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Techie Friendly Towns, Worldwide?
banditski asks: "A while back, there was an Ask Slashdot forum about Geek-Friendly cities. Invariably, most of them were in the U.S. Now, I'm finishing school in a month or so, and I'm looking to move abroad and see what else is out there before I settle down into a nice comfy niche. My question is this: In which 'foreign' cities (as seen from North America) is there a lot of Internet/IT action taking place? And how well could a predominately English speaking person adapt to living and working in these cities?" On a related note, you might want to check a slightly related article, aptly titled 'Good' Countries for Geeks.
Ok, so it's still in North America, but rated as one of the most techy towns in Canada :-) :-(
Last stat I heard, over 65% of the population had internet access. Lots of good techie places to work in Calgary to, JAWS (encryption company), there is an MS office, lots of good places. City is growing too, up by 12k or so just last year..
Problem is the taxes - ~40% of your pay is taxed
Philly's a pretty tech-friendly place, especially for college kids, what with Drexel and it engineering school, and stuff like that. Not to mention SAP's right around the corner.
-You're wearing...A bag? I have misplaced my pants.
It is nothing but an eclave of newcomer dot-commie yuppies who work 80 hours a week in trivial and worthless web crap. They make tons of money, which somehow is only enough to pay for a crummy studio appartment and an SUV. They drive around recklessly, endangering the lives of cyclists like me. There is no fucking culture here, just an endless expanse of strip malls, office buildings, or yuppie stores. Meanwhile, those who work in other jobs, say, janitors, have to work 2 jobs, become vegetarians, and live with more than one family to the house just to make ends meet. Avoid this place like the plague. It is, in the words of JWZ, Hell on Earth.
Though I am most probably biased, seeing as I like there, I feel Brisbane is a unique city to live in and has a thriving I.T. community. Many I.T. company's are based here and consequently there are many job opportunities. There are many good Universities in the city. Though the Internet Censorship laws have been enacted in Austrlia they have proven to be, as most people suspected they would, ineffective in stopping transfer of the kind of material it set out to.
Friendly people, smart people (not just I.T), very livable city with little polution and more Urban Sprawl than you can poke a stick at (we built outward rather than upward). All these things make Brisbane the best place for an I.T. professional!!!
Never believe in anything until it has been officially denied. -Otto von Bismarck
London is currently economically booming. There is a lot of work for IT consultants, IT contractors, Web everything. We have connectivity difficulties (no xDSL yet, and leased lines are expensive). Amsterdam is also (from what I hear) very developed in the field. Amsterdam is also very welcoming for English speakers. Everyone there speaks English very well and many of the businesses operate in English.
For the more linguistic esotic areas, I know that the Copenhagen/Malmoe area is rising quickly, but it's harder for find make-money-fast startups there. Copenhagen also has good beer.
Berlin is also up and comming, they've got good beer as well.
/dev/eskil ---
If anyone actually applies for work there, tell them Dave told you to. This will win you lots and lots and lots of points. Trust me, it'll be funny, you might not get it at first but itll be funny.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
What about Melbourne,
Here out in the suburbs it's great, and in Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane there is cable internet to most households, and before the end of the year there will be DSL.
Also if there ends up being a nuclear war Australia will probably be the only continent unaffected by the fallout.
--
Laptop006 (RHCE: That means I know what I'm talking about! When talking about linux at least...)
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
There are only two ways to play Slashdot, paranoid and not paranoid.
Playing the latter means you feed the knee-jerk trolls, fall into some of the intentional flame wars, and generally get a finger poked at you in the troll circles. No one is a universal expert, so all of the trusting look naive from time to time.
Playing the former means seldom replying, seldom discussing. Flaming on the least suspect of posts, and constantly bitching to oneself in the forums.
Posts like this only go to feed the paranoia.. Slashdot started out trusting, and I'd like to see it that way!
Some (if not most) of us were aware of the troll forum, and just let it be. It was hard to miss for the devotees of osm, TroLLaXoR (I never cap that right!), etc.. Please, leave it and the rest of them be!
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- Tokyo
- Geneva
- Amsterdam
But this also depends on what you actually expect from such a city.The ones above are just ones where you can easily and cheaply get connected, either at home or in a cyber-cafe.
In Paris, in March/April, there is also lots of Internet-related-attractions/activities like in "la Villette" (also known as "La Cité des Sciences").
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Isn't a bad place to live if you're a geek - The main attraction at the moment being the cable modem avaliability - ADSL isn't widely avaliable in the UK yet (Although BT keep promising that it'll be here Real Soon Now, Honest)...
Guildford also has quite a lot of tech companies based there for a town of it's size (pop. roughly 130,000) - especially games companies - EA/Bullfrog, Lionhead, Mucky Foot, Criterion Studios, Fiendish Games (The company I work for), KUJU Entertainment, Glass Ghost, etc..
It's main downside is that it's quite expensive - on the whole you'll be paying pretty close to London prices on most things. Speaking of London, though, it's only about 40 miles away, and it takes half an hour on the traing to get from Guildford to Waterloo station, and during the day trains are every 15 minutes...
I quite like living here - it's not the best place on earth, but I've got my cable modem, so I'm happy.
cheers,
Tim
P.S. And Guildford Computers is a great place to pick up old cheap bits of computer hardware - Just great if you're trying to put web terminals in every room of your house...
When it comes to being a wired, geek-friendly city I have to say Stockholm, Sweden is right up there at the top! Lots of new computer companies growing like psychedelic mushrooms, Fast net access is getting wired in to buildings at a rapid pace, and working in IT here is cool. I think we have already come to peace with the fact we are heading towards a technocrat society. As a foreign contractor you can make a killing, although for me as a citizen and so forth the pay scale doesn't escalate as quickly, but I'm making decent money. Also we have some of the most beautiful women in the world ;)
I used to live in Wellington, New Zealand. And that's a nice city - but small, only 400K.
:)
At the start of last year, I moved across the Tasman, to Melbourne. Melbourne is just a really nice place to live - great culture, night life, and the job scene seems to be going strongly.
I've found it pretty easy to settle in here, and meet people. There is always something to do. As for jobs.. try these sites:
IT Jobs site by Fairfax
Seek
Monster
As for other sites of interest, check out:
Immigration site
Autralian Taxation Office
Domain a great place to search for share accomodation
The Age newspaper
Umm.. I don't have links for what's on around the city, but some great stuff happens, apart from the good club scene - there's the formula 1 grand prix, if you like noisy loud things that go fast, moonlight cinema is a good thing in summer - outdoor movies. It's just really kind of relaxing and nice.
Melbourne is just really livable and has a good public transport system Victrip
Hope this helps.. and don't forget, I'm a kiwi saying this about Melbourne
Michelle
----
Be true, regret not, and let your star shine forth!
I moved to Norway a little more than 7 years ago, my wife is a Norwegian national. It has turned out better than I ever dreamed, and I will be here for the duration, whatever that is.
I have done some travelling in Europe for business, and gotten to know a little bit about most of the countries.
All of the scandinavian countries are great places to live, and really oriented to high tech.
The difference is in economy of scale. The American perspective is way too big, actually. Here, there are a zillion small companies that are a riot to develop for, because they aren't so big. Then, when you have come up with something really cool, use your American connections to market it stateside.
Here is the hard part - language and work permits. Generally, they are so hard up for tech types that you can make deals to circumvent these problems. However, I would STRONGLY urge you to learn the language of your target country. You don't have to speak it perfectly (I speak Norwegian with a John Wayne accent), whatever effort you make will be greatly appreciated. Plus, we spend all of our time learning C, PERL, etc., why not hook up with a whole new group of people?
Lykke til videre! (Good luck with your plans)
If you got a $100 bill, put your hands up...
Switzerland has a shortage of IT types (especially people with Java skills) and is a very beautiful country. Here in Zurich everybody speaks three or more languages, with at least one being english. It's easy to get 2 Mbs cable modem connections with unlimited (rather than metered) bandwidth.
If you're interested in seeing Europe, Zurich is 30 minutes from Germany, 1 hour from France, 1 hour from Austria, 2.5 hours from Italy and 45 minutes from Lichtenstein. It also doesn't hurt
that it's only half an hour some skiing.
The cost of living here is pretty high, but the
pay is higher too.
Ciao,
Mike
the title says it all, but let me tell you a little more about Bangalore a small city (by western standards !) in South India. This cosmopolitan place is a revelation ..
...
... and its a greaaat place...
:)
Its not without the problems other Indian cities face esp. support infrastructure, public transport etc., but in terms of human potential, IT saviness etc., this place should stand out
If you are looking for GEEK power, this place is fairly up to the mark, what with most of the american big boys having a presence in some form and manner.. (I hate to admit but most of them send over their maintenance tasks here...) implying the geeks are around.. its a great place to be.
Let me continue to sell this place..
The main selling point for a place in India is the weather.. its brilliant.. I mean I have lived in Bangalore all my life
The night life is not as great as any of the western cities but you have a good crowd the the pubs (highest number in India I would imagine...), the people are very nice.. and its a fun place.
So thats some info for the people here who might be interested in knowing about other places...
Cheers,
-/ramas
- ramas opines !!
I have good news and bad news.
:).
The Bad news is that crime rates are high and the government kinda sucks.
The good news is that the network is starting to open up and 2 new companies have been licensed to do Cellular telephones locally. An ISP has been licensed to provide Island wide, wireless, digital, cable TV. In 3 years this will be a 4th phone company and a huge ISP.
We are a lot behind the curve but I think it's more fun to build the infrastructure than to go work in an established market. Around here we have 2/3 the residential telephones needed, we have a dozen ISPs that mostly suck, we have everything basically just starting out.
The downside of building infrastructure now is that we don't have affordable residential DSL or Cable modems yet. The upside is that we have nice scenery, more pretty girls per acre than anywhere else and we actually produce almost as much music as the US ( We have ~ 1/100 the population
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
The Chicagoland area is positively sprouting positions for technical workers. They're one of the fastest growing VC areas outside of Silicon Valley. There's a a huge technical corridor stretching from Joliet nearly to the Illinois/Wisconsin border.
Not to mention that Chicago's NAP sees more traffic coming through than ANYWHERE else on the planet.
Cablemodem and DSL services are emerging in the area (Ye God! There's so many DSL companies advertising out here now it's disgusting!) For cable, look at AT&T, MediaOne, and @Home. For listings of DSL providers, just hit 2Wire.com
How much you make depends on what you know. Decent wages for a tech support drone at an ISP is about $9-11(USC) an hour. Some positions down at the law firms downtown pay as much as $40K a year for people with basic techsup skills, some Unix experience, and some network experience.
Housing can be anywhere between $500-900 for a 1 bedroom apartment. Between $750-1200 for a 2 bedroom. (Not sure for 3.)
Depending on how far out you live, and what neighborhoods, actually buying a house may be cheaper. In Berwyn, the median price of a house is about $140K (some condos go for around $50K).
Further south in Downer's Grove/Darien, housing is in the $180-200K range, with condos going for between $60-100K.
If you live out further west in areas like Plainfield (starting to build up), housing starts around $120K and goes up from there.
The only major hassle in Chicago is the traffic. They have 5 major tollways, and 4 major freeways. And right now, they're working on most of them (hopefully to be done by the end of this year). For night-shift workers, this isn't too bad. For 9-5'ers and evening workers, it can be a big hassle.
Also, parking downtown is disgustingly expensive. Luckily there's a decent rail system in Chicago with several major lines (IIRC all of them are now open nearly 24/7).
There's two major airports for commuting (O'Hare and Midway). Midway is undergoing major construction right now to add a huge parking structure, and additional terminals.
Hope this helps.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
well im english but workoing in helsinki, finland
i do get alone fine there is tonnes of tekkie stuff but i would say we do not need to start the Mc donalds, run every half hour. im happy with my coffee.
If you want the best paying cutting edge job stay in the US. If you want to work abroad to expand your horizans, which I highly recommend, choose the country based on what you want. Most countries are in need of tech workers and will pay a good salary in relation to the area.
I was born, raised and am currently living in Canada, and have lived in the US, Australia and France for extended time and the UK and Germany for short periods of time. I would recommend any one of these countries, each of them has a slighty different culture and history, and any one can be a great expenence.
After living in Calgary for most of my life the 30c temperatures of Perth and Sydney in Australia was great, although Germany is also amazing.
If you want to make money stay in the US, even after living in five other countries I believe it is a great place dispite what people might say. I choose to come back to Canada to start a family near my family, but I could have stayed in, and have visited many of these countries.
Good luck
So here goes nothing:
Here's a great info page about Toronto. (An exerpt: "Toronto has nine months of winter and three months of poor skating -- at least that's what it feels like.")
Seriously, though: our winters will put hair on your chest, but the great summers make up for them!
Here's the City of Toronto's official web site.
<Dons flameproof suit>
Here's another great link to go along with the last two.
--
Id suggest youd take a look over here at Munich in Bavaria. Al major tech companies have their headquarters here such as Sun, Apple, IBM, Intel, and even Microsoft :P. There are also a lot of Startups and Publishing Companies related to the Internet, Linux or PC-Stuff in general. We are desperatly looking for young motivated IT-Professionals and i bet youd find a nice team in no time. Whats more: The lovely little Town with 1Mio. Citizens is also the Beer Capital of the World featuring such funny events as the Oktoberfest or the Hofbräuhaus. Munich is Germanies first Adress for Hightech and InformationTech so youd sure find a good place to work over here...looking forward to seeing you! Lispy
You want tech heaven? You want ultra obsessed geeky otaku fanboys? You want to go to where Ramen noodles come from? You need to try asia.
The following cities in asia are ultra techie:
Bangalore, India: The Silicon Valley of India, huge computer industry and very western compared to the rest of india. English is the first language for most tech workers in India.
Singapore: Clean, efficient, wired city. English is the first language. The state religion is capitalism and anyone found spitting gum on the sidewalk will be publically flogged.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: The government is spending billions on fibre connections.
Tokyo: Bladerunner, Otaku, PS2 what more needs to be said?
Cambridge UK is the central point for high tech R&D in England (Reading is more of an commercial IT type area, and LondonCity is more financial) - with a lot of biotech and software firms, including a number of web based start ups. AT&T and Microsoft have R&D centres here.
Good points:
- it's a student town, so there are lots of pubs, and lots of people from different places, so a sort of international melting pot community.
- in the university environment, there are a lots of lectures, classes and interesting things to do if you are in the student/graduate social scene.
- job wise, there's a shortage of engineering supply, and lots of software work, you can walk out of a job one day and pick up another one the next day.
- close to the excitement of London, only 50mins by train into central London for museums, nightlife and everything else, London is one of the great cities you need to experience.
- close to major airports such as Stansted, and Heathrow/London, making it cheap and easy to take off on holidays around Europe, including discount operators such as Go, Easyjet and Ryanair.
- Cambridge university is on the academic tour circuit, so there are lectures by and visits by well known 'stars'.
- the pound is strong, so being paid in pounds sterling is good.
- its a cycle town, so you can get around by bicycle easily and cheaply, plus it's also semi-rural, so you can escape into the surrounding countryside in several minutes.
- a reasonably civil and cultured community: arts theatres, arts cinemas, reasonably good restaurants, museums, sports activities, etc.
- more of a community and friendly rural town feel than of a busy carbon-monoxide drenched city (i.e. the feeling of London or Oxford).
Bad points:
- traffic is bad, trying to drive around in during peak hour, or finding parking spots at any time, can be problematic.
- english weather is often dreary and bland.
- the cost of living is relatively high compared to the average salary that people earn.
- british reservedness and class attitudes, which are still somewhat prevalent.
- in technology/engineering/commercial terms, the practices are behind the united states and australia (in my experiences so far) - it is no match for silicon valley.
- high rents and living costs, and housing shortage in general - accomodation is impossible to find at times.
I've been here for 2.5 years now - I have worked, travelled, studied, attended university formal functions, made friends in the university, spent time in London, hung around coffee houses, devoured books in the many book stores, entertained friends as visitors and a lot more. I only wish that the weather was better.
If your career/job skills match the speciality of the area (high tech R&D), then Cambridge can be a good base for several years of work, travel and life.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
Most European capitals have booming Internet and IT sectors, except maybe for south Europe. So Paris, Francfurt/Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Bruxell, Stockolm, etc... are all fine, depending on what lifestyle you are looking for. Salaries are usually the same once you relate them to life cost (London is well paid bug extremely expensive while Paris is not as well paid but cheaper to live in, etc...). I'd said Milan might be good too.
Selected as Irelands information age town by Telecom Eirinn (as they were then known) as a testbed town for all sorts of interesting technologies. Every household in the town and surrounding areas was given a computer and high bandwidth internet connection and they do a lot of experimentation with cutting edge stuff.
as far as speaking the language goes, it depends on your employer and your job. back office developers don't have to speak the language all that well, but if you're going to be sent out to do pre-sales, or CeBIT, you're going to need some proficiency.
recently some countries have changed their work visa requirements. in france it became official in december, 1998. you get a fast track visa if you're a high tech engineer, it takes less than two months. this situation is becoming more and more common; talk to the consular offices of the countries you want to go to.
as far as where to live, dublin is a nice place, so is sydney, and don't forget scandinavia. whats important to you? being near the ocean? the mountains? mass transit? options not already mentioned include santiago, buenos aires, wellington, and taipei.
you just might find you never want to go home.
--
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
I'm Canadian, working in Dublin for over a year now. You can write your own ticket here, especially if you're a programmer or do database stuff, but almost any computer skills make you quite employable due to a sever shortage of workers.
I'm working on my second job... not because I didn't like the first place I worked at, but the opportunity just came up out of the blue, and the offer was too good to pass up. Getting here (work visa-wise) is easy if you're a student (I enrolled in a cheap online course to get my student status), but a company can get a Visa for you with fairly little hassle. And I've heard they're trying to make it even easier due to the labor shortage.
Pay is good, though cost of living's kind of high. But you can golf all year round! And the culture here is great - great music, beer and of course plenty of Red Bull.
New Zealand's quite brilliant too, from what I've heard (got some family there)... pay's super... but it's a bit far, eh?
Of the western countries that have foreigner friendly immigration services three clearly stand out: Canada, Australia, New Zealand. All three have policies that with a bit of luck will allow you to work there for a while and even settle. Their governments run various programmes to attract foreign individuals with the right skill sets. Canada is probably the most prominent of the three so that's where I'm heading in September ;). All of them will have a requirement that you have some experience in your field prior to your work permit application. Usually they ask for two or three years.
Also with some luck you may get to South Africa. If you feel you are open minded enough you should try some Central Europe countries. Hungary, Poland and Chech Republic are the most developed of the lot and their major cities will have quite a few techie jobs. Their immigration policies are now in place but at least in Poland it's not a problem to get a permit as long as you have some sensible qualifications. The employers will be quite enthusiastic towards English speaking foreigners there as well so you'll probably feel quite welcome.
As for Asia I don't know much about it but I heard Taiwan is seeking English speaking foreigners to work for their companies but it's not something I could confirm. Don't know about the rest of Asia though.
So that's it. As you can see there isn't that many choices you have. Being an American if you have no or little work experience you can rule out pretty much all of EU straight away, unfortunately. They won't let you in. Consider Canada, Oz or New Zealand or perhaps Central Europe. Sorry about this pragmatic tone but despite all the media blabbing about global workforce the governments are still placing awkward barriers even for highly skilled people. This is something you will have to wrestle with. Good luck with your endavour.
I work quite close to you then, there's a lot of computing work available in the area to be found. As EnglishTim says it is quite a pricy area to live in, but no more so than London, and the air is definitely a bit cleaner... my personal favourite is how London is always 2 degrees hotter than the surrounding areas :)
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Yip, the 3rd world country with the 1st world tech!
Two cities of reall interest:
Johannesburg, Host too two sepperate LUG's one for Linux Proffessionals with about a $100 one-time joining fee, and the other a standard run-of-the-mill free-for-all-lug with about 500 members. Severall Major IT companies in the City and surrounding towns including branches of Mecer, IBM and Microsoft (the one that got bombed) bringing us to the con, the highest crime-rate in the world, a city for martial-artsy adventurous techies.
Pretoria:
Home of the 3rd largest LUG, crime-rate extremely low (leading to Johburgers calling it boring). Politticall and live/gothic music capitall of the country. Also home to the largest university outside of America famous for having "higher standards than any european university". Birthplace of programs like mcedit and cd-tux. The city plays host to branches of severall other large IT firms including Mustek, Compaq and Amiga. This is also where you will find the largest engineering firms, developement companies ISP's et all.
"Semper in excretum set alta variant"
Stockholm is the "wireless capital of the world".
I was very suprised when visiting New York last week. Noone (I mean hardly anyone) talked in a
mobile telephone. In stockholm (and all of Scandinavia) about 25% of the people walking on the streets are talking in a phone. (Earsdropping on the bus is fun).
Besides the wireless broadband is hot (most appartments are offered some type of >512 Kbaud connection for about $25 a month.)
Copyright 1998 arne Verbatim copying and distribution is permited as long as this message is preserved
I could talk about University of Helsinki's CS dep. as well, but I won't. It seems that the Technical University would be a better place for studies.
Whatever is said of Stockholm, Oslo or Copenhagen, also applies to Helsinki - except for difficulty of the local language, which you don't have to learn if you stay just one year or so, since everybody really talks some english, most people fluently.
Want more of an experience? Choose Reykjavik, Iceland. That's where I'm going to go one of these days.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
I'd say Amsterdam is a good place to go to. Almost all major IT companies have a presence here, which should make it easy to find a job. The dutch are very open to foreigners, especially americans. Amsterdam is one of the, if not the, most important points networkwise of Europe (hence all the companies here).
:)
:)
One of the things to consider is a workpermit and a residency permit. You can't just pick up your stuff and move to Amsterdam (or any other European city). You need either a residency permit (which will include a workpermit), or a workpermit (which will eventually include a residency permit).
You get a residency permit by either marrying or living with a dutch partner. After a few months you get your permit which includes a valid workpermit for any job you want to do.
You get a workpermit by applying for a joboffer that a company has open (check out all major companies like cisco, sun, hp, and so on). The workpermit you get then is linked to that company, and if you get fired you also loose your residency permit. So find yourself a girlfriend asap
And last but not least, Amsterdam is just a very nice and friendly city
Cor
today or yesterday it was announced that some ICT companies in the netherlands will get some extra room to hire people from outside the EU, so that may just be a good shot if you wanna come to the Netherlands. Speech is free, the beer is good, coffee is just about a national drink, job security is good. Most people know english quite well, so language shouldn't be much of a problem either. at age 18 you're fully adult, so none of this 21 year crap for buying alcohol. And then there's coffee-shops, but that's another story (that has remarably little to do with coffee)
//rdj
P.S. No, I don't know what companies are hiring.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
So, while it's not a "fabulous jobs every you look!" situation *today*, keep your eye on the Champaign-Urbana area over the next few years. The cost of living here is still very decent, there's a great technical university right next door, and I think the area is finally poised for some heavy tech business growth. Chicago is just 2-3 hours north (depending on how fast you drive :-) ), and most of that trip can be spent on one highway which has farmland on either side nearly the entire way north -- meaning that if traffic between Chicago and CU starts to increase, the highway can easily be widened to accommodate. So travel between Chicago and CU should remain convenient as well.
Anyway, sorry if I'm sounding like a Chamber of Commerce. :-) Keep an eye on Champaign-Urbana is all I'm saying.
ChicagoFan
Both born here.
;)
SSH Tatu Ylönen
F-Secure Half of my friends work there (suckah's
It's not the end of the list but those are some cool things born here. As for cool geek stuff from Finland, you might want to check out Oulu as well - would 'IRC' ring a bell?
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
The Netherlands has just about the highest density of cable (~98% of all homes I think)and cable-access to the net is easy to get.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
+ the atmosphere is without compare.
ALso london is pretty good, as is Cambridge. Of course, all english speaking but London is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world and there's something for everyone here.
Working for the (other) man
I came from Australia and have been here 9 months. I prefer here to working in a native-English speaking country because there is so much more culture. However you should do your own research on the culture in the places you're considering (eg the Dutch live on meetings :)..
The other great thing about .nl is that grog is cheap (and there's no minimum drinking age - i was at my girfriends old school last night for her bro's graduation and they were giving beers to the (15yo) kids), geek toys are amongst the cheapest in EU, and all the cities are very compact so dont require cars to get around.
Anyway, as I said - do your own research on the culture in the various countries, but do keep .nl in mind as it is a great place to experience.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
One of my friend would ove to be a hermit. If not for computers he'll dive off the ends of the earth and that's it.
.. am i turning into a hermit as well??
Well actually what i want to say is why even ask? Concidering how the internet have developed you can work pretty much anywhere if you have the right job. Alan Cox live in Swansea Wales. Used to be quite a remote place and still is compaired to other bigger towns. Incidentally that hermitish friend of mine is starting at Swansea University this comming school year.
At anyrate I would suggest people concidering a job not concider what other people think of it as a geek city. Afterall lots of the same people means in some case napster over loaded lines and pubs that are just too full.
Man.. i read reread that
I'm not sure what that country's attitude is towards foreign tech workers, but I wouldn't be surprised if they encouraged outside brains helping their economy. Trinidad is the last island in the Caribbean chain, and its economy was devastated after big oil companies (Texaco) drained its resources in the late 70s without regard to the country's long-term well-being. In my view, when a skilled CS or other tech worker goes into such a country, she is performing a service to that country similar to a volunteer in the Peace Corps.
Unfortunately, I can envision some problems with living/working in such a country. Your salary, unadjusted for cost of living, will be much lower than in the US. However, you can live quite comfortably in Trinidad on a significantly lower budget (maybe 20-50% less than in the US?). At the same time, you are surrounded by economic squalor. I can see how this would be depressing. Another problem would be interacting with the government. It is common knowledge in Trinidad that to get any kind of interaction with government inspectors, officials, etc, involves bribing your way into a permit, contract, etc. For instance, if you get pulled over for speeding, you take the cop down to the local rum shop for a few beers. Literally. In fact, corrupt government officials are largely responsible for the decay of Trinidad's economy and infrastructure. If you don't want to play by this country's dirty rules, it might not be the place for you. On the other hand, one might view this as an philanthropic opportunity: it's probably much easier for one person, company or organization to change the political or economic climate of a nation such as Trinidad (pop: ~1.5 million) than it is to become influential in a North American or European country.
I wouldn't be surprised if these comments apply to other small countries as well? Just some thoughts...
If you're not wasted, the day is.
Barcelona is a great city for techies. There seems to be loads of competition in the telecomms sector here, meaning cheap ADSL connections are easy to come by, and international phone costs are coming down all the time. Barcelona is one of Time magazine's top 22 "High-tech hot spots" in Europe. Other advantages of Barcelona is that it is a fantastic city to live in - great bars and restaurants, great climate and sunny, low living costs, wonderful food and wine. I can really recommend it!
If you check with the cable companies first (Tokyu Cable, Tokyo Metallic, soon Microsoft too :-( ) you can move into an apartment or house with cable modem access in Tokyo. Service is comparable to that in the US ( approc $50 month, 400-800 kbits service). If you don't live in a building serviced by cable modem (and there are only about 15-20k subscribers in Tokyo, I understand this year), you are really screwed. No flat rate telephone service, ISDN is expensive (for ISP access). So it's really binary here, either get cable or get screwed.
You might wanna try out Sweden. Rumor is that Sweden is one of the front most countries when it comes to IT. I live in Luleå in the north of Sweden next to the univeristy; a smaller IT community is growing close to campus. I am currently exmployed by a company there.
.sig
Of course with any foreign country the hard part is probably getting a work visa. Most have laws that say something like companies can only hire foreigners if there is no "local" who can do the job.
a 2M ppl city. good xDSL (we provide it since about 5 years now). the only downside is the political situation where an extrem right wing government is in power now. (OTOH the extrem right is not much worse then e.g. the republican party in the u.s.).
greetings from vienna.
mond.
Avoid tech towns with a low/medium ratio of universities/students to jobs. Salaries will be signifigantly deflated below norms because of the college students that are desperate for a quick buck, and don't care/don't know what the going rates for their skills are elsewhere.
This isn't an issue with major centers, but most people know that SF is a good tech center, I'm assuming that the article is looking for worldwide/smaller/non-obvious places.
On the up side, university towns have lots of "real" women and quality bars, so, YMMV. I'd rather have more $ to buy car toys with :).
Kudos
..don't panic
Indeed all true, but its raining today in Espoo and that is perfectly in tune with the miserable IPO Tecnomen had today. Sheesh
Sweden's the most wired country in the world, surpassing even the US. (According to some IDC study i can't find right now) The people are friendly, and everybody speaks english.
:)
Swedes are very good at adopting new technology, and because the country only has ~9e6 citizens new tech can (and is) quickly adopted. Think of it as a lab where tech is "tested" before it spreads around the world.
Also, it's not a bad place to live. You don't have to be afraid to go out at night, it's roomy, lots of space and few people. As for cities in sweden, i'd go with the capital - Stockholm. Probably has the largest concentration of IT companies outside SV.
But then again.. this post isn't very much different from all others. Close your eyes and pick a country.
As long as you're open to new experiences and keep a friendly face it doesn't really matter where you are. There are IT jobs all around the world, not just in Silicon Valley.
There are a lot of reasons to live in Barbados, but if access to high-tech IT is your goal, keep looking.
There is a lot of encouragement for the national adoption of information technology. Considerable effort being put into encouraging early adoption in schools. There is even a policy to allow computer hardware and software to land duty-free, so as to keep the cost down and allow wider acceptance. However, the costs are still high enough that you won't want to purchase hardware locally if it can be avoided.
Bandwidth is another matter. Point-to-point local telephone is flat-rate, so there is no per-minute charge for dialling an ISP. But the telco has a terrible reputation for customer service. They are also the LD carrier, and the top-level ISP as well. Say "Monopoly". And compared to the USA, the bandwidth is relatively expensive, and the QOS is poor and spotty. Only limited services are available (ADSL only now being tested). To nail up an internet connection of (say) 128kbps would cost you thousands of dollars each month for private use only. To be able to re-sell the bandwidth will cost several times more.
Local employers are often thick-headed and hide-bound. If you send the boss an e-mail on the LAN, he is likely to call you on the phone, tell you to print a copy, and bring it to his office. Unless you work for a company that is directly related to the IT industry, chances are they are computer-illiterate. Even some of the companies that are in the IT field are so incompitent I refuse to use their services.
As for the entire issue of "Online Rights", well, it has not to my knowledge been tested even in the tinyest way. But I have a feeling that the local ISPs would rush to terminate your service if there was even the smallest suggestion that you were being a naughty boy! So I don't think you will be able to set up an off-shore data haven to make copies of DeCSS available to the world.
As I said, there is considerable interest for national adoption of IT, and I hope that we can rapidly catch up in that regard, but as of today, I would have to say that Barbados was not an ideal spot.
But as I said, there are lots of other reasons to live here, and it's a great place to visit!
For those of you looking for a change of pace, try Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada - great beer, unlimited DSL for $40 bucks a month, good tech sector, low, low, low cost of living, it's actually possible to buy a house, and you're only three or four hours from some of the most beautiful scenery (and some of the best roads to race on) on the east cost, the Highlands of Cape Breton.. Plus, the women aren't bad either.
If you want > $70k CDN/year, you'll have to poke around, but the jobs are there if you're as good as you think you are. I can't overstate the cost and quality of life on the east coast. People are _nice_ to you. :)
Kudos
..don't panic
One interesting correlation between hi-technology and the people who live in them is the tolerance of the area for alternative lifetsyles according to a recent article in the Austin American Statesman. Apparently both groups of people, gays and hi-tech workers, are looking for the same type of place to live.
Montreal is a great city for hi-tech.
It has been growing steadily over the past few years in the technology sector (especially thanks to countless government subventions), and is now at a level it hasn't been in a long time. The quality of life is great (great food, great shows, and, wow, we have culture), which was proven the other day with the UN calling Canada the most liveable country in the world.
Good luck
http://www.logient.com
There are many US basied tech firms with offices here and English is an official language. Seems like an IT revolution is on in India. (That and the fact that there were a few recent Miss Universes from India)
Agree, keep the good spirit up fellow /.er.
Home of the HyperLink. Good things: errr, you can work at BT. Labs. property is cheap beer is cheap Bad things: the women are ugly (although they will want to sleep with you, something about fresh genes or some such) the nightlife is... limited.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada isn't called "Silicon Valley North" for nothing. There is a huge high tech presence there with companies like Nortel, QNX, Newbridge, etc. all having campuses there. All the high tech amenities (cable modems, DSL, digital cellular service, etc) are there as well and cheap.
:-). There is a huge outdoor market downtown with cafe's, fruit stands, cheese shops, etc. and culture out the wazoo. Why, practically every week during the summer, there are a few blocks closed off somewhere for Italian week, Greek week, Chinese week, Indian week and so on. So, if you're looking for a beautiful, clean, safe, not too big (about 1 million if you include suburbs) town with lots of high tech jobs and great multiculturalism then Ottawa is the place for you.
Plus, as the nation's capitol, it is one of the cleanest and most beautiful cities I've ever seen.
From my friend's 12th floor balcony, you look out over a forest...except that it's a city suburb with so many trees, you can't even SEE any houses (except in winter when the leaves fall off
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Ireland seems like one of those overseas places that is booming, because:
a) it's close to the States (roughly - you can't walk, but you know what I mean)
b) they speak English over here
c) it's in the EU
d) the government is giving HUGE tax breaks to businesses in order to get them over here.
Java/C++ people in Dublin are getting the most attention, as there are a lot of companies with big plans but no people to carry them out. Everyone from Dell to Micro$oft to Intel are looking for people who know how to do IT, and the government is finally catching up to the demand. They recently lowered the bar for US citizens coming over to Ireland, and made it much easier to get work authorization (see here and here for government info - I like the part about being an 'IT Specialist' - heh). One company is now considering delaying their major construction and expansion of their chip plant because they can't find enough people to work there.
The country is broken up into two parts, it seems: Dublin and everywhere else. Dublin is like a medium-to-large sized town in the States, with a good social life and clubbing, nice and friendly people (not like New York, more like, um... Chicago! Go Cubs!), and some of the most beautiful countryside you'll see around.
I'll stop rambling: here's some more links.
Move to Ireland - a site on what you should do to move; very helpful.
IrishJobs - one of a number of job sites for the burgeoning working populace (like you).
Ireland Department of Foreign Affairs - another government website, good links.
And yes - I moved over here, and it's pretty cool. The only drawbacks are that there's no Taco Bell (argh!) and no ESPN on the TV (AAARRRGGGHHH!!!). But hey, what the hell.
Good luck!
Will
You might want to also consider your interests outside of computers in considering a location. What I mean is that the money that pays all of our techie salaries has to come from some place and that some place can help you determine your location. For example, if you have an interest in economics or investing, Chicago or New York might be a good choice because there are always open positions at exchanges, investment firms, etc. If you like the idea of shrinkwrapped software development, California might be a better choice.
Yeah, it's a great city to live. I was there from 87 to 92, went to UQ and tried a couple of majors, but then had to leave since I was still hanging off my parent's apron strings at the time, and they left for the US. Life is much more relaxed than in most places, people are friendly--especially after you prime them with a few bottles of XXXX. Gold Coast is just an hour away, and the beaches around Brisbane are some of the best in the world, period!
The only downside to life in Australia is that it's so fucking far from the rest of the (relevant) world. Most of my family lives in Germany, so I didn't get to see them very often. And at the time email and the Web were only just getting started in the non-geek world. Considering a return ticket to Europe used to run $2000 or so, you're pretty much stuck to the Continent. And a big continent it is, with way not enough decent freeways to go places.
Just as soon as commercial wormholes becomes available and travel from Australia to Europe and the US involves nothing more than stepping through a gate, I'll be back in Oz, that's for sure.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Even though Munich is a large city population-wise, it feels like a small provincial town almost. Road infrastucture is terrible, it takes forever to get from one end of town to the other, since there are no (or few) freeway bypasses.
Besides, life is way too expensive in Munich itself. You have to go outside of town and commute to find decent housing. However, the area to the south towards the Alps is quite accessible with two freeways, and it's beautiful around there.
All in all I'd have to say Munich is a mixed bag. Besides, especially for foreigners, the accent takes some getting used to.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
I'm a classic American yankee, and I speak 3 languages, and at least 3 of them are English. The others I won't mention out of modesty.....
You have a major university, a national lab, a lot of Phillips stuff, and assorted other geek magnets (though IPIX and Cyberflix, alas, are no longer major factors here). And high-speed data is easy to get. Also, housing is very cheap, and there's easy access to mountains, etc., if you're into that sort of thing.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Wellcome to Hamburg
In the the IT sector everybody speaks english, and most people on the street do so as well. We have a large english,irish and american community, even got an english speaking theather. As traditional port, we are germanys gateway to the world
While the whole of germany is currently looking for IT personal, Hamburg also offers a richt Multi-Media and PR scene, that gives good working opportunities for the graphically inclined.
Hamburg has lots to offer with a cool Heavy Metal scene if you are into that, or lots of other arts and culture.
Hamburg is at the intersection of three Rivers, with lots of watersports to do, the climate has mild winters and no weather extremes as the USA is prone to. The streets are clean and have a friendly athmosphere. The city has a superior public transport system (I do not own a car, I do not need it. No designated driver nessecary)
Hamburg is close enough to Hannover to sleep in your own bed when being sent to CeBit (Which will happen if you plan on working in the IT Sector)
And If you are looking for jobs, mail me I've got good jobs to offer (the relevant part of my geek code is 'ULS+++$' B-)
Okay okay, I know, it's the middle of NOWHERE. However, I have found that being in the middle of nowhere has some benifits. It is dirt cheap to live here. You can live like a king in Tulsa for less than 70k a year... And the main two companies in town? Williams and WorldCom. Talk about employment opportunities. Esp if you are more of a networking style geek vs a programing style geek (judging from some code I have seen, the two are not mutually exclusive, but only rarely ;> )
I moved from Multimedia Gulch in San Francisco to Berlin in January. The software business is strong in Berlin. It's just as hard to keep good programmers on board as it is in the Valley. I have a 768/128 ADSL line at home, which was not hard to get, although Deutsche Telekom botched the installation and left me without any phone service at all for a week. Cost of living is much lower than the Bay area, but so are salaries. You can get around Berlin just fine without a car--there's an excellent train system here. If you like classical music, Berlin is tops, and a million people are invading my neighborhood next month for the techno-music Love Parade. You can travel to anywhere in Europe from here on the train, although it isn't cheap. On the down side, the weather sucks, and you just can't get a good burrito anywhere. Simply buying things can be an ordeal, because shop hours are short and customer service is not a high priority. Most educated people speak English pretty well, which is good because I haven't learned much German. My social life would be a lot better if I did.
Coming from Brisbane myself, I must say that the only problem is that the $A is not too flash and the wages are not high due to the low cost of living. In general, Brisbane is a great place to work & live if you don't plan on leaving it any time soon.
You might want to have a look at Ireland, lots of tech jobs popping up and pound is strong and wages are high. Beer is outstanding, people are too friendly (if possible). Weather could be better.....but as a geek, who cares....;P
"I have been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding" -- Harvey Danger
Only problem with Vancouver is you're competing with a few thousand PhD people who ran over here from Hong Kong for the exact same reason - so it might be harder to find a job than you think. The bare minimum for good employment there is a post-grad degree (although, if you've got a BSc. Eng or CS, or a MCS you should have no problem). Our immigration laws are a lot more sane, although nobody wants to move to Saskatchewan, hehe.
Come on over to the east coast and get some non-americanized Canadian culture :).
Kudos!
..don't panic
Hi,
I'm an american living in Barcelona. I don't know if I'd recommend it (or anyplace in Spain). Sure there are a lot of job openings in IT and programming, but no new tech is being produced here. Also, it's proven damn hard to get a work permit.
However, it's definately do-able and spanish and catalan aren't hard to learn.
Stockholm is great but the Taxes are through the freakin roof!
I would choose Berlin probably, though it's damn cold. Or somewhere in Malaysia.
geremy
The housing isn't as cheap as all that if you don't want to be way out in one of the suburbs.
I had the misfortune of moving to town during the September rush, and it took me two solid weeks of looking to find a reasonable 1 BR apartment. Even then, I still ended up paying C$750 / month, which was more than I had been paying in Toronto.
That said, it's been a good switch. The social atmosphere is really pleasant here. So much so that I often find myself being nice to people just by accident!
About Amsterdam - if you're planning to move to the city center it would be best if your employer can arrange a place to live for you (and foot the bill).
We called several estate agencies and the message was uniformly 'sorry, there just too much demand for too few places.'
The few places we did see were about the same price as one would pay in London.
Great games
Hey!
Dubna is a nice little town to the north from Moscow, full of nerds (both physics and computer gurus), with good connectivity and friendly geek community. Some really cool high-tech companies are based here.
--bo
Both Kongsberg and Horten in Norway are small towns, ~20k inhabitants, that has a (comparably) large hi-tech industry base.
You get the disadvantages of small-town life (not much is happening) and the advantages (peace and quiet and low crime rate). In addition, Kongsberg is sort of a winter sport capital, and Horten is a seaside town with opportunities for boating. Both towns are about an hours drive from Oslo, the capital.
A few examples of companies in Kongsberg:
Kongsberg Group has several companies in Horten, too. These are the big companies, there are a lot of small ones.
Most Norwegians speak English quite well. My girlfriend came here as an exchange student and got along just fine without any Norwegian at all. I would assume that it's no big problem getting a job without speaking Norwegian.
Norway is a peaceful and quiet country. There is little crime and good social security, but also high taxes and often cold weather. Check it out if you like this kind of life...
A)bort, R)etry or S)elf-destruct?
Vancouver, in the milder West Coast of Canada, is just like Toronto, except it has: cleaner air, great skiing and snowboarding, ocean beaches, even more affordability, and most importantly, the winters _won't_ put hair on your chest! Just be sure to pack an umbrella.
A better town for any kind of freedom & fun lovin' geek there is not!
We should all move to Sealand! Well, there might not be enough room for all of us there, but we could probably find some more abandoned bunkers somewhere.
Ann Arbor, Michigan. You only have to go there once to fall in love with it.
All higher education in Michigan is based there. The populace is intelligent and friendly. The coffee shop to population and computer shop to population ratios are higher than anywhere I've ever been to. There are two beautiful Art Deco movie theaters downtown. There's a store that specializes in stuff like little chrome fish - like one of the emblems for some Christian sect - but these fish have little feet and the word "Darwin" in the center. And broadband is readily available.
This isn't a city-affiliated site, but it's got a lot of cool links, so check it out.
[longing sigh] Ann Arbor.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
As as German living in the US, I have a bias towards Europe. When I return there, I will consider one of these options:
Berlin. Huge place, largest city in Europe. Tons of money are pouring into the place, even though right now it's still one big construction site. My feeling is it will become more and more the German show piece, so lots of things will be "firsts" in Berlin. Deutsche Telekom (most hated in Germany, btw) is planning flat-rate DSL rollout this summer, so eventually connectivity will be good. Personally, I'm biased towards large metropolitan cities (despite where I live right now!), and Berlin definitely fits the bill. Road infrastructure is good and getting even better with more city freeways. The surroundings are pretty good too, with lots of lakes and stuff to do, especially up north towards the Baltic.
However, I'm not sure I want to live in Germany again. For one, my wife is American and doesn't speak a lick of Deutsch. Besides, I'm sick of Germany for various reasons: Germans are very conservative overall--politically, socially, economically, financially, technologically. True, lots of tech came out of Germany this century, but those were different times, when Germans were still adventurous. Now they're used to the good life and don't want to jeopardize it with any "risky business". Most bright and open minds have left for the US long ago.
Also, Germans can be incredibly rude, especially in the service industries. I've never been treated with more indifference and contempt than in German shops and restaurants. And that at hourly wages many times more than in the US, where you get better service regardless.
Add to that a strong dose of arrogance. Germans still think of their country as the leading edge in all the areas that made it great, completely ignoring that times have changed and the world has moved on. While they certainly haven't missed the train yet, they need to wake up and smell the coffee--and I'm not sure they're capable of that anymore.
Ireland. Seems to be really booming in the IT area. Life should be a lot cheaper than in most of Europe, though I'm sure that'll change. Language is English (well, arguably anyway), and the people are reportedly very friendly, especially after being lubricated with some ale. However, the weather is reputed to be bad a lot of the time. It's also pretty far from the Continent. I'd be interested to know how long it takes to get to the mainland, and at what cost.
Spain. One of the cheapest European countries, except for telecom. Friendly people, great weather most of the time. After living in Australia and the southern US, I'm not sure I can return to cold climates again, so Spain is a strong favorite there. The language is a problem since my Spanish is worse than my Swahili, and I don't speak Swahili. I don't know how far English will get you in Spain either. But I'm willing to learn, so that should count for something .
Amsterdam. It's on the Continent, so there's easy access to everywhere. Everybody speaks English, and good English at that. It's quite a high-tech city from what I hear, so that's a plus.
Other than these options, I can't think of anything else. Eastern Europe won't be an option for at least another decade, their infrastructure simply sucks.
Americans looking at Europe should keep the following things in mind in general. They're not show stoppers, but they can be very irritating in day-to-day life.
-cost of gas. Europe sucks the blood out of you there. Filling up a mid-size sedan runs about $50. On the flip side, there's a plethora of public transportation, and you don't need a car as much as in the US, but it depends on where you live. If you're used to the US lifestyle of two cars no matter what, that can get pretty expensive.
-cost of housing. Rents are high, houses cost even more. I only know about Germany, but I assume things are similar everythere. Most houses in Germany start at $400,000 or so and go up, up, up. There's really no equivalent of the small three bedroom suburban house for $100,000. Properties are really expensive ($150 a square meter in many places, do the math for acres), often running almost as much as the house. Therefore people build big expensive houses to make it worthwhile. Get ready to pay for the rest of your life (and maybe your children's lives) for your house.
-communications. Most European telephone companies were only recently privatised, and they're still dragging their feet. They're simply used to monopoly status and price their services accordingly. In most places even local calls are metered, so staying online with your ISP will cost you a bunch. The ISP costs themselves are comparable to the US, the real killer are the phone company charges. Downloading a Linux distribution will probably cost you more than buying the boxed version. However, it's a fast-paced field and a lot of competition is arriving. In many countries DSL is starting to arrive, and along with it flat rate Internet access. With respect to DSL, I don't think Europe is far behind the US, where it's still impossible to get DSL in most places and will be for the next 5 to 10 years.
-culture. Americans are used to travel all over the US and still remain within their cultural context: same language, same politics, same restaurants, same TV and media. Travel that much in Europe, and your head will spin. No language is truly common to all of Europe (though English is the official language of the EU). No TV is common, you have to adjust to what's available in each country; and while people on the street might speak some English, the evening news most certainly will be in the local language. Magazines and newspapers differ widely, too, though you will find many international ones also. People's lifestyles and attitudes differ incredibly, and you can make no safe assumptions except with time and experience. Don't forget, these are still independent countries, proud of their differences and heritage. In the US we can all make a joke about the South and rednecks and all, safe in the knowledge that we're all Americans after all. In Europe, make a joke about another European nation and you're liable to get your head bashed in if the wrong people stand around.
All in all, you can live quite nicely in Europe--300 million people do it every day and wouldn't be anywhere else. But be prepared for a serious culture shock for the first few months. I know of a lot of people who went through serious depression until they got used to the place. Eventually most people settle in and like it a whole lot.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Hey...how can we have this discussion and NOT mention NYC? I'm a native who's lived abroad and away before, and I still love this place best of all....why?
:)
There's a snapshot of the world here...if you're homesick there are groups from every ethnic group in the world to join/hang out with...24/7 lifestyle, but lots of neat hidden places to rest, chill out, and even enjoy some scenery and greenery (and NOT just Central Park)....
Yes, housing costs a lot more by national standards...BUT...other than that you can live surprisingly cheaply. NYC is the only town I've ever lived in where you can still find tons of FREE arts/entertainment and good food for under $5/plate...
Right now is actually a great time to visit...it's beautiful outside...
Oh, and did I mention that all the coders I know have more bread than they know what to do with?
He said "cheaply connected", and it's pretty much true nowadays (if you live in the right area). It's certainly not as cheap as the States, but you can get a 1Mbps cable connection for around 5000 yen (~$US45), an ADSL connection for about 10,000 yen (~$US90), or a 128Kbps dedicated line for 32000 yen (~$US290). Dial-up is expensive because of NTT's monopolistic deathgrip on the domestic telecommunications market, but that might be getting cheaper RSN...
Montreal is most definitely the most European of all North American cities. It's a great place to live, if you can tolerate snow for most of the year and then 3 amazing summer months. Great beer, late call time, amazing jazz fest, the best skiing on the east coast, etc, etc. Tech-wise, you've got Nortel, Softimage, Zero Knowledge, Discrete Logic, lots of medium-sized startups -- Openface.ca, Hasc.com, etc, etc.. not to mention great talent coming out of McGill and Ecole Polytechnique.
Shameless plug!!
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
I'm offered a job in London that would more than double my salary in Paris .. and I would'nt be much better off considering taxes and cost of living. London is probably the most expensive city in city in the world, all considered. Housing is more expensive than NYC or the Valley, maybe just slightly less so than Tokyo or Hong Kong, and then you have a crappy weather (rain, rain, rain ...), and on top of that goods are very expensive. I hear though that with a good tax advisor you can save a bundle, but the legality of it is doubtful, somehow. ;) LOL
Paris has not so bad taxes compared to the rest of Europe. Actually, if you have kids you'll probably end up paying less income taxes than anywhere in western Europe.
We have semi working ADSL (ok pricing, not very reliable and some tech. problems though), working cable connectivity in some areas (but with upload limitations that may make it extremely expensive but for the casual surfer).
Also the Telecom industry is being forcefully opened -- the telecom regulation authority is making quite a good job of breaking the existing monopoly.
The city life is getting better (10 years ago it was sad) with some good stuff happening, and there's a trend to make it more environment friendly (less cars).
The weather is balanced, not too hot in summer, not too cold in winter, not too much rain (that's, compared to London or Amsterdam!).
It's not as crowded as London or NYC. Crime is rather low.
No drinking age (I would be extremely surprised if a 13 y.o. was denied buying a beer). Age of consent, 15. No fscking moron telling you what's good or bad (that's compared to the US). If you're into haschisch, it's not that great, still not yet liberated (despite having a few ministers in office publicly claiming to smoke or having smoked), personally I don't like it anyway. No stupid political sex scandals as in the UK, as nobody gives a fuck.
Lots of easy female US tourists
Good food. I can't believe I forgot to mention that. Good cheap wine. Bad cheap beer.
Doing business with french people is strange at times. I mostly work with foreigners, personally.
It's not absolutely great, but it's really ok.
The Philippines has a pretty active IT industry (it's probably the only tech sector there having a lot of activity). You must at least know English to get the most out of your stay. A lot of the major media companies (newspapers, TV networks) use English. You'll see a number of American and British shows on TV that are not dubbed at all.
Metropolitan Manila is a good place to start, though even the smallest towns have some form of Internet access. You'll find a lot of UNIX/Linux/xBSD techies around, especially in the big universities (e.g. University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila, De La Salle University). There are a number of user groups (e.g. Linux users group, etc.) there as well.
Big foreign companies such as Intel, Motorola, IBM, and AMD hire a lot of IT people.
During the weekends, you can drive out of town for some fresh air and have fun at the beach or sail on a lake all year round. Check out Tagaytay where there is an active volcano in the middle of the lake --- good view too. If you like to play golf or go diving, there are a lot of places to go out of town.
You could also taste the night life, as there are many good restaurants, cafes, and bars in the city.
As for telco companies, there has been a lot more competition among telecom companies since they opened the market a few years back. There is also a lot of competition among ISPs there, though even the smaller ones are thriving. ECommerce is being pushed aggressively. Cell phone service is cheap, as you don't use up your minutes when someone calls you.
It isn't as bad as how it is shown in the media (though you still have to avoid the "hot" spots). You'll actually have fun there.
I found Australia to be quite a change from California. Not particularly in any geek way, but life in general.
To start with, Australians are incredibly friendly, and for some reason, almost everybody seems to be in their 20s. They consume enormous quantities of beer, and in general are very talkative and nice to hang out with. By contrast, Americans are guarded, expect a greater amount of "personal space" and would probably find the Aussie rules of social interaction startling. Australia is also different in its city culture. Things are much more relaxed and people prefer to spend time at leisure, instead of the rush towards instant gratification that's common in the US. This also means that things can take longer, but it's far better than the frustrated, horn-honking lifestyle of california.
Another amazing thing about Australia is the sheer amount of space. You can buy land the size of a small town for 50K, or something like that. Everything is spread out.
Other nice things about Australia - no guns, little crime. People generally use syringes to rob stores (cracked me up when I heard of this), and violent crime is pretty rare. On the flip side, Australia is well behind the US in terms of net access, and the govt. keeps micro-managing everything, so it's REALLY bad for business. It's great for a working holiday, however.
w/m
I live and work in the Philly area and I find it a thriving tech town. The suburbs are crawling with tech companies-- both well-known names (Like Micros~1, SAP, Unisys, etc) as well as plenty of small and medium-sized companies, web-design firms, and of course, the requisite slew of consulting firms and headhunters.
Also significant is the thriving arts community to balance out all of those left-brain functions we use. Performing and fine arts (both mainstream and local) are plentiful and easily accessible. Big college town (technical and non), lots of good, cheap food, reasonable housing, good public trans LOTS OF COFFEE!! (sorry, had an AOL moment there).
Not bad for an American city.
And a really active LUG and two (count 'em) two area Debian Society chapters. http://plug.nothinbut.net
Toronto has to be the dirtiest place I've ever been in Canada. I had the misfortune to work there for 8 months. I'll never go back. Halifax is the place for me. It is smaller, cleaner and WAY friendlier! Plus the entire city has cable and dsl available.
As you come into town from the airport, there's a big sign proclaiming that you are now entering the Silicon Valley of Mexico.
Guadalajara has a couple of high tech plants there (disk drives, I think -- I'm not entirely sure). When I was there in January, I was surprised by the Internet connectivity. Walking around town, there were Internet cafes and computer stores every couple of blocks.
You'll want to pick up some Spanish for living in Mexico, that's for sure. But most people in Guadalajara speak a little English -- they've got the university there, plus there's a community of about 2,000 American expatriates living on the outskirts of town. I found it a little frustrating since I wanted to practice my Spanish and everyone kept trying to talk to me in English.
Finally, the cost of good tequila is very low there, as the town of Tequila is only 60km away.
The people are very friendly, the cost of living is really low, and it's a major city so there's lots going on and the populace is used to foreigners. What more could you want? A tech job? They've got those, too!
Oh, go on, check out my job.
Many reasons why:
* Caltech. Feynman taught there, and there are many interesting guest lectures and stuff.
* NASA, JPL
* Nice old buildings. Lots of cafes. Lots of trees..mmmm....trees.
* Many bookstores, including a used bookstore that is open at midnight.
* Smack in the middle of two techtonic plates. IF you want to enjoy an earthquake, this is the place.
* Smalltown atmosphere. Quiet place.
* Biggest stadium seating arthouse movie theatre in the country.
VERY high geek ratio within a 2 mile radius of caltech, and you can spot them. On a Friday night, you can often see a few guys hanging around talking about particle physics while everyone else is dating. Impressive stuff.
w/m.
I can't imagine a place much better than Ashland, OR (pop. 18,000). Here's what it took to get me to move, and stay, here:
The city has its own fibre optic network over which it offers Internet access and cable television. The local cable company does the same. Yes, Ashland may be the only place on the planet where you can choose your cable company! High speed Internet access can be had for $20.00 a month.
Good jobs. There are lots of high tech firms that are hiring. Almost all sects of computing (Microsoft, Open Source, Mac) are represented. Wages are not as high as in the big cities, but there not bad, either.
Proximity to a larger city. Medford (pop. 45,000) is only 15 miles away, and has a Barnes and Noble for those late night book runs.
Good restaurants. A good Thai joint is a necessity. We've got two. The local breweries and cafes are very good, too.
An economy not based on local natural resources. Other similar sized towns in Oregon have languished because of a reliance on the timber and fishing industries, which are waning. Ashland has embraced tourism and high tech and is flourishing.
Good schools. Ashland has exellent schools, consistently outscoring the neighboring community's schools in both math and reading. Ashland also has a University with a better than average Computer Science program.
No commute. I live on the very edge of town and my commute is less than 5 minutes. By bike it's 10.
A liberal minded community. Ashland has great diversity in both individual and family lifestyles. People who would be outcasts in other places are accepted, or at least tolerated, in Ashland.
Good outdoor recreation. When I'm tired of looking at a CRT, I can drive 20 minutes and be hiking in old growth forest.
Unfortunetly, much of what I value cannot be reproduced in somplace like Pittsburgh. I feel that the best places are no longer in the big cities. Small, foward thinking, towns seem so much better, particularly if your a geek with a family.
So...if anyone's looking for a Linux sysadmin/Technical Manager, drop me a line. Seriously.
TheGeek
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
Kill the monkey
With a name like "Cyberjaya", do you think it has something to do with tech? Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) is being developed as a Silicon Valley wannabe with legislation, networking, infrastructure and land designed to attract foreign high tech companies and talent. Cyberjaya, located in the MSC, is billed as a smart "cybercity" for those working and living in this IT fantasyland.
Well, here are 2 cities I can talk about, Frankfurt/Germany (where I live and work) and Paris/France (where I studied, lived and worked).
:). Lots of IT business around, and lots of banks. This is clearly the european center of finance with London, but London is not in the Euroland. About Internet access, you can have ISDN, but it's not really cheap. The cost of life is not really high for a big city like that, and the salaries are quite good. Besides, Germany is quite cool, with generally speaking good health insurance, good job security, and not-so-bad food (from a french point of view, of course). Also lots of Irish pubs around. And every one I know who once went in the US says Frankfurt really looks like a US city... Finally, german people are not much into the overtime/work/hours stuff, so you usually work 8 hours a day (period), and have 6 weeks of paid vacation (isn't that neat? :)
:) And it's not an exception...]
:)
Frankfurt:
- good: quite a big city, but not so big as to be very far from the country side. Depending on studies, 1 person out of 3 or 4 has a foreign passport. Lots of UK/US people, lots of french/dutch, almost everyone you can meet here speaks english (that's good, cos speaking french doesn't really help and my german is... ahem, well, let's not talk about german
- bad: you'll faint every time you get your phone bill, the german definition of "service" is quite strange, and everything closes early (but work finishes early too, so that's ok). Also the city has no real soul, being full of skycrapers themselves full of people here only for work. Sometimes, this ambiance really sucks.
[note: I'm working in Frankfurt in a team with 2 french people and 4 english people. No germans. So I don't speak german so much
Paris:
- good: well, it's Paris. 'nuff said. Well, just kidding, but this city is clearly just great. On the business side, there's a lot of work for IT people, no prolbem about that. The salaries are not so impressive usually, but the cost of life here is really interesting compared to other big cities like NY or even London. Also, you have access to cable operators and ADSL (depends where you live exactly in Paris or in the Paris area), and there are a lot of providers, including free ones. This is maybe not as cheap, but still quite cheap for Europe (cable connection for around $60 a month). About the language, speaking a little bit of french really helps, but Paris is a big city with associations like FUSAC (French-US relationship, with a free magazine in english and so on) or others, who provide help to expatriate people. And the next Irish Pub is only 200m away anyway.
- bad: sorry?
Well, that's all atm. If you need any other info, mail me in private, I can certainly add a few details.
Will
--
"Listen, [...], going to another country doesn't make any difference.
I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from
one place to another. There's nothing to that."
-- Ernest Hemingway in 'Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises'
There are lots of American Multinational corporations here [IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, .. brought in by 10% corporation tax], and indigenous startups are starting to takeoff, people are starting to come back after spending a couple of years in the U.S. we speak English though there is a bit of a housing bubble and traffic problems. The government is starting to encourage jobs outside the Dublin area. Galway is a great small place to live with a fair amount og I.T. action.
Ennis, Clare, Ireland has been used to experiment with wiring a small town for computer.'Irelands Information Age Town'
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
I've been scanning through this thread, and found it more informative and interesting than most slashdot threads these days. Cool stuff.
But, I'm somewhat bemused by how many Americans and Canadians seem to have trouble with, "cities outside of North America." It seems to bounce off a few of them without leaving a mark. We've had Philly, Chicago, San Francisco, California in general, Tulsa(!), Ann Arbor, New York, Ashland(!!), and almost every major city in Canada suggested. "A world outside North America? Say it ain't so!"
Perhaps it's time for a slashdot geography thread? The article body could just be a GIF of a world map. (Sorry, PNG.) Then there could be big arrows delineating "inside North America," and, "outside: people unfortunate enough not to live in THE WORLD'S GREATEST DEMOCRACY."
Okay, okay. As a furriner living in the U.S. for the past 5 years, I'm not *that* bemused =)
A.
"Only problem with Vancouver is you're competing with a few thousand PhD people who ran over here from Hong Kong"
:)
That's just not true.
You just said that because we got the best ski slopes in North America.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
I've been living for London for about a year now doing mainly contract work. I came over here on a student work visa that is soon about to end.
My impressions of London are as follows:
Very expensive. I pay £300/month for flat in central London (Whitechapel). It is a slum. Mice/rats and mushrooms growing in the bathroom. Yuck. Everything else is expensive as well. It was recently (and in the past) named the most expensive city in Europe.
Very oppressive. Public transport is hideously expensive. If you live in London unless you want to spend money to get out...you are stuck. Luckily if you are doing IT you have a lot of money...Also there is a lot to do here, but it is honestly a pain in the ass to get around the city.
Money: London is full of dot.coms and web consultancies and tons of vacancies. Basic knowledge of any web technology will get you a job. I got my first job six months ago with a few months knowledge of Perl and a lot of balls. I was making £20/hr. I was meant to write Perl/CGI/DBI scripts. I barely knew Perl. As they say here, I blagged it. 6 months and 4 contracts later I've learned a great deal and am now making the ridiculous sum of £50/hr. I see job adverts all the time for £60+ outside of London. For me this is a lot, maybe its not for you Silicon-Valley-startup-share-option-millionares.
Alas, immigration laws are stringent. Unless you get a company to sponser you for a visa or do the student program I did you can't work here. Once you get the visa, you can ONLY work for the company that hired you. They are relaxing the laws because they finally realized that their economy will suffer if they don't fill the vacancies but as of now its very difficult to work in the UK.
The current issue of Wired has a list of the 40 biggest tech cities in the world (this is the issue that has Sealand as its cover story). They rated the cities by the VC coming in to the cities, the start-ups in the cities, the established tech companies in the cities, and industry ties with local colleges and universities. This doesn't quite tell you what cities will be geek friendly but it will give you a good idea of where your skills will be most wanted and a lot of the time if companies are looking for a lot of geeks they will try and make the people in the city geek friendly, especially if its a city where one of these companies employs many of the city residents.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
And (OK I know it's a "joke") what makes you think that Lima, of all places, has an honest-to-goodness "Westerner go home" attitude?
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Do you have anymore info on jobs in Hamburg? I will be done my PhD in high energy physics by the end of this year and I will be looking for something in Hamburg. Jason P.S. I am an America that just travels from McDonalds to McDonalds *grin*.
Well, being a native of Reikjavik I can give you some idea how things are here.
I think the situation is pretty good here. Lots of things going on tech-wise, icelanders are indeed very quick to grab new gadgets and technologies, I think that f.ex. the number of cellphones per capita is about the highest in the world (second only to Finland, I think). Almost every home in the country is connected to the internet, many ISP's and several free ones, ADSL is available everywhere and cable connection in several areas in the city, although not everywhere. There are a lot of firms ranging from low-level programming to high-class multimedia and should be fairly easy to find a job as the labourmarket is fluid and unemployment rate is very low.
Plus, the people are friendly and everybody speaks english fluently (a problem if you wanna learn the local language!) and the nightlife is phenomenal!.
Gummi
Though the poorest country in South America might seem a poor choice for an offshore tech wonderland, I highly recommend it. Here's why: 1. The tech sector here is exploding. When I arrived just over a year ago there were three Internet Cafes in this metro area of 1 million. Now there are over 30, with 12 near our office (the information about most of these can be found at our website tunarionline.com). Rental of computers at these places is generally less than US $1 per hour. Unlimited dial-up access can now be had for $10. Half-a-year ago nobody even offered it. 2. The telecom monopoly is about to die. The big teleco is just about to officially lose its monopoly on sending data (voice or bits) out of the country, its domination has already ended unofficially. There is a huge opportunity opening up for ISP and related services. 3. It's still wide open. With an extremely modest investment our web design company (Tunari.com has already gained reasonable publicity. While we might have had to struggle for years or spend millions on advertising in the US just to kiss the ass of an Amazon.com, in Bolivia there is still no giant famous Internet retailer, auctioneer, classified site, and so on, though I suspect there will be soon. 4. It's still a little wild. While US senators seem to be competing to see who can limit Internet freedom the most, Internet regulation here is at least two years off. Pirated CDs (software, music), should you desire, can be had at dozens of locations. Whole families share motorcycle rides without helmets. Lawyers here are glorified clerics, lawsuits are extremely rare. 5. The living's. Food and housing are dirt cheep (full-time live in maids run US $100 a month). The locals are patient with "gringos", and they speak a slow, easy to understand Spanish. They will tell you your Spanish is "muy bien" even when you know it still sucks. The local newspaper is of Chicago Tribune caliber. The climate is good, and they have the largest, sprawlingist, get-anything-you-want market in South America.
Weather? Great? I live in Vancouver, and it rains a fair bit.
.com (pre-ipo) thats opening an office here to do most of their development. The IT market is hot.
But... some of the cheapest computer-parts prices I've ever seen (and I just got back from 3 months in Silocon Valley/San Francisco), cheap high speed internet access, lots of outdoors stuff.
And every American that ever comes here says, "I can't believe how clean it is...".
Hi tech is getting good. I work for a San Franciso
Housing prices are a bit expensive, but nothing compared to coastal California (especially if you are IT).
Taxes are a bit high, but since we've had a balanced budget for the last 3 or 4 years, the government is on a tax reduction kick. Average tax burden will drop by 15% over the 5 years.
Fellow Canadians, come home! Everything good is still here, and the bad is starting to go away.
Can't say much about North Europe or elsewhere, so I'll stick to my bit: South Europe :)
:) it's a pretty nice town. Loads of companies and loads of Americans, if that makes a difference to you. It's dubbed "the Silicon Valley of Europe". Lots of places to visit in the nearby area (Salzburg, lake Constanz, Herrsching just to name a few) plus a very interesting town by itself.
I've been in Munich 9 months now on an industrial placement from my uni. and apart from the Germans
Oh, and you'll have 24/7 access to the Oktoberfest (German for "infinite beer" %-) without having to pay for those ridiculously expensive hotels.
Other places I'd be considering:
--------------------------------
Madrid (or anywhere in Spain). OK, so I don't know what it is tech-like, but I know it's a great place to live, cheap life, good food and pleasant culture.
Thessaloniki (Greece). Seems like the Balkan's tech center right now, especially for telecomms. Beautiful place and good life, on the seaside. Good food, lots of places to visit, average infrastructures and administration that most of the times doesn't make sense. Crypto-laws and censorship? You've gotta be kidding. They (the govt.) know better than to mess with the population on those matters >:-} Again, probably not the best-paid jobs, but at least you'll enjoy yourself.
Places to avoid:
----------------
Athens: horrible place to live, trust me. And the jobs also suck (unless you're willing to start your own somewhere there, but then choose places around and not IN it).
Any small town in South Europe. It'll be an enjoyable stay but not much more than that.
I'm no longer fed up with MS Windows: I go rid of them
He surely meant cheap as in, "worth nothing" (e.g. you cheap bastard ACs!)
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I know that many of the newest startups are based in Israel, with headquarters here in the States. Technology is very prevelant there, and is possibly the largest industry. I've never actually looked into getting ADSL or Cable modems there, but I'm sure they will be along soon, or are already there now.
If you have to live in the UK ... Brighton is as good as it gets for an English town :
... though that's gone a bit cold recently
Being on the South coast means better weather than most parts of the country - and you get seaside / touristy stuff
2 universities - student culture, and some tech startups. Sussex university has one of the UK's traditional centres of AI / ALife research
growing multimedia / interactive TV / web scene
gay capital of Europe - and tends to be sympathetic to alternative / artistic / squatter /
raver / geek cultures.
lots of cafes / clubs
cosmopolitan (a lot of language schools here)
it's pretty small geographically, which means everywhere is pretty much within walking distance of anywhere you're likely to live
40 minutes - 1 hour from London by train or car
This is a fairly good tech city. I'd say it's developing. The popular opinion is that Ireland's economy is presently booming, partially due to the computer industry. While I don't have hard figures, I know that there are plenty of IT jobs out here.
I'm actually working out here as a student through Northeastern University. I got a job through our work abroad program, and I found a place to live through the online DAFT.ie web site. I happened to find a house with two other guys in the it field.
One of the big things out here is the mobile phone industry. Not only does everyone have mobile phones, they're much less of a hassle than they are in the U.S. You purchase the phone, and then you purchase prepaid cards. You pay about 6p per minute on off-peak hours and weekends. It's pretty sweet. The two major companies are Eircomm and Esat.
Internet access: Hrm. Well, I don't have a connection at home, but I have enough time for that at work. Outside of work, Internet cafe's are my best bet. They cost, on the average, £4 an hour.
It's a busy, but friendly, city. My experience with cities is largely with Boston, where I grew up, so YMMV. It's not the "top o' the morning" stereotype. People work hard, and rest easy. As always, when leaving home, try not to grip expectations tightly.
This place is a fascinating mix of east and west.
Net geeks lean heavily to the libertarian side and HK is definitely one of the freest countries in Asia.
No net censorship here a la Singapore and Australia. Free press, laissez-faire government. You're also free to chew gum. :) HK is consistently chosen as the freest economy in the world. Low flat tax. No sales tax.
For English speaking geeks, they should be able to fit right in as there is a sizable expatriate population and English and Chinese are the official languages.
Plenty of start-ups here. There's a culture of entrepreneurship born out of the place's immigrant roots. Some interesting sites:
now.com
comicinema
Lots of cutting edge tech. People are gadget crazy here just like in Japan. One of the highest rates of cell phone usage here, behind only Nokia-land, aka the Scandinavian countries. People change cell phones like clothes. WAP is already widespread here and i-mode is coming soon. Broadband is rapidly being adopted. Had the world's first interactive TV system.
Great food, HK movies, excellent public transportation system. Clean subways, trams, buses, ferries, even the world's longest escalator that cuts through the city up the hills!
Downer: pollution. That's the major complaint that people have but it's getting better. Also high cost of housing. Prices have dropped in the past few years but costs probably rival those of Tokyo and SF.
Oh yeah. And there's Starbucks, CNN and CNBC if you're into that sort of thing.
Montreal is a nice city to live in, if you don't mind some politics about 'official' language and signs, and things like that.
The city is very diversed and cosmopolitan. You can find all kinds of good foods in the same city. There's a China town, a Little Italy, a Greek town, French Quarter, irish pubs, english bistro, morrocan restos, vietnamese cafes, ..... City night life is just fine, althgough it's not a 24-hour city.
Public transport is really good. I lived there for 10 years in the suburb, studying and working in downtown, never had a car and never needed one. Pollution is not too bad, since a lot of can live without having cars, and government encourages people to use public transport by subsidizing the cost. You can get a monthly pass for CND$50 (when I was there 3 yrs ago), and that's valid for the bus and metro (the subway). You can board as many times as you want, going in any direction you want. No limit to the 'kilometrage' (or mileage, gee, I still don't know how to convert from metric to the awkward english system!), valid from beginning to the end of month.
Universities are good. There are four universities and a lot of colleges. Two french language universities and two english language ones. They are among the best in the country and very good compared to universities around the world too. I graduated from a french-language college and then from McGill University (an english language university). Most people speak more than one language, and at the english language universities, some professors even allow you to do your assignments and write your essays in french, if you think your english writing skill is not good enough to express yourself. If you only speak english, no problem. You can always get around and find a job, actually, there are a lot of companies where people only speak english (I have worked for one like that). Some big companies even send you to learn french, paid for by the companies. That's a nice perk to have.
Universities are really 'open'. I love to go and sit in classes, those classes that have nothing to do with computer science, things like economics, literature, philosophy, and thinks like that. I tried to do that twice at Santa Clara University, and I got kicked out, I was told I didn't pay for it. Gosh, in the US, you gotta pay for your willingness to learn.....
Living cost is low. We had a 3-bedroom apartment, with a huge living room and a nice kitchen (big enough to hold parties of 50-60 people no problem, and we did a lot!), for about CND$550 (now convert that to US$, and compare that to any city in the world). Since you don't need cars, that saves you tons of money on insurance cost, car repairs, fuel, parking, ..... And if you are in IT and hi-tech, you can earn very good income and live quite comfortably.
Ok, taxes are a little bit high. However, social benefits, medicare, education, and a tons of other stuffs are hugely subsidized by your tax money. Actually, I have never complained about paying taxes in Canada, it is a nice country to live, and I have seen what the tax money has achieved, and I'm always willing to pay it. Now, in the SV, I'm paying about the same amount of taxes to all levels of government, and I have received nothing, no services, no benefits, absolute nothing. As a simple example, two years ago, in Sunnyvale, California, I need to have a piece of paper notarized. So naturally, as I always did in Canada, I went to the city hall, because this is one the services that governments provided to citizens, unless of course, you need very fancy and complicated services, then you need to pay for it. The Sunnyvale city hall people had never heard of it. I asked what did they do to the tax money I paid, and I was told that is none of my business.
Security is one of the nicest thing you can have. When I got married, we had a few friends from the US attending our wedding. A couple with two kids stayed with their cousin, who also have kids. The little Montrealeses wanted to bring their american cousins to play in the park in the evening, at about 8pm. The american parents were screaming no, no no, not at this hour. The canadian kids were surprised, what's wrong going to play in the park? And this couple come from Madison, Wisconsin, one of the safest places in the US.
Weather could be a problem though, but it could also be a good thing. You have real four seasons. So if you like outdoor sports, that's really good. In summer, you have summer sports, in winter you have winter sports.
Cultural events are my favorites. The international jazz festival (one of the biggest in the world, sometimes you can listen to the biggest names, like BB King, Buddy Guy, play live). The international film festival, where you can see movies from around the world, films that you'll never see otherwise. I usually bought a booklet of 50 tickets (because you get discount this way) and share them with my friends. I usually watched 10 to 15 movies each festival, because that's about the amount of time I could allocate in the 10-day period. Then the international food festival, the irish festivals, the french, the english, the chinese (there are a lots, like mid-autumn festivals, chinese new year with ice cultures, summer festivals....), the vietnames, the italians, the greeks, the arabics, .....
There are a lot of green places, nice parks. You got a moutain (Mont Royal, hence Montreal) in the middle of the City, and it's open to the public. The mountain is really beautiful in fall. Try imagine that, if you can. Then, there's a huge botanical garden, with a japanese garden and a chinese garden in it. The chinese garden is of Ming dynasty style, very beautiful, and is one the largest gardens of such kind outside China and Taiwan. In winter, there's an ice culture festival, by chinese artists from Harbin (in the North-east of China). It's best seen in the evening, with the beautiful lights.
And there are tons of outdoor activities you can do. Ski, camping, moutain climbing, whale watching cruise, water rafting, water rapid cascading, sky diving, ... all within reach, in 2 to 3 hours driving.
All in all, the best city I've found I have lived in so far. And don't forget smoked meat sandwich, I mean, the real one. You can't get this kind of good stuff in the US. At least, haven't found it yet.
Those shots are great. Let me ask: what day is summer supposed to happen this year in Sweden? yuk, yuk, yuk.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
If you speak English and only English and don't want to learn another language, your options are somewhat limited. The UK is incredibly expensive and for the most part ugly. Telecommunications aren't nearly as subsidised or state-supported generally, which means that nowadays you pay the same rates in the UK as elsewhere, but you can't take advantage of new infrastructure. Ireland is coming around with the growth of high tech there, but you still have to live in one of Europe's most deeply conservative countries.
Australia is okay if you can command a tech's income. Otherwise, recent dismantling of the school system and social services makes it awful. Public transit isn't very good there either. It is in many ways the worst of America combined with he worst of Britain.
New Zealand has been a mess for years. Stay clear.
English Canada is okay, but either you pay a fortune to live in Toronto or Vancouver or you live in dull, cold secondary centres with little to offer the tech or anyone else.
Montreal is cheap, very tech oriented, and has cheap DSL and cable modems as well as a first rate telecom infrastructure, but good knowledge of French improves the experience dramatically. Ottawa is a bit of a compromise between Toronto and Montreal, cheap and dull, fairly high tech, and somewhat French.
It is possible to live in Brussels with only English. It won't be as much fun, but it is possible. Brussels and the university towns of Leuven and Louvain-la-neuve are fully wired for cable modems and as I understand it DSL is now available. Rates are good. Rent is high, but not as much as in Silicon Valley.
Paris is still an excellent place to live, if you can afford the rent which is at roughly Silicon Valley levels. The French telecommunications system has come back from being one of Europe's worst 20 years ago to one of Europe's best and most modern. If Paris costs too much, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and the new high tech centres at Sophia Antipolis and Grenoble have a lot to recommend themnselves, including topless beaches or good skiing.
I'm told Barcelona in Spain and Coimbra in Portugal are pretty good - at least for relatively cheap and poor European countries - but you can't live there with English alone.
I haven't lived in Germany in years, but it doesn't strike me as a haven of high-tech. Leipzig and Chemnitz used to be the communist Silicon Valley before reunification, but I doubt they're much now. Perhaps the newly rebuilt Berlin is good for tech, but I want to remember the cool, artsy, punk West Berlin that was. Without it, I don't think I'd want to live there.
Stay away from the major west German cities. They are all post-war ugly construction. And, German taxes are out of control. France or Belgium are much better on that count.
I'm told Stockholm and Göteborg are good to techs these days, as well as the area around Uppsala, but I can't verify this. Finland is reputed to be the most wired nation in Europe, with more than three-quarters of the population online. In Sweden, you can survive on English alone. In Finland, it's a bit harder. Plus any idiot can learn Swedish - it's pretty easy to do - but Finnish is extremely hard.
I've never lived in Italy or the Netherlands. Switzerland is home to a lot of high tech now, and things are getting better there, but you have to put up with a lot of boredom to live in Switzerland.
Outside Europe and the Americas, Bangalore is the place to be in India. They speak English and have most of India's high tech sector. Compared to the US and Europe, it's reputed to be dirt cheap. In China, Hong Kong is the most wired city, but also the most expensive. Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing are supposed to be pretty modern and have good computer infrastructure. Taiwan is also a well wired country, but it is pretty expensive. Of course, learning Chinese may pose some barriers to integration. Singapore is wired and anglophone, but expensive and deeply conservative. Malaysia is cheaper, and quite high tech now, but still very conservative. Japan is just expensive, and no longer quite the paragon of technology it used to be.
As far as I know, that covers your options.
Glorious, wonderful Sealand! A high-tech hub, just coming to life. Featured on the cover of Wired Magazine, Sealand's only industry is its data haven!
Just think... it has laissez-faire intellectual property laws, brisk sea air, and freer business laws than the Cayman Islands. What other country can say that it's never lost a life (or took a life) in its war for independence?
Sure, the night-life might be a little boring. And without any stores on the sea fort, Sealand Dollars aren't all that useful. But, hey, just remember...
Apple Computers started out in a garage, too!
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
I've worked in some of the cities mentioned, Calgary, Vancouver, Fairfield CA, Big Bear City CA, Blaine WA to name a few.
The availability of techie drinking buddies varies from place to place. And being able to drive to the road and pick up computer components for "near-net" prices is a nice feature.
But honestly, when "I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine." It is with the community of people that I am part of on the Internet.
I currently live in Blaine, WA. I'm easily the geekiest person in this town (3k people), and can't talk techy with anyone in walking distance. Kind of a downer.
I can, however, walk 100 meters to step into a lush forest teaming with huge varieties of birds , and moles and shrews and deer and coyotes.
In Yucca Valley California, there were 330+ days of bright sunshine. Nearly every morning, I could walk out onto the porch, and kick back with some well indexed tome, and feel the cool morning breeze fight the warm desert sun for thrermal dominace of my dermal layers. Of course, three hours a day for 2 months a year, one must be in a well-shaded, well swamp cooled environment.
The reason the Northern folks drink so much coffee BTW, is not because they are inherently geeky. It's because when you go 14 consecutive days without seeing the sun, (no exag. here) you must do something to establish your mind's active/inactive cycles. Else you (really about 90% of humans) will become depressed and continuously tired. They call it Seasonal Affective Disorder. It's real.
Though AT&T has been promising cable modem service here for 11 months, it hasn't quite arrived. My sat. dish give me 400kb download speeds and delivers on that promise 90% of the time. It's quite comfy.
If I were to recommend a city for a fellow geeky person I would say this:
"Connectivity is there for the taking. Toys can be mail ordered. If you want to pick a city, pick one that suits your non-geeky self, dry or moist, forest, desert, or beach. Make it suit your whole person. Geeky goes anywhere, connects to anything, and most importantly adapts at a rate that your body and taste in music and culture cannot match."
Sure, the techie community isn't very big in Tijuanna and you can't walk down the street at night without worrying that you'll get your neck slashed. But, booze is cheap and you can "buy" your way out of almost any leagle infraction.
Heh, heh...
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
OK Vancouver wins on looks and temperture hands down. And Jerico beach is nice.
But you won't buy a house there, unless you walk away from your IPO with multi millions.
The winter in Vancouver can be very depressing cause it rains and rains and rains. Ok it's cold here in Calgary, but then the next chinook blows in and the tempetur jumps 15 degrees and we get sun shine.
What about trafic? Many people in Vancouver spend hours and hours in their daily trip to work. Calgary has the worst trafic in Alberta, but it's nothing compared to Vancouver or Toronto.
One negitive about Calgary: it does get wierd weather. The weather in Alberta is a debate between Summer and Winter with lot's of heckling. In Calgary it's a WWF death match.
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
I met the Singaporean ambassador to the US about 2 years back during an event geared toward recruiting IT professionals to Singapore. Given its location in southeast Asia, Singapore is trying to build itself as a financial capital in the region. Along with that comes the infrastructure provided by technical know-how and IT skills. As a bonus, the national language is English. Housing, however, is hard to come by. All of this happened before the relatively recent financial crisis though.
I have pondered this question quite seriously. I'm heading to Aberdeen, Scotland, in a few months. Here's the long and the short of it.
The main places you're seeing venture capital, and thus a thriving cutting edge tech schene, is Ireland (Dublin, I think..Ireland was out of the question for me for other reasons) & London. Both of these have a great high tech scene, with programmers making good money. DSL is being offered in both these places (think about it...no broadband, no high tech...). DSL is even available in parts of Aberdeen (this tipped the scales for me, as it's a better location for my spouse).
If you're using some of the latest technologies (JSPs, EJBs, CORBA, DCOM) and have some experience, you wages may even exceed those typical in the US. If you do training, you'll make significantly more (they're a little behind the US in terms of adoption of bleeding edge tech, so the demand for trainers is higher).
If you're a rank-and-file programmer, I think you'll easily find work making, by local standards, a lot of money. At this level, US counterparts make significantly more. That said, the recent startup scene in London and Ireland is supposedly hot enough that companies are beginning to offer stock options. I think this will get more common as the high tech labor force is further tightened. The European stock markets have done pretty well in the past few years, and the conditions seem to me to be similar to the US in the mid to late '80s (individual stock ownership, volume, etc...).
I don't think you'll beat the business climate in the Bay area, or Seattle, or Washington, DC. You might not beat it in any of the next six or seven cities in the US. That said, it's all good. You could probably choose some place like Tangiers and do fine in the high tech biz.
--Be human.
"20 years of Democrats in power and there won't be USA any more. "
Yes, but do you see our alternative at the moment? George W. Bush? This is a man who is so dumb it takes Dan Quayle standing on the platform next to him to make him look smart. His record as Texas Govenor? Bah. He got the highest youth turnout in the past several years, but overall, the turnout of voters was the _lowest_ it's been in DECADES. Lt. Governor Rick Perry and the Railroad Comissioner hold much more power. They're the ones responsible for any growth in Texas.
My mother is a staunch Republican. My entire family is. My father was a Precinct Chairman for about 14 years and we all grew up conservative, but George W. Bush? Eww. I talked to my mom a little while back and she said "If Bush get's nominated I'll have to vote Democratic for the first time in my life(she's been an active voter for about 42 years). Bush is just such an idiot."
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Austin is one of those cities that no matter how big it gets it will always retain that small town techie feel.
"Help me Obi-/.-Kenobi,your my only hope!" -$
more hi tech companies outside of the valley come out of Israel than anywhere else in the world. I've lived here for two years, and as an American, it's not hard to adapt. English is taught in the public schools from the second grade onwards, so communication isn't an issue, and almost all the hi tech companies here use english primarily in the office.
try www.jobpilot.de
forgot to add - Hamburg is good if you are into nightlife - during daytime people are more reserved than in Munich. Munich is more flashy and people show off money which they wouldnt do in Hamburg. Hamburg prides itself to be anglophile - you draw your own conclusions. I guess an American would be happier in Munich.
Tech companies here: Softimage, Matrox, Monster.ca, Zero Knowledge. Also biotech (BioChem Pharma, Novartis, etc) and aerospace (Bombardier, CAE, Bell Textron).
I agree with the comment about the women; you can't believe it until you see it. Also, because the bars close at 3:00, if you want to grab a beer after coding until 2:00 am, you can go anywhere.
The winter is nasty, but no worse than most of the midwest. Good air hubs; cheap flights to Europe and good connections to North and South America. And the cost of living is unbelievably low: a 1300 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment across the street from a park for $1200 CDN ($700 US) and people will tell you that you're overpaying; restaurant meals for $25 CDN and you bring your own wine.
Well, a few people have said it before - but I'll say it again; Dublin, Ireland. Ireland is the second biggest exporter of comuter-based products (after the US ofcourse). Intel has just invested another $2 billion in a plant in Ireland. They have Global Crossing building a trans-atlantic fibre-optic cable to Long Island, NY. It is apparently the most 'connected' country in Europe, and like everyone who has talked about it has said - there are oodles of IT jobs ( Jobfinder and IrishJobs are nice sites to check). House prices are a bit high at the moment, tax is pretty high, you have to pay call charges for the internet (!), but Esat Clear does have a flat-rate IR£20 per month for free off-peak (6pm-1am) internet. If you want broadband access, you can really forget about it for a while, ntl are planning to offer a nice looking cable internet service soon, but right now the only one is CableNet but they actually charge you per minute, and the monthly and installation isn't cheap either. Apart from that, it's a pretty good geek city (I wouldn't say Ireland as a whole is great though - as soon as you go out of the city you find alot of people don't even have a telephone!). Laters
The one place that I'm NOT seeing here is Hamilton, Bermuda. I passed on a chance to work for the largest ISP on the island a couple of years back, and I've often thought about whether I made the right decision.
/. ers live there? The IT people I talked to raved about the booming IT trades, the pay (in $US), and the fact that there were few taxes. They were screaming for techies two years ago.
From the limitted time I spent there, it's a beautiful country, full of haves and have-lots. Any
Thoughts?
I've lived all over the place searching out hi tech jobs. For outside the US, here is my list in order of techiness, not in order of livability
London and M4 corridor without a doubt the hi-tech consumption leader outside the US. London has the city, with its outrageous salaries and rents to match. All the tech companies stretch out towards the west, following the M4 motorway. Best nightlife in europe, and traffic sucks.
Dublin Lots of development following the dual carriageways north, south, and west from the city. The nightlife is friendly but muted and it ends too early for my tastes. Home of Guiness.
Netherlands Several areas around the netherlands are good for technology. Utrecht is a university town, to the tech is good but the salaries are bad. Cable and DSL are appearing all over the place. Amsterdam has good tech, and Rotterdam is starting to take off despite it being a big ugly port city.
France The frenchies are starting to pull their heads out of their asses, and technology is starting to become cool. Paris now has a few startup centres where the hyper-cool hang out, with a level of pretentiousness that puts san francisco dot-commies to shame. There are a few other tech centres, but they don't have that entrepreneurial spirit. Grenoble has tons of hi tech, but is too distant and not wired. Sophia poses as hi tech, but the riviera is still rural french work ethos meets tourist ripoff. You will have to learn fluent french, but your english will make you very valuable.
Belgium There is a lot of hi tech starting up here. Cable and DSL are spreading around Brussels and east to Leuven, and a few other big cities. Brussels can be a fun place, it's home to the commission, and employs many young, single women. The nightlife revolves around drinking, and most everyone speaks english.
Torino Turin is becoming home to many hi tech companies as the automotive industries evolve. Italian is a must, though. But it is centrally located to the alps and the riviera.
Singapore Tech heaven. Life is hell.
South AfricaCapetown is the nicest, but jo-burg has the connectivity.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
They simply don't speak German in die Schweiz. "null aynz, nünenünzk zwaa drie-e-driezk aachtzk, klappe null zwaa", that's how your average Züricher gives you his phone number. If that's German, then Redneckspeak is Victorian English :)
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
see subject
The UK has passed a few recent bills which make it much easier for IT workers who are not EU citizens to find work here. The main government agency to deal with these kinds of work permits is the Overseas Labour Service (which is a division of the Department for Education and Employment). Basically, IT workers are considered a shortage occupation here. There is a large list of shortage occupations on the website if you scan around. If your particular skillset is listed, you get to go through a fast track process (typically less than a month to get approval), rather than the slower track (which is more like 7 months +). With the slow track process, the company hiring you has to prove that there are no suitable candidates who are either citizens of the UK, or citizens of the EU. I'm a US citizen, and the company that sponsored me got me approved in a week and a half. But be sure to keep a close eye on the current shortage list. When you want to renew your permit, make sure your skills are still listed, otherwise you'll find yourself back on the long track, and very likely lose your job. It's a tough world, but the UK is a fantastic country to live in. And from what I've seen, it's very high tech, and I've never felt held back in my job by being a non-citizen.
Hi Peter,
I'd be glad to mail you about Helsinki/Espoo if I'd know your e-mail address. I guess you forgot to log in since you've posted as an AC. You can contact me via e-mail.
The author of the article mentioned about "Techie Friendly" as it means English Speaking, Technologically Up-To-Date, and people who are generally knowledgable about the tech stuffs.
I would very much like to point out that there are MORE dimension to this "friendly" definition - that is, it not only takes the knowledgable people who speaks English, one also has to consider the ENVIRONMENT of which all these things are taking place.
Take for instance - Singapore versus Malaysia.
In both places, people speak English.
In both places, the gummints are pushing
technology.
But there is ONE thing that is VERY DIFFERENT between Singapore and Malaysia - and that is, in Singapore, the gummint let the techies do their stuffs WITHOUT placing any sort of artificial interference, whereas in Malaysia, there are LOTS AND LOTS of interferences - on religious ground, on racial ground, on language ground, on belief system, et cetera.
So, by the author's own definition, BOTH Singapore and Malaysia can be said to be "Techie Friendly", but if one considers the stiffling environment in Malaysia versus an open-minded attitude the Singaporean government is taking, Singapore is one aspect MUCH FRIENDLIER to techies than Malaysia.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Anyone know what the story these days is, both job/money wise and tech infrastructure wise? I'd guess that at least Dubai must have some opportunities.
Dublin is a great place for the techie minded - Many large American companies have set up their European bases there.
Additionally, there is a great social scene to give you an escuse to be dragged away from theat screen for a few hours. Taxes are faily high if you were planning to live there, as is the cost of accomidation, though not as expensive as the likes of London, or San Diego where I live now.
If the trees are in the west
Not that, I would want to live there. Housing and cars are horribly expensive. Plus all the fines for doing anything. On the other hand the food is cheap and pretty good. And, there is definitely a lot of high tech industry. And, generally when I travel their I have no problem finding a web connection for $3US/hr. Also, most people speak english to some extent.
Dastardly
If you don't mind a 100 year old city that is kind of a mix between Hong Kong and Seattle, with a 'small town' complex and a few bigger tech companies (MDA, Ballard, Motorola, Sierra), then give Vancouver a look.
Geeks are not only welcome here, they are taking over the East Side. The true hardcore live in the neighbourhoods that aren't quite so wholesome, and play in their basements with MIDI gear and Linux. Americans and other foreign nationals are welcomed as long as they have skillz. People from Toronto are tolerated.
If you want a little taste of the East Van lifestyle, check out eastvan.bc.ca where cracked-out sysadmins and naughty programmers post their daily gems in this Slashdot interface ripoff.
I hear Australia is good too, but I'd rather kick it here for a while.
Happy Canada Day!
Also, notice this:
;-)
http://it.uk.freelancehq.com/nocomment.shtml
That pretty much makes the whole exercise a waste of time. If you're only allowed to post opinions that the agencies want posted, then they may as well just run banner ads.
Under UK law, if you have a bad experience with an agency but aren't *certain* that you can prove it, you'd better keep your mouth shut or move to the US. I guess that's one way to keep a lid on society.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Damhna@hotmail.com