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Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Aug 30, 2008 11:38 PM
from the change-of-atmosphere dept.
from the change-of-atmosphere dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I am a American citizen with a masters in Computer Science from a 3rd tier college and 4 years of work experience under my belt. I would like to work somewhere abroad in Europe for a couple years before I get too settled in life but have no clue where to start. I only speak English but would love to learn a second language. What sort of opportunities are there for American citizens to work abroad? What countries offer the best opportunity to balance a challenging work environment with enough vacation to explore the rest of Europe in my free time? Any hassles I should know about?"
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Submission: Programming Jobs Abroad for a US Citizen by Anonymous Coward
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In Soviet Russia (Score:4, Funny)
code writes you... ?
Interestingly enough ... (Score:4, Insightful)
tier? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was not aware US colleges had some sort of official tier. Who defines these tiers? What are the criteria?
Re:tier? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was not aware US colleges had some sort of official tier.
There is no tier system. The submitter hasn't figured out that outside of academia, nobody really cares where you went to school only what you can actually do.
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Re:tier? (Score:5, Insightful)
outside of academia, nobody really cares where you went to school only what you can actually do.
If you really believe that, you are desperately naive.
Keep in mind that we're talking about the European job market.
If it's not Ivy League or MIT, we've never heard about it.
When you've picked a country you want to work in, don't forget to read up on the local education standards.
A few years back things started changing here, we've got bachelors and masters here too now, but they might be slightly different to the American model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_process [wikipedia.org]
Just so you know how your degree compares to the locals'.
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Re:tier? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:tier? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:tier? (Score:5, Funny)
Remind me never to buy another one of their locks.
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Re:tier? (Score:5, Insightful)
outside of academia, nobody really cares where you went to school only what you can actually do."
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." -- G.Marx
I've hired about 100 programmers in my career. There were a few rare gems among the self-educated, but you had to apply a bit of focus to the educated, too. The ones who brought samples of their work and were willing to enthuse over it in the interview were the ones I kept. Sometimes their code was a little off, but I found it fairly easy to get someone to change direction when they were actually covering ground. The theorists I bought a coffee and sent them politely on their way. Which school they went to was utterly irrelevant, except that I did get a larger proportion of twits from the more expensive schools (some good folk too, but the better-school twits were ferociously attitudinal)
I'm not sure if it was Joe Spolsky or Sergy Brin who said it -- hire people who are smart and get things done. Brains plus energy, gotta have both.
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Re:tier? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy - if you've never heard of it, it's a third tier college.
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Re:tier? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:tier? (Score:5, Funny)
"Sure they do: snotty, good, small, and fake."
Sorry, only just woke up half-way down the comments. Are we talking about breasts again?
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Re:tier? (Score:4, Informative)
US News and World report started the bullshit a long time ago. There used to be 4 of them, now they skip the second one or something. Someone else in the replies here linked the full details.
Basically:
If you've heard of the school (in an acedemic sense, not fucking sports), it's probably first tier.
If you haven't heard of it, it's probably third tier (second gets skipped, wtf?).
If you've heard of it from a TV ad or spam e-mail, it's probably fourth tier.
There is no official clear-cut guidline other than their annual rankings. It's overhyped bullshit that it likely making US News a ton of money.
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Re:tier? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it is just automatically assumed universities with good research programs also teach undergrads well? I would think there is very little connection between the two.
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Hrmm? (Score:4, Funny)
"I am a American citizen "
Are you sure you speak English?
Here are a few job boards for Canada and UK. (Score:5, Informative)
I live in Canada, but I'm being sponsored to work in the US, so I will more than likely be working on the US side in the next month or 2.
However, if you wish to work in Canada or the UK, you can try these job boards.
http://www.jobshark.ca/caeng/index.cfm
http://www.jobserve.com/ [jobserve.com]
Now as for balancing pleasure with business, gee, I could always make a joke about working in a country where the "siesta" is mandatory :P but the truth is, I don't know. All I know is that in Canada, you could always challenge yourself to learn French. For me, being bilingual it obviously works well. But the truth is, if you had to learn a new language, I would suspect the following languages would be beneficial: spanish, mandarin, japanese, russian, german.
Re:Here are a few job boards for Canada and UK. (Score:5, Informative)
For Sweden you have the official job agency ArbetsfÃrmedlingen [arbetsformedlingen.se].
As for being an American in Sweden it's no big deal. I have a workmate from Vancouver that has moved here. And on an earlier place there were a few too. Most people in Sweden speaks English too, so the language barrier isn't huge, and the cultural barrier is relatively small too. In fact small enough that some companies tests their new brands and products in Sweden before they release them in the US.
As for computer related work you do have a few of the international businesses like Accenture, IBM, HP, Logica [logica.com] over here too, but also a few local ones like Ã...F [www.af.se], Cybercom Group [cybercomgroup.com], Epsilon [epsilon.nu], Semcon [semcon.se], Sigma [sigma.se].
So there are a few to pick from. But the use for Swedish outside Scandinavia is very small, so if you want to do this for learning a new language it may be better to pick one of the bigger languages like German, Spanish, Italian or French. Maybe Switzerland is a good place, since they have four different languages in that country.
Just be aware that people in some countries or areas of countries are less welcoming to Americans and that you will have to expect them trying to get you into heated discussions about American presidents, especially Bush...
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Switzerland (Score:5, Informative)
I guess I can shed some light on the situation in Switzerland.
There are four spoken languages here: German, Italian, French and Romanic. Typically, reasonably large companies in Switzerland have offices in at least two language areas, typically German and French or German and Italian. While the Swiss have their own version of German (which Germans don't understand when they first hear it), they will usually use the official version when talking to non-Swiss. So you can easily learn German, French and Italian in Switzerland.
All working-age Swiss speak English. There are some older people who may never have learned English, but you can easily get by even if you only know English.
I have a few American friends who live and work in Switzerland (Google has an office here, so there's tons of American Google programmers over here :-), and they seem to love it, so I guess I would recommend Switzerland. Also, we're always hiring good programmers :-)
When looking for programming jobs, I would start out in Zurich; there's a lot of software companies in Zurich.
I think admin.ch [admin.ch] should have information on how to apply for jobs and such.
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English at work countries... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:English at work countries... (Score:5, Funny)
People Generally consider GB and Ireland to be part of Europe, much as many in GB/Ir would like to disagree.
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I had a somewhat similar desire (Score:5, Insightful)
... except my primary concern was learning the language, and then finding work. Specifically, I wanted to live in Japan, so I ended up going to a language school full time there for a year and a half, and then after that finding work. If your primary concern is just living and working abroad, and language secondary, I would think that would be possible in many places in Europe. If language is important to you though, I would strongly recommend that you first study the language in the country you've chosen, and then find work. This is because 1. It's much easier to study when you don't have to work at the same time. 2. It will make you a more attractive hire. 3. Since you'll have put significant effort into learning the language (as opposed to just doing it in your free time while working), it will become a skill that will stay with you and that you can draw upon in the future.
So that didn't really answer the questions you were asking, but I thought it was something that was important to address....
Africa would be a better deal (Score:5, Interesting)
I submit to you that with your programming skills, you could gain valuable experience imparting knowledge and working in the developing world. One thing I'd like to advise you on, is to have a very open mind in case you decide to go to Africa. Africa is not what CNN, ABC, CBS and FOX show the American public. It's much more lively and socially better than USA in some cases.
I was in for a shock when on my very first visit to Africa, I met a country (Uganda) with pretty modest infrastructure compared to what I had in mind. I had to get used to the food though. I met Americans who decided years ago to call Africa home.
There are tonnes of dollars from the American government going to Africa through agencies like CARE, USAID, Americares, UNICEFUSA and many others.
So be open and brave man and consider Africa.
Try France. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Try France. (Score:4, Funny)
LOL. The country folk are OK in France... though everyone knows Parisians are douches no matter where you come from.
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Re:Try France. (Score:5, Funny)
There, fixed it for you.
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Re:Try France. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think so. Lots of Europeans dislike the US government and are "concerned" (to put it midly) about the american people because of http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml [cbsnews.com]. We can understand the Bush-phenomena since all countries have that kind of politicians, but it's a bit harder to understand the 19th century mentality of (the majority of?) americans.
However, most americans who come here (Europe) to work or study are rational and civilized (at least the ones I've met) and therefore appreciated. (Except for the missionaries, who are seen as some kind of excotic animals.)
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Go to India (Score:5, Funny)
And get some of that sweet in-sourced work from the US.
Re:Go to India (Score:5, Informative)
This may not be a bad idea actually. Salaries in India can actually be pretty high, up to 2/3rds of what US workers are making. India is not the bargain it once was for outsourcing. If you can find a good job there in a specific area of technical expertise or in a leadership role for a US organization you can do well. And in India, my understanding is that tech workers speak English on the job as it is considered the language of business.
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Working Holiday Visa (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to work in Europe, speaking English with an opportunity to learn another language, your options are the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden & Norway & Nokia (oops, I mean Finland)
All of these countries have high tech sectors that their own populations can't sustain & import foreign workers (from all over the place) who use English as a working lingua fraca.
All the countries I listed above allow working Holiday visas for 1-2 years for many western countries (not sure about the US, sorry) for workers under the age of 31.
If you can't get such a visa, consider the same countries, but apply for jobs online, making it clear that you need a visa / sponsorship / whatever.
Good luck!
Re:Working Holiday Visa (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry to seem negative, but if my (limited, Holland/Belgium) experience is anything to go by, you will fail to learn the language in these countries. Certainly, despite attempts, I ended up with little more than a smattering of Dutch.
Why - they want to practice their (already good) English. So it's hard.
And you are never going to learn Finnish. It's impossible, apparently. (There's a rumour that even Finns speak to other in English when no one else is listening, but it might not be true).
It's fun though! Go for it.
(Personally, I'm always pleased when I meet an American that even knows there are other countries, let alone has actually been there)
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Re:Working Holiday Visa (Score:4, Informative)
:D
I wish I hadn't posted so I could mod this up :)
I think the Dutch are very excited to speak English, but you'll only get that at work. The moment you go to the store, the lady behind the deli counter won't speak a nit of English - possibly purely stubborn, I am sure they know English, they just don't want to think in it (let's be honest, meat and cheese in other languages is not something you'd commit to memory even if you worked in it). The other problem is that Dutch companies (unlike German or French companies) won't pay you to go learn Dutch. They're happy with your English. A lot of German companies will sign you up to a conversation-level German language course, before they put you in for anything else like a CCNA or MCSE whatever.
You pick it up eventually, and can get around, to the point that you are at the same risk of getting some kind of throat cancer practising your words.. I've heard actually the best way is to have a kid, and send them to school. They come back speaking Dutch, and you HAVE to learn it..
I think there is a definite toss-up though between learning a marginal, single-country language (Finnish, Swedish) for that country, and learning a more generic and "mainstream" one (French, German, etc.). You can get around France, Switzerland, Belgium and most of the Netherlands with French. Same with German, and you can add Austria to it too. If the intent is to travel around Europe, knowing Norwegian is not going to get you very far outside of Norway..
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Re:Working Holiday Visa - Wrong countries (Score:5, Informative)
It's easy to practice Dutch. Just ride your bicycle into the countryside and get lost. I guarantee that the person of whom you ask directions will not speak English. Or French. Or German. Not only that, although they will understand your Dutch, you won't be able to understand the response because it will be in some non-standard dialect. :)
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American Citizens working abroad (Score:5, Funny)
" What sort of opportunities are there for American citizens to work abroad?"
Lots of opportunities with this outfit:
[URL]http://www.marines.com/page/usmc.jsp[/URL]
"Any hassles I should know about?"
Nothing we can't train you for son.
On a more serious note, if you are under 29 there is a class of working VISA available in many countries that allows you to work there for up to 12 months with few restrictions.
Maybe Sweden? (Score:5, Interesting)
Without knowing too much details about the alternatives it seems to me that Sweden would fit your bill nicely for the following reasons:
* Large IT-sector which regularly accepts English-speaking foreign labor in their workforce with no demands for knowing any Swedish.
* English is the second language and is spoken more or less fluently among most of the population (especially the younger one), more so than in Germany, France or Finland.
* Safe, generally non-violent place with all kinds of security nets if things would go wrong, like (almost) free hospitals.
* 25 days of vacation per year guaranteed by law. Most people have 4 weeks of continuous vacation during the summer which is a great time to travel around the rest of Europe.
Only thing speaking against Sweden as far as I can see is that it might not be exotic enough for your taste since it both culturally and geographically is quite close to your neighbor in north, Canada.
The Netherlands (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, whichever country you choose, I wish you a great time!
:-).
ps. for anyone that goes to Holland for a longer time, you might want to read The Undutchables [amazon.com] to prevent any culture shock
Singapore (Score:4, Informative)
It's also a pretty foreigner-friendly environment so the transition when moving is very easy to handle.
A job in Germany... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hello original submitter - I have no idea if you'll read this or not, since it's probably destined to be buried right at the bottom of your view, well below MANY pointless discussions about things completely offtopic.
The company I work for, in Germany, is currently looking for a programmer type working closely with me (also a programmer). The job is about 25% actual coding, 50% helping other programmers with our own specific API and 25% other stuff (including various kinds of planning meetings, lots of travel around Europe and occasional travel outside of Europe (Japan being the most common, but US from time to time also)).
We're looking for someone with good C# knowledge, since that's what our API is based around, however strong Java and web-based skills is also a very big plus for something else we'll be doing quite soon.
I've actually already passed on one slashdotter's resume (a guy from Chicago) to my boss, and we have NO problem looking outside of Germany (we're required to look within Germany first, but the response has been less than stellar so far, so once we've finished looking inside Germany, we'll open it up to anyone, anywhere). I myself also do not come from Europe originally, so I myself am pretty good evidence we'll hire from anywhere if we need to. English is the defacto standard language for business in our company since we're the European HQ of a large multi-national. German is good to learn for "day to day life" here, but it's definitely not required for work.
If you're interested, please send me an email - my slashdot username minus the last 3 characters at Google's mail provider.
(if the other slashdotter who I have already talked to about this job reads this - don't worry, we haven't forgotten you or thrown away your resume - you're still in the running as well)
Come To Slovakia (Score:5, Funny)
Try Iraq (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What opportunities for a European in the USA (Score:5, Funny)
You mean "they're" and "there".
I see what you did they're.
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Re:elect obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop bringing the fucking election into everything! Just stop it!
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Re:elect obama (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:elect obama (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're half right and half wrong. Speaking as one of probably only a handful of English speaking foreigners who holds down an IT job in Japan outside of Tokyo, it's a tough place to get into. A lot of people who claim the Japanese are hard on foreigners have a huge chip on their shoulder and far too often mistake legitimate job rejection for racism. Put yourself in a Japanese employer's shoes - you're interviewing 5 candidates, 4 of whom are native Japanese speakers and 1 who can barely string together a basic conversation. Who is going to be the easier to work with. Given that the interview process is often more about finding reasons to reject than reasons to employ (in any culture), it's a no brainer that the foreigner is going to have a very tough time unless they've studied the language to a pretty high level.
That said, in my experience if there are jobs that do benefit from having a foreigner in the position (which sadly are very very few), companies will often bend over backwards to assist you overcome the language barrier, which the Japanese themselves recognize as a huge problem.
If you're willing to put up with the unbearable heat and stifling humidity of Tokyo or perhaps Osaka, there are opportunities there with both Japanese and foreign firms. I personally know an IT recruiter/headhunter there who specializes in foreign recruits, and he must have opportunities because he keeps hitting me up with questions about whether I'm looking for anything.
Videogames are an extremely unlikely route in though. Visit any web forum relating to employment in Japan and you'll see a queue a mile long of foreigners wanting to find out how to get into either a) manga art or b) videogames programming in Japan. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that a large number of Japanese kids grow up wanting to to do the same, so it's a fiercely difficult industry to get into even for homegrown talent.
Just as an aside, I will pick you up on one point. Contrary to popular belief, most developed countries have more or less caught up with Japan now cellphone wise. It's true that in the past Japan was well ahead of everything else, but more recently the handsets that are coming out, particularly in Europe, have pretty similar feature sets to what's available over here.
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Re:Stay the fuck where you are! (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect it's largely because of the World Wars that the US currently has such a bad odor in Europe. Europeans know very well what happens when a large, prosperous country with a strong military starts thinking it has a natural right to dominate the world.
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You're wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, Europe used to love America.
I grew up in the 90s. People over here had "America" stickers on their skateboards, wore baseball caps from US teams, had 49ers jackets, listened to Michael Jackson and every kid wanted to grow up to be like Chuck Norris. People actually bought US cars, and most sports gear was from US brands.
A lot of people spent their holidays in the US, and many planned to move there after finishing school. Having friends in the US automatically made you the cool kid.
Second, Europe doesn't hate America now; certainly not as much as the Americans seem to hate the French.
We obviously don't love the United States as much as we used to, but most Europeans are perfectly capable of distinguishing between a government and the people. We realize that a lot of Americans are unhappy with what their government is doing. We realize that you suffer more from your government's actions than we do (it doesn't exactly hurt us if your government takes away your freedoms). Our American Style Pizza is still called American Style Pizza and was never renamed to Freedom Pizza or something like this.
You are very welcome over here. There's no animosity.
As for the article's original question, programmers are always sought after in Europe. I know a few Americans how have moved over here (ironically, the opposite of what I thought would happen even a decade ago), and they seem to be happy with their choice (although sadly, they could not come with us when we went on holidays in Cuba - what the hell is up with that???).
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Re:You're wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
We obviously don't love the United States as much as we used to, but most Europeans are perfectly capable of distinguishing between a government and the people. We realize that a lot of Americans are unhappy with what their government is doing.
This is true, but after electing bush, twice, it has become very, very difficult to argue that there is a difference between the american people and the american government. If mccain gets elected this time around, the american people deserves his presidency for all I care.
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Re:Stay the fuck where you are! (Score:5, Insightful)
Before 9/11 Europeans just called us "fat and ugly", now they can call us "warmongerer's". Which is Ironic considering that the worse humanitarian disaster in the history of humanity was caused exclusively by Europeans (WWI and WWII).
While there is truth in that, I also think that is quite a statement coming from an Anonymous Coward from the only country on earth who ever used the atomic bomb. Twice. On civilian targets. WWII was dirty beyond imagination from both sides - and that includes the USA.
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Re:Stay the fuck where you are! (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical European who has no idea how the US government works. George Bush is only one part. Learn the facts then come back to a US based website to debate.
Typical American, validates every preconceptions Europeans have of you with three poorly written sentences :-)
Seriously though, there's really no question that not re-electing Bush would have stopped some of the madness.
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bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
None whatsoever, as a general rule. All countries (and EU) protect their labor market and do not allow foreigners to just come and work.
You do need to get a job offer and get the paperwork done ahead of time, but there are no significant problems for high-tech workers to get work permits in European nations: the process is generally quick and pretty painless.
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Re:South africa (Score:4, Informative)
Continuing the outside-Europe-theme, Australia and New Zealand could be worth considering. New Zealand has the lowest unemployment in the OECD and is there's plenty of demand for IT people. In Australia the demand is even greater. Tax is roughly on a par with the UK (maybe slightly better in Australia, slightly worse in NZ).
You could also try asking US firms - particularly in the finance sector big US financials will tend to have EMEA (London, Paris, Frankfurt, etc) and APAC (Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland - plus Tokyo, Singapore, etc) offices, with significant regional IT needs. Speak to someone locally about work globally, and you'll have good contacts when/if you return to the US.
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