Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? 836
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?"
In Soviet Russia (Score:4, Funny)
code writes you... ?
Interestingly enough ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The same applies to the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. France, Spain and Italy are probably an option as well, but in general their English language skills are worse. That said, it is probably a better place to learn a language (becaues many people don't speak English, you have to), and French and Spanish are the more useful languages compared to Dutch or German.
tier? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was not aware US colleges had some sort of official tier. Who defines these tiers? What are the criteria?
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Ah, no. Most professional societies rank departments according to various productivity indicators, including papers published, journal quality for those papers, PhDs/Masters granted, external funding and a few others here and there. Using these rankings, tiers are established. Law schools, med schools, CS departments, Math departments, chem, physics and on and on. And it is indeed official in the sense the it is agreed upon by the professional society of a given discipline and hence agreed upon by the fo
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
In the real world, there are two tiers of university: name-brand, and everyone else.
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'.
Re:tier? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:tier? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:tier? (Score:5, Funny)
Remind me never to buy another one of their locks.
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.
Re:tier? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of my most talented (and well paid) co-workers had a degree in Saxophone from a conservatory.
Strange you should mention that. The very best programmers -- the genius coders -- I had working for me, with rare exception, had a background in classical music and played one or more instruments. I'm not sure that's causative, but there was a clear trend.
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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First tier is the Ivy League.
Second tier is most public universities and "lesser" private universities.
Third tier is National American University, ITT Tech, and DeVry.
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Uhhh... no.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/ [rankingsandreviews.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see any reference to "tiers" in that link. At any rate, I was joking. For future reference, unless a post of mine is indescribably brilliant, you should probably just assume it is supposed to have a winking smiley thing after it. Since nothing I write ever approaches brilliant, you can probably assume everything I write is intended as humor, even if it's painfully unfunny.
Re: (Score:2)
For future reference, unless a post of mine is indescribably brilliant, you should probably just assume it is supposed to have a winking smiley thing after it.
Maybe you should include a link to this post in your .sig, just so everyone won't have an excuse. :)
Re:tier? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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.
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.
Re:tier? (Score:4, Informative)
Mod parent up. The good research schools may be loaded with brilliant professors but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching, or that they even care about teaching.
Hrmm? (Score:4, Funny)
"I am a American citizen "
Are you sure you speak English?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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...
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I will strongly recommend both Sweden and Denmark. They both have very strong economies currently and very low unemployment. Denmark alone is missing thousands of IT professional to fill vacant positions. As for a choice between Denmark and Sweden; Denmark pays around 25% higher salaries but is 25% more expensive to live in, so evens out unless you are looking to save up. IT salaries for non-educated developers starts at 5000$/month, for a computer scientist they start around 7000$/month.
English at work countries... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also, don't forget the international organizations. Many of them have English as one of their official languages, and a desire to hire Americans (because we help foot the bill). Examples include UNESCO, the OECD, and the IEA. It helps to have a more well rounded education than just programming, but definitely have a look.
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.
Re:English at work countries... (Score:4, Informative)
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a) people don't eat curry in the EU
The UK is in the EU and we eat lots of curry there. Wherever you happen to be there might not be lots of curry eaten but don't generalize to regions of the EU you know nothing about - our diversity is one of our strengths.
We do have water in the toilets. The function of the water is to seal the pipe to prevent odours coming in from the sewers and not to fill the entire toilet bowl as seems to be the fashion in the US.
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.
Geekcorp or the like (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Africa would be a better deal (Score:4, Funny)
And their flag has a AK-47 on it, very welcoming :)
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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I also don't know of any international corporations that use French as the corporate language.
I work for a French multinational. Company policy is that the local language is to be used for meetings at each site. So German is the official language at our sites in Germany, English is standard in Australia, the US and the UK. French is obviously used in France.
Re:Try France. (Score:5, Funny)
There, fixed it for you.
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.)
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.
Working abroad is an experience worth doing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well as a person who now lives and works abroad I can say it something that everyone should do.
It has many benefits. Least of which is cash.
First off and most importantly it opens your eyes to the greater culture of the planet. Being someone from the "new" world this is even more important. As North America suffers from a homoginised culture. Less so Canada.
Secondly the experience both for work and personal. Work wise your experience in different cultures working can only help you back at home. Secondly the experience you gain personally will enhance your life and alter your life priorities.
Now for the tough part the how too.
First off do your research in an area you wish to live. What is the cost of living etc. Secondly start to look at the job market in the region. Google will be your friend here.
For example: Rent in Sydney Aus in the city runs you about $400-$600au a week. That's about $350-$500us. Which for most american's is gigantic cash.
At this time several markets are suffering from a downturn in IT. So be careful. This is a particularily sensitive time for employment. Many regions of the world have laws that prefer citizens over foreign people. Others require lengthy and costly Visa and certification procedures. Also some countries foreign workers are not governed by labor laws no matter what they do. So you may not have the protections the locals do. So again this is a point of research.
If you are going to a non English speaking country. Make sure you have someone translate you CV/resume before you go. And then again when you get there. Make sure they understand the subject matter in the CV/resume. Otherwise you may end up looking like a professional gopher cage cleaner.
Some countries have issues with American's. So be careful. For example a job in Egypt for an American could have personal safety issues. ( I picked a country and random. )
Moving countries is hard work but well worth it. I have been doing it for almost 20 years. So don't be afraid. If your mind is set on it, you can do it.
I could ramble on for hours. But I'll leave it at this.
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)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Finnish is not an Indo-European language, which makes it a bit more distinct (considering that all of the languages from the Gaeltachtai of Donegal through to Bangladesh are Indo-European, except Arabic, Turkish and Hungarian).
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..
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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).
Heh, one of the reasons that we (I'm from Finland) change language to English even when English speaker can speak little bit of Finnish, is that people whose first language is English pronounce Finnish such an awful way. It is really painful to listen, so we return the compliment and start speaking English. :)
Germans aren't so bad at butchering our language and Spanish and Italians sound almost native. :)
Oh, and more thing. English natives tend to speak Finnish using mostly nominatives and only small subset
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. :)
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.
Go for a masters abroad - Plenty of work on campus (Score:3, Interesting)
There are very strong English language masters programs available in engineering schools and universities in Sweden [www.ltu.se] and Finland [www.tkk.fi] (also this one [www.uta.fi]), and presumably the rest of Scandinavia as well.
You haven't lived till you've biked over a frozen lake or read a book in perfect daylight at 2AM. Some schools have industries right next to campus to tap the student labor force and nearly all the universities have ample jobs for masters students right there on campus. This is also the perfect choice to allow you to maximize your vacation opportunities - Cheap student rates and lengthy school breaks. A university is also the ideal environment in which to study the language, both in a formal setting and with the students that are much more used to dealing with foreigners on a daily basis than the rest of the population.
That said, there's plenty of sysadmin jobs abroad under the employ of the US government, if you're willing to give up on coding at work for a while. See usajobs.gov and careers.state.gov. Simplifies dealing with visas and such.
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.
Germany (Score:3, Interesting)
According to my German wife, there is a fair amount of opportunity in Germany (she cited Berlin specifically). Well, that was a couple years ago. But, it's still worth checking out.
Also, apparently you can get by fairly well with English only in the larger cities. So, that should help you acclimate.
You also might want to consider other English speaking countries such as New Zealand. Wikipedia actually has a list of countries that have English as an official language. So, you might want to check that out.
As a last note, I'd shy away from the UK as the violence there is getting bad enough that there are reports of people leaving because of it. Not to mention all the Orwellian BS.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The statements about women and dark skinned people are 100% incorrect (NL is one of the most tolerant countries I've ever been to - there's a small racial issue with migrants from some places, but it's NOTHING like the problems elsewhere in the world).
Netherland used to be incredibly tolerant and proud of it, but Dutch politics have taken nasty turn towards xenophobia during the last decade. I'm sure it's temporary, though.
Singapore (Score:4, Informative)
It's also a pretty foreigner-friendly environment so the transition when moving is very easy to handle.
Things to consider (Score:3, Informative)
A buddy who went outside the US to an unnamed country (not in Europe) found that he was getting much lower pay for a standard Java developer job there. Plus, he noticed that places he was interviewing at, people were coming in to work rather formally dressed. He also noticed that most people would be very friendly, but wouldn't really socialize after work, and things 'died down' very quickly during the week. Of course, that is just one data point, but basically points to checking out all aspects of 'life', outside of just your day-to-day job. One of the easier transitions to make will be to join a company with offices in the US and elsewhere, and then transfer within that company to another country. Once grounded, you can choose to stay, return, or move. If you are willing to chuck up your job, you will probably have the most luck if you can actually go to the country you want to be in and meet face-to-face with companies. That, of course, is rather difficult, unless you have a support network. And paperwork. Bon Voyage! There is so much you can learn by immersing yourself in a different culture!
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)
Don't forget taxes (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
incorrect with "they're" and correct with "there"
"they are probably are not as many opportunities"
not so much
"there probably are not as many opportunities"
better
Re:elect obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop bringing the fucking election into everything! Just stop it!
Re: (Score:2)
That will take far too long, and is far from certain. The correct solution is to obtain a Canadian passport and learn to say "eh" after every sentence.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If by "productive members of society" you mean "parasite MBAs," then please, by all means, they're welcome to get the hell out. Let them go wreck some other country's economy for a while.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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To where?
Almost any other place in the world have higher taxes than the US, so unless the taxes goes over 50% in total you can forget that argument.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To where?
Almost any other place in the world have higher taxes than the US, so unless the taxes goes over 50% in total you can forget that argument.
Singapore is a good option, as long as you don't mind living in a big, mildly fascist industrial park.
Hardly (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost any other place in the world have higher taxes than the US
Only if you use Bush/Neocon/GOP math. That is, if you only consider taxes a negative and do not weigh the value of what is received in return, then the US looks like a good deal.
If you develop a major illness, you will not necessarily think that it is such a good deal.
(If you would prefer not to have millions of people killed in your name, you may also not consider it such a good deal, but that's a separate conversation.)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
While you are living in this fictional world where Republicans are "fiscal conservatives", and Democrats "tax and spend", I think I'll take a look at real evidence to the contrary.
Bah! I'm a slider and I thought I finally found my way home, but I guess this really isn't my Earth.
I should have known. The black guy running for President and the little MILF hottie running for VP should've given it away. We only run old white men vs. older white men.
By the way, you guys didn't elect Dean, right? Holy shit, was that a f*ck-up, I can't even begin to tell you. I'm sure you guys had it better these past few years than we did. You found the WMD stash in that little bunker, right?
Re:elect obama (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Heavily accented english should suffice?
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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7 years ago, I was a college student. I had no investments.
your house is worth almost 2x as much as it was in 2000
Didn't have a house then, either. I bought my house during the time before the bubble burst, where house prices were skyrocketing because banks were giving sub-prime loans to people who had no hope of being able to pay the loan off without foreclosing. As I'm sure you know, the increase in demand caused
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Obama doesn't have a fucking prayer.
What is a "fucking prayer"? A prayer that gets you laid?
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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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New Zealand has the lowest unemployment in the OECD...
New Zealand unemployment rate: 3.4%
Iceland unemployment rate: ~1%.
Re:South africa (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks - the stats I were looking at lumped all/most of Europe together on 6.9%.
Incidentally, a more recent figure is 3.8% for NZ - and Denmark, the Netherlands and (South?) Korea [1] all beat NZ (and presumably Iceland too). I believe NZ has been more affected by the current economic crisis that many other OECD countries, as it's very reliant on trade and tourism. Not sure how this affects IT (as I'm not currently job-hunting) but I'd guess that businesses may be scaling back recruitment.
[1] North Korea isn't an OECD member, and I'd imagine that the unemployment rate in North Korea is in negative figures and everyone is gloriously happy in their jobs ;-)
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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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.
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???).
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.
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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I agree that WWII was general not a model case of avoiding noncombatant casualties, but I will point out a few facts:
1. When the USAAC and RAF firebombed Dresden, they caused more casualties than in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
2. The Japanese used WMDs (as currently defined as Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons) first; estimates of casualties from their attacks on Chinese cities using plague are in the 50k to 100k range.
3. The U.S. previously avoided using WMD on Iwo Jima, which it was not necessa
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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As stated above, "third tier" mainly means schools might teach well, but have small endowments, no brand name, and little research. "Second tier" means having at least one of those (preferably two out of three), and "first tier" means having them all.
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Nah... Just expect the usual irony over the cup of coffee in the morning along with the usual jokes about American coffee...
Unless you want to work in countries that has been battered by the US recently like Serbia the worst thing you probably have to stand are comments about the US in general.