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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?"
code writes you... ?
Many foreigners come to the United States for the reasons you have listed here.
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 am a American citizen "
Are you sure you speak English?
I live in Canada, but I'm being sponsored to work in the US, so I will more than likely be working on the US side in the next month or 2.
However, if you wish to work in Canada or the UK, you can try these job boards.
http://www.jobshark.ca/caeng/index.cfm
http://www.jobserve.com/
Now as for balancing pleasure with business, gee, I could always make a joke about working in a country where the "siesta" is mandatory :P but the truth is, I don't know. All I know is that in Canada, you could always challenge yourself to learn French. For me, being bilingual it obviously works well. But the truth is, if you had to learn a new language, I would suspect the following languages would be beneficial: spanish, mandarin, japanese, russian, german.
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.
You mean "they're" and "there".
I see what you did they're.
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...
Actually most countries, even the strictest on immigration, have work visa programs specifically for skilled positions that are difficult to fill locally. In Switzerland, for example (a notoriously tough place to get the right to stay permanently), you can get a Permis-B to work for 18 months with very little hassle at all, with the sponsorship of your employer, as long as you have skills. MS in Computer Science from a US University makes this a perfectly simple matter of paperwork and about $3000 in legal expenses (that the company will pay).
If by "productive members of society" you mean "parasite MBAs," then please, by all means, they're welcome to get the hell out. Let them go wreck some other country's economy for a while.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
... 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....
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.
France just loves Americans who only speak English. Maybe you can find something there.
And get some of that sweet in-sourced work from the US.
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.
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.
Well as a person who now lives and works abroad I can say it something that everyone should do.
It has many benefits. Least of which is cash.
First off and most importantly it opens your eyes to the greater culture of the planet. Being someone from the "new" world this is even more important. As North America suffers from a homoginised culture. Less so Canada.
Secondly the experience both for work and personal. Work wise your experience in different cultures working can only help you back at home. Secondly the experience you gain personally will enhance your life and alter your life priorities.
Now for the tough part the how too.
First off do your research in an area you wish to live. What is the cost of living etc. Secondly start to look at the job market in the region. Google will be your friend here.
For example: Rent in Sydney Aus in the city runs you about $400-$600au a week. That's about $350-$500us. Which for most american's is gigantic cash.
At this time several markets are suffering from a downturn in IT. So be careful. This is a particularily sensitive time for employment. Many regions of the world have laws that prefer citizens over foreign people. Others require lengthy and costly Visa and certification procedures. Also some countries foreign workers are not governed by labor laws no matter what they do. So you may not have the protections the locals do. So again this is a point of research.
If you are going to a non English speaking country. Make sure you have someone translate you CV/resume before you go. And then again when you get there. Make sure they understand the subject matter in the CV/resume. Otherwise you may end up looking like a professional gopher cage cleaner.
Some countries have issues with American's. So be careful. For example a job in Egypt for an American could have personal safety issues. ( I picked a country and random. )
Moving countries is hard work but well worth it. I have been doing it for almost 20 years. So don't be afraid. If your mind is set on it, you can do it.
I could ramble on for hours. But I'll leave it at this.
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.
" What sort of opportunities are there for American citizens to work abroad?"
Lots of opportunities with this outfit:
[URL]http://www.marines.com/page/usmc.jsp[/URL]
"Any hassles I should know about?"
Nothing we can't train you for son.
On a more serious note, if you are under 29 there is a class of working VISA available in many countries that allows you to work there for up to 12 months with few restrictions.
And how does one submit these "fucking prayers"?
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.
Yes, obama will force upper middle class workers to flee from America to Europe, to enjoy their world renowned reputation for low taxes and small governments.
Continuing the outside-Europe-theme, Australia and New Zealand could be worth considering. New Zealand has the lowest unemployment in the OECD and is there's plenty of demand for IT people. In Australia the demand is even greater. Tax is roughly on a par with the UK (maybe slightly better in Australia, slightly worse in NZ).
You could also try asking US firms - particularly in the finance sector big US financials will tend to have EMEA (London, Paris, Frankfurt, etc) and APAC (Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland - plus Tokyo, Singapore, etc) offices, with significant regional IT needs. Speak to someone locally about work globally, and you'll have good contacts when/if you return to the US.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Anyway, whichever country you choose, I wish you a great time!
:-).
ps. for anyone that goes to Holland for a longer time, you might want to read The Undutchables to prevent any culture shock
This may not be a bad idea actually. Salaries in India can actually be pretty high, up to 2/3rds of what US workers are making. India is not the bargain it once was for outsourcing. If you can find a good job there in a specific area of technical expertise or in a leadership role for a US organization you can do well. And in India, my understanding is that tech workers speak English on the job as it is considered the language of business.
It's also a pretty foreigner-friendly environment so the transition when moving is very easy to handle.
It's easy to practice Dutch. Just ride your bicycle into the countryside and get lost. I guarantee that the person of whom you ask directions will not speak English. Or French. Or German. Not only that, although they will understand your Dutch, you won't be able to understand the response because it will be in some non-standard dialect. :)
Come to India... Urban India speaks English with varying levels of competence. and being a white person will draw excellent salaries as well (I'm serious). Though it will not be in the 100K range. But then cost of living is much cheaper in most parts...
If it were a dictatorship then maybe you'd be right, but the American voters put Bush in charge. Or at least the ~25% of them that voted for him and ~50% that didn't bother to vote at all put him in charge. And subsequently that 75% is definitely culpable for everything that America has done in the past 8 years.
Last time I checked they had at least the rule of law, unlike some, err, other countries.
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.
I guess I can shed some light on the situation in Switzerland.
There are four spoken languages here: German, Italian, French and Romanic. Typically, reasonably large companies in Switzerland have offices in at least two language areas, typically German and French or German and Italian. While the Swiss have their own version of German (which Germans don't understand when they first hear it), they will usually use the official version when talking to non-Swiss. So you can easily learn German, French and Italian in Switzerland.
All working-age Swiss speak English. There are some older people who may never have learned English, but you can easily get by even if you only know English.
I have a few American friends who live and work in Switzerland (Google has an office here, so there's tons of American Google programmers over here :-), and they seem to love it, so I guess I would recommend Switzerland. Also, we're always hiring good programmers :-)
When looking for programming jobs, I would start out in Zurich; there's a lot of software companies in Zurich.
I think admin.ch should have information on how to apply for jobs and such.
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.
While you are living in this fictional world where Republicans are "fiscal conservatives", and Democrats "tax and spend", I think I'll take a look at real evidence to the contrary.
Bah! I'm a slider and I thought I finally found my way home, but I guess this really isn't my Earth.
I should have known. The black guy running for President and the little MILF hottie running for VP should've given it away. We only run old white men vs. older white men.
By the way, you guys didn't elect Dean, right? Holy shit, was that a f*ck-up, I can't even begin to tell you. I'm sure you guys had it better these past few years than we did. You found the WMD stash in that little bunker, right?
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
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
Come to Slovakia, we love Americans to come here. We have a nice Hostel for you to stay in too.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
There's a couple of hundred thousand Americans working there, and new vacancies being created every week.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Thanks - the stats I were looking at lumped all/most of Europe together on 6.9%.
Incidentally, a more recent figure is 3.8% for NZ - and Denmark, the Netherlands and (South?) Korea [1] all beat NZ (and presumably Iceland too). I believe NZ has been more affected by the current economic crisis that many other OECD countries, as it's very reliant on trade and tourism. Not sure how this affects IT (as I'm not currently job-hunting) but I'd guess that businesses may be scaling back recruitment.
[1] North Korea isn't an OECD member, and I'd imagine that the unemployment rate in North Korea is in negative figures and everyone is gloriously happy in their jobs ;-)
This is where the serious fun begins.
I agree that WWII was general not a model case of avoiding noncombatant casualties, but I will point out a few facts:
1. When the USAAC and RAF firebombed Dresden, they caused more casualties than in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
2. The Japanese used WMDs (as currently defined as Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons) first; estimates of casualties from their attacks on Chinese cities using plague are in the 50k to 100k range.
3. The U.S. previously avoided using WMD on Iwo Jima, which it was not necessary to cancel (the Navy's plans to gas it and bypass were vetoed by the President).
4. Invading Japan would've made Iraq (and Iran) look like a picnic; estimated U.S. casualties to establish an initial beachhead on the Home Islands were in excess of a quarter million; Japanese civilian and military casualty figures were estimated at several times higher. The persistent effects of nuclear weapons were not well understood for decades after - the U.S. was still doing "training exercises" with troops in close proximity to nuclear weapons into the 1960s.
So yes, the U.S. is only nation to use nuclear weapons in combat, but the use in WWII is still "permissible" under current U.S. and international (including French) WMD policy (which considers all NBC weapons to be equal, as we "official" don't have any of those).
Just my $0.02.
P.S.: Yes, I'm going to vote for Obama.