Wow. Great thought. I lived abroad for ten years, and just finished a seven month stint in Budapest. I take it that you are single and your experience is with coding. Here is the scoop:
1) Go somewhere where there are fewer other Americans. Avoid England, France, Spain and Germany. You'll have more fun being the odd American in town.
2) The places where you will be most warmly received are the former Communist countries of Central Europe: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, etc. It was the Americans that saved them from the Russians 20 years ago, not the Europeans, and they remember that.
3) There are jobs aplenty available in these countries. For an English-speaking American programmer, these are usually jobs managing local talent. You will NOT find these jobs in the US - you need to go there and look for them. Employers want to see that you are already in the country and happy being there, rather than hiring you in the US, expensively shipping you to another country and potentially having you quit soon thereafter. Oh, and these jobs pay quite well, particularly compared to local costs of living.
4) In reference to #1, and this is hard to make yourself do, but strongly recommended - try to find a position that places you in a smaller town, not the capital. It's better to be the odd American in Brno than one of thousand in Prague; you'll have an easier time making friends and it will force you to learn the language, since there will be fewer English speakers around. My first six months in the Czech Republic and my first six months in Taiwan were both in small towns, and they remain my favorite countries that I have lived in (I've lived in eight now).
5) Finally, I just returned from Budapest this week. I believe that Crytek has positions available in their Budapest office. My Hungarian tutor was teaching their staff a couple of times a week (and they were doing a terrible job of learning Hungarian).
The best list I've seen in the past year was the one published by Marc Andreessen. I've worked my way through almost all of these now and, aside from one or two clunkers, its a stellar list of books and authors I had not heard of.
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/top_10_science_.html
Actually, Ender's Game was a novella published in Analog science fiction magazine in August 1977. The predictions were there largely intact - I was reading it as a teenager at the time. This was still before the time of Radio Shack's TRS80.
I always wondered what happened to Old Man Murray. I thought it might be the same guy, but when I got to the rant on crates in games, I knew it was him. Maybe a Fat Baby or two as well?
My first memory of Star Trek is tangential. I came upon my older bother and sister in the TV room watching a spaceship on the tube. I asked them if Star Trek was on; they "shushed" me. I sat watching with them and slowly realized that it was a real space mission, not the TV show. This must have been Apollo 8, 9, or 10 in 1967 or '68 -- there were three people in the ship and I know it wasn't the first moon landing.
This early memory (I was born in '63) tells me that I knew at the time what Star Trek was, though I don't have distinct memories of the episodes or watching it during the first seasons.
While this is a time for geeks of my age to rejoice (we have the final Star Trek episode and the final Star Wars movie now - I was 14 in 1977 for the debut of Star Wars), Star Trek has always been closer for me. Going back to that time, the future then was a dark thing: Cold War, oil shortages, stagflation, Club of Rome, overpopulation . . . the list goes on. Star Trek provided an optimistic view of a future world - not without pain and suffering to achieve it, but a final world in which the differences of the '60's and 70's were achieved.
Well, boys and girls, we've reached that world; and not a little bit because there were fictional sources to point the proper way. Lt. Uhuru was the first major black character on a TV series. The Cold War is over; my beautiful wife is Hungarian, inaccessible before behind the Iron Curtain - today, we have a boy and a girl together. It's not because of Star Trek - but Star Trek was a touchstone for many of us here in the west - a common vision and means of communication.
There is a previous memory in this list of watching Trek in Somolia. My memory is watching Star Trek 4 in Taipei, Taiwan, in a youth hostel almost entirely populated by non-Americans. Yet they shared so many of the visions. Truly, Hollywood is a powerful tool. Too bad too few of those in control have the vision of Gene Roddenbery.
Three or four years ago, Bleem! developed an emulator which allowed PlayStation games to be played on PC's. The founders of Bleem! figured this was going to be a win-win for Sony - they don't have to sell their hardware at a loss, but receive licensing revenue from the game. Sony did not see it that way, and sued Bleem! out of existence.
Further, note that Bleem! actually won all of the court cases I am aware of. However, the cost of defending themselves in court put them out of business.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Great thought. I lived abroad for ten years, and just finished a seven month stint in Budapest. I take it that you are single and your experience is with coding. Here is the scoop: 1) Go somewhere where there are fewer other Americans. Avoid England, France, Spain and Germany. You'll have more fun being the odd American in town. 2) The places where you will be most warmly received are the former Communist countries of Central Europe: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, etc. It was the Americans that saved them from the Russians 20 years ago, not the Europeans, and they remember that. 3) There are jobs aplenty available in these countries. For an English-speaking American programmer, these are usually jobs managing local talent. You will NOT find these jobs in the US - you need to go there and look for them. Employers want to see that you are already in the country and happy being there, rather than hiring you in the US, expensively shipping you to another country and potentially having you quit soon thereafter. Oh, and these jobs pay quite well, particularly compared to local costs of living. 4) In reference to #1, and this is hard to make yourself do, but strongly recommended - try to find a position that places you in a smaller town, not the capital. It's better to be the odd American in Brno than one of thousand in Prague; you'll have an easier time making friends and it will force you to learn the language, since there will be fewer English speakers around. My first six months in the Czech Republic and my first six months in Taiwan were both in small towns, and they remain my favorite countries that I have lived in (I've lived in eight now). 5) Finally, I just returned from Budapest this week. I believe that Crytek has positions available in their Budapest office. My Hungarian tutor was teaching their staff a couple of times a week (and they were doing a terrible job of learning Hungarian).
The best list I've seen in the past year was the one published by Marc Andreessen. I've worked my way through almost all of these now and, aside from one or two clunkers, its a stellar list of books and authors I had not heard of. http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/top_10_science_.html
Actually, Ender's Game was a novella published in Analog science fiction magazine in August 1977. The predictions were there largely intact - I was reading it as a teenager at the time. This was still before the time of Radio Shack's TRS80.
I always wondered what happened to Old Man Murray. I thought it might be the same guy, but when I got to the rant on crates in games, I knew it was him. Maybe a Fat Baby or two as well?
My first memory of Star Trek is tangential. I came upon my older bother and sister in the TV room watching a spaceship on the tube. I asked them if Star Trek was on; they "shushed" me. I sat watching with them and slowly realized that it was a real space mission, not the TV show. This must have been Apollo 8, 9, or 10 in 1967 or '68 -- there were three people in the ship and I know it wasn't the first moon landing.
This early memory (I was born in '63) tells me that I knew at the time what Star Trek was, though I don't have distinct memories of the episodes or watching it during the first seasons.
While this is a time for geeks of my age to rejoice (we have the final Star Trek episode and the final Star Wars movie now - I was 14 in 1977 for the debut of Star Wars), Star Trek has always been closer for me. Going back to that time, the future then was a dark thing: Cold War, oil shortages, stagflation, Club of Rome, overpopulation . . . the list goes on. Star Trek provided an optimistic view of a future world - not without pain and suffering to achieve it, but a final world in which the differences of the '60's and 70's were achieved.
Well, boys and girls, we've reached that world; and not a little bit because there were fictional sources to point the proper way. Lt. Uhuru was the first major black character on a TV series. The Cold War is over; my beautiful wife is Hungarian, inaccessible before behind the Iron Curtain - today, we have a boy and a girl together. It's not because of Star Trek - but Star Trek was a touchstone for many of us here in the west - a common vision and means of communication.
There is a previous memory in this list of watching Trek in Somolia. My memory is watching Star Trek 4 in Taipei, Taiwan, in a youth hostel almost entirely populated by non-Americans. Yet they shared so many of the visions. Truly, Hollywood is a powerful tool. Too bad too few of those in control have the vision of Gene Roddenbery.
Three or four years ago, Bleem! developed an emulator which allowed PlayStation games to be played on PC's. The founders of Bleem! figured this was going to be a win-win for Sony - they don't have to sell their hardware at a loss, but receive licensing revenue from the game. Sony did not see it that way, and sued Bleem! out of existence.
Further, note that Bleem! actually won all of the court cases I am aware of. However, the cost of defending themselves in court put them out of business.