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Comment by this2shallPass | Hacker News Reader

>>6 The gulf (UAE, Saudi, Qatar, etc) is the regional tech hub.

I would imagine Israel is the regional tech hub, even if there are few to no interactions with tech people in Gaza. Would it be more accurate to say the gulf is the regional tech hub for these programmers' day to day lives?

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A "hub" should have connections to the surrounding area. Being the biggest creator of something won't necessarily make you the regional hub as well.

You're right - thank you. I've just made an edit.

Thanks for the edit. Too often journalists phrase things in a way that implicitly equates "the Middle East" with "the Arab countries", to the exclusion of a great many people who actually live in the Middle East.

Does anyone know how the IT sector is in places like Dubai? I hear about a lot of need for skilled programmers there, but it's hard to glean insight from Europe. Anyone with first-hand experience?

I'm living in the UAE. As far as I can tell, there is a growing demand for skilled developers, especially in web and app dev positions. Most companies hiring are small in size, usually local startups, and most of them are operating in the e-commerce space.

Cool places to work at: Dubizzle[1] (Python + Django) and JadoPado[2] (PHP I believe).

[1]: https://uae.dubizzle.com/

[2]: https://uae.jadopado.com/

Just from travelling to europe and dubai, the tech scene in dubai is incredibly small. There are some cowork spaces and 'accelerators', but the ecosystem needs time and effort to grow.

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