A man was walking along a river bank when he saw another man on the opposite side. "Hello!" he called out, "how do you get to the other side of the river?"
The man called out in response, "you are on the other side of the river!"
Fair point. I inferred OP was in the US, considering the US election that just ended and people were jokingly talking about leaving the country[1] to other places.
Appreciate the sentiment, but I think it's a false equivalence.
I was in Amsterdam for a week in June and I'm in SF today. I love both cities, but the difference is palpable. The US is experiencing a wave of xenophobia and outright hate right now.
I totally understand not wanting to be part of it.
--
Amsterdam is beautiful. It has more bikes than cars, transit that makes the Bay look embarrassing, and in my subjective experience, super nice people.
It's also a real city with a lot of interesting projects happening.
> The US is experiencing a wave of xenophobia and outright hate right now.
Were there actually any reported hate crimes, or is this just rumors and confirmation bias? People are definitely on edge today, but I felt it more from the Clinton supporters.
(I know of the swastika graffiti in Philly, but that could have been from either side.)
My wife is an instructor at University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Yesterday all faculty/staff/students got an email about a girl who was assaulted. She was walking down a street close to the university. Two white men (one in a Trump hat) pulled up next to her in a car, hopped out, hit her over the head with something then stole her hijab and wallet. http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/crime/2016/11/09/ul-...
There is a lot of demand here for skilled developers, most positions are not for startups, but established business.
Software developer salary is typically lower than in the US, but then again, cost of living (as far as apartment rent goes(in Oslo)) is lower than in SV. C#/Java back-end salary usually range from 600,000 NOK (73 188 dollar, at the low end, not much experience, poor resume) to 1,000,000 NOK (121 980 dollar, senior).
The average developer salary in Oslo is at 106k (dollar). National average is 82k, most attractive jobs, and salaries, tend to be in Oslo.
NA being so diverse I'm not sure which city I should compare to, but compared to the larger cities I'm not sure it's considerably more expensive, in terms of rent alone. E.g., NY is more expensive than Oslo.
Rent prices in Oslo haven't boomed in paralell with the real estate market, so it's not that bad. And opting for something outside the city-centre, but still just a short commute (10-20 min by train/metro), is always an option.
Those of you who live in SF, how accurate are the rent numbers here? For Oslo they seem about right.
Durham isn't some tiny village or one-horse town. It's part of the North Carolina capital metropolitan area; on the edge of the Research Triangle Park (where there are tons of jobs); in near proximity of 3 reputable research universities, offering first-class medical, engineering, veterinary, and agricultural programs, among others (Duke, UNC, and NCSU — thus, the "Triangle"); home to an international airport; birthplace of Clojure, while Epic Games and RedHat Headquarters are just down the road in Raleigh, and GamebaseUSA is just across the road in Chapel Hill, while hundreds of companies, many of whom you've heard of, either call the Triangle area home or have major satellite offices in the area. It's got mild weather, a fantastic craft beer scene, great culture, and frequently makes it on "Top 10" lists for quality of life and business climate.
Starting salaries for junior software engineers start at around $65-75K, but within 3 years in the industry, I was already earning 6 figures — and that money goes a long way in the area due to the low cost-of-living.
I know it was a joke, but we might actually be hiring someone to do scheme development (in Sweden, not Norway). We started as a mostly delphi shop doing software for smaller private healthcare businesses. Most of our internal tooling evolved started as one-off scripts I wrote in guile.
Our business grew to deliver huge installations on tens of thousands of computers, and our internal tooling grew as well. We have well over 100k lines of scheme. Since it works well, we don't really want to invest in porting it. We tried rewriting our macro system in python, but it was god-awfully slow, and ended up being harder to read. With scheme, we can just rely on syntax-case to de-construct the macros, which is not only fast but also easy to extend.
I am from Sweden and basically everyone here (except some immigrants) speak english very fluently. You would have no issues living in any Nordic country with only English.
I worked at a pretty international company before where there was several individuals whom had lived in Sweden for several years without even bothering to learn the language.
Don't be that guy or gal though, Swedes don't like it when you live here for years without learning anything. Norway is the same, same with Finland and Denmark.
You are welcome, if you ever consider moving I could probably give you some tips of potential employers!
I've been strongly considering moving since spending a semester abroad. Any potential employers or leads you think I should consider? Email's in profile so feel free to pm
I am actually in the making of a swedish job site for developers. But you will have to wait for that one though.
Otherwise, you can search for your language of choice at https://www.arbetsformedlingen.se/. I am sure lots of jobs will turn up, at least in Stockholm. What you want to do is probably to use Google Translate on that webpage or something because their english version sucks ass.
Sometimes English is enough to get through a workplace at times - a lot of tech jobs have English speaking workplaces, for example. Outside of some industries, however, learning the language is nearly required. Socially, however, you'll likely find you'll want to learn the local language.
English does get you pretty far, however, and a lot of folks speak English to varying degrees.
At least in the beginning, and for many companies. International hires is common. There are quite a few offices where English is the official language, as well. You can see that a lot of ads on the site is in English.
Not merely a lot (in Sweden, anyway) - I'd say the vast majority of Swedes are fluent in English; of course more or less so but I don't think I've ever met a Swede who couldn't at the very least hold a basic conversation in English.
And that goes for authorities too. Had a non-Swedish partner for a few years who always communicated in English in all interactions with Sweden's governmental services - no problem. All important government websites are available in English. Knowing Swedish isn't even a requirement for citizenship.
So while knowing Swedish is certainly very beneficial and recommended, you can certainly get by without it, and work for many interesting companies (at least as a developer).
My wife and I spent two weeks in Sweden (well, two of those days were spent in Oslo...), and we only encountered one person who didn't speak English. He was a pizzaman/bartender in Nynäshamn, and luckily all the dudes sitting at the bar translated for us in drunken semi-unison :)
(Honestly, though, we probably would've gotten along fine without the translators, as we'd spent a couple months with Rosetta Stone before traveling... we were/are far from fluent, sure, but good enough to order a pizza, I'd imagine ;) ).
I lived in Denmark for 5 years and yes, it has been like that.
However, all the paperwork you will need to handle will still come in the official language, not in English. All contracts and legal documents will be in that language as well. So not knowing at least the basics will handicap you severely.
I have learned enough of Danish to be able to read the paperwork and do some basic writen communication. That's really the minimum to get you by.
Spoken Danish was a bit too much - the saying that Danish is not a language but a throat disease is not far from the truth!
I'm in Norway, and it is similar here. Not all industries are so kind to non-Norwegian speaking applicants, but government and everyday life usually isn't an issue. Half of the official paperwork has English as well as Norwegian - and English transcripts and official documents are OK to turn into the government without further translation.
That said, as soon as I started getting some actual Norwegian language skills, it improved.
I visited Oslo last week, and I have to say that its one of the best cities I have ever been to, people are very welcoming, streets are clean, everything is almost perfect.
Have you been to any other European cities at all for comparison? For example I think Barcelona is a very clean and welcoming city, so is Amsterdam come to think of it.
In my experience, Nordic people are extremely polite, but not really welcoming. They do not actually care about you as a human being, they just care about a nice, polite interchange. Going from that politeness to something more is hard. YMMV.
You could try freelance work for clients remotely. That would give you a lot of freedom to choose where to live.
I am an American living, working (as a freelance programmer) in Czech Republic -- good economy (especially Prague), low crime rate, low cost of living. Happy to answer questions.
I lived in Prague for a short while as a digital nomad. It's a great city and I'm considering coming back more long-term and buying property there. Not only is the economy great, but it's a very walkable city with fantastic public transportation and is generally very clean. All of this was helpful in making each day I woke up a happy day, something that's hard to capture and definitely not the norm for most cities in the world.
So if you do get your remote work job, this is another +1 for Prague being amazing.
Nice to see praise of my city. As a research software engineer I am in the top 1 % percent here so it is definitely a good career choice here.
However, the cost of living is skyrocketing now in Prague compared to the rest of the country and our wages. For the cost of my small flat (60 m^2) I could buy two nice big houses in a smaller city just 60 km from here.
Correct, eLance and other similar websites are an absolute waste of time unless you are ok with competing only on price and you have a very low cost of living.
* Build a web presence that funnels potential leads to you (blog, portfolio, resume, stackoverflow profile with activity like posting questions/answers, programming/freelance subreddits, github contributions and projects).
* Build your personal network via meetups, conferences, etc.
* Toptal [1] is the best platform for finding gigs that I've used, but it could be better. It has short-, medium-, and long-term contracts. Not the best possible rates and it's possible to waste some time with interviews, but it's still a lot better than elance and others.
* Gun.io [2] is something that looks interesting, but I have never gotten a contract through it. So could be hit or miss.
I gave the most consideration to Toptal of all the gig sites, but ultimately even the high end of their rates are below market, at least for someone with 3–5 years experience doing web APIs for startups. I still may consider them for short gigs down the road, but I definitely think it's better to have your own clients.
I know every path is different for every person, and the things that worked for you might not work for other people, but could you tell us how did you get your first remote freelance client?
I posted a short update on Linkedin like "I left my CTO job at {nnn} and started a development shop" and a guy from my network saw it and asked if we could develop something for him
I started doing full-time freelance a few months ago (really independent contracting, not project-based freelance). My initial clients came from companies in my network who I'd met with before and know needed dev work. There's also been some traction with referrals, but working with someone who already knows you and is familiar with your work simplifies a lot.
[And I'll second that the dev marketplace sites are a waste of time. Anyone I've mentioned it to has echoed similar thoughts except for the one-off non-technical person who wants to get a simple job, like converting a json file to an Excel spreadsheet, etc done for cheap.]
The easiest and best option for me was temporary residency, because my partner is Czech. But if you are not in a long-term relationship with a Czech citizen then I recommend a business visa. Here's a fairly straight-forward resource for what is required:
For me, it's not worth moving. I was born here, and as a result I'm somewhat responsible for the actions my country takes as a whole. Moving doesn't change that. The grass looks greener on the other side, but other countries aren't really doing that well with human rights, LGBT issues, affordable housing, or constitutionally-protected free speech. No matter where you move, you're trading one bag of shit for another.
Not in all topics. I lived in 3 EU countries so far, and I'm preparing for another changes, probably the last one. I don't care about LGBT issues as it doesn't affect me. I mostly care about living standard, access to nature (parks, reservoirs, sea/mountains), high quality roads for motorcycling and IT infrastructure.
Countries I considered:
Malta - similar wages as in Poland, but smaller market, housing problem as in Germany, rent prices as in the UK. Great nature, I like nature.
Germany - language barrier, housing problems (in Berlin 30 people visit a house or flat to rent and landlord decides who will get it). Nice pay/(rent price + living costs) - I still could afford more in Berlin than in Bristol and Cardiff.
Austria - language barrier (not really German), even when job offer and interview is in English, job requires fluent German, as everyone in the office speaks German, so you don't want to be alienated at the very beginning.
Switzerland - extremely high living costs, you won't be able to afford to buy a flat/house after 5years of living there, I felt really poor when I realized I will financially struggle even to move there and rent a flat for few first months.
France, Paris - visited it and that's a no-go zone for me. Couldn't buy a ticket at international train station in English and German as cashiers speak only French. City is a ruin after allowing all refugees live on a street.
Now, I'm looking into Japan, Australia, Canada and Czech Republic. As op said, you're always dealing one bag of shit for another.
> France, Paris - visited it and that's a no-go zone for me. Couldn't buy a ticket at international train station in English and German as cashiers speak only French.
Huh. I've lived in Paris for two years, freelancing, and I'm still not fluent in French. I get by just fine. Train tickets: I've never had that problem with cashiers, but you can always use a machine or buy a ticket online - there's always an English option. Same with ATMs, public transportation, etc.
> City is a ruin after allowing all refugees live on a street.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Refugees were mainly around Stalingrad metro station in northeastern Paris. The camp was cleared out a few days ago and people were sent to more proper accommodation. Probably people will set up camp around there again. If seeing refugees bothers you, I suggest you simply avoid that particular little part of this massive city. It doesn't make Paris a "ruin".
> France, Paris - visited it and that's a no-go zone for me. Couldn't buy a ticket at international train station in English and German as cashiers speak only French. City is a ruin after allowing all refugees live on a street.
What the fuck. I have been living in Paris for a couple of years and those are insane issues to have.
I have not seen an increase in the number of homeless people in the street (which is not too say that there are no homeless people in France)
All the automatic ticket machines can display their text in english.
The state of the city is roughly the same as it was when I arrived.
I think that would work, locking yourself to a certain area of a city just to avoid seeing rest of the city. I would not like that. I didn't like Paris because of that, and that's my final opinion.
I can't pretend to know the whole city but no I am not locked in any particular area.
Of course there are shitty parts in the city (and even more just outside of it) but I have not seen any huge change this past year
Seems most of your problems seem to stem from the fact that you are too lazy to learn the language of the country you want to move to. From your offensive tone with regards to the refugees I get the impression you would still be the kind of person to moan about immigrants not speaking english in the US too though, right?!
English* is not my native language, I was taught Germany at school, I lived there it was OK. I wanted to move to the UK, I learnt the language mostly myself. I don't have any more that much time and energy to learn Austrian dialect of German or remind German again. Yea, I'm lazy, but I can communicate in 3 languages.
Hey, I'm an Austrian and I'm sitting here in an office with a bunch of Eastern Europeans who have a hard time understanding my dialect. When things get rough, we just switch to English. Problem solved ;)
I'm mostly just curious. There is a lot written about immigration to the US but not too much about emigration from it. I agree that moving away doesn't really solve the problem and that despite our flaws I believe we have an advantage in many respects.
Democracy isn't perfect, and sometimes it means you lose. It means you need to talk to people who disagree with you and persuade them, and I think this cycle shows that the left hasn't been doing too well on that front.
Right, but you can take a foreign tax exemption or credit.
You can make a US tax free $100k in Hong Kong with the exemption. Going the credit route takes what you pay in local taxes and deducts that from what you pay in the US, so in European countries with high taxes, you still don't pay any more.
Yeah, democracy seemed to work OK. The average american wants it to be illegal to not be a God-loving hetereosexual white man. And they elected someone who will make sure that laws get passed to move the country in that direction.
Work to change what the average American thinks. Declaring democracy broken is counterproductive, as the only alternatives have been proven to be worse.
Freedom for everyone means they have the freedom to disagree as much as you do.
The reason you see people concerned about this is because most people assume Trump will defer to his VP on most policy stuff, and his VP is very, very anti-gay. The reason people assume this is that one of the other people considered to be his VP pick, John Kasich, told the press that when Trump's son pitched the job, he said that he could be "the most powerful vice-president in history" and that he would be in charge of both domestic and foreign policy.
It seems that message was lost on his supporters. I've seen scant evidence in interviews, polling, or personal interactions to indicate this pro-LGBTQ stance is shared.
No doubt. The Republicans have always been anti-gay. It's just that Trump done more than anyone ever has to bring them around on this issue.
I'll never forget the cheering and applause Thiel got from Republicans when he announced he was proud to be gay at the RNC. That was a pretty special moment.
He has a long record of being pro-LGBT and if he was going to backtrack on that to appease his supporters he would have done it before the election, not now after he already has their votes.
It is true that unless you are only in USA for 30 days of the year, you will still have to pay income tax in USA. I've been in Asia this year, working as remote freelancer and because I had to come back for about 6 weeks to deal with some business stuff, I won't be able to claim the foreign income tax excludion. I'll also have to pay the ACA penalty (still cheaper) because I cancelled my health insurance after leaving USA. But living in Asia has been a great experience and I would recommend it. However, time zones between here and west coast are weird. I'm either waking up at 5am or staying up til 12am if I have to do a call.
We at SUSE Linux will be happy to relocate all the suitable specialists (development, QA, support, management... 66 positions are open) to Germany or Czech: https://jobs.suse.com
You can filter by location, we have a couple of positions in Provo, Utah as well...
As a self taught, inexperienced programmer, I hope you don't mind answering a question. Looking through the list of jobs it seems that I could perform the Junior QA. However, since I am probably suffering from imposter syndrome, I'm somewhat unsure. A bit about my background: My interest is in full stack development. I'm comfortable with python, html5 and am currently re-learning CSS, which I have found harder to understand than programming, but I am getting there. My workflow is mostly through the CLI (basic commands) and have some experience with git. I've toyed around with a few languages, racket and js come to mind. I could conclude by asking, if I'm currently not fit for that position, what else would I need to learn?
As a self-taught, formerly inexperienced programmer, my advice to you is to apply. In the early stages of a programming career, you want to try to get a job you're underqualified for. That's where you will grow the most. Don't be scared off by what it says in the job posting. I've never met all the qualifications of any job I've ever gotten.
"Just apply and let us sort that out" was exactly the advice I was going to give you.
Basically: you never know what exactly the team on the other side is looking for. They might try to convey that the best possible way in those 2-3 paragraphs the "Typical Job Description" format allows them, and still fail.
Or they might even not try that, because of some weird internal political reasons, or just a lack of job-posting skill, or plain unwillingness to bother.
So, consequently, the only reliable way for you to know if they're looking for a person with your skillset or not — is to apply.
- electronics, groceries, cars etc are all much cheaper
- lower rent if you compare towns and cities of similar sizes
- world leaders in computing for the past 50 years
Have you been to NZ? Why do you think it's so great? Do you like poorly built, overpriced housing, expensive groceries, lower wages and anti-American sentiment?
Housing prices vary so radically across states and cities in the US. It can be ~5x going from a mid-size midwestern city to San Francisco or NYC for a 1-bedroom apartment, for example.
I think getting paid by an American company but working remotely and living in NZ or Oz might be the holy grail.
That's kind of my point! The arbitrage of working for a company in a US tech hub while living outside of a US tech hub. It could be done living domestically here too, but abroad is more interesting. (However, given the discussion, maybe this is just a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side".)
I am not being clear. Why live in an NZ city of 200,000 when you could live in an American one of the same size and enjoy a lower cost of living, and cheaper rent?
I don't think one can find the same quality of life in a comparable US city for a lower cost of living.
Portland, Oregon might be the closest counterexample that comes to mind, but it is an order of magnitude bigger — population of the greater metropolitan area is 2.4 million.
There is a fair amount of inexpensive housing here but not in areas with the same cultural values. (Perhaps Wellingotn wasn't the best example, but it's in the only NZ city I've been to firsthand.)
Feel free to shoot me an email (in profile) if you'd like to discuss more.
You're not going to find anything near as beautiful in the US for a decent cost of living. I would move to Wellington in a heartbeat if I could. Imagine San Francisco without all the traffic and homelessness.
A bit of that, and a bit of pointing out America is probably a better place to live in than most western countries in terms of career and opportunities.
Would you be willing to write a general post on it? I don't agree or disagree with the idea of emigrating due to the election but it would be engaging to read - I don't see much stuff from people moving that direction.
I've found a job abroad (im from portugal) twice, once in UK and recently netherlands, both through LinkedIn Jobs (coincidently or not). Had other contacts through HN Who's Hiring posts as well.
If you're interested in moving to Switzerland then the lad who wrote the post below is semi-frequently on HN iirc. I had a brief email back-and-forth with him which was pretty useful and informative (though I ended up staying put).
I think the problem is not about finding resources but about culture of the country and their work culture
I'm French, long time ago as long as I was looking from France to work in the UK, about 9 out of 10 recruiters ignored me.
Once I landed in London and did the same search of jobs, interviews piled on me.
I'm not saying you can not find anything from remote and online, just saying it seems much much easier to find something once you are already in the country.
Similar thing happened to me with a much shorter move: central NJ to Philadelphia suburbs. Once I started using an address local to my job search I had no issues getting interviews. Before that was rough and the distance was only 100 miles.
Is the cultural difference between the United States' more cutthroat form of employment and the "salaryman" idea in Japan an issue in the transition? Does it apply to our industry?
I'd say its in transition on the whole, but especially in IT. Massive companies like Sony, Toyota, Nissan, etc. still have a lifetime employment structure, but once you get hired to any company here, it's still real hard to get fired.
Answering your question would really take a small essay because the answer is yes and no for SO many reasons.
EDIT: I think I misread your question the first time. It can be difficult mostly because firms here are used to having employees who are generalists, work in every part of the company through the years, and become upper management who have a much needed knowledge of the whole company. In the west in general, we focus on one area and change companies to grow our skills in that field. This is a problem because its really hard to change companies in Japan and Japanese employers often want you to learn new skills to work in different areas of the company. In short, it's difficult to become a specialist in Japan without sacrifice (usually salary). But there are many new technology companies that are trying to change that pattern.
Ive read that as well, and it's pretty spot on/thorough. I don't usually agree with people when they talk about Japanese firms, but Patrick knows his shit. But everyone has different experiences here. It's nearly a mono-culture as far as business is concerned, unless you work for a foreign company that operates in Japan.
So even if I take my full 30 days (or whatever it is) of vacations. Be in the office only 9-5 and encouraging co-workers to do the same, to get a life, etc... I still won't be fired? :)
Also a difficult question. Getting fired is possible here, but there are major repercussions for the business. If your hours were 9-5 and you had 30 days of vacation time you could take a year, no one would say anything if you did what are your rights as an employee. But if someone asks you to stay late and you don't have a good excuse, or if you take vacation days during times that are known to be busy periods, the repercussions are much more social rather than financial. The office gets dark, and they might move your desk into an undesirable area (they used to call it the window seat for some very grim reasons). There are worse things than getting fired.
But, also because of this system, if you do lose your job, it's extremely difficult to get another one.
That's what it was referred to because that's what many people did in the 90s. A lot has changed since then. Although still high, the suicide rate is much lower now than it used to be [1].
Its actually the opposite. It is completely unnecessary for every day life. I know plenty of people here that don't speak any Japanese and get by just fine.
As far as working goes, it depends on the type of job you want. Most of the people I know with low Japanese skills are English teachers. Most engineering jobs require business level reading/writing/speaking since you often work in teams.
Recruitment firms are really picky here, most won't even consider you if you don't have JLPT N2 or above. They search for their candidates similar to the way US firms do (from what I've heard). Having key words on your linkedIn profile showing that either your interested in moving here, have a background working with Japanese people, or have the language abilities plus (nearly any) software skills, there's a good chance you'll get contacted.
Just signup, get a call with a talent advocate so they know what you're looking for, and as soon as the next monday you're in. You will receive from 5 to 15 tailored job offers in less than 2 weeks. That's the easiest way around.
I was able to find a job rather quickly on berlinstartupjobs.com if you'd like to consider Germany as an option.
Germany is a rather good option for working abroad as getting a visa is pretty easy if you have a college degree and make a certain amount of money. They're pretty liberal about handing out something called the EU Blue Card. That's what I had when I was over there. You don't even need to do anything before you get there. All the paperwork happens when you're in the country. The trickiest part of the whole process is making sure you end up at a place when you get there that you can register at with the local government as you have to show your registration confirmation as part of the Blue Card process. If you can get registered and receive mail wherever you stay initially everything is pretty easy.
For EU citizens you could just go on Jobserve.com and find an IT job in the UK or Switzerland (or maybe else where) that interests you and apply. Many jobs will only take people with the right to work, but there may be others who would sponsor a permit from outside the EU.
I am assuming however this is leaving the US for ... not-US locations
My suggestion would be to stay where you are, look for remote work opportunities that will give you the ability to losslessly change jobs until you found the work culture that suits.
And it also gives you opportunity to get involved in your local or state politics where you can make a genuine difference.
Just as Europe has a free-to-move labour force (for now!) the US has strong and increasingly independent States that look more and more like the engines of progressive change. California just approved marijuana for example.
Let the countries of the world deal with any changing trade and defence agreements. It's why they have diplomats.
NB - I am not meaning to be as patronising as I may be coming across
There is a platform https://hitcontract.lt/ for IT jobs/contracts in Scandinavian and Baltic countries. If registered you may get all the projects that suits your skills and experience precisely. Also, project managers can invite you to their projects. It's absolutely free for Developers. Please have a look.
They will start you just about any Western Europe country on your first job / contract. After that rely on your network as agencies advertising there are not 1st tier in the supplier chain
I have written a bit about working abroad, working remotely from abroad, and how to emigrate to germany and finding jobs in Berlin. Let me know if you find any of this information useful!
Are there any country outside U.S. that pay more for software job? I've looked before, but I didn't find any, so you'll have to figure out a way to quantify quality of live improvement in dollar figures.
There's tons of jobs in Canada that pay better then software jobs in North Dakota... But in pure dollar amount, you're not going to beat a Google or Facebook job in SV. Best you could do is work remotely for an SV company.
That said, remember that if you're an actual american citizen, they will tax your foreign income and a programmer with a lot of experience can hit revenues where they actually have to remit money to the IRS in addition to the cost of compliance (which can itself be significant.)
Expect to be paid less but that money will go further - e.g. if comparing with Silicon Valley, there are many places worldwide where you'll be able to afford a much larger, nicer home and more services while earning a much smaller dollar amount.
In general, there's a scale/tradeoff of this, and California is on one extreme of that scale - there won't be any country that will pay even more, with the possible exception of some Saudi contracts or similar niches.
Yet is extremely more expensive in terms of cost of living.
It cheaper to fly to Los Angeles, buy Adobe Suite ( the old one when discs were still around) and arrive back to Australia rather than buying it in Australia.
If you're upset with the way things seem to be going with US politics, I would urge you to not flee and look for a software engineering job in another country, but rather look for domestic software jobs that will put your skills to good use.
Maybe this means civic tech organizations like Code for America that explicitly work on public sector projects. Maybe it means working for a political advocacy group like the EFF, or someone working on privacy-related projects to help protect our civil liberties. Either way, helping improve things domestically seems like a nobler option than running away.
It's relatively easy to Google for expat websites for any specific country. The salaries are generally lower, but so is the cost of housing.
Our company Smartly.io is also hiring. 3-year-old startup, 100 employees, 30+ engineers, profitable, some real scalability issues to be solved (already 200+ servers), and based in Helsinki. :)
Any specific country ?
Even though there is huge shortage for skilled IT labor in USA, you have a better chance of finding another job in Australia / New Zealand region.
If you are interested in AI and want to work in an international environment in a startup in Japan, this company (in which I work) is probably your best bet: http://www.reactive.co.jp/home-en
We are focused on AI and deep learning, and we are hiring research scientists, research software engineers, devops engineers, etc.
Just signup, get a call with a talent advocate so they know what you're looking for, then you'll receive from 5 to 15 tailored job offers in less than 2 weeks. That's the easiest way around.
I've also heard about these cool guys from RelocateMe.
Apart from a diverse number of IT jobs (http://relocateme.eu/jobs/), they also provide comprehensive relocation support to candidates and their families.
Definitely not the ceiling. I've been working here for five years and always earned more. Also if you're married they'll sum you and your partner's income and lower your taxes if your partner earns less. Good way to study or do non-paid work while the other earns for both of you.
Berlin is very liberal and open-minded, but learning Deutsch is a must...
Another thing that scares me away from west Europe in general - such low percentage of people owning houses/lands... Even in Berlin, most people with their families spend whole their life in apartments (not to mention a house with a backyard) that do not belong to them...
Compared to the Bay Area you'll pay 1/2-1/4th of the rent/mortgage and soon 1 EUR will be 2 USD, so I'd say it might not be so clear cut. Add in cheaper childcare and medical expenses. Also California taxes might actually be higher than German taxes (or at least in the same ballpark).
"Compared to the Bay Area you'll pay 1/2-1/4th of the rent/mortgage and soon 1 EUR will be 2 USD"
1 Euro is currently ~ $1.10 US. Are you being facetious?
I agree with you on everything else though. Everything in Berlin seems reasonably priced. And it seems like a good quality of life there for a city. People seem pretty relaxed.
I actually have some money in Germany that I was waiting to bring back until after the election, hoping for a Trump win and a collapse of the Dollar relative to the Euro, but some of the stuff I've read suggests that it might actual do better? I don't know...it's all a little confusing to me.
I'd firstly pick a country and then look at job boards for that location. For example, assuming you mean abroad relative to the US, then I run https://cleanwebjobs.com, which is mostly UK based.
It only lists Tech job offers from companies willing to recruit internationally and to sponsor working visa if necessary. It's free. I co-created that website. Enjoy :)
When I worked in Japan, they did already have job search boards setup for software developers setup (forkwell.com). I would imagine some of the other countries might have something similar.
Seriously, ask your social network contacts in the countries that interest you. Demand for good developers is high everywhere, odds are there are openings at their companies.
Don't just go and browse job offers on random websites, that's inefficient and a lot of good offers are not there anyway. Another option would be to subscribe to something like https://www.talent.io/. Or, if you know some, just get in touch with headhunters in the country. They often have very good offers nobody knows about.
The head hunters in European countries are particularly good at placing engineers across borders. I have worked with English head hunters placing engineers in Germany.
If I remember correctly, it started as a pet project of some guy who wanted to tech himself some techniques.
It is a great aggregation of sources that is first filtered by geo (also holds remote positions), and then can be filtered deeper on other criteria such as skills/languages or visa-supporting employers.
How are the immigration processes in various countries ?
US is awful visa-wise, considering that much of the cap is filled up in a day by Indian body shops; ensuring thus that one can at best start in October, and set out on this magical journey 6-12 months ahead.
Oh I missed the part where it said what country he (she?) was leaving, or where he might want to go. Do you feel the same way about people leaving any country, wherever they might be?
That really depends on why they left. In this case I agree with OP, anyone who leaves the U.S. because of Trump instead of standing and fighting is a coward.
There's a difference. Something tells me that the original poster isn't someone who is leaving with just the shirt on his back and a letter from his brother.
First of all, where did it say in the OP's post that the question has anything to do with the U.S. election? Maybe it does, but that's irrelevant since it was not even hinted at.
The man called out in response, "you are on the other side of the river!"