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Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen?
An anonymous reader writes "I am a American citizen with a masters in Computer Science from a 3rd tier college and 4 years of work experience under my belt. I would like to work somewhere abroad in Europe for a couple years before I get too settled in life but have no clue where to start. I only speak English but would love to learn a second language. What sort of opportunities are there for American citizens to work abroad? What countries offer the best opportunity to balance a challenging work environment with enough vacation to explore the rest of Europe in my free time? Any hassles I should know about?"
Many foreigners come to the United States for the reasons you have listed here.
Stop bringing the fucking election into everything! Just stop it!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I was not aware US colleges had some sort of official tier.
There is no tier system. The submitter hasn't figured out that outside of academia, nobody really cares where you went to school only what you can actually do.
AccountKiller
... except my primary concern was learning the language, and then finding work. Specifically, I wanted to live in Japan, so I ended up going to a language school full time there for a year and a half, and then after that finding work. If your primary concern is just living and working abroad, and language secondary, I would think that would be possible in many places in Europe. If language is important to you though, I would strongly recommend that you first study the language in the country you've chosen, and then find work. This is because 1. It's much easier to study when you don't have to work at the same time. 2. It will make you a more attractive hire. 3. Since you'll have put significant effort into learning the language (as opposed to just doing it in your free time while working), it will become a skill that will stay with you and that you can draw upon in the future.
So that didn't really answer the questions you were asking, but I thought it was something that was important to address....
It's easy - if you've never heard of it, it's a third tier college.
I suspect it's largely because of the World Wars that the US currently has such a bad odor in Europe. Europeans know very well what happens when a large, prosperous country with a strong military starts thinking it has a natural right to dominate the world.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If you want to work in Europe, speaking English with an opportunity to learn another language, your options are the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden & Norway & Nokia (oops, I mean Finland)
All of these countries have high tech sectors that their own populations can't sustain & import foreign workers (from all over the place) who use English as a working lingua fraca.
All the countries I listed above allow working Holiday visas for 1-2 years for many western countries (not sure about the US, sorry) for workers under the age of 31.
If you can't get such a visa, consider the same countries, but apply for jobs online, making it clear that you need a visa / sponsorship / whatever.
Good luck!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
outside of academia, nobody really cares where you went to school only what you can actually do.
If you really believe that, you are desperately naive.
Keep in mind that we're talking about the European job market.
If it's not Ivy League or MIT, we've never heard about it.
When you've picked a country you want to work in, don't forget to read up on the local education standards.
A few years back things started changing here, we've got bachelors and masters here too now, but they might be slightly different to the American model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_process
Just so you know how your degree compares to the locals'.
+1 Funny Signature
I run a small European software company..if I'd be hiring an American, I wouldn't be sure what to make of the difference between a "3rd tier" university and Harvard. It can mean anything or nothing, and anything in between. The Harvard guy could have been at Harvard because of many reasons, such as being brilliant, being rich, being connected, etc. Bush graduated at Harvard, I think. The 3rd tier guy could be average, or someone with less financial opportunity, and thus very motivated, whatever. I myself didn't do so great at university. I was a little bit too playful after cruising through high school. (Funnily that worked out great for me, as the playful directions I took turned out to be the next great thing (the Internet) and I was ahead.) Since then I have had many conversations with people with higher grades from more respectable universities, and what can you say? Nothing. The first guy could be much smarter than you, the second might be useless, etc. You have to take them one by one and look at their actual capabilities and intelligence. That said, I think in 9/10 cases there is a big difference between the Computer Science (and software engineering) educated and others, such as self-learners.
First of all, Europe used to love America.
I grew up in the 90s. People over here had "America" stickers on their skateboards, wore baseball caps from US teams, had 49ers jackets, listened to Michael Jackson and every kid wanted to grow up to be like Chuck Norris. People actually bought US cars, and most sports gear was from US brands.
A lot of people spent their holidays in the US, and many planned to move there after finishing school. Having friends in the US automatically made you the cool kid.
Second, Europe doesn't hate America now; certainly not as much as the Americans seem to hate the French.
We obviously don't love the United States as much as we used to, but most Europeans are perfectly capable of distinguishing between a government and the people. We realize that a lot of Americans are unhappy with what their government is doing. We realize that you suffer more from your government's actions than we do (it doesn't exactly hurt us if your government takes away your freedoms). Our American Style Pizza is still called American Style Pizza and was never renamed to Freedom Pizza or something like this.
You are very welcome over here. There's no animosity.
As for the article's original question, programmers are always sought after in Europe. I know a few Americans how have moved over here (ironically, the opposite of what I thought would happen even a decade ago), and they seem to be happy with their choice (although sadly, they could not come with us when we went on holidays in Cuba - what the hell is up with that???).
Typical European who has no idea how the US government works. George Bush is only one part. Learn the facts then come back to a US based website to debate.
Typical American, validates every preconceptions Europeans have of you with three poorly written sentences :-)
Seriously though, there's really no question that not re-electing Bush would have stopped some of the madness.
Before 9/11 Europeans just called us "fat and ugly", now they can call us "warmongerer's". Which is Ironic considering that the worse humanitarian disaster in the history of humanity was caused exclusively by Europeans (WWI and WWII).
While there is truth in that, I also think that is quite a statement coming from an Anonymous Coward from the only country on earth who ever used the atomic bomb. Twice. On civilian targets. WWII was dirty beyond imagination from both sides - and that includes the USA.
outside of academia, nobody really cares where you went to school only what you can actually do."
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." -- G.Marx
I've hired about 100 programmers in my career. There were a few rare gems among the self-educated, but you had to apply a bit of focus to the educated, too. The ones who brought samples of their work and were willing to enthuse over it in the interview were the ones I kept. Sometimes their code was a little off, but I found it fairly easy to get someone to change direction when they were actually covering ground. The theorists I bought a coffee and sent them politely on their way. Which school they went to was utterly irrelevant, except that I did get a larger proportion of twits from the more expensive schools (some good folk too, but the better-school twits were ferociously attitudinal)
I'm not sure if it was Joe Spolsky or Sergy Brin who said it -- hire people who are smart and get things done. Brains plus energy, gotta have both.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
So it is just automatically assumed universities with good research programs also teach undergrads well? I would think there is very little connection between the two.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.