Staying relevant - What to do?
TLDR: PM here. Loving life in UAE, but tech scene feels stagnant. Should I stay for the perks or return to India to upskill and stay competitive?
I'm a Product Manager with 4 years of experience. I moved to the UAE 6 months ago, but now I'm feeling really conflicted about whether I should stay or move back to India?
Pros: I genuinely love life here. The people are great, there's civic sense, respect for others, no tax, no pollution and hardly any crime
Cons: Tech scene here feels pretty underwhelming. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything impactful. Whenever I check LinkedIn, Reddit, or Grapevine, I see my peers in India talking about building great generative AI solutions, using cutting edge tech and solving problems that feel revolutionary
It’s giving me FOMO - I’m worried I’m falling behind. If I decide to go back to India a couple of years later, I’ll mostly struggle to compete with my peers.
Back in India, I was working on a major app with 10M+ MAU, working with an amazing tech team. In the past 6 months here, I haven’t felt that same growth, and I don’t see it happening anytime soon because the tech culture is just not as strong.
So, I’m stuck. Do I stay here, save more money, and hope things get better? Or should I move back to India now, take a financial hit (had a few offers but I’d save ~50% less) and focus on upskilling and staying relevant?
I’m 27M and don’t plan on getting married anytime soon
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
This a good problem to have. Can you refer me?
Startup?
My 2 cents
It depends on what you like doing? Is it intrinsic or extrinsic
- if you love doing things without the badge of Faang (eventually), then it wouldn’t be a problem staying in Dubai.
- if tech scene is relatively weaker, it gives you greater opportunity to make a dent there cause lesser competition.
- Dubai scene is picking up, I have seen lots of folks moving there cause of talent requirements and tax free.
- product scene is also improving, there are a lot of people/influencers from there getting massive followers on SM.
- what you optimising for, eventually will help you make a choice.
This is something I have read do you want to be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in small pond. Choice is there to make.