[MortenK]

A couple of things:

You have to be absolutely certain that they will supply living and work permit for both you and your family. Immigration laws are very strict in Scandinavia, so you'd obviously want to be certain there won't be any nasty surprises with getting your wife and children here.

Living costs in Moscow and Stockholm is not that far from each other.

A full-time position as a front-end developer usually won't pay through the roof. However a good front-ender never needs to look far for a new job.

Career-wise where you'd really be able to take a leap is after a year or two as a frontend dev at this Stockholm company. By then you have working permit sorted out, a Swedish referral and maybe a little knowledge of the language.

When you have these things you can break into front-end contracting for customers in Sweden or other countries in Scandinavia (Oslo, Norway is particularly booming at the moment).

Front-end contracting is typically full-time contracts on-location for between 6 and 12 months. It typically pays 100+ USD an hour, meaning a monthly income of 16K USD or so given a standard 40 hour workweek. If you have the skills (and it sounds like you do), the contracts are pretty easy to get by using agencies who are always looking for new development talent.

It's very hard to jump directly into contracting in Sweden from Russia, particularly due to the whole work-visa problem. But once you are inside, it's a very viable opportunity.

If your wife enjoys learning languages, there is free Swedish language education (she can even apply for a "learning bonus" of around 1000 USD pr 6 weeks or so). Once you are in, there's also (almost) free health care and such.

Stockholm is a lovely city, and it's only a 2,5 hour flight from Moscow, priced typically at around 400-500 USD round-trip.

[pathy]

>Front-end contracting is typically full-time contracts on-location for between 6 and 12 months. It typically pays 100+ USD an hour, meaning a monthly income of 16K USD or so given a standard 40 hour workweek.

A lot of those 16K will go away in taxes and social costs though. I am not sure what most freelancers use for estimates but somewhere between 50-75% should probably be deducted before getting a comparable number to a salary.

[MortenK]

Yeah that's true, expect around 50-55% of any pay (contracting or salary) to go to the tax man. As an employee, you get 6 weeks paid holiday, 5-8% of your salary in pension and you also get paid when you are ill. When you are contracting you get none of those things. A good rule of thumb is to deduct 20-25% of the contractor pay to reach comparable employee salary.

Still, 25% off 16K is 12K before tax. As a full-time frontender in Stockholm, you'd generally be around 5-6K before tax.

[seivan]

Agreed. Freelancers and small business although backbone of the economy, the are not receiving much love from the Government... It's a shame.

[davewasthere]

Ouchy! That's a sting. That's where the UK seems a bit friendlier. It's possible to take pretty much 80% of your daily rate home if you plan it well..

[NonEUCitizen]

Sweden has implemented the Blue Card scheme, so work permits should now be simpler for highly skilled migrants:

http://www.workpermit.com/news/2013-08-23/sweden-joins-eu-bl...

[MortenK]

I didn't know about the blue card, and yeah in theory it looks to make things easier. However like with many EU regulations, there's a nice idea behind but quite often a very different reality.

Individual countries can and do override EU regulations. Sometimes even illegally. Getting local laws overturned in the EU court system is an exercise in futility though.

You'll also notice a long list of requirements, some of which can be very hard to live up to. As an example Sweden doesn't recognize Russian university degrees. You'd need a year or two extra of a special "top-up" education in Sweden, depending on your field, to have a "valid" bachelor or candidates degree. To get that though, you'd need the living permit which you can't get without the degree... At least through the blue-card method. This kind of catch-22 situations grounded in bureaucracy and red tape are very common in Scandinavia. Sweden is much better than for example Denmark though, but it can still be extremely frustrating.