How is the consulting life like in Dubai?

Lifestyle on projects is more likely to depend on the leadership team that you're working on in the firm than the location of the project. 

I've heard of wonderful projects in the middle east with very chill lifestyle because the client was generous enough with the project finances and the team with staffed sufficiently (or perhaps overstaffed by MBB standards :) )

I've also heard of awful situations were the clients were disrespectful especially to female consultants. 

It's difficult to generalize. My suggestion would be to go where your curiosity leads you, find the people that you enjoy working with and if you don't like the region as you get to discover it, move to another office. 

Having worked 4 years in BCG Dubai - I can say life is pretty cool here!

• Travel: Pre-COVID we used to travel every week to Saudi or another GCC country or stay in UAE (for local projects). Weekdays in UAE are Sunday to Thursday. So we would take the morning 7am flight on Sunday and come back to Dubai on Wednesday night. Thursday's were spend in the local office chilling and vibing with office friends - and working a bit as well.
• Clients: Exposure is really solid. As an A/C you will get opportunities to directly interact with minister-level people. It goes beyond CXO-level in that case
• Lifestyle: Life in middle-east is generally very rich and opulent. You get to stay in hotels that were formerly palaces. You get to visit the actual current palaces.
• Personal travel: There used to be a provision of weekend flybacks to locations of your personal choice and the flights would be reimbursed.
• Projects: Most middle-east projects are either public-sector ones with country-level impact - or enterprise-based (majority of which are state-owned). So your scale of impact is pretty high

Happy to answer more specific queries if you have.

Hi there,

I would first start off by saying all regions of the world have tough clients and work-life balance. I would also flag that there is immense variation across companies, industries, and even specific projects.

That said, I have heard some stories as well about the Middle East (excluding Israel/Lebanon) that would prevent me from voluntary serving clients there. If I had to rank where I would personally avoid working, it would be Germany > Saudi Arabia > UAE > USA, if this provides any context/clarity!

I can speak for BCG and McKinsey on the basis of very close personal anecdotes. 

UAE and Dubai are not the best relative to Europe and US - in terms of client demands as hours are tough and they can insist on lots of output. There's also some cultural displacement both with clients and with the more transactional vibe of ME offices in general. 

On the other hand, the consulting perks are more extreme as well due to the wealth there (e.g., their airlines are better than US airlines, hotels are super luxurious, coffee boys on call in the offices), and the pay is better than even the US.

But in general, final verdict was it was more stressful and not worth it.