Ask HN: Can a US developer transition to the EU easily?
Context: I am a dual citizen US/Greek. Did schooling in both contries and am fluent in both. Earned my BS in the US and currently in grad school and full time employeed. Also at some point I could speak some french.
I have been considering moving to a city with good transit and quality of life, but from my POV that's not really a thing in the US. Then it occured to me that I can probably live in EU.
How hard would it be to transition to working in the EU? How fluent would I need to be to work as a developer/engineer in the EU?
3 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 17.4 ms ] threadAs for fluency, here you definitely need basic French outside your work for taking care of basic things like getting health insurance, filing your taxes, getting Internet, etc. You might find jobs where English is the working language, though I believe they are rare. Where English is not the working language, in my experience French colleagues do not like switching to English. So it's hard at first, although people are also very accommodating if they see that you have basic knowledge and are trying to improve. From my experience with other expats who did not want to learn French, they were not exactly welcomed with open arms, and they weren't happy here.
Things are very probably different in other places. Scandinavia is said to be more English-friendly. And then there are Ireland and Malta with English as (an) official language. Ireland especially has a lot of tech company presence.
I'd say that if you're willing to put in some effort into learning a language, go for it!
There are many English people who retired in Brittany and more generally in the west part of France as well in Dordogne. In my village we can even hear the BBC on radio, and in some place receive English TV (Dinard, Saint-Malo). A good compromise would be to work in Rennes (insane amount of developer jobs) and spend time on the coast on week-end or in Paris (2 hours duration and sometime less).