American software engineer, thinking of moving to Europe. How hard would this be?
Hey guys,
I'm a 28 year old software engineer, thinking of moving to a northernwestern-ish (read: no Spain/Italy/Greece or Eastern Europe) European country. I probably wouldn't be able to move for another 2 years (waiting for my husband to get his US citizenship first; I'm already a citizen). How hard would this be to achieve? Am I in a good field for this? Anything I can put in motion now to help me with this goal later?
Posted Feb 13, 2012, 5:01 AM UTC · edited
1737
Estonia. They are desperately looking for programmers. You will have to learn Estonian if consider to do that in long term. That is the best nation that uses internet - worlds first electronic voting, home of Skype, worlds first virtual army.
There are awesome countries all around Estonia - Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden.
Oh man, no. I'm from Russia originally, I think Estonia is too far east and too ex-Soviet-bloc for me. Thanks for the suggestion though.
Want to hear your story. From Russia to US and now back to Europe. Why not straight to Europe?
Ha, the full story is even more fun than that. It goes: Russia --Age 7--> Israel --Age 10--> Canada --Age 14--> USA! USA! USA! (/s)
Being Russian Jews, the easiest route to escape in 1990 was to go to Israel--aside from the Right of Return, we had tons of family there (even though most of them, being second or even third generation, treated us as the poor black sheep that we were). Some of our relatives ended up going to Germany, I'm not sure why we didn't, except that Israel was more of a known quantity.
That travel timeline sounds so familiar it hurts. I think I can name at least 50 people who have gone through that route.
Have you ever been to any of Baltic states? Only hruschovkas and few urlas are reminding of those terrible times. Estonia is really nice and more European than some Spain or Greece.
I think it has more to do with being too close to Russia than any real vestiges of the Soviet Era that may remain (also you'll notice I did say I'm not as interested in Spain and Greece, to be fair). I guess in the back of my mind I worry about being caught up in a USSR v 2.0.
Haha, that is a lot less likely than United States of Russia. For your knowledge - Russia is federation, but unlike USA, there are so called autonomous regiones, which are not happy with Russian Federation. If all those small nations declare independance there would be only Petersburg and Moscow left of Russia.
I'm imaging a WoW PvP guild called "Estonian Army" with every players account subscription funded by the taxpayer. Complete with ranks and titles. That could be a force to be reckoned with in the virtual world.
OP said no Eastern Europe -- Estonia is a prime example of that. Just saying...
Northern Europe. Knowledge is great.
American here. As far as we're concerned - ex-USSR = eastern europe. East Germany is still on probation.
It is very interesting. Usually in cheap expensive holliwood movies we see Serbs, Russians and Yugoslavs to play commie roles.
It is a pity that Americans are lazy and want easy entertainment. i could of guide you through how it was in soviet times, show secret city on our lands, show wnuclear missile complex you all feared so much, stay at most amasing hotel in the world - The Karosta prison, prison for once secret city, where ghost busters from USA discovered over 30 ghosts and declared it as spookiest place, got and recreate some battles with airsoft guns on Zenith missile complex, take you to awesome war museum in 600 years old tower, civil defense museum, worlds only occupation museum, largest Soviet aircraft museum in the Europe. It would take about three days completed with stories about life in the USSR nobody from America really knows.
TIL that Estonia has the highest GDP per person among former Soviet republics. The more you know..
Oh, yeah, The Baltic Tiger. Latvia was in the lead until economic kaput. Now Estonia is elading with their G4S, Skype, all programming they do and they really use human potential to the max.
Next is Lithuania with all those supermarket chains and awesomery they have. Latvia is last, making medieval costumes, birch shoes and wooden spoons in 21st century.