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by patrickk
4946 days ago
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"...but I'd argue that you won't find better English speakers for the same amount of money anywhere in Europe." Wow, I must admit I've never heard this opinion expressed before. That was why I was surprised in my previous comment. All you hear in Ireland is that "wages are too high, we're not cost competitive" blah-blah-blah. I've heard that you can get programmers in places like Germany, Scandinavia and parts of Eastern Europe (esp. countries like Estonia, Poland and Latvia) for relatively cheap and they nearly all speak good/great English too. Maybe that is for more contract work than for hiring on a more permanent basis though, I've never hired anyone myself. Can I ask, what line of work are you in? You seem to have a broad perspective on this. |
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For this sort of relatively labour-intensive sectors, places like France, Germany and Nordic countries are way too expensive. Eastern Europe is a hit & miss, safest being Czechia, but they're also a few more hours away from the US (in terms of flight and timezone), and they're not as dirt-poor as in 1989 anymore, so prices have gone up. Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal) would be great, except their English is lousy, tax arrangements are byzantine, their salespeople will screw you at every turn, and their approach to customer-service can be borderline disgraceful (and I can say that, being one of them! lol).
I don't think Irish wages are too high -- they certainly went up in the last 20 years, as the country improved dramatically and sort-of aligned with other EU members, so the economy has to rebalance a bit, but that was to be expected. Overall, the Irish system still provides very good value for money, I'd say.