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?"

Comments

English at work countries...

[rbunker]

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.

Africa would be a better deal

[bogaboga]

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.

Re:elect obama

[McFadden]

Japan is where a lot of the video game industry is, so it could be fun looking for a programming job there. But, the market for PCs in Japan is shrinking (their cell phones are amazing and replace most uses of a PC) so there's probably not much future in "regular" software over there. And again, you're not going to be able to pick up Japanese very quickly, either, although a lot of people over there speak English. (Besides, I'm told that the Japanese aren't very friendly to foreign workers; that a foreigner taking a Japanese job will always be unwelcome. At least that's what a friend of mine said when he came back this semester, so your mileage may vary. I'd expect younger folk to be more forgiving.)

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.