[Sir_Substance]

I move from Australia to Iceland. Icelanders always go "what the hell man? why would you do that?" when they find out.

It's complicated. Broadly speaking, it's an even split between:

1. Icelands software industry being considerably more vibrant than Australias, which is really sad for Aus.

2. Australias government increasingly intervening directly in it's citizens lives whether they like it or not. The Icelandic government is pretty hands off, þetta reddast etc.

3. Icelanders have no idea what the word "heat" really means. They've never under-clocked their computers to keep them stable during summer. I'll take Icelandic winter over Australia summer any day of the week.

It's been hard, but I wouldn't take back my decision, no way. Any one of those reasons is good enough for me.

We're living in the first age in human history where you can really just pick up all your shit and straight up move to the opposite side of the planet, no dramas. I paid ~$8,000AUD to some dudes, they rocked up at my place with a truck full of boxes and paper and wrapped up literally the entire house and drove off. Three months later some other dudes showed up at my new place in Reykjavik and unboxed everything for me. 8k isn't nothing, but it's not unreachable either, and I also paid for the full service move. Easiest move I ever did, but you could probably do it for half the price if you packed yourself.

Out of the whole planet, what're the odds that you were born in the place that suits you best? It's definitely worth shopping around.

[alva]

Would love to find out how you got a job programming in Iceland. What were the requirements for language, Visa, how did you find the role etc?

[Sir_Substance]

Australians don't need visas to visit or stay temporarily in Iceland, but to work you need a residence permit and work permit.

Residence permits won't get processed while you're in the country as a tourist, so you apply from outside the country and wait. There are no language requirements as long as someone is willing to hire you. To get a residence permit you need to meet the quality of "support"[1], which broadly means either approximately $22,000 in savings per year of your permit OR payslips demonstrating a monthly income that meets $22,000/yr OR an employment contract from an Icelandic company.

If you go the employment route, you need a work permit. For software, this is usually done on the basis of "expert knowledge"[2]. The company usually needs to demonstrate that they're unable to hire a schengen zone citizen to do your job (otherwise you're not expert enough I guess?), and then issue you with a contract that you submit to the directorate of immigration. That's relatively informal though, and mostly means the company needs to advertise in Iceland first and show that it interviewed candidates and they weren't suitable. Iceland is heavily unionized and your work permit will need a stamp of approval from a relevant union. The first time you request this the union will want to see your qualifications. I strongly suggest becoming a member of that union to smooth things over when you get it renewed every one or two years. Iceland is charmingly small-town corrupt like that.

All Icelanders under ~60 speak flawless English, and it's pretty common for Icelanders under 30 to interleave English words into Icelandic sentences in cases where there isn't a good Icelandic word. Unless the company you apply to works heavily with Icelandic language products, it's unlikely that speaking only English would be a barrier to employment.

As for getting the job itself, Iceland is /desperate/ for good programmers. The cost of living is high, the wages are low, and the local universities don't have fabulous software degrees[3]. It's hard for Icelandic companies to hire good programmers. If you want to come to Iceland and you have a qualification, it may not be that hard. However, I suggest visiting for a holiday in June and again in February, to see what this country is really like. If you don't love it as a place to live, you won't stay long.

This might be a good place to start looking: https://www.tvinna.is/

[1] http://www.utl.is/index.php/en/basic-requirements1#support

[2] http://www.utl.is/index.php/en/residence-permits-based-on-wo...

[3] My friends tell me that slightly pre-banking-crisis, all the universities reformed their software degrees to churn out low level CRUD app webdevs to make lots of web apps for the high flying Icelandic banks. When the banks all crashed, Iceland became awash with relatively inflexible developers, and the universities haven't really refocused their coursework much, so the standard of graduates is, I am told, still relatively poor.

[alva]

Thank you for the detailed response :)

[njwi332]

I can't offer any direct comparison with Iceland, but the software scene in Australia has been improving rapidly the last couple of years - particularly with US visa laws making it worse for immigrants wanting to move there.

To offer some data for Sydney, Google has of course been around a while, Google Maps is based out of Australia. Atlassian is hiring as much as ever. Amazon has been growing at a rapid clip here in Sydney (I wish I could disclose numbers publicly!) and we have offices in Melbourne and Brisbane, and Microsoft is in the process of opening a dev centre in Sydney right now as well. Still a long ways to go but it's much better than even a few years ago.

[bitL]

> Australias government increasingly intervening directly in it's citizens lives whether they like it or not

What exactly do you mean? And is it Australian government or individual state ones?

[Sir_Substance]

Both. A few examples are in order I guess.

A few years ago, the federal government dissolved the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, which checked peoples passports and asked them stern questions about the suspicious grass dolls they bought in Vietnam. If you did something really stupid, a customs officer might point a pistol at you.

They replaced it with the Australian Border Force, who despite formally not being a military force (how-dare-you-suggest-it-you-unaustralian-piece-of-shit-do-we-need-to-check-your-passport) are armed with the same Steyr AUG assault rifles that are used by the Australian Army and very much like to show them off at all public appearances.

Within literally less than a month of it's formation the government attempted to deploy this new department, which is under unusually direct control of parliament for an armed force in Australia, to spot check for expired visas on the streets of Melbourne. Fortunately, we never got to find out how the Aussie Stazi were going to tell the difference between visitors and normal Australians. Australians are not required to carry ID and due to our wonderful melting pot of cultures cannot always be distinguished by accent. As it happened, Melbourne did us proud and brought the city to a halt in protest:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-28/border-force-to-check-...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/aug/28/prote...

Meanwhile, in my home state, a new government has just been elected on the back of an unironic campaign promise to deploy sniffer dogs in schools to ensure children don't have drugs:

https://strongplan.com.au/first-100-days/ (ctrl-f "sniffer dogs")

One of the reasons I left Australia is that I am expecting them to close the borders and start granting exit visas within the next 5-10 years. They've already successfully used "won't someone think of the children" to establish precedent for denying people freedom to exit the country: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/world/australia/pedophile...

The next step will be expanding it to preventing people with "dangerous ideas" from "embarrassing Australia and endangering our neighbors". I expect to see vocal anti-vaxxer proponents denied permission to travel within about 3 years. It'll creep from there.

Basically what's happening is that Australia is sick to death of its two identical political parties, and they're both losing support rapidly in both state and federal governments. Understandably, neither one is willing to accept that it might just not be wanted by the new generation, so both are grasping for provable victories they can display like trophies at elections. This has resulted in huge tax increases on booze and cigarettes, burdensome increases in the difficulty of teenagers getting drivers licenses and reductions in the utility of those licenses, sweeping surveillance and data retention laws, attempts to criminalize the teaching of encryption algorithms, big increases in security theater at airports and a litany of other annoyances.

Mostly I want the government to just fuck off and leave me alone, but it won't play ball. So I fucked off instead.

[jscholes]

I've enjoyed reading your comments in this thread. Have you considered writing up any of your observations about places you've visited, lived or worked in in a blog/book/etc? I would check it out.

[Sir_Substance]

I've certainly considered it, but it's very much not me. It's hard to be more expressive than that without posting a huge long introspective ramble. I'm one of lifes natural born psudo-anonymous internet posters, I guess.

edit: Thanks for the compliment by the way :) I really do forget my manners on the internet!

[sashavingardt2]

Dude, I moved to Reykjavik just over a year ago from NYC!

[sashavingardt2]

Wanna do lunch next week?

[Sir_Substance]

Yeah man, somewhere downtown?

edit: If you've got keybase, you can add me with user "arkaroo". Otherwise, what's a good way to get in contact?