Ask HN: Should I go to Sweden for work?
Now I feel like I am ready to perform a next step in my life, in regard to my career. Recently I have received a job offer from a company in Stockholm doing a software as a service, for a position of a frontend developer. I had a talk via Skype with a couple of representatives of the company and in the end they offered me to visit their office to have a detailed talk as they seem to be quite content with skill I have shown so far. Surely they offer benefits, work permit visa and other things like a vacation, insurance.
I googled for average salaries for a position like mine there in Stockholm as well as in other Sweden cities. I have also found some more info about life there, costs, conditions, climate and so on. I know 'average salary' doesn't give much info about my specific potential salary I can get there. But at least I see the range and it's quite different from my current income knowing that I will have to pay for an apartment, likely pay more for food and other things I don't yet know about. On the other hand, may be it will be a good start for me to go networking, finding new opportunities, improving my skills.
So, please advise, what things I should consider while deciding? Did you face similar choice when you were offered with a job while you were freelancing? How did you choose to accept or to reject a full time job? What are important factors for you? Can it be a real move forward or more like a deadlock turning me into a small gear in a big mechanism? How can I setup my priorities properly not to say in a year or two I have had lost them?
I know many of the questions are subjective but I would like to hear from people who were in the same situation like mine.
Thanks!
72 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadI'm not from Sweden but if you could post an approximation of the salary they offered maybe someone who lives there might better answer how you will manage. Good luck!
I would say that in Stockholm that would be a average salary for a front-end developer.
If I were you I would offer remote service to that company but would not relocate there. If they accept it's a win win. Other wise you can continue freelance.
I am not sure about Russian healthcare and so forth but free healthcare, education, childcare (cheap at least) and such might make up for it.
The salary will obviously be lower than freelancing rates since there are less taxes and costs to consider. You will have to make a spreadsheet or something to see what would end up being most profitable.
Housing is rather expensive in Stockholm at the moment, and rentals are hard to come by unless you want to pay ~10k SEK for a small one bedroom flat.
There's more Crime in Sweden than you think.
Oh, and for better or worse, alcohol is the social lubricant and a primary way of making friends in the Northern Europe even moreso than in most other places.
more friendly -> less friendly
Denmark -> Norway -> Sweden -> Finland
Taxes aren't as high as people complain about, unless you're a freelancer. Small businesses get screwed royally and don't get much support compared to larger ones, but as an employee you will have it decent. You get what you pay for. Compared to say in Singapore, where you pay nada, and get nada. Some people like it.
Crime and religious extremism is in all time high. They do correlate to some degree. I lived in SG for two years, and I felt incredibly safe there (not even locking our door) coming back to Sweden, I feel a but more paranoid about having my laptop in my outside compartment of my bag.
I'm too scared to pickup my iPhone from my pocket when walking home late.
Public Transport is amazing. Trains across Sweden, is less so. I got stuck or eleven hours one winter. They seem incredibly amazed that it snows in Winter... each year.
Dining out is also pretty cool. Not as much variety as I'd like, but the level between fine dining and regular dining on the food quality is pretty similar. So if you're ok not having a waiter, you can pay less and still have decent food.
Language skills... nothing to say here. Every Swede can speak and write English. You won't have problems here.
> Language skills... nothing to say here. Every Swede can speak and write English. You won't have problems here.
This is true insofar as that I've been studying Interaction Design in Sweden for one and a half years now (one half year to go) and I have not needed to learn Swedish. However, I've been informed that to get employed in Sweden it's quite vital that you know Swedish. There's plenty of jobs where you don't even really need to know Swedish, but they demand it anyway to give the local people a bigger chance.
To give an example: I know of other students who couldn't get a job delivering newspapers because they didn't speak Swedish because, and I quote "suppose a stranger on the street asks you for directions, how are you going to help them?" which is obviousy part of the job description of newspaper delivery boy.
Can't say how that translates for jobs like UX, although I hear similar stuff from graduates: knowing Swedish is almost necessary if you want to get employed.
I'm quite surprised about your fears at night - I live in Malmö (which has a reputation) and have never felt threatened or in danger at all.
But yeah, regarding other types of job, without Swedish, you'll have it tough. My partner speaks fluent Mandarin and English and has a Bachelors degree with honours. Will probably have an incredible tough time finding a job in "Communications". Ugh... Shit degree but you didn't hear that from me.
Some couples straddle Copenhagen–Malmö (35 minutes by train from each other across the strait).
I like Stockholm a lot and think it´s a great oppertunity to come here.
Coming from the U.S., cities in the Nordic countries are extremely calm and low-crime, so low that you'd need a logarithmic axis to show their crime rates alongside those of major U.S. cities (L.A., Chicago, Atlanta, NYC, etc.). I don't feel at all unsafe walking around the media-hyped "bad" areas of central-ish Copenhagen alone at 3am, or using a laptop on the train/subway at any hour. The housing projects way out in the suburbs may be different, but if you don't live there, you have little reason to ever be there.
At least it's snow on your train tracks. Here in the UK, leaves, rain and yes, even sunshine can delay our trains... :-)
- Stockholm is really expensive, housing as well as other living expenses[1]
- Salaries are okay, but probably not as high as in some other places
- Climate is awesome in the summer, and much less so during the winter.
There are some upsides too:
- Lots of tech companies, so switching jobs shouldn't be too difficult should you want to.
- Some would say it's one of the better cities in the world to live in and grow up. As The Economist puts it "If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with average talents and income, you would want to be a Viking." This is great for your children.[2]
- People are good at english, so getting setup should be easy. Low level of bureaucracy as well. I'd still advice that you learn Swedish though.
Many other aspects of course, the actual company you are considering is probably the most important. However, that's hard to speak to in general terms.
(I'm not really neutral, since I'm Swedish)
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/9554951/T...
[2] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571136-politicians-b...
You have to be absolutely certain that they will supply living and work permit for both you and your family. Immigration laws are very strict in Scandinavia, so you'd obviously want to be certain there won't be any nasty surprises with getting your wife and children here.
Living costs in Moscow and Stockholm is not that far from each other.
A full-time position as a front-end developer usually won't pay through the roof. However a good front-ender never needs to look far for a new job.
Career-wise where you'd really be able to take a leap is after a year or two as a frontend dev at this Stockholm company. By then you have working permit sorted out, a Swedish referral and maybe a little knowledge of the language.
When you have these things you can break into front-end contracting for customers in Sweden or other countries in Scandinavia (Oslo, Norway is particularly booming at the moment).
Front-end contracting is typically full-time contracts on-location for between 6 and 12 months. It typically pays 100+ USD an hour, meaning a monthly income of 16K USD or so given a standard 40 hour workweek. If you have the skills (and it sounds like you do), the contracts are pretty easy to get by using agencies who are always looking for new development talent.
It's very hard to jump directly into contracting in Sweden from Russia, particularly due to the whole work-visa problem. But once you are inside, it's a very viable opportunity.
If your wife enjoys learning languages, there is free Swedish language education (she can even apply for a "learning bonus" of around 1000 USD pr 6 weeks or so). Once you are in, there's also (almost) free health care and such.
Stockholm is a lovely city, and it's only a 2,5 hour flight from Moscow, priced typically at around 400-500 USD round-trip.
http://www.workpermit.com/news/2013-08-23/sweden-joins-eu-bl...
Individual countries can and do override EU regulations. Sometimes even illegally. Getting local laws overturned in the EU court system is an exercise in futility though.
You'll also notice a long list of requirements, some of which can be very hard to live up to. As an example Sweden doesn't recognize Russian university degrees. You'd need a year or two extra of a special "top-up" education in Sweden, depending on your field, to have a "valid" bachelor or candidates degree. To get that though, you'd need the living permit which you can't get without the degree... At least through the blue-card method. This kind of catch-22 situations grounded in bureaucracy and red tape are very common in Scandinavia. Sweden is much better than for example Denmark though, but it can still be extremely frustrating.
A lot of those 16K will go away in taxes and social costs though. I am not sure what most freelancers use for estimates but somewhere between 50-75% should probably be deducted before getting a comparable number to a salary.
Still, 25% off 16K is 12K before tax. As a full-time frontender in Stockholm, you'd generally be around 5-6K before tax.
I recently moved to Stockholm from London to join a startup as a software engineer. Here's my experience so far:
Stockholm is a lovely city. Small enough to not be too hectic, but big enough to offer a broad variety of things to do. On average, I would say it's expensive – more than London at least – but I think I'm still living like a tourist instead of a local. You're going to have to hunt for the good and cheap places. On the other hand, rent is cheaper. The salaries are lower compared to London and what you've been earning as a freelancer in Moscow but I believe 1000EUR/month spending money for a single person should be enough for a good standard of living.
The startup scene is really picking up. There's a number of excellent startups and an attitude towards substance over hype. There are also quite a lot of events happening in the tech and startup scene and most of them are on meetup.com.
I'm 26, single, no kids, so my situation is different than yours. When it came to make a decision, salary was not my top priority. The company and people were pretty cool so I just went with it. I was getting a bit bored in London anyway, so I wanted a new experience.
Whether it will be a move forward or not it's completely up to you, but I think Stockholm has the potential and infrastructure to help you progress individually and career-wise.
General Rules:
- Don't talk to people on the subway. Swedes like their public transportation silent. :)
- Swedes like coffee.
- It is expensive as hell to eat out (daily), and go to bars often. I did it anyway.
- Swedes are very punctual and schedule oriented. They generally work 9-5pm, even in startups.
- Don't wait until Saturday to stock up on adult beverages, the lines at the Systembolaget can get insane.
- Learn to ice skate (or play Hockey), fun activity during the winter.
- Swedish pizza is amazing. Great thin crust.
If I could improve one thing about Sweden it would definitely be the pizza.
Besides that, I really wouldn't worry about crime etc. Swedes definitely have a different perception to crime and danger in general compared to the rest of the world I'd say, simply because Sweden is so peaceful.
I lived in Husby, which is considered "ghetto" by Swedes and the riots this year happened pretty much in front of my door. I didn't even notice anything and was never scared to walk home at night, but every Swede I talked to reacted pretty shocked when I told them where I lived. So I really wouldn't worry about that, especially if you got along in Moscow.
Comparing the cost of living is difficult. I don't know anything about the lifestyle in Moscow, but the US is so extremely different from Sweden that it turns out I did all of my comparisons wrong... I thought my expendable income would go down by moving here, but it actually went up. This is not because Stockholm is cheaper (it's much, much more expensive), but because I imitate the Swedish lifestyle, and the Swedish lifestyle is much cheaper than the American lifestyle :)
Swedish salaries aren't going to make you wealthy, they are just going to make you comfortable. And if you live your whole life here and retire here, the government programs will keep you comfortable through your retirement. It's a good system to live in long-term, but it's not the most competitive for short-term positions.
Most of my friends here are non-Swedish europeans, and I really only see two stances: either they moved here because they needed a job and they can't wait to move home, or they moved here because they wanted to live in Sweden and they love it. Marriage complicates it even more... some love it, but their spouses desperately want to move home. (good news: young children seem to transition very well)
If you or your wife is particularly against moving to Sweden, drop it immediately. You'll probably never get over that. But if it sounds like a fun adventure, then it probably is! If the first thing you want to do here is find some surströmming and köttbullar, you'll have a good time... if the first thing you want to do is find other Russian expats and a Russian food market, it's going to be a long winter.
My company is extremely international, and all business is done in english, so there is no problem. Other companies I interviewed with did bring it up as a problem. Startups seem to care very little, major corporations care a lot.
Immersion helps a lot for languages.
I've lived in Denmark for 2 1/2 years and probably have had less real need to speak Danish here than in the 3 weeks I spent in Spain! More Spaniards are either unable or unwilling to speak English, so that trip was much more immersive language-wise, in that I actually had to interact in Spanish.
My personal theory is that Spanish Spanish (i.e., from Spain) has a range of spoken sounds that is to a large part complimentary to that of English, thus making the transition between these two languages particularly difficult. (Note that there is significantly less of a difference between the sounds of American Spanish and English).
Where do I find information like this? Taxes, costs of living - everything. How did you do before you moved to Sweden?
Numbeo is ok for comparing the cost of items, but it's not clear how your consumption will change. My consumption is much lower in Stockholm.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
Cars are expensive, but hopefully you don't need one if you're looking at NY metro.
The big differences that are harder to predict are insurance, healthcare, and retirement. Healthcare costs can be sudden, large expenses ($2-20k USD) even if you have insurance through your employer... to be safe, you need to keep a pretty gigantic emergency fund. If you don't have insurance through your employer, you will probably bankrupt.
Children, college, and retirement cost more than you will ever earn. Don't do any of those things!
Also, I know a couple of Russians who went from no Swedish to conversational level in just 3 months. It's a simple language to pick up.
All in all, just go, talk to them and have a look around. Even if you accept and end up regretting it, you still will end up with a bit of immersion living in another (comfortable and interesting) country and that never hurts ;)
Average time in queue in the Stockholm region: 8.5 years.
Average time in queue for central Stockholm: 15 Years.
If you don't want to wait that long, you generally have to a) sub-let, which as the example above shows, is very expensive. b) buy something, which in the central areas of Stockholm cost something like 50-80K SEK per square meter.
[1] http://www.dn.se/sthlm/lang-bostadsko-i-stockholm/
One could also live in non-Stockholm parts of Sweden, like Göteborg or Malmö, both of which have significant tech industries and lower housing costs.
Compressed salaries basically, so the high end is lower and the low end is higher. I generally like that, since it means I can have friends in different occupations without huge socioeconomic gaps between us. But it means the income at the high end doesn't buy the same lifestyle. It's nonetheless enough to buy a good lifestyle, imo: as someone around the 80th percentile in Copenhagen incomes I live "somewhat better" than the median income earner, but the median is already living a pretty decent lifestyle.
That said, Stockholm is a great city and I'd jump at the opportunity.
Some thoughts I'd like to share:
1. Ask people on your new job for help to find a good place to live. Rent market in Sweden is very complicated, and you'll find yourself in a queue for at least 6 months. Don't try http://www.blocket.se/ as there's a lot of scam there.
2. You'll love public transportation and internet connectivity, they really rocks!
3. Taxes are not as expensive as people used to say. Same thing with food and some other stuffs.
4. It's a great opportunity to grow up as a professional
5. I hate the weather in Sweden, too cold to me :)
6. Don't worry about the language, everybody in Sweden speak English.
7. Göteborg is a small city, so it's not dangerous at all. Different story in Stockholm, you have to be careful with that.