Product Management in Dubai
Is it a good idea to switch from a product manager role in India to Dubai? I’m currently getting paid 36LPA as a PM2 in one of Fintech Unicorns in India. Have about 4years of PMing experience. Please suggest, also as I’m doing research for this topic i’ll put up all my research on this thread.
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Was in a similar situation a few years ago.
Heres my notes, you make a call as you wish
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Dubai is a homogenous market and thus has limited complexity, data sets and customer behaviour. Long term Indian market experience, with its hetrogenity, data sets and the sheer size is much more valuable
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Dubai is not US. Later if you want to crack big roles in India you wont be as hot as an Indian PM in California now wanting to get back to India. Dubai has different salary for different race/color/nationality. Its an ugly side no one talks about
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Your salary is correlated with VC investments in your industry and country. India certainly will have more investments than Dubai for atleast next 5 years
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Your Dubai Salary might be good but to enjoy same lifestyle as India- Cook, Maid, Car, Home rental at Proxomity to work etc you will shell out 10-15K AED. Add 5K if you have a Kid. Now think where does this land
Thanks for this detailed perspective, really appreciate @MrGandalf 🙏🏼
Have you worked in Dubai before?
I had an offer from Noon during pandemic. Was very close to joining but decided against it. All the notes are from friends in the UAE market.
Hey, work in UAE. All the points of MrGanfalf is super valid.
You should target AED 25+ per month, that will make life very comfortable. Caveat is UAE offers a lot for good lifestyle so creep is very easy, any salary can seem low! Eg. my in hand component in india was 2.2L and I just couldn’t spend it!
Rents are super high so more you negotiate the better.
If you live with a friend - it can become very comfortable to live. If alone - 12K for india level lifestyle.
Challenges :
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Cracking role - shallow market, few roles - random applicant flooding market making shortlisting insanely hard. Check Reddit!
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Lack of growth - no cutting edge work, although you can see it a place to achieve FIRE!
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Increments - hope you know that india level hikes don’t happen ANYWHERE. Just a word of caution.
40K-50K would be extremely tough!
Checkout this post on Grapevine - https://share.gvine.app/WdJ2n3LcWeinxVBT7
Careem, Noon, Talabat, Cafu, Rapyd, Amazon, Bayut, Delivery hero, Geidea, Swvl, Dubizzle- All these are good options for product based companies
Totally worth it. Savings will be much higher given the comp range that you've in India. My friend who works at Careem, lives in Marina area near to dmcc metro pays about 6k for 1bhk. Based on your lifestyle if you can keep 10-15k monthly expense then savings will be good.
Moreover, KSA region is hot for fintech right now, ton of good startups (bnpl, lending). So it makes sense to move.
I think you can make 40-50k A month in dubai tax free with your experience. When uou convert it to INR it's insane!! Emphasis on Tax free
@babysir you might wanna change your company name in profile
That’s fine :p
Brave soul
@babysir I had a offer from Hungerstation last month. 32k AED for a backed Dev role. Was making 45 base in India. Decided to stay in India. Could have saved more(2X) in Dubai but didn’t move.
Brand value and career progression were the major reasons. The work and team(peer quality) would be way way better in India.
I would have moved if I could have gotten a offer from a better tech focussed company through - read Careem/Talabat - they seem to be having good tech talent per their LinkedIn people section.
Some of the decent product companies in Dubai.