[some_account]

American culture seems to be incredibly bad for living a fulfilling life. Intelligent people on hacker news would do good to look at Sweden for a good balance between capitalism and socialism that actually works very well. Of course lately our politicians have allowed millions of immegrants to come in without having any sort of plan to give them jobs, so I expect Sweden to become pretty crap in the next 10 years. :)

[expertentipp]

Would intelligent people from HN do good in looking in Sweden for the sun, female partner, or an apartment for rent (in regions where there are professional opportunities)?

[piva00]

Sun? No, although summer here is amazing and bright and beautiful you'll have to live 3 months with the darkness (even here in Stockholm, wake up in the dark, go to work with the sun rising and get out of work in pitch dark when there's no snow).

Female partner? You can be lucky, sex is easy to come but relationships are much harder, there's a reason why "The Swedish Theory of Love" exists, people here are very autonomous, partnership is something very fluid and can crumble for things you'd probably linger more in other societies.

Apartment for rent... Well... I can definitely say this is not easy nor cheap.

[depressedpanda]

My anecdotal experience says yes.

Except for the sun, but vitamin D and living close to an international airport are sufficient supplements for me.

[thesimon]

Do you think the salary level reflects the high cost of living? 45k SEK pre-tax seems like a common figure, but appartments e.g. in Stockholm are around 12k SEK.

[some_account]

The rental market has crazy prices. You would be a lot better off to get a loan and buy an apartment in the outskirts of Stockholm. You need 15% cash to get a loan for an apartment, so if you buy a small one for 2 million Swedish SEK, you need to have 300 000 Swedish SEK to get the loan. That's about 30 000 dollars. But I'm not sure if foreign people can get loans from Swedish banks, need to check that out.

[elgenie]

A $66k salary doesn't seem like enough to motivate someone from the US to uproot wholesale.

[some_account]

I make 3700 dollars per month after Swedish taxes, live in a big house 45 mins from work surrounded by beautiful nature, and pay about 400 dollars every month for the loan on the house. For me, that's a perfect life. More money than I need, and a great life / work balance since swedish culture is very relaxed and nobody counts hours at work. People work maybe 7 to 8 hours.

I should put up a web page with more and better info perhaps. You guys don't know what you are missing and there is a huge amount of tech jobs here. Stockholm is very hot in tech.

[oAlbe]

> I should put up a web page with more and better info perhaps.

Please do. Not only for the US people though, target it to EU too.

[expertentipp]

hey but they culture the perfect balance between capitalism and socialism, want some?

[expertentipp]

45k SEK monthly is 54k EUR annually (what a beautiful exchange rate!) - not far from salary ceiling in other EU countries. Hitting it so hard my head spins. Salary fixing alarm!