy there. This is all easily searchable btw. 

I get it. You don't want to talk bad about your city/country/region but I've noticed, most Arabs really hate when it's done to them but easily do it to other races. There's no issue admitting when your own country is wrong.

And the UAE Laws are questionable. Yes they're good in many ways. Theft is almost non existent to the point where you can keep your doors unlocked. But who are the UAE authorities going to believe? A South Asian labourer or an Arab/Emirati when it comes down to it? The sexual assault laws are also questionable. Women are punished for being victims of it - plenty of examples online. They have been charged for illicit sexual relations (again search it all up).

The Middle East is cool in many ways: architecture, cleanliness, minimal theft, etc. But they are bad in many many ways and it's time people actually take that seriously. If Arabs or Emiratis were treated the exact same way as they treat Asians and Black people, you know for a fact they wouldn't be able to handle it and would be vocal about it.