What is the basis of salary in Qatar?

I agree with it but i think it should not be so..so i was saying its rubbish to think in this way..what employers are doing is wrong and i am in agreement!My passport should nto determine my salary what happened t good old QUALIFICATIONS????

your friend's case certainly highlights a problem.

i don't deny that in some cases the passport is an issue, which it shouldn't be. your friend sounds like he had the right background for a good position, and if he did not get it because of a passport, that is terrible.

my point goes to the people who don't have a western education & experience, and think that they are being overlooked simply because of a passport. i'm not suggesting that those things automatically make you better as they don't, but on average they give you certain skills that are harder to develop in other places.

i'll do my best to help when you contact me!

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"Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day." Withnail & I

blackeberry - it may not make sense and I agree that the country you're residing in should matter, but that's not what happens is it? It's clear to everyone here that your passport determines your wage, so to say it's rubbish is just denying the truth. I'm not saying it's right, but it's what happens.

I'm laughing at the make believe world some prefer to live in.

Consider the following live example that lays to rest all the x y z parameters.

I know this person who had an asian passport. He was living in and educated in the UK.

Got a job offer in a gulf country. Salary including all benefits was Riyals 14,000.

He declined the offer. Went back to the UK, made up with his dad, with whom he had earlier fallen out with and sort of run away. Got the UK passport based on his dad's immigration which was on the basis of business/investment. Then he came back to the same company, same job, same responsibilities but the offer this time was 38,000 :) viola...

I think this example isolates all the make believe reasons people have been giving here.

Experience in the west - he had it

Education in the west - he had it

Perfect english - he had it (is a part time journalist)

Good pr skills - no question about it

So the only thing that changed between the old offer and new offer was the passport :)

so admit it or not, facts are facts.

but still.... i don't think this is something to worry about. everyone gets whats written for them.

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

Hi Withnail,

nice to hear something about actuarial accounting... i'll be in touch with you for some advise .. ok?

thanks

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

I am a Labourer from a third world country. I earn xxxxx a month. own 2 cars. live in a compound with swimming pools.

I don't think a Western Labourer will ever get what I am getting now.

So Passport does not matter :)

That doesnt even begin to make sense coz the country where u live ie are a resident matters alot..if the cost of living in Qatar is too high as compred to my country then i will end up spending so much more here that i hvae nothing to send home so this passport busniess is absolute rubbish..coz it beats the purpose..i might as well stay at home if i cant save after giving up my home.

Salaries here are usually based on cost of living in the employees country of origin, so yes your passport does determine your salary.

That's how ex-pat salaries work; you earn here in order to have more money to send back home. People may be earning significantly less or more than you when you just compare the numbers in Qatar Riyals, but if you look at how the salaries compare as a multiple of what they could get at home, then the lower salary will often be significantly greater.

Whether you think it's fair or not, the fact is that it boils down to the basics of supply and demand;

Someone earning the equivalent of QR 1/hour at home is going to be very tempted to come to Qatar and earn QR 10/hour.

But someone earning the equivalent QR 100/hour at home is not going to be tempted by that amount. They are more likely to go for QR 130 or 150/hour, which is significantly more than QR 10/hour, but as multiple of their home salary it's significantly less.

That some African contries plagued with unemployment and poverty have the most educated people in the world.

Ps most countries in Africa have english as the language of instruction,hence it may be spoken with accent but ask them write you a negotiation paper,it will make as good sense as a European man if not better.

It funny how I have also been able to teach new words to western people..wake up people!

All are Equal in the Eyes of GOD.

WE ARE ALL BROTHERS AND SISTERS

The topic is not about westerner, its about every expats here in Qatar...just a clear example.. I was a buyer for a contracting company, they're paying me good and i worked hard, then a new guy came in the department, not knowing even simple materials such as the sizes of nails,and asking everything as if I'm doing all the work for him and he got 100% higher salary than me,and you know why? He is Arabic I'm not angry at the guy i was angry with the situation.. I have nothing against Arabic really, i have plenty of Arab friends and they are good,and i want to mention one...Happy birthday Ussama.

It is particularly sad that some employers would so obviously discriminate in this manner!it is pitiful for a passport to be the basis of salary and as much as you deny it..it is true..please note that poverty is not soemthing you decide to have...and so i may be just as educated or more educated on many instances but a foolish reason to give me less is where I come from.

It is true employers are discriminating based on passport,I now a lady of Nigerian origin who worked here for a meagre salary,she has just one degree.

She met a man and got married and luckily changed her sponsorship and passport.

Now shes the manager of a top company simply because she got rid of her passport...

IN 2009 that is still happnening!!!totally sad!

Whatever your nationality is, Information dissemination and UNITY is the key to all of this. Granting you are an engineer, in order for you to receive a good offer, you must know how much minimum salary acceptable to your profession (it may be x5 than what you think). Now, if you have this information, let all people in your country with the same profession know this. And everybody should agree that nobody will accept offers lower than the minimum. The employer then has no choice but to hire one of you and give the minimum salary you require.

If your countrymen's (like mine) mentality is "This offer is better than what I am going to earn back home" and "If I will no accept this offer, somebody is willing to accept such". Then, we all end up as lossers.

withnail... you sound professional..I guess we are not talking about people like you....I totally understand what you mean..its not only the qualification and experience required to excel in a job...many other things involved which may be lacking in other nationalities….You got a point there.

not sure about your carpenter - as i mentioned in my post a few time "on average".

i know of an australian finance guy who married a colombian and moved to colombia. he ended up getting a great position at citibank (years ago) because he was foreign. he was not qualified and after a while he quit on his own.

i fully accept that there are westerners who get positions they do not deserve because they are western (such as your carpenter). my point is this: they are getting the job because the employer is assuming that a certain skill set is present that is far more often found in westerners than non-westerners. in some cases, those skills are not present and employers should be more careful. in other cases these skills are found in non-westerners and these people should not be overlooked.

i have worked for and with big organizations here and in cairo and many of the employees from developing countries simply did not have the soft skills and experience to match up. there are always cases where a good person from a developing country gets screwed because some hack westerner gets a job he did not deserve, but i think there are far more cases of people from the developing world who are just not as good as they think they are (with respect to senior and management positions).

like i said, on paper my education might be similar to many other finance people. but it takes a lot more than that to be a solid finance professional. i spent my first year here not only doing my job, but educating the non-finance people in my company about what i do, how i can help, and how they can help me. i have people outside my finance dept who have a solid understanding of revenue and accrual accounting principles now, and they are better at their jobs because of it. i have taken a group of people who knew nothing about finance and created a solid control environment that matches up to our western offices. i have also spent over a year improving practically every finance procedure we have (for example, our month end closing takes 3 days now as opposed to 5-7 it used to). my degree and accounting designation did not help me do these things, my experience working in Canada did.

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"Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day." Withnail & I

I must agree some Brits/Americans and Europeans get offered jobs by companies out here that they are no way qualified for!! 'Back home' they would struggle to be employed let alone be in senior positions.....

However you have to blame the companies for hiring them in the first place rather than the individuals.

All are Equal in the Eyes of GOD.

WE ARE ALL BROTHERS AND SISTERS

In part I agree with you QS, but if you haven't been in a company where the practice is very obvious where salaries for a certain nationality is 100% higher than the others, you may argue, you may insist but reality bites...It's really happening out there..

I would agree that a european passport opens doors and means you get better offers, and also as mentioned above have heard of brits getting into construction jobs which they would not be able to do in UK due to not having qualifications or appropriate experience. I knew of one brit guy who became a general manager for a company and he had only foreman skills, he made a complete mess but left and went to another company and was offered more money!!

Where you have done your study makes a difference too as some countries will be looked upon as the degree being weak or possibly even fake!

exiledsaint: hmmm, i'd look at it another way. say i am british and hold a masters from KCL.

say, now i am from pakistan and hold the same qualifications from UET. KCL and UET are half-decent unis in their respective countries.

how much was spent on my education and training by the govt/me in both countries? the reason behind the difference in costs is another debate.

This was a couple of years ago but I did a few calcs out of interest.

I compared myself to one of my Filipino colleagues and to have the same multiple of salary as compared to my home base and to them have the same purchasing power in my home country I need to be making a base salary of in excess of 200,000 pounds a year. Unfortunately that is not the case...

Its not a perfect argument but just up for discussion:

Say you pay the westerner and non - westerner the same money and both can save 100,000 QR a year.

For the westerner a house in his country where he has to return is 2 million QR. So it will take 20 years before he can afford to buy a house for his family. Plus he has to live there and the cost of living is 5 times that of the non-westerner's country.

The non-westerners house costs 200,000 QR, so they can pay their house off in just two years, plus the cost of living back home is substantially less.

This is the basis of why we accept jobs here on the money we do. However don't tell me that the non-western person should have the right to move to a western country so should get the same salary because it is not Qatar's responsibility to improve the lives of other nationals. For that you need to look at your own governments.

At the end of the day there is a simple choice for all of us. If you do not like the offer you do not have to come.

withnail: agree with you. anyone who has worked/lived in the west would know how structured every aspect of life is there. there are procedures and processses for everything and it is not really a choice to ignore them. people are brought up with the training that everything should be done in a certain manner. developing countries are trying to achieve all that. hence the differnce in their attitudes and behaviours.

small example if it does not get deleted. check out any discussion forum on bbc. its clearly explained that the forum is moderated fully/reactively and house rules are stated. do we have that here? i see people use abusive language here and get away with it. i see something is said in jest and it gets deleted.

I agree with your soft skills part...but education and experience I doubt..A person who was working as a carpenter in UK is working as construction manager here..why??

promotion is a different issue. I agree with you, FS.. In Qatar, I noticed they do not promote! There is the certain logic in it. Country brings you here for the particular job on the contract basis. They don’t have to care about you making your career, they need you for the certain job for the certain time. You have done you job, you can go home or wherever you want.

I know one girl, she used to work for some company for over 4 years, always performing excellent. When the next level in her department became available, she surely applied for this position. High education, work experience and her excellent performance – she had everything to get this position. She got refused. She submitted the resignation letter. Management was begging her to stay! But still, they couldn’t give her the vacancy. She left the company and went back home, thanks God she has a good place where to go (again, if this girl was different nationality, she most likely would stay, as her home country would probably offer her even less than she had here)

I don’t like this practice either, and I don’t agree with it.. but as I said, you can see here a strong logic.

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“You become responsible forever for what you have tamed”. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

An Accountant from the state of Kerala in INDIA got the following offer from us.

Salary QR 2500

Sharing Accomodation (2 to a Room)

Transport to office & back.

1 return ticket after 1 year service.

Health card from HMC

He grab the chance and 100's are waiting for a simmilar oportunity. got it.

while there are certainly some westerners who are overpaid, on average westerners have better experience and better education. on average they also have better soft skills - communication, task orientated, organizational, management, flexibility, etc.

this is my fourth year working outside the west. i work in finance. i have met plenty of accountants from developing countries who have an accounting degree from somewhere and who are technically proficient. but i would still say they are not great at their jobs because being a good accountant is not the same as being a good finance professional. many of them don't try to improve the processes at their work. many of them don't communicate well. many of them don't try to integrate themselves into the organization and educate non-finance people about how they fit into the whole, etc. etc. etc. many of them are happy to show up, go through the processes, and do nothing more.

to simply say you get more pay because of nationality is rubbish. of course there are exceptions but companies pay more for a reason. how can anyone seriously argue against this during these times of layoffs and downsizing? if the past decades have shown us anything it is that companies will do whatever it takes to improve profit. if they could get people from developing countries much cheaper to do the jobs they are paying westerners for, they would do it. if they are not doing it, then there is good reason (on average). anyone who disputes this does not understand how the world and business works (and one could argue that not understanding how the world and business works is one of the reasons they are making less money than others who do understand how the world and business works).

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"Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day." Withnail & I

hmm based on my observations and experiences i'd like to add to the above posts that i'd be a bit reluctant to say that it is down to one's nationality ie passport only. i think the class system (in all societies) plays an important role here.

i used to work with IIT, Mumbai. wherever their graduates went, they were offered salaries no less than any well-educated westerner. but at the same time, unfortunately, there are many indian IT fellows who accept really low salaries. Same is the case with another poor country like Pakistan. i have friends with Pakistani education (no foreign degrees) who work with NASA. there are also pakistanis here with masters who are working as taxi drivers.

Qatarisun: agree with you. just want to share with you that some households in asia speak queens english only. their accents, grammer and understanding of the language is unbelievable.

QS what you are talking is a different issue...we can very well understand what you are saying.

there are companies here who offer more if they are holding a western passport..no matter what his qualification and experience is.. who in fact don’t know to prepare a technical document..forget about preparing cannot even comprehend a technical issue…whereas there maybe people in the same company who are more qualified and experienced than this person..why cant they promote him? and take a new person for the lower position??

You cannot deny it...am not saying all companies...but it’s a normal practice in many companies in this part of the world.

it' s not because of NATIONALITY itself.. but rather coz ceratin nationalities possess certain skills which other nationalities don't... simple...

.. even from my own experience. We are currently looking for the NATIVE English speaking FEMALE. This particular person will represent our company, it’s like a “Face of the Company”… We are willing to pay to the right person as much as she wants…Our Clients are all international western companies. We need someone who perfectly speaks English with no accent.. sorry.. it has nothing to do with the racism or so.. it is a strictly matter of business success… By the way she might be black, red, yellow.. whatever her skin color is.. but she has to look representative and to have an English as her Mother language…

this is just a sample.

Now. Second factor is : for how much YOU agree to work for the company. How many times people ask on QL something like : Is that a good offer: 3500 basic+sharing accommodation for the engineering position?? .. How many times we say: it is a BAD offer .. but people from certain countries MUST grab this offer, coz they have nothing better back home.. now ask a Germany engineer whether he will accept this offer? he will be laughing ... So.. IF the company desperately needs this particular Engineer, it will pay to him as much as he wants (see above).

Approach to the matter is different:

-specialist from country “A” is desperate for the job. Company says: we will pay that much, take it or leave it.

-specialist from country “B” doesn’t really need a job, as he’s got one back home, but Qatari company attracts him with an excellent salary and other benefits..

... So, i'd rather blame the governments of some countries which cannot provide a decent life for their citizens, who are desperately looking for any job anywhere in the world..

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“You become responsible forever for what you have tamed”. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

amen bro!

Your passport, your luck and of course the mercy of the company which is hiring you!

Your Passport has more value than Education & Experience in this part of the world.