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 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...
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
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.
" 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.
"Sure they do: snotty, good, small, and fake."
Sorry, only just woke up half-way down the comments. Are we talking about breasts again?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
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
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
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...
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.
Remind me never to buy another one of their locks.
Stick Men