Ask HN: How to get a developer job anywhere in Europe

Answering for Germany, Berlin/Munich in particular.

1. You'll need a bachelor's degree in your field, but you won't need a masters. That said, getting a masters may give you a leg up. Postgrad education in Germany is free even for international students, the standar is high, and it gives you the opportunity to get your German up to an acceptable level. Additionally, you will have 12 months following graduation to find a full-time job. If you're looking to work for a bigger Germany company like Siemens, BMW etc., I'd seriously consider the masters.

2. Research job openings before you go. Tailor your CV. Two places to look are AngelList, and also http://berlinstartupjobs.com/ Applying online has always worked for me, but you may also want to go to some meetups while you're there. Berlin Tech Meetup https://www.meetup.com/b-tech/ is one of the largest.

3. Develop your portfolio. I had plenty of Indian colleagues at several of the companies I worked at.

Try RemoteOK as well.

I'm a migrant to Germany as a software engineer and I can tell you its probably going to be really hard if you don't at least study in Germany or are a student in your home country (I was a student when I came). You don't necessarily need to stay and get the degree but its much easier for companies to give you an internship and then hire you if you go this route. Otherwise, its a total pain in the anus for the company to hire you over a EU citizen. I've experienced both ends of this now and its basically just not worth it from a company's perspective to hire someone outside the EU unless they are a super talent and/or the company has the resources/hr to deal with all the paperwork crap.

So to answer, "In other words, can I get a work visa anywhere in Europe without having an offer in hand?" Theoretically yes, practically - highly unlikely.

Maybe its better in other EU countries but I wouldn't know.

To #2: just flying in and hoping you'll land something even with a very solid portfolio is a bad idea, since its highly unlikely any company is going to go through the hoops so you can work for them and time will be against you since the process takes a while.

I'd say if you can suck it up you should go the student route since its the path of least resistance and all you need is to be enrolled, you don't have to finish. Then get an internship since thats easy enough and make a good impression, then that company will want to do the legwork to hire you. This whole process might take about 2 years but at the end of the day you'll be set.

Landing.jobs check this out..I got a few responses here..Once from sky scanner

As someone coming from the US, my strategy was:

1) Put some effort into a side project, in my case a SaltStack tutorial that I'd wanted to do for a while.

2) Go to a conference (PyCaribbean) and meet people.

3) Reach out to recruiters in the cities I was targeting.

4) Reach out to recruiters who had emailed me in the past 2 years and to ask if they had any contacts in Europe.

#2 and #3 seem to have been the most valuable. If you want to move to Ireland, Michael Diver is communicative, ethical, and responsive.

Also, some logistical tips:

- Use https://calendly.com/ to schedule phone interviews across timezones without off-by-one errors or a lot of back-and-forth.

- When interviewing over skype, have a phone line or page on https://appear.in/ room at the ready.

- If you decide to stay in a hostel rather than hotel or airbnb, it is worth asking what type of mattress they have. http://rainymood.com/ and an external battery charger are a necessity if you want to do this.

I'd be happy to help more if you give me a bit more detail on what type of company you're interested in working for. If you're open to living in London, I really like the place I'm working and would be happy to introduce you. Our interview process looks a bit like https://gocardless.com/blog/redesigning-the-devops-interview... My email is in my profile, so feel free to get in touch.

Re 2, if that becomes your plan make sure you research immigration law in the country you choose first. It's not always legal to just move to a new country and start applying for jobs.

A history of breaking immigration rules won't help your eventual visa application.

You might want to find other Indian engineers working for companies in Europe. Maybe LinkedIn helps with that. Once you found a few, message them asking for how they did it.

1. No, that's impossible. This is why companies outsource to India instead of move Indians to Europe. If you want to work inside Europe you'll have to go through the long process of becoming European.

2. No, if you start living somewhere illegally you'll be deported. The first step is to visit Embassies.

Does India have working holiday arrangements with the EU? As a Ukrainian living in Australia without a degree, to move to Europe I got my Australian citizenship so that I could then get a working holiday visa. In the meantime I freelanced and contracted in Australia to save up money. The working holiday visa allowed me to move to my chosen European country for a year and look for work while there - much easier than trying to get a company to relocate you remotely. I ended up applying for jobs through listings on various company sites after moving and started work about 2 months after the move with a largeish company (which then assisted with applying for a proper longer-term employment visa when the time came).

Estonia has made it much easier for selected local start-ups to hire from outside the EU: http://www.startupestonia.ee/visa/estonian-startups

Might be worth checking with a selection of these companies to see if they have something for you. Good luck!

Immigration laws are very country specific. I'm Austrian, so let me tell you about the situation in Austria:

1) You don't need a degree from Europe, but you do need a degree. There are multiple types of work Visas, but typically you need a degree from a program that takes at least three years.

2) Currently software developers are officially "scarce" in Austria, so they made it easier to get a work permit. You will need to have all your documents (eg. your diploma) translated to German by an official translator, but apart from that it should be easy.

4) Your work permit will be tied to a specific company in the first year. After one year, you can apply for an "unlimited" work permit.

5) The biggest hurdle is going to be finding a company that wants to hire you. If you don't care where you work, in Europe, I suggest to also look at smaller companies, and look at companies that are outside the big cities. For example, here in Linz (small city in Austria), there are currently dozens if not hundreds of open positions for software developers. Every tech company I know here in Linz is trying to hire people, but we just don't have enough developers that live here, and nobody wants to move here.

6) For jobs in Austria, have a look at http://karriere.at

7) Applying from India shouldn't be an issue, but make sure that you have a proper setup for Skype. Many Austrians will have a hard time understanding English with Indian accent, and echos / noise / etc won't help.

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