Pros
Salary is still good . However, from what I understand, after I left, the summer vacation was cut short by about 7 weeks and everyone will now have to do summer school or 'busy work' for no extra pay, so in effect I think this is about a 5 % pay cut. Up until summer 2019 there were wonderful long summer vacations of 10 - 12 weeks (depending on Eid tagging on) and summer school was an optional extra that a lot of people wanted to do because it was paid pro rata and they still got a good long vacation. Good opportunities for in house PD though attendance funding for TESOL Arabia was cut. You could really feel the cutting back over the last few years I was there. For example, faculty had to pay for certain laptop repairs or replacements which wasn't so in earlier years.
Cons
No salary rises for several years unless you were on a very low point on the scale. Going over to cash housing (as opposed to uni paid housing where ZU took on the tenancy) meant that unless you are a couple with no children - (families with kids really came out badly) - you might find that you would have to go for an inferior apartment (the decrease in rents in Abu Dhabi, however, did make going on to cash housing beneficial to some people, as they could pocket the difference). Cash housing also means you are liable for the municipality charge added on to the electricity and water bill every month. With a couple of exceptions, I didn't find colleagues particularly friendly or supportive - you only really met people in your own department unless you were a smoker. Apparently the smokers corner is the place to meet people and socialize - and I even heard of non-smokers dropping in to get the latest gossip. HR (human capital) is a nightmare. Nasty and unhelpful people who think you should be beholden to them and that they are doing you a special favour. One colleague dubbed them 'sub human' resources - even lower than 'inhuman resources' that they were often called. We often wondered why we weren't asked to rate them, as all the administrators, professors and teachers have to be, by their peers or students. But I think the rating would be so low as to be an embarrassment to the university. Students are mostly nice enough but in what was ABP before it morphed into something else, it was difficult to motivate them. The English entry level to the uni is now supposed to have been raised, so maybe not having those very low level students will make a difference. I found when I was there, a lot of students, did everything possible to get out of doing any work but wanted the maximum grades. You kind of get into the way of how it is in the Gulf, grade adjustments so even weak students pass, etc. There is also a huge move towards catering for special needs students, so teachers who have no experience of this are often obliged to have one or two special needs students in their class with very little back up. Having had this more often than not, it has been both good and bad - I enjoyed trying to help my special needs students, but I would say I would spend on average about 3 hours a week extra catering to their needs - and it is the luck of the draw whether you get them or not (though if you have done a good job, you are more likely to get a special needs student again - so maybe don't do a good job if you think it a burden!) I might add that when I left in May 2019, it was the biggest cohort of leavers ever - across both AD and Dubai campuses. I wonder if this is significant!