[theGREENsuit]

Can you mention the job boards you used for your existing gig in Poland and the one you use for the potential German gig you mentioned? I'm in Canada, and have dual citizenship (Polish, Canadian) but find it tough to find local boards. Also, do you find that English is enough for opportunities without being able to speak the language native to wherever you look? I was always under the impression that along with English being able to speak the native language was a huge factor or even a requirement. Apparently I was wrong.

[copter]

For Poland go for pracuj.pl and have an account on goldenline.pl (Linkedin-like platform - I usually receive a job opportunity per week even though I am currently employed)

Note that both of these platforms are only available in Polish language. Google translate usually helps and most of the jobs you might have a chance are already posted in English. You may consider applying to those jobs posted in Polish as well. They will consider you as a candidate if you are good. I am the only non-Polish employee of my current company for example.

For Germany, there are many platforms that I am sure you will be able to find with a little effort on Google. There are many start-ups in Berlin as well as enterprise tech companies. Regardless of the size of the company, most of them are already international environments where all the internal communication goes in English.

I want to underline that in most countries in Europe, the language of programming and tech environments is mostly English (documentation, internal communication, white-board meetings). So just English is enough in most cases. (I can confidently tell this, because the city that I currently live is neither a touristic nor a big one where multi-national companies usually have offices - it's a damn small city with a population of 300k)

Of course being able to speak the native language is beneficial, but not mandatory. As long as you get the job done, there are literally no problems.

[lgieron]

> I want to underline that in most countries in Europe, the language of programming and tech environments is mostly English (documentation, internal communication, white-board meetings). So just English is enough in most cases.

That is not my experience of working in Poland. As a native, I've worked in multiple projects and Polish was the communication language in all of them. I am sure there are jobs available where everyday communication is in English, but my guess would be that they are in minority.

[copter]

I was not directly referring to Poland here but more like to the tech driven countries of Europe (Germany, Estonia, Scandinavian countries etc.)

As for Poland, indeed the white-board meetings will held in Polish if everybody else is Polish.

Being a non-Polish developer employed in Poland - during the relationships I engage with other partners or the projects that I work with my team, everybody are totally Okey switching to English for discussion. In-fact they think that they are improving their communication skills.

Talking about documentation or any other material that is necessary for a software project, I have never seen a language other than English in such places.

Of course these are the companies/projects has a revenue, impact or importance higher than an average one. If you are developing websites for locals with ASP.NET 1.1, just ignore what I have been talking about.

[lgieron]

I think that you might have just been insulated from the large parts of Polish software industry which straight up wouldn't hire someone who doesn't speak Polish. And it's not just some small shops doing websites for locals, some of the projects I've been on had hundreds of developer-years worth of work in them, tens of thousands of pages of documentation - and were being performed in Polish exclusively.

For a foreigner, IMO the best bet would be to get work at places like R&D centers for Google, ABB, Motorola, IBM (all in Cracow), Intel (Gdansk), Samsung (Warsaw), Nokia (Wroclaw). Since they're multinationals, English shouldn't be a problem.