Absolutely. Worked as a pilot many years abroad(still do in a kind of way as an Austrian living and working in Italy, but at least it's in the free world and you can ALWAYS react in a PROPER way IF your empolyer decides to make up fishy reasons "to let you go"), Australia, Middle East(Qatar, another dark chapter in my life), been flying in and out of the who is who of horrible places on this, generally beautiful, world.
You need to have a certain "mindset" to survive longterm in the ME, mainly just ignore whatever they are doing and staying "fine" with it. If you can do that, you are perfect ME airline material. OR - you do it as many FO in my(!!!!ty) airline are doing - take what you get to find a way out(IMHO this only works for young people, old farts like me, with only few years left to retirement just should sit the !!!! till retirement), get the type on that heavy, see how it goes(most leave on very nice terms with our current airline because they want a way back in, as others did already, just in case things go south in the sandpit), take some profit shares and see something else, starting to compare what is important in each individuals life(some like the cage - I always asked myself(and my wife) - "what the !!!! they put into their water"
to see the ME so chill, others don't).
As
nickler writes so nicely - they hire DEC's to get hated by everyone(FO that get jumped in internal upgrades), YOU have to take the heat, YOU are expected to do the job the airline should do(a proper induction, a proper linetraining onto the LH seat without an incredible amount of stress). I mean, even QR managed that(and assume they still do) direct entry widebody Captains(was one myself many many years ago) get properly inducted, get a fair sim training, fair and good linetraining and finally a release to line(I did it in 20 sectors, no idea if that is good or not) just to fly with some(times) very sceptical FO(as you "jumped their line" - later you do not wonder why they put you in front of them
) . If have nothing bad bad memories of the ME "airline experience". I brought my family after 5 months and that was a very long time for us to be apart. 1 year is just absurde - but hey, if you like shiny jets OR have no family, it might be ok(after all humans are different, that's the #1 lesson I learnd in life(just followed by "humans are snakes and will backstab whenever they can" ;-) ).
So, be very careful what you go for and if you really want to waste so much of your life to an airline that will fire you in an blink of an eye if it is convenient for them(hello covid ;-) ). ME - EK, QR. VERY overrated. Nobody wonders why they are continuously recruiting. Since decades....