Slashdot Mirror
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?"
I was not aware US colleges had some sort of official tier. Who defines these tiers? What are the criteria?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I think that you will be delighted to find that many EU companies have adopted English as their work language. This is especially true in Switzerland and Germany. Of course the UK, Ireland and (I know it isn't in Europe) Australia are good picks, too. Germany or Switzerland would afford you the chance to pick up another language, which is a really wonderful experience (I studied Russian for years, worked in Germany so learned some German, and worked in Geneva so ended up with a little bit of French too -- it is life changing). You can find web sites with jobs listed, monster.de for example...but in the local language so you might need to bablefish the sites. Last but not least, US-based international companies are a great route to doing this (this is the path I took). Search for the HR pages on web sites of major international corporations and you are sure to find job listings around the world. Apply and be sure your cover letter expresses your excitement about overseas work. Best of luck! Rick.
I submit to you that with your programming skills, you could gain valuable experience imparting knowledge and working in the developing world. One thing I'd like to advise you on, is to have a very open mind in case you decide to go to Africa. Africa is not what CNN, ABC, CBS and FOX show the American public. It's much more lively and socially better than USA in some cases.
I was in for a shock when on my very first visit to Africa, I met a country (Uganda) with pretty modest infrastructure compared to what I had in mind. I had to get used to the food though. I met Americans who decided years ago to call Africa home.
There are tonnes of dollars from the American government going to Africa through agencies like CARE, USAID, Americares, UNICEFUSA and many others.
So be open and brave man and consider Africa.
None whatsoever, as a general rule. All countries (and EU) protect their labor market and do not allow foreigners to just come and work.
You do need to get a job offer and get the paperwork done ahead of time, but there are no significant problems for high-tech workers to get work permits in European nations: the process is generally quick and pretty painless.
Something like Geekcorp would be a great place to look for opportunities.
There are very strong English language masters programs available in engineering schools and universities in Sweden and Finland (also this one), and presumably the rest of Scandinavia as well.
You haven't lived till you've biked over a frozen lake or read a book in perfect daylight at 2AM. Some schools have industries right next to campus to tap the student labor force and nearly all the universities have ample jobs for masters students right there on campus. This is also the perfect choice to allow you to maximize your vacation opportunities - Cheap student rates and lengthy school breaks. A university is also the ideal environment in which to study the language, both in a formal setting and with the students that are much more used to dealing with foreigners on a daily basis than the rest of the population.
That said, there's plenty of sysadmin jobs abroad under the employ of the US government, if you're willing to give up on coding at work for a while. See usajobs.gov and careers.state.gov. Simplifies dealing with visas and such.
Without knowing too much details about the alternatives it seems to me that Sweden would fit your bill nicely for the following reasons:
* Large IT-sector which regularly accepts English-speaking foreign labor in their workforce with no demands for knowing any Swedish.
* English is the second language and is spoken more or less fluently among most of the population (especially the younger one), more so than in Germany, France or Finland.
* Safe, generally non-violent place with all kinds of security nets if things would go wrong, like (almost) free hospitals.
* 25 days of vacation per year guaranteed by law. Most people have 4 weeks of continuous vacation during the summer which is a great time to travel around the rest of Europe.
Only thing speaking against Sweden as far as I can see is that it might not be exotic enough for your taste since it both culturally and geographically is quite close to your neighbor in north, Canada.
Most people in Belgium, and especially in Brussels, speak English quite well. And due to the language issues with the 2 Belgians communities (Walloon/French and Flemish), they end up speaking English together if one doesn't speak the other's language. A lot of nationalities are working in Brussels, we have a lot of agencies from the European Union and a lot of US companies have a local office in Brussels. Google for "expat brussels" will give you a lot of links for specialised websites. And don't forget beers and chocolate! ;-)
Given your experience and educational background, companies like Infosys, Wipro and hundreds of other IT companies in Bangalore/Hyderabad would be easy to get into. Moreover, since you're a US citizen, you may not face problems in getting a work visa in Europe. And most of these big IT services companies send engineers on long-term assignments to US, Europe. Having said that, if Europe is your priority, get it in black-and-white at the time of joining.
As an aside, if I were you, I would love to have some India experience under my belt--from a long term career growth perspective. Sooner or later, you will end up partnering with Bangalore folks for your IT projects. Many US companies are realizing that and getting mid/senior management to spend time in India (for software operations) and China (for hardware/manufacturing operations) to know the culture, processes, etc.
To where?
Almost any other place in the world have higher taxes than the US, so unless the taxes goes over 50% in total you can forget that argument.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
According to my German wife, there is a fair amount of opportunity in Germany (she cited Berlin specifically). Well, that was a couple years ago. But, it's still worth checking out.
Also, apparently you can get by fairly well with English only in the larger cities. So, that should help you acclimate.
You also might want to consider other English speaking countries such as New Zealand. Wikipedia actually has a list of countries that have English as an official language. So, you might want to check that out.
As a last note, I'd shy away from the UK as the violence there is getting bad enough that there are reports of people leaving because of it. Not to mention all the Orwellian BS.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
That's not been my experience, have had a blast in Paris. Just try to speak a little French, it's not that hard.
How would you react to a someone speaking French asking for directions out of your Kansas wheat field there billy-bob ?
Last time I checked they had at least the rule of law, unlike some, err, other countries.
But, as far as cities go, Amsterdam does have something if you want an active and diverse city. The Hague (Den Haag) is a good place to have a quiet beer with you and your friends, but it's not really a party town, and there are far too many guys for girls, due to the nature of expat demographics. Delft is boring. Leiden is nice if you want a small main-street city with everything you need, plus it also has more women thanks to the University's soft subject focus. Rotterdam is big and lively but has no old-city, thanks to the War. Whatever you do, live in the Randstadt (between Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam, & Utrecht) or you'll be out in the sticks.
I think you're half right and half wrong. Speaking as one of probably only a handful of English speaking foreigners who holds down an IT job in Japan outside of Tokyo, it's a tough place to get into. A lot of people who claim the Japanese are hard on foreigners have a huge chip on their shoulder and far too often mistake legitimate job rejection for racism. Put yourself in a Japanese employer's shoes - you're interviewing 5 candidates, 4 of whom are native Japanese speakers and 1 who can barely string together a basic conversation. Who is going to be the easier to work with. Given that the interview process is often more about finding reasons to reject than reasons to employ (in any culture), it's a no brainer that the foreigner is going to have a very tough time unless they've studied the language to a pretty high level.
That said, in my experience if there are jobs that do benefit from having a foreigner in the position (which sadly are very very few), companies will often bend over backwards to assist you overcome the language barrier, which the Japanese themselves recognize as a huge problem.
If you're willing to put up with the unbearable heat and stifling humidity of Tokyo or perhaps Osaka, there are opportunities there with both Japanese and foreign firms. I personally know an IT recruiter/headhunter there who specializes in foreign recruits, and he must have opportunities because he keeps hitting me up with questions about whether I'm looking for anything.
Videogames are an extremely unlikely route in though. Visit any web forum relating to employment in Japan and you'll see a queue a mile long of foreigners wanting to find out how to get into either a) manga art or b) videogames programming in Japan. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that a large number of Japanese kids grow up wanting to to do the same, so it's a fiercely difficult industry to get into even for homegrown talent.
Just as an aside, I will pick you up on one point. Contrary to popular belief, most developed countries have more or less caught up with Japan now cellphone wise. It's true that in the past Japan was well ahead of everything else, but more recently the handsets that are coming out, particularly in Europe, have pretty similar feature sets to what's available over here.
But, if I was the one going to another country, I'd want to speak the language first, if only to not promote a few choice stereotypes about Americans... (I speak Spanish more or less fluently, and I know enough Japanese to find the bathroom. Maybe.)
Hmmm... India is like Europe. Except for a few northern states, every state has it's own language. (Indian currency carries 17 languages. :) ) How many can/will you learn :)
America's biggest image problem is that people around the world can't distinguish between an American and the Federal Government of the United States of America.
I don't think so. Lots of Europeans dislike the US government and are "concerned" (to put it midly) about the american people because of http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml. We can understand the Bush-phenomena since all countries have that kind of politicians, but it's a bit harder to understand the 19th century mentality of (the majority of?) americans.
However, most americans who come here (Europe) to work or study are rational and civilized (at least the ones I've met) and therefore appreciated. (Except for the missionaries, who are seen as some kind of excotic animals.)
Hello original submitter - I have no idea if you'll read this or not, since it's probably destined to be buried right at the bottom of your view, well below MANY pointless discussions about things completely offtopic.
The company I work for, in Germany, is currently looking for a programmer type working closely with me (also a programmer). The job is about 25% actual coding, 50% helping other programmers with our own specific API and 25% other stuff (including various kinds of planning meetings, lots of travel around Europe and occasional travel outside of Europe (Japan being the most common, but US from time to time also)).
We're looking for someone with good C# knowledge, since that's what our API is based around, however strong Java and web-based skills is also a very big plus for something else we'll be doing quite soon.
I've actually already passed on one slashdotter's resume (a guy from Chicago) to my boss, and we have NO problem looking outside of Germany (we're required to look within Germany first, but the response has been less than stellar so far, so once we've finished looking inside Germany, we'll open it up to anyone, anywhere). I myself also do not come from Europe originally, so I myself am pretty good evidence we'll hire from anywhere if we need to. English is the defacto standard language for business in our company since we're the European HQ of a large multi-national. German is good to learn for "day to day life" here, but it's definitely not required for work.
If you're interested, please send me an email - my slashdot username minus the last 3 characters at Google's mail provider.
(if the other slashdotter who I have already talked to about this job reads this - don't worry, we haven't forgotten you or thrown away your resume - you're still in the running as well)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Well, French was widely used until the middle of the last century, especially in the diplomatic sphere. Plus it's spoken in part of Belgium and Switzerland, Quebec and former French colonies in Africa and Asia. And that's without counting all the overseas territories France owns.
Should you not believe me, here is the whole thing.
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
I also don't know of any international corporations that use French as the corporate language.
I work for a French multinational. Company policy is that the local language is to be used for meetings at each site. So German is the official language at our sites in Germany, English is standard in Australia, the US and the UK. French is obviously used in France.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
DO COME! I repeat: DO COME TO WORK IN EU!
Sure, the wages here are less than in the USA but do not only consider that part, I mean what's the use of money? To have a good life would be my answer. You can have a good life in Europe not having a USA salary... And also, you can learn a lot from Europe (don't get me wrong, this is not a pride-statement: I meant "from Europe as well as from any part of the world: no less no more but still a lot to learn from"). Your wish to travel in Europe, to visit the countries is a very good idea IMHO: it can only open your mind. I'd also suggest not to stop there (and i hope and think you won't: when you start traveling, it gets in your blood and you can't stop it!)
Here are a few other hints...
First of all, you won't have trouble in finding a computer-science job in Europe (as in many parts of the world), I "searched" a job in France and Spain (searching meaning putting my resume in monster and infojobs and waiting for offers) and had no problems in finding one. With an American masters in computer-science and 4 years of experience... just pick a job.
Now, if you want to visit all Europe you won't have any problem: there are a lot of low-cost airlines (ryanair is the most famous but there are dozens of other companies), there are train-tickets valid in all Europe (EuRail: http://www.eurail.com/). That's quite cheap (I come back from a 2-weeks journey over Europe that cost me around $1000...). As for the vacations, I think Europeans countries generally have a minimum vacation days greater than US (> 5 weeks in France, 4 weeks in Spain, ...). You'll be able to travel!
The language might be a problem in some countries. In Spain and France at least, not many people speak English (I'm not speaking of the job environment but of the daily-life) but well... I know American people here in Madrid that didn't know Spanish at all when coming here and they live fine. Moreover if you want to learn the language of the country you're leaving in that's better! If you want to speak English in the street, I'd suggest you go to Germany, Netherlands and northern countries. If you want to learn a language you can use after your Europe experience (if you don't chose to stay :-)), Spanish would be an obvious great choice... As for the wages/price of life, generally the northern you get, the bigger the figures are.
I lived and worked in Europe for a year, and then Australia for 7 years and it was the best time of my life. I even started our family overseas.
In a customer service/professional service type job, we had plenty of opportunity to travel all over, some places job related, and some not. London was a great jumping off point to the rest of Europe.
Things to be aware of:
When your return with a wealth of international experience, be prepared to deal with ignorant dweebs in HR departments who discount the value of that experience. You might also notice that your friends are now directors or VP's in companies and you're not.
I ended up starting my own consulting business. Some years are great, and others not but I wouldn't trade my world travel experience for anything.
Finally, save, save save. You'll need a stack of cash when you return. We returned with no house, no car, no job, family of four. So what did we do? We started two companies. I'd say 150K-200K to buy a house, a car or two, and start your own consulting business and subsidize living expenses for the first year.
For those who are still in college: Take a year between Junior and Senior and travel to find yourself. You'll be a better person and learn to appreciate what a great Land of Unlimited Opportunity the USA is (words from a German friend of mine).
Flame bait: With nearly 10 years of total world travel experience, I'm convinced that some parts of the world only hate us because they want to be us (or have what we have worked hard for) and they can't or won't for whatever reason. Help Keep America Beautiful.