[zeemonkee]

I've had a similar experience in Finland - the shitty salaries (and lack of interesting work that isn't somehow tied to the sinking ship that is Nokia) are one reason I avoid Finnish companies like the plague, and just work for foreign clients.

This is the reason Finnish companies don't advertise salary, which is common in the UK and US for example - it's all collectively bargained in some way out of your control.

[kaib]

Just a quick heads up. If you are interested in distributed systems, computational geometry or working on a custom WebGL app fire me an email, we might have something interesting for you at Tinkercad. Our tech team is based in the heart of Helsinki and we are actively looking for new talent.

If we aren't a good match for you I know a bunch of other interesting startups that I can put you in touch with. Ping me at [e-mail].

[daeken]

Not to hijack the thread too much, but with the sort of thing you're doing, I'd seriously consider reaching out to people from the demoscene. There's a pretty large demo culture in Finland, and they'd be perfectly suited to the task, particularly the computational geometry and WebGL side of things. I'd be interested myself if I were in Helsinki.

[base698]

I was implementing a proof of concept in WebGL for my product and thought, I wonder if someone has implemented a WebGL modeler yet? After a bit of search ran across Tinkercad... Was a super impressive product, and don't know why more people aren't aware of it.

[pmjordan]

To be clear: collective bargaining normally only sets minimum conditions. You're free to negotiate for more, the employer just might not go with it.

And I know what you mean about foreign clients: the majority of my contracting revenue has been from clients in more progressive countries. Part of it is also that Austria is a small country (though higher population than Finland), so of course there are more potential good clients elsewhere.

[zeemonkee]

I don't know about Austria, here it's a case of "well, this is the industry standard, why do you deserve more? - oh you're a foreigner? Just be grateful we even give you a job" (even if you speak Finnish).

So, most employers don't go with it ;-)

I'm quite happy with foreign clients as they pay better and the work tends to be more interesting - the only killer is the different timezones.

[pmjordan]

Yes, there is also a strong bias against employing non-natives (or at least non-Germanics) in Austria, orthogonal to the other issues, which was quite shocking after living the previous years of my adult life in the UK, which has a much more liberal culture. This bigotry is much less of an issue (I'd almost say a non-issue) in actual technology companies though. It's telling that the proportion of immigrants among the self employed is much higher than the total proportion of immigrants (though that effect is seen in many countries, and I don't know if it's much higher in Austria).

[skrebbel]

Interesting! This is nearly a 180 degree opposite in the Netherlands. Companies can't find the talent they need inside (because they pay them too little, but ok), so they try to attract foreigners. Foreign "knowledge workers" also get tax benefits for the first many years, and many employers (particularly consultancies and larger OEMs) have people specialized in getting foreigners a worker's visa.

[mryan]

Ah, the "30% ruling". For those that haven't heard of this wonderful piece of legislation if means you only pay tax on 70% of your salary if you qualify as a knowledge migrant. Yes, you get 30% of your salary tax free. There are also other benefits, e.g. you don't pay income tax on dividends from your home country.

It's not just consultancies and OEMs that will help apply for this - I work at a startup and I am classified as a knowledge migrant.

Any Django/Python devs who are interested in living in a beautiful city and only paying tax on 70% of your salary, please get in touch - we're hiring!

[skrebbel]

Wonderful for you maybe. I call it positive discrimination.

Btw, is that startup cloudfrag? Where're you guys located? (I'd rather be a garbage man than write Python for a living, but I'm always curious about Dutch startups that I didn't know about)

[mryan]

PS: I had someone email me to see if this post was serious. It is - if you know Django/Python and want to live in Amsterdam, please email me.

[reinhardt]

Sounds tempting.. is there a hidden jobs link in the site somewhere? ;)

[ricardobeat]

Being brazilian and having lived in the UK, calling the british a "much more liberal culture" is incredibly funny :)

[brunnsbe]

In Finland IT-companies must pay a minimum salary for full-time workers, it's something around 2000 euros (source: http://www.teknologiateollisuus.fi/file/7960/ERTO_Tes_fi_201...) but the limit gets higher when you get more responsibility.

[nickik]

I just saw a add of a firm that wants to get a clojure programmer wiht a Ph.D. in robotics, computer vision or something around there. I got the first part down at least :)