Before I start, I wanted to say I have been apart of this community for over 3 years now and greatly trust the amount of thought and time taken in giving opinions here, so that is why I am asking on this forum.
I know this is sort of off topic, but I am a coder out of the Washington, DC area and I am about to be offered a job to go to IRAQ for 1 year at a pay of around $200k.
I am wondering, if offered, should I actually take it? I enjoy my job here and have actually just been transferred here about 4 months ago.
200k is a lot of money, I would be able to pay off all my student loans which equals about 80k and have some left over to invest in and maybe take another year off for setting up my own software project. I would also take the time off there to code and really focus on a project or two that I always wanted to get off the ground.
On another note, I truly live to experience. I love new experiences and this would truly be a once in a lifetime experience, so do I do it?
I can be debt free and sit and code hard for 1 year and push out something amazing also while enjoying the time in a greatly different country than what I am used to.
I do appreciate the responses!
1) Afghanistan can still be dangerous. The risk for a trigger puller/door kicker is very high, but for an IT contractor it's about the same as riding a motorcycle 50-100mi/day in Seattle.
2) Iraq is actually safer (on base, for IT contractors) than living in a lot of big but not especially nice cities. The biggest risk is honestly chronic health conditions (like a heart attack) or people having emotional/relationship/etc. issues and self-inflicted injury.
3) Kuwait is INSANE. Specifically, driving off-base is insane. I drive about 2-3h/day between US bases, and see one obviously-fatal motor vehicle accident on the highways every day. The only time in my life I've ever done CPR and treated arterial bleeding (I'm an IT guy, not a doctor!) was responding to a Kuwaiti on Kuwaiti vehicle accident a couple years ago. I'd say the risk is about the same as riding 50-100 miles/day on a motorcycle, drunk, in a not-especially-motorcycle-friendly city.
4) Qatar is like Kuwait only safer.
5) Bahrain is safer than Kuwait and fun, except on Thursday/Friday when lots of drunk Saudi weekend guys show up, turning it into Kuwait-level danger.
There are lots of reasons to do or not do this, but safety is basically not an issue (except if you're driving between bases in Kuwait, which people don't really do)