What Saudi Arabia’s surge into a post-oil future means for its people
Mohammad Hashboul has not looked back since he left oil behind.
Since leaving a promising career at state oil company Aramco for a management job at Uber in 2016, the young chemical engineer helped establish Academi, a Saudi e-learning start-up, a year before the pandemic hit.
Sitting at his desk in a leafy office park at the edge of Riyadh, he says giving up the gold standard in Saudi careers for the uncertainty of the private sector was actually an easy risk to take.
“At the time I saw great opportunity in Saudi Arabia; there was an untapped market, a rapidly evolving economy, and a real desire for change,” Mr. Hashboul says.
“I saw these changes as a high-potential opportunity that we should not miss out on. And now we are living it.”
Here in the world’s largest producer of crude, oil is increasingly regarded as old news, passé, even a career dead end.
Mr. Hashboul’s career shifts, and the seized opportunities by many like-minded young Saudis, are part and parcel of a wildly ambitious plan by Saudi leadership to transform the economy. After
