I remember when I first came to Dubai in 2008 thrilled to be making 25k a month as an architect and then I met a dumb blonde from Australia who'd come over on a whim and walked into PA jobs making 20k, with no quals or degrees....

It was a weird time. Literally anyone from a western country could get a job. I'd never experienced anything like Dubai in 2007-2008 and won't again.

Cenary: expatdom is ephemeral. I spent 10 years as an expat in the Gulf and Singapore and while I had a good time except for the two years in Qatar, I have no desires to be an expat again. It's a highly transitional environment and the conveyor belt of friends coming and leaving and constant moving and constant living out of suitcases wears you down after a while.

Construction

Under sea have just picked up the exploration contract for the red sea

I worked in AUH for two years just after the GFC. I left in 2011.

I was taking a look the other day at job offers. I was shocked. Salaries (including major local companies or international companies based in the UAE) are lower than what I was paid and back in the day I had car/housing allowance. So something like this:

2009: my salary was (let's say) AED 25k + house + car + flights
2019: I see salaries max. AED 20k with no allowance of any type (!)

Maybe housing costs are down now, but my acquitances there keep me telling how expensive the UAE has became (food, utilities, fuel, enterteinment). I really cannot make those numbers.

To live pay check to pay check I would rather live anywhere in the civilised world. This is an advantage people with a 1st-world passport have compared to a Filipino or an Indian which have a slightly harder time to get a job in Europe, the US or any Western country.

agreed - we are getting a lot of decommissioning work and the usual maintenance work, which is keeping us ticking over. But definitely no exploration currently.