aminadia

Hi Guys,

I am young engineer, 24 years old, not married with 1 year experience in multinational companies.

Urgent Advice Required svp

I have been offered a job in Doha working as systems engineer, they have offered me a package deal of 22000 QR per month including:

-Accommodation Allowance 7200 QR
-Transport Allowance 1800QR
-Basic Salary 13000 QR
-Full Medical Insurance
-annual bonus from 10% to 30% of total annual salary
-Few other small benefits ( as Premium mobility : one month basic salary , ...)
- 24 working days (vacations)
- Working hours : 44h/week

I have actually no idea of what this correspond to, it seems to me huge in first approach before i've read some posts there.

Does this offer sound good or would you expect more, taking into consideration living costs, rent, utility bills etc?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Best Regards

co durham boy

Put at least 5K on the basic and it could be a decent first entry job overseas . Qatar is very very expensive . 13K is too low in my opinion .The rest of the deal is pretty bog standard terms .

Pitch in for 20K and settle for 18 .

scrubbedexpat141

I don't think it's too bad.

What kind of Engineer are you?

Russ_Sarah

Aminadia..see my comments below in red..i have been over here for 6 months, drop me a message if you would like to ask any more..good luck

Accommodation Allowance 7200 QR
Rent here is very expensive, you could look at shared accommodation, 7,200 per month here would not get you a place in very nice area.
if you want to rent a place on your own most every landlord will want you to pay 1 x month deposit and 1 x month in advance, and usually you have to pay a fee of 50% ox months rent to the agent, I had to pay that to secure a place.
-Transport Allowance 1800QR
That doesn't seem to bad..i use a driver to take me to work and pick me up afterwards every day, I pay him 2000/month at the end of the month.-Basic Salary 13000 QR
My gut feel is that is a bit low, food here is expensive, that said you can eat out cheaply enough for one though. Alcohol is expensive here, a bottle of beer is about 40qar so if you are going to go out at the weekend you need to factor in how much you would need for socializing.
-Full Medical Insurance
that's handy

-annual bonus from 10% to 30% of total annual salary
that's a big range, I would ask them for more information on that, as a percentage of staff how many got 10% and how many got 30% last year for example..
-Few other small benefits ( as Premium mobility : one month basic salary , ...)
- 24 working days (vacations)
that's about the norm, plus there are public holidays here too- Working hours : 44h/week
check that the 44hr week is over 5 days or is it 6 days..you don't want to only have a Friday off here in Qatar as all the shops are closed until about noon and the banks etc are closed too so check you have Friday and Saturday, lots of places here work 6 days a week

aminadia

@Russ_Sarah Thanks you for all these details. It will be very helpfull.
I will ask for more on basic salary as advised by @CoDurhamBoy.

-About working days, it is 5 working days and 1 saturday working per 2week. I am a bit afraid with that point, i dont want to spend all my time on my job.

- What is for you a good budget if i want a 1BedRoom flat in a nice place in Doha?

- Can you please tell me what would be a typical good entry-level engineer package for a good lifestyle in Doha (not luxurious) ?
+ Basic Salary :
+ accomodation allowance:
+ transport allowance :
+ other allowances:

Thanks you very much for your answers.

co durham boy

Word of advice , expect to spend a lot of time on the job , it's the whole deal . Expect long days and weekends and phone calls at stupid o'clock.
Don't sweat the small stuff , get more basic and it's a half decent deal . 13k is too low , if you come for that you'll struggle especially if you're grafting hard , expect the long hours whatever deal you're on . Get the deal right now , less pain later . Don't under sell yourself .

Qatar is the most expensive place in The Gulf to live and do business , you need to make it worth it.

Russ_Sarah

Aminadia,
on the whole I would say its all good apart from your base salary..i would indeed be trying for 20k base salary and see if you can push up on the living allowance..10k qar per month would get you a nice one bedroom apartment in a nice part of town like westbay or the pearl.
at the end of the day you have to not be afraid to ask now as you are holding the cards...better to ask now for more and have them say no and then you can decide if you want the deal or not. If I was 24/25 years old again I wouldn't come here for a base of 13k per month, it wouldn't be worth it I don't think.