Working Abroad?

dazdaz asks: "I have spent the last 12 months applying for IT positions abroad (Europe and Asia) from the UK and out of it, have had 1 offer and 3 free trips! The offer I had unfortunately was not enough to live on and only came through because a friend had recommended me. For the other 3 positions, I had seriously under-estimated the cultural differences along with the tight competition I ended up as choice number 2 several times. Just briefly: my background is web/internet/unix/sysadmin with contract experience. I am looking at permanent work abroad for the stability and long term career path. I speak basic French, and realise that not 'speaking da lingo' does cut down my chances and will start learning a language when I reach my destination. My question is, do I continue to apply from remote, both directly to companies and through Agency's or should I take the big gamble and goto a country. This is a last resort due to the global economic situation and one that scares me in that it may not pay off and with limited financial resources the risk factor is higher."

"I've also noticed that to work in Asia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan etc you generally won't get a position from remote, you need to either transfer from an existing company or just go there. I've spent some time researching expatriation to each of these country's in preperation, however going there is the real research. There are various specialist expatriate websites that are quite interesting along with a handful of expatriate books to various country's around the world.

So in a roundabout way, I've decided to become a career traveller, start out in Europe (one of Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain) which has a higher chance of success of getting or even continuing my IT career and then then at a later date try the big leap of working in Asia.

I'd be interested in other people's thoughts and ideas, those who plan this, those who have done this. The tight IT market has become quite ugly, even for those qualified, do you give up pursuing a dream or stride on."

Comments

Language Barrier

[qurob]

I'm going to get modded down -1 Troll, Flamebait, Offtopic, Racist...

BUT

Half the people I call for tech support @ IBM, Dell, ______ Software, they all can barely speak fluent English. IF they can, they have such a horrible accent it doesn't matter anway.

What are these people doing phone support for? Router configuration is the same in French/English/Klingong, but phone support?

Back on topic, I don't think the language barrier will be THAT big of a deal. At least it isn't over here.

Re:My advice: Be *really* careful

[funky womble]

Of course, some companies in the USA know the *exact* same trick...

Re:Do you know the language

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there are skilled IT people already in these
countries already. They don't *need* to bring in English
only speakers who have the same skills when they can
hire skilled locals.

I speak as a European who has worked there and in
the US right now.

Denmark sounds like a good start...

[Ratface]

From the list you posted there I would highly recommend Denmark as a) The country is officially bilingual (Danish & English) and b) there is a pretty strong market for IT folk there.

Having said that, the Netherlands are also extremely English friendly. I don't know so much about Switzerland and afaik Spain's IT industry is pretty backward compared to the other countries.

Myself I took the plunge 4 years ago and moved to Sweden to be with my gf. It was the best thing I have ever done in my life, but if I could go back and do it again I would have to say that the one thing I would change is that I would have tried to set up a job before I moved. Instead I spent 4 months out of work, concentrating on learning the language enough to get an entry level job. I went from a UK salary of 45k to a Swedish salary of around a third of that!

Getting back to a decent salary level has taken me quite a while. However, if I had lined up a job with an English speaking company (many multinationals use English as their corporate language), I would have been able to keep my salary level high. The cost would have been that it would have undoubtedly taken me longer to integrate, learn the language and so on.

If you're looking to experience the country and are less worried about learning the language at each place, stick to multinationals, arrange your jobs in advance and you should be ok. If you are looking for adventure and something that pretty much forces you to pick up some of the local language, then jump right in and move first. But be prepared to work with whatever you can find in order to pay the bills and get started!

Good luck! Sounds like you're gonna have a fun time ahead of you.