Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawayosiu1 | Hacker News Reader

I lived in UAE for 10 years.

All I can say is...it's not a "bad" place if:

1) you are working as a direct hire for any of the govt companies (Adnoc, Etisalat, etc.).

2) if not, you are contracted directly by those companies

3) if you are on contract and your visa's sponsor is good (won't take your passport on arrival, won't create issues when you need to leave, etc.)

4) If you keep your head down basically - go to work, come home, have fun - Don't get involved in politics, using encrypted chatting applications, talking about human rights or anything along those lines.

oh and there's definitely a lot of brain washing going on. Almost everyone claims that it's the best place to be, discrimination ain't a thing (yes it is), everyone's fair (nope) and so on...

View on HN

So UAE is “not a ‘bad’ place” for people whose definition of “fun” does not include premarital sex, alcohol consumption, kissing in public, adultery, blasphemy, homosexual sex, criticizing rulers … may I ask, what do they do then?

that was a bad choice of words from my end. Sorry.

By "have fun", I meant - go around, visit places, hang out with friends, shop etc. While I am personally not aware of premarital sex, alcohol consumption is fine (as long as you have a licence, and do it indoors)

kissing in public, adultery, blasphemy, homosexual sex, criticizing rulers - yep, all these are big no-nos.

"it's not that bad if your sponsor doesn't steal your passport"

Your employer stealing your passport is something that generally only happens in a hellhole?

Most decent companies there, generally don't do that. However, there are always exceptions.

Furthermore, this issue generally plagues the contractor companies (those that provide workers to bigger govt companies - who don't really care and use contractors to get around this in the first place)

Quite a lot of private companies do the same as well.

Very recently (just 6 months back), a friend of mine, got an offer from an import/export company in UAE. They had a few interviews over the phone and agreed upon the everything (including salary, accommodations and so on..)

Once my friend (a Canadian citzien) landed in UAE, the company took his passport and then demanded that he sign a different contract (reduced salary, longer period, etc.) and refused to hand over his password till he signed it. He had to threaten to visit the Embassy, for them to hand it back to him. However, if he was a citizen of some 3rd world country like India, Pakistan or anywhere from Asia, or even some European countries - he'd not have a choice but to sign the new contract.

Furthermore, when he tried to leave - as he was no longer interested in working for the company, they refused to pay for his flight back as well.

Yes but what I mean is, that's something that often happens there, whereas even the shittiest companies in the US and Western Europe would never ever do that, because the people/company who took your passport would go to prison or be heavily fined or both if they did.

Which means the UAE is a hellhole no one should visit, because if that's a common enough problem that everyone knows about it, and it's not a problem people face elsewhere, then who knows how many other nightmares lurk beneath the surface in the UAE?

It's not worth the risk for the shaky promise of some amount of money beyond your existing salary (on top of any ethical issues of economically supporting such behavior).

So...sounds like a hellhole? That might be the point of your comment...sarcasm is hard on the interwebs.

I think OPs point is that while they might have treated OP like gold, he couldn't conscious taking part in the horrifying things they do to their own people, to say nothing of migrant workers (taking passports as a means of control).

Question: if "using encrypted chatting applications" is banned, can on use iMessage?

Or for that matter, HTTPS?

I'm not too sure about iMessage (I was a kid when it first debuted in UAE).

But I do remember them having an outright ban on BBM (for about 3 days) till Blackberry had a local datacenter (and I believe provided the govt access to the messages - I am not sure about the details in parenthesis).

iOS devices sold in UAE don't have iMessage and FaceTime support. I can't remember whether I was able to use iMessage the last time I was there with an iPhone I purchased elsewhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com