[Maxion]

Pretty much yes. While you can find tech companies that hire exclusively English speakers A LOT of companies require fluent Finnish, even when the internal language is Finnish.

Finland is still in many ways a very conservative society.

[tekkk]

I don't think that's true, at least for Helsinki. Plenty of companies here who hire non-Finnish speakers. I think there's half a dozen Indians in the office where I'm working at right now. Not an issue. I think country-side can be conservative, yes, but Finland is quite progressive in many respects. In immigration there are some heated opinions but I think that's true for many countries.

[tasogare]

Let’s be real 30 seconds, while it’s possible to live in a foreign country without speaking the language, it’s inconvenient to do basic daily activity (ordering at a restaurant, opening a bank account, posting a letter, etc.) when knowing jack-shit about the local language. It’s also extremely hard to form a social circle.

I speak from experience. I’ve lived in a central Europe country where I cannot speak anything and it was annoying outside work; I felt like an idiot most of the time. Now I’m living in a country I can speak the language and I can interact with people, do complex things alone (moving home), and it’s way more nice to live like that.

[stevekemp]

There's a fair bit of truth in that, but even people who "speak no Finnish" soon learn the names of foods, how to ask for coffee/beer, and their numbers.

There's just a big jump from simple things that will get you by to actual fluency.

[em-bee]

this depends on your personality, and how you make friends. i lived a year in latvia, and i had no trouble despite speaking neither latvian, nor russian. i made friends through the local linux community and other communities i was part of. i also have no problems in china. yes, some things are more difficult. eg. calling a plumber needs the help of a friend who speaks the local language. but for every day stuff, i was actually surprised how easy it is.

[shusson]

> while it’s possible to live in a foreign country without speaking the language, it’s inconvenient to do basic daily activity

I think there are a few exceptions in Europe, e.g The Netherlands.

[olegp]

Helsinki, Finland is another such exception.

[privateSFacct]

Bummer - especially for folks with ability to work in finland but who only speak english. Good to know though. Fluent finish is not easy!

[olegp]

We're building a tech recruitment platform at Toughbyte and I'm based in Finland, where we've filled around a hundred developer positions so far.

In my experience Finnish is not required for jobs at 95%+ of product companies, only consultancies and even there there are exceptions.

You can check out our current positions in Finland here: https://www.toughbyte.com/developers#positions - perhaps there's something you might be interested in and if not, you can can also leave your email via the Get in touch button and we'll get back to you the moment there is.

[shusson]

well there goes a dream, Finnish is also ridiculously hard to learn, coming from English.

[stevekemp]

If you're a developer/coder/sysadmin you can find companies that will hire you speaking only English. This is very common, though much more so in Helsinki.

In everyday life speaking Finnish will be beneficial, for obvious reasons. I've been here a few years now, having moved from Scotland. Using English I've been able to get my brain scanned, buy a couple of flats, deal with daycare (I became a parent after moving here), and most bureaucracy.

Finnish is indeed hard to learn, but even getting the basics down will make your life easier and better.

[sha666sum]

Almost everyone in Finland speaks either good or fluent English. Movies and TV shows aren't dubbed apart from some animated content, usually for kids. Domestic media can only create so much content for a population of 5 million, so the population is constantly subjected to English language media.

There's also regions along the coast where a sizable portion, or even the majority of people, are Swedish speaking[1] (and bilingual to various degrees). Swedish is an official language, and if you want to be a pain in the ass to the 95% of the population that doesn't speak Swedish apart from the mandatory school courses, you are entitled by law to get service in Swedish.

Working only in English is obviously harder, but if you want to live here, don't let that stop you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish-speaking_Finn