Work life balance is great, there’s a beautiful outdoors to enjoy all year, and the people are warm and kind, if not difficult to start with.
All that said, there’s a lot of bullshit and hot air here in this thread:
- public healthcare is great until you have something difficult to work with or non acute. Enjoy the months longs waiting times to see a dentist.
- Yes, you can get by speaking English but your kid and partner might not. The tech industry employs foreigners here but there are countless people I know and hear of who end up here outside of the tech or sciences industry and cannot get work due to the language. Furthermore, don’t expect the same opportunities provided to Finnish speakers as you won’t get half the jobs at least. I work for an IT consultancy and only about 10-20% of client roles are available to me within the company.
- Winter here is shit nowadays. It used to be cold and snowy. Now it’s just like slushy and miserable
- Not all your services will be available in English. I have English banking for example but their department is slow and difficult to work with. Same with phoning utility services etc.
- Yes the language is hard but the main problem is finding time to learn it. Trust me, you don’t want to spend your free time doing it or you’ll just work and study and not enjoy the lifestyle here.
Don’t get me wrong. I love this place but look through the marketing and try and get some real experiences before you uproot your whole life. Happy to answer more questions here or privately (email through website in my profile).
I've seen many foreigners quit because they felt like they were intentionally left out of casual conversations, but you really have to understand that speaking in a 2nd or 3rd language for just casual stuff takes a lot of mental effort and if you are already working in a field that requires that effort lowering everyone's productivity to keep you in some nonsense about lawn mowers doesn't make sense.
It'll be very stressful for a few months, but, in my experience, will get you conversing in about half a year.
This is not a language that shares any traits with English. It is hard to get going, and the vocabulary takes a considerable amount of time.
You can't switch to Finnish at work, as you simply would not be able to get by, and you can't do it at home as it changes the dynamics of your relationship. This is not an excuse, it's reality.
If you want to learn Finnish, go for it. Just don't expect it to be easy. :)
Living in a neighboring country I understand nothing of Finnish. Spanish, Italian, French — I can make some sense out of it without knowing the languages.
I must however add that I've witnessed, more than a handful of times, English speaking knowledge workers moving to Sweden who continue speaking English and only English for years and years.
It comes with a social price though. You will never quite understand all the social codes or become a part of the social fabric. At many parties and dinners I've seen the whole group having to switch to English because there's someone in the group who has lived here for five or ten years and still haven't gotten around even attempting to speak Swedish. Everyone will switch but but it will be a different night, without all the nuances we usually enjoy. In the end everyone loses.
If you plan to stay, do everything to learn the language. You will be happier person in your new country.
There is no shortcut to learning a new language - even if you're fluent in 9 languages, the 10th will still take 1000+ hours. The most efficient way appears to be a loop of listening and drilling vocabulary, particularly listening to excerpts that come with text transcription.
I always make most progress when I’m forced to use the language when I’m in the country.
I’m surprised OP isn’t fluent with the language after 10 years in the country.
Of course you need to learn the language of the nation that hosts you. You are an immigrant.
You move to a country, you learn the language. If you don't, that's your fault and you have have to deal with it.
This is pretty much true, many people do. You can get your paperwork sorted, buy a car, a bank account, deal with the government and have a social life all in English. I have done.
But, all of the comments I'm seeing here are saying that while this is true, if you want to take the step forward into learning Finnish, it _is_ harder than other languages and that the resources around doing so as an adult are not as developed as in other languages. The fact that you don't strictly need to and that a lot of people have excellent English here anyway makes it harder, therefore active and sustained effort is needed on your part, you are not going to 'just pick it up'. If I had lived in France for as long as I have in Finland (not even a full year), then there is no question that my French would be at a much higher level than my Finnish is now.
In the US I (as a non-native speaker) was very pleasantly surprised that accents do not matter and mistakes that do not kill the meaning are universally tolerated. People would still gladly chat with you over beer, etc.
But that is not the case in some other countries: optional conversations suffer a lot if you, say miss a few conjugations.
Where do Finns stand on this?
Have seen it many times.
I've seen a lot of whining about the high taxes here, but honestly this is not a European way of thinking. You are safe here. You have a safety net if things don't go right in your work or health.
Taxes are also super simple. You tell the tax office your predicted income, you get a percentage and give it to your employer. You don't have any other dealings with them unless you need to adjust it due to change in income, or you have some expenses to lower your tax percentage before the end of the tax year. It's highly efficient and works well.
My first year in Finland, i got SAD - seasonal affective disorder - and it was horrible. No amount of money or learning Finnish can address that. Oh and there's yet another downside to an ethnically homogenous society like Finland - you'll never be more than a tolerated person if you are a visible minority. Someone who's visibly different will never be a fully equal member of society.
Personally, this is why i much prefer life in the US or Canada despite all their downsides.
I'm surprised about the second point though. Outside Helsinki, sure - but in HKI I've met enough non-white people who grew up there, speak Finnish and didn't feel like that at all. I felt like the language is more important for being considered a „proper Finn”.
Months long waiting times for a dentist? I'm not sure if that qualify their public healthcare as great. In a months time your dental issue might actually become acute.
Granted, this is another Finnish city, not Helsinki.
Months? What? Why? We have universal health care but the dentist is just days away... if you have pain, usually 1-2 day, or immediate extraction. I live in Eastern Europe.
Most employers offer private healthcare and even if you buy the insurance yourself its inexpensive. I also disagree that difficult cases aren't dealt with properly on the public side, in my experience it's been the opposite: simple cases are ignored, but serious ones are taken care of properly.
There's plenty of English language daycares and plenty of non IT jobs for non-Finnish speakers in both smaller companies and medium sized ones as well. IT consultancies are a different story.
Winter is no worse than in mainland Europe or Britain and if you go a bit inland, you see a lot more snow.
If you use a big bank like Nordea then you get great English service, at least in my experience, same goes for other services.
I grew up in Finland and wanted desperately to get away when I finished high school, but having lived in the UK, Germany and Russia and spent some time in the US, my views have changed.
An aside, if anyone reading this is interested in relocating here as a developer, we at Toughbyte can help. Here's a blog post we wrote on the topic:
https://www.toughbyte.com/blog/relocating-to-finland-as-a-de...
Finally all our open positions in Helsinki can be found here:
https://www.toughbyte.com/positions?location=Helsinki%2C+Fin...
"Hello, thank you, goodbye, yes, no, sorry, I don't speak Finnish, English?" is probably ok for everyday life, if you don't care about not fitting in. And even that might not be necessary, most of the time you know what might be asked. E.g. if your getting groceries then pretty much every answer is going to be no from you. Just a head sign and a smile will work fine. Or just go to the self-checkout.
For administrative stuff, Google Trad (or similar) is often good enough. Especially nowadays where most things are online. For critical stuff (hospital, ...), they'll find someone that speaks English.
Funnily enough, it's the stuff like getting an haircut, going to the garage and other non-critical but non-automated/common tasks which are the most difficult. You start to dread those situations because you cannot make by with just smiles and yes/no.
If you need immediate service, you get to a fast track queue and can get free dentist care on the same day. If it's non-acute, you can go to a private clinic which is highly subsidized but does costs some money. But nothing like in the US.
> And is the wait similar for major things like cancer, brain tutor, or heart surgery
If you have serious acute illness, you will not be stuck in a queue. Such a situation would probably be grounds to a lawsuit.
So, if your condition won't get worse in a few weeks/months, you wait, and get the free healthcare when they have time (within some legal limits). They'll be too busy working on the more acute cases while you're waiting.
You can certainly pay for your own dentist visits. I do - not because the waiting lines (I could just book my annual check at the same time each year and get the visit roughly annually) - but because I trust my dentist, and I want the same person to do my teeth each time. Most people do, I think, because public dentistry services weren't included for adults for decades until 2000's or so. So, you would get public dentists till you're 18 and then pay for your private dentist after that. That actually worked pretty well in its time but now that everyone is allowed public dentist visits there are queues.
You can pay to see a medical doctor as well. There's a large number of private medical clinics that will take you in the very same day. Some people use their own money to buy that service but most commonly people use these via their employer's healthcare benefit or via private insurance. For example, if you have kids you can buy them a private insurance for 150-200€ per kid per year and should they acutely need a doctor you can just take them to any private clinic instead of waiting in the emergency reception in a public healthcare center or hospital. But if it's something really acute you'd be taken in anyway, so many people will just use the public service.
No.
For serious illness or acute accident that needs hospitalization, the public health care is excellent and fast. And it won't bankrupt you, even for the most demanding medical care (usually you pay small flat fee for every day you're hospitalized).
For non-urgent doctor's visits and routine dental care, not so much. Wait times can be long and the system can be quite frustrating. It's a bit better for children.
Most employers in tech sector (and most white collar work, even some blue collar work) will have additional health care benefits that will get you your doctor's or dentist's appointment faster from a private health care provider. You can get insurance or pay out of pocket too.
There is absolutely no issue if your issue is acute or serious with the public healthcare. But as mentioned, if your issue is complicated (e.g. i have an undiagnosed hip issue for a year) it takes ages to get scans and such.
Cancer etc - yes, you get fast tracked on the public health care system.
Cancer treatment, etc, there will be a waiting list as well on public sector. Wait time depend on the severity and where you live.
What is your level of Finnish now, and how did that progress over the time you've been there?
Is English your first and only other language?
I can get by in restaurants and supermarkets but I stopped studying a year or two after moving here as I realised very quickly that I was spending my day's at work and my free time studying. If I had not done this, I would have definitely moved back home as I wouldn't have had time to appreciate the things I enjoy in life here.
The government here doesn't do enough unless you're unemployed to get you to learn the language. The courses at university are hard to get into and in demand and there's not intensive courses shaped around the realistic work/life schedule of technology professionals.
I don't know a single person who has learnt the language here to the point where they can use it professionally, who hasn't either a) studied intensively or b) been forced to learn it as part of being a student or c) had no choice (ended up outside of Helsinki in a place where English-language skills aren't as high).
I will say though that my dentist is very busy, and unless you're on a waitlist for cancellations they are basically booked solid 6 months out with all the routine cleanings and checkups. If you're lucky you might be able to get in for non-emergent stuff within a month but most likely you're going to wait 2-3 months to get a call of "we can see you in 45 minutes if you can make it in, I need an answer now because there are 6 other people to call on the waitlist."
If I really have a serious injury or a life threatening emergency, I am confident I will get good care. But I would also be dreading the bill and whether I went to the right hospital in my network etc.
Which country is this? This certainly isn't the America I live in.
Public dental care sucks. For regular checkups and maintenance, go for a private clinic. Yearly checkups, cleaning, occasional minor patching cost me around 200-300 € (edit: if you shop around you can likely find cheaper; I didn't), and I've been much more happier with the whole process. Never got that "we haven't opened our next year's calendar yet, try calling us again in 3 months" from them I got used to at the public side.
For something more expensive, go to a private clinic for diagnosis and get a referral to a specialist at the public side (never had to, but I hear it works).
In Australia they were charging me 7k AUD for wisdom teeth extraction, and they wanted to take me to a hospital to do general anaesthesia... nuts!
In Germany the cleaning procedures were super basic and the doctors were not very careful.
Beyond being very expensive, the dentists are scared of doing certain procedures. I wonder if it's due to liability, improper education, or something else.
Unfortunately many countries still don't treat dentistry as a vital part of your healthcare.
They said it was some sort of strict cultural thing. Everyone wakes up early and you got to get used to that early schedule. And I've been a life long night-hawk.
Not talking just about bars either. I have multiple 24/7 convince stores and gas stations near by. And Uber Eats shows quite a few options at 1am on week nights.
That said, there's no issue in Helsinki. Big shops and malls are open until 8-10, some smaller shops might close around 18 but they have to go home to feed their families.
The 24/7 lifestyle might be convenient, but I've never thought I might need it.
Other stores close 9pm. Bars are open till 2am, night clubs 4 or 5am. Some places stay open but they can’t serve alcohol in the morning hours. Getting food after 12am is trickier but there are restaurants that are open until 4am.
And it’s dark. And people on average go to work early and clock out early. And definitely not new york or berlin nightlife wise.
Talking about helsinki here pre covid regulations.
Edit: reading other comment, it’s true most speciality stores which only have one set of employees close 6-8pm. Larger chains are open till 9pm
Some friends of mine who moved for work to different European countries told me their companies would just provide language courses if the number of 'imported' workers were high enough. Is that not a thing in Finland? Seems like it'd be prudent for them, after spending money to get you to come over, to also give you a reason to stay with some anchoring language learning.
- Work in tech, the company is as international as any back in London, just with a higher margin of Finnish people. Total compensation (take home / benefits / holiday) is pretty much comparable to places I worked in London. I’m not a web developer.
- Not had to use healthcare luckily apart from paying for a COVID test so I could shorten the isolation period on my last trip back. It would cost you more to be ill here - prescription prices for one are higher than in the UK. It feels like a public insurance system and not a National Health Service. NHS has waiting times and I’m sure they do here. Private sector is more established.
- If I earned a couple of 10s of thousand euros either way (higher or lower) then UK taxes would definitely be cheaper but tbh as a portion of my salary it seems about the same. The high taxes manifest themselves as the ‘built in’ price for pretty much everything. Bell peppers (paprikas) are something like 3 times the price as the UK. Neither country grows them at any meaningful scale (crappy example I know)
- The country is effectively an island on the edge of Europe (Finland, not the UK). It has a small population so there isn’t really an economy of scale - this also makes things more expensive.
- Language is a pain. I went to a class to study the basics, and make an effort to pick things up. I can order coffee and beer in Finnish but a lot of the time they switch back to English. I can get the gist of a lot of conversations. Most of my friendship group are friends of my wife or other foreigners. Tbh most of my good friends in London weren’t British so that’s the same.
- Immigration isn’t really on the same scale as London. Yeah as a proportion it’s probably higher but it is a small number of people.
- Education is free in both (student loans in the U.K. are just a tax under a different name. It’s not a loan. I was also paid to do my PhD back there) But here you could choose to study a(nother) masters degree at any point in your life for basically free which would be very expensive in the UK.
- I’m writing all this from my perspective as someone who had a job lined up before arriving. If you are thinking of starting a new life here and you’re not highly employable but have bought in to the American hype about it being a land where the state will provide everything for you then you’ll get a rude awakening. Even as a (not any more) EU citizen I had to provide proof of income to fully register here which ironically the UK never required from EU citizens.
- I had to drive 20km to find a good curry last weekend.
However, if you enjoy family life I would say Finland and Helsinki area are really great places to raise your children. If you enjoy getting rich as an elite programmer, maybe SV would be a better match.
I think part of it is cultural too, and if you are a sort of honest type who enjoys actually working socialism I think you'll find the way of life easier to adapt. Learning Finnish as an adult is difficult (especially if your SO is not a Finn) but certainly in Helsinki area there are a lot of companies that have only-English speaking employees. Really good tech-workers will always find a job if they can just bother applying hard enough. IT-consultancies here seem to attract most of the tech-talent.
Unless you're in a financial hardship, you could pay about 100€-200€ for a private dentist in Helsinki.
Living 10 years in a country and not learning the language is not only stupid. It is borderline creepy. I guess many locals end up seeing you as somebody who has an active dis-interest in their culture. No wonder you have trouble making friends!
— top schools (Aalto U. produces incredibly talented engineers)
— startup friendly ecosystem (cheap rents, cheap internet)
— Finnish work culture (direct, no nonsense, hard working but balanced)
— fantastic food and beverage scene in downtown Helsinki
My wife is originally from Finland but we live in SF now, but as soon as COVID is over we'll all go back to Helsinki so I can start Webflow's first EU office there. Hope this program stays around for that!
- There are good schools and people, but don't expect the density of top people to be anything close to SF. Finding friends to talk shop with requires active engagement.
- Every European country is trying to promote itself as startup friendly, and what you are seeing from a distance is being heavily curated by government funded marketing efforts. I recently declined to take part in an marketing video because I cannot in good faith suggest people leave SF/US unless it is for ideological reasons. Expect your company L's valuation to be 1/10th of what the would be back in the US. Expect to make up the private investment shortfall with hugely distracting public funding, both in terms of wasted time applying/reporting and tangental product development. Labour laws will require you to have a _at_least_ extra 3 months of runway on hand so that you can give the mandatory notice periods.
-Nordic work culture gets really old really quickly if you're a high achiever type.
- Nightlife is just one of those things America does bigger and better
- Finally, and this is admittedly tongue in cheek, expect to be taxed to hell and back on all things fun unless it involves making babies.
Anyone planning a move to Europe as an entrepreneur, please take time to talk to people and understand the downsides. It's still okay to move for ideological reasons or if europe offers a better environment than your home country. But understand a lot of what you are seeing is being promoted by marketing departments, not entrepreneurs.
> - There are good schools and people, but don't expect the density of top people to be anything close to SF. Finding friends to talk shop with requires active engagement.
This is true in terms of density, but if you do put in a bit of effort, you can find lots of hardcore skilled people to talk shop with. Depends on your speciality but lots of good devs in Helsinki, across web/mobile dev, embedded, game dev, machine learning (check out papers coming out of Nvidia Helsinki office), audio and graphics dev (great demoscene legacy), also more exotic fields like quantum physics or SAR satellite tech.. In fact you can find experts in most fields to hang out with
> - Every European country is trying to promote itself as startup friendly, and what you are seeing from a distance is being heavily curated by government funded marketing efforts. I recently declined to take part in an marketing video because I cannot in good faith suggest people leave SF/US unless it is for ideological reasons. Expect your company L's valuation to be 1/10th of what the would be back in the US. Expect to make up the private investment shortfall with hugely distracting public funding, both in terms of wasted time applying/reporting and tangental product development. Labour laws will require you to have a _at_least_ extra 3 months of runway on hand so that you can give the mandatory notice periods.
There is some truth to this (though I would say early stage valuations are perhaps half, not 10%), but there is nothing fundamental stopping you from building a global company in the Nordics, there are many examples of this - Skype, Spotify, Supercell etc. Also I think there is more and more VC money available, also from US VCs, to Nordic companies - they are seeing the high quality of startups and attracted by the non-inflated valuations. If anything, I would say that as an employer, reasonable engineering salaries and somewhat less competition for talent is in your favour vs SF.
1. some of the cities here are walkable and cyclable. can't say the same about SF. 2. my kid goes to a free kindergarten and it's been fantastic 3. healthcare doesn't revolve around money, and again, great experience with the public sector, including my wife giving birth here. it's a breath of fresh air when you understand that money is not really a factor when it comes to diagnosing and treating you.
That's highly debatable, I'm European and lived in SF/LA for a while, night life over there always felt "fake" (I don't know how to explain it better but i know many people in my circles felt the same) compared to my experience in Europe, it was like being in a parody of an American feel good movie. So I guess it's very dependent on where you come from and what you grew up with.
People generally work hard but smart, tell you how it is to your face and are generally honest, kind and sincere.
And welcome to Helsinki, I think Webflow will do great there! Love the platform.
24% VAT (sales tax)
18% employer payroll taxes
10% employee payroll taxes
20-30% typical income tax
Take your American disposable income and cut it in half.
Still worth it for 'free' education and 'free' healthcare?
Also a lot of cold and darkness.
What matters is what the taxes give you. A lot of American taxes don’t give people much of anything. Maintaining the worlds largest prison population is expensive but what exactly does that give the Average American? Worlds largest military also sucks up tax dollars but don’t give any benefits back. Finnish taxes give you education, health care, child care, sick leave, vacation, job retraining, great public transport and many other thing directly improving your quality of life.
No brainer, absolutely worth it.
Even making good money in Silicon Valley I'm perpetually afraid of medical bankruptcy if something were to happen. And the cost of education here takes another 15% off my salary for schools far lower quality than in Finland.
* every legal resident has access to basic health care in their own municipality. A visit costs around 30 euros, max 700 euros a year (Which is a lot compared to Germany, cheap compared to the US). Queues can be long, several weeks. Negotiation skills help, but as a foreigner you might get blocked completely as a trouble maker if you think to negotiate in English
* nearly everybody with a full employment contract has basic health care coverage by their employer at a private provider. Normally you get an appointment the next day or so and you pay absolutely nothing. So most employed people just skip their "free" public health care, because it is worse. Yes, the employement health care is subsidized by tax money (although they are cutting back). This is not mandatory, so the details especially for mor expensive treatments and examinations vary a bit. When your employer stops paying you need to fall back to public service or pay yourself.
* for kids around 50% have private insurance to avoid the queing at the public service
* medicines are expensive compared to Germany, but cheap compared to market prices. Well, basically they are covered by the public health insurance, but the compensation is far from 100%, own contribution max 600 euros a year.
* hospital care is 50 euros a day, max 700 a year. There can be some queues, but for acute cases there should be no problem. (Non-acute cases can be a pain.)
In real serious cases the 1500 or so Euros you pay a year is of course cheap compared to complete bankruptcy or even remaining without good treatment. Being relatively healthy paying several 100 Euros a year is more than you would pay in many European countries with a public health insurance systems.
There's a reason Finland tops satisfaction/happiness charts every single time.
I think it says a lot about the person on how they value these decisions
Yes. The taxes are worth it, for a stable society.
This US 2020 election:
An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93% of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas.: https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-coronavirus...
2016 US election (there are multiple studies on it but there was one from Boston University public health that was the most revealing): Study: Communities Most Affected By Opioid Epidemic Also Voted For Trump: https://www.npr.org/2016/12/17/505965420/study-communities-m...
I am a dual US|Croatian (European Union) citizen. I happily pay Croatian taxes, just for the stability. I don’t have to worry about amassing a huge amount of savings for retirement as an EU citizen and I can work/live/retire in 30+ countries. (By the way, if you save for retirement, in the millions range, it may not pay for your cancer or rare disease treatment, even if covered by insurance, due to Medicare Part D catastrophic coverage level. I know this because my out-of-pocket responsibility for my blood product costs $50,000+/year under Medicare Part D, under catastrophic coverage level. 7% of the general population has some sort of a rare disease and obviously cancer is a common diagnosis)
> Also a lot of cold and darkness.
Well, I’m from Seattle and I have to say, you eventually get used to the dreariness, cold, and darkness.
Cancer already takes all of it here, tyvm, so I'd gladly like to see half of it back.
The cost of having a society is high. The big difference between Europe and the US is that there is some sort of safety net if you become unable to work. Here, you get a cardboard box under the highway and a stern lecture to try harder next time from a 104-year-old politician that's never had a real job in their life. It's good when it's good, but it can get bad fast.
In other posts people are complaining about the homeless people living in SF...
you know how you avoid homeless persons?? by having taxes paid healthcare (there is no free), taxes paid education, taxes paid home support.
So it depends, but as a general policy it's far more sensible to have stability than not.
The question should be whether we could lower those costs (taxes) and still have the free education and free healthcare, and if so what are the compromises to be made in order to do that.
Remember it's not a zero sum game, which means a nation can start to produce wealth or save on costs, bringing up efficiency and lowering the required taxes per person to deliver the same goods and service.
The real problem is corruption, and inefficiencies.
My sib went there for grad school because of the finances & stayed. Thinking about following.
Weather its wort it is still a personal question, but my education was certainly free including my masters degree (I even got paid a stipend to study like everyone else).
There are also quite significant 14% (e.g. groceries, restaurants) and 10% (some specific services) VAT categories.
Most of employer payroll "tax" (~18%) and employee payroll "tax" (8.4%) is actually mandatory pension fund payments and counts toward your accumulated pension.
Many people choose to pay the 1% church tax, even though it is entirely optional (most of those people participate in any church stuff only for weddings and funerals).
We also pay ridiculously high taxes for cars and fuel, tobacco and alcohol.
Additional things we get for our taxes:
* 'free' defense against our eastern neighbor (we only have to pay with our blood, if they ever decide to try again)
* 'free' mental health care and basic necessities for the crazies in the subway, so I don't have to be their therapist and they're slightly less likely to murder me for my pants
* 'free' police force who are respected by the society, rarely need to resort to lethal force, and don't get to keep the money from traffic tickets and impounded property
* 'free' elections, with no armed mobs demanding the vote to be changed to their desires
* 'free' air conditioning, just open a window (also there's no need to pay for sunblock, you won't need it)
It's only dark half the year, the other half is all light all the time.
If you only think about you and your family, in this system you can also be sure that your children will have access to free education and free health care, and your grandchildren too.
It's also nice to live in a society where everyone has access to free education and free healthcare. The inequalities are not as big and it benefits you indirectly.
Yes.
For me? Yes. Without the shadow of a doubt. I'd stay out of Helsinki, though. Too many people! :D
I love Sweden tho, no tax can change that ;)
All that disposable income but no vacation time to spend it.
Consider the situation of me and my wife, we got monetary aid for attending the free high quality universities. This had nothing to do with the wealth of our families, it's available for everyone. Just like all the education before that.
We had our first child and bought a house in our 20s, easily done since one can get into work life without any debt. Oh, and we both had a year off work to spend with the said child. Expecting a second and planning to do the very same with her.
We reside ~30 minutes from the city center that's accessible via affordable public transportation and even walking / cycling roads where cars are not allowed. The air is clean and these roads go through small forests and parks.
When it comes to income, we're well off nowadays, probably in the 5% of top earning households (in our early 30s). But despite that, due to sensible city planning and good social policies, we have a lot of friends from different income brackets living next to us, having pretty similar quality of life as we do, who also bought their own apartments in their 20s and had kids. Our children go to the same kindergarten, will end up in the same schools, and they will do so with other kids from all walks of life. That's a real treasure in my opinion. Compared to the rest of the world, they are also quite safe in here. Some US cities look like warzones (statistically speaking) compared to our roughest neighbourhoods.
I have an idea what the SV top earner life without kids looks like, it's pretty sweet I can admit that. Would I trade my life to have that? Never, if it means that my friends without jobs have to live on the street without healthcare. Life is just so much better when everyone has a decent standard of living.
For many, many people, the psychic pain of all this inequality is too much and they retreat into bubbles of people very similar to themselves. Communities, schools, workplaces, and social networks can be shockingly segregated by race and class and people constantly get more unable to relate to the lives of others.
A little extra money is worthless in comparison to all that. Please enjoy the egalitarian society that we will never know.
This fact only is a reason to live in countries with proper social policies, and accept paying high taxes is not a bad thing
Forget it, I just read this:
> The “90-Day Finn” program is funded by the Helsinki Business Hub and is specifically targeted at “technical professionals” on the west coast of the United States. Hub will fund the “90-day free transfer package to Helsinki” and invite children.
This an attempt to "steal" SV engineers, I am not in that category, so back at the end of the line for me.
[1] https://www.helsinkibusinesshub.fi/90-day-finn-terms-and-con...
I'll consider applying again as it would give me a fun way to expose my girlfriend and her kid (she already chats with a friend's son) to a country and city I enjoy. They are also interested in more exposure to Europe.
Paying very high income taxes and having a salary under half what you get in the states is at least buying the Finnish government one tesla a year.
That said, it's almost worth it because Finland is a great place to live.
It's just too bad you trade your own wealth stock pile for the possibility of getting in on that social welfare that may not pan out in the long run (most is not applicable to you as a foreigner in the prime of your life).
As an American that worked in Denmark quite a while, I'll say it's a major trade off. Financially, I'm definitely poorer for having done so. But it was a terrific time in my life.
I'd like to see some reduced taxes for foreigners not eligible for the services until they're proper and permanent.
'Fair' by itself is a pretty meaningless term.
A simple example:
Assume for the sake of argument, that we agree that all else being equal that people without kids should pay higher taxes than people with kids.
Now, progressive income tax systems are fairly common and often seen as fair. So it might make sense and be fair, to make rich childless people without kids pay a bigger penalty for that choice than poorer people.
So far so boring.
But let's flip our perspective now:
Take the childless case as the baseline and instead talk in terms of getting tax allowance for having kids.
Now we can argue that rich people shouldn't get a bigger tax allowance for having kids. That wouldn't be fair! At most they should get the same tax allowance as poor people, or perhaps even a smaller one.
If you step back a bit, you see that talking about a tax allowance or a tax penalty are just two faces of the same coin depending on what you see as the baseline.
Just talking about some nebulous fairness let's you argue for either approach.
So you need to supply some extra information to actually make a decision.
Happy down to earth citizens, socially liberal with far less echochamber/signalling/two-faced bs than california for instance, tons of Finnish sauna, & great air quality for a big city.
For cities, as so many other things, it's not all about size.
321.9 people per square km in Oklahoma city.
IME helsinki these feels & has the dynamics of a big city.
Oklahoma city feels mostly like a suburban sprawl.
If you are a white guy from US/UK/WesternEU and stay in your own bubble, daily life is a peach even without knowing any Finnish.
This looks like a wonderful offering. With phrases like the above it looks to be one of the first of its nature where government _gets_ the needs of remote tech workers.
It doesn't even snow anymore really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki#Climate
Personally, I really enjoy the summers where it rarely goes above 20C/70F. The only real complaint is the amount of daylight in the winter. Look at the mean monthly sunshine hours in that chart.
Not wanting to pitch countries against each other. All places have their advantages and disadvantages.
As a Finn, this is always funny to hear. I have no idea where they draw their conclusions from. :^)
Incidentally, Finland's great rep for schools is similar: Finland doesn't do a great job with the best students, but it's quite good at supporting the weakest.
Funnily enough, Finland is #1 right now. https://www.goodcountry.org/index/results/
In general I agree with that claim, but talking specifically about pensions/retirement: how can you be so sure that 20, 30, 40 years down the road you'll get the same deal as retirees are getting today?
The way I see it, most advanced democracies have some variation of an intergenerational pension system. These systems were planned in a post-war, high-growth context. A lot of countries are having some kind of trouble with pensions, resorting to increasing minimum retirement age (Portugal, UK, Russia come to mind -- I'm sure there are others) or otherwise trying to find alternative funding for increasingly expensive pensions.
Again, I still think the trade is fair (less "personal" income in exchange for more social benefits, healthier and happier society), but I find the certainty people talk about pensions a bit odd.
If you're pretty young and you work in FAANG then stay where you are and save money. When you get older and want to form a family then move here.
Another option is if you're living in a poorer country and you want to pursue a degree (for EU people it's free) or have a decent tech job (stress is the lowest here, pay is good if you don't compare to FAANG). Spain is good to hang out and socialize but when it comes to work it's usually miserable so it was an easy decision for me since I can visit the country often while my daily life has been simplified a lot.
Long live yyyy-mm-dd
Think of it like playing a game: no language = hard mode, no access to hidden quests, always stuck in the low tier. language = medium mode, access to all the maps, NPCs are friendlier.
In my experience, based on how hard the language is, you will see great results after investing 500-600 hours into it.
- What do you do with your belongings? Do you move them around?
- Does someone takes care about your home while you are away?
- What about pets?
- What do you solve administrative tasks, e.g. you receive an official letter from govn't that you supposed to reply within a timeframe? How do you get to know the content of the letter?
- What about your health insurance? Premiums that I encountered have a obscure logic on what is the procedure when you live at certain places for a longer period.
- How do you handle taxes?
* Great public schools especially in Finland which as good rankings in Pisa.
* Five weeks of Paid vacation every year
* Paid parental leave.
Let's cut to the chase: if you're in tech, and you're any good at what you do (you know who you are), you likely shouldn't waste your time on Helsinki or anywhere in Europe.
Let's start with the money...
In Helsinki as a software engineer you're looking at 3kEUR - 7kEUR monthly salary before tax. Only the flashiest software consulting firms will pay ultra senior people 6k (you'd better have 10+ years of experience to even broach the topic!). In Finland, if you make 6 kEUR a month you've "made it" and your colleagues will be openly jealous (yes, really). Stock options in Finland are a joke, you will receive perhaps a tenth of what you might anywhere in the US (if even), and they will be non-qualified options in American terms, there is no such thing as an ISO here.
Taxes? Your all-in income tax will be 40-50% on that 6k income. Plus 24% VAT on anything you buy in a store. And as a completely medieval twist, food is exorbitantly expensive in Finland because the "reduced" VAT on that is 17% (by comparison in most civilized countries groceries are taxed at like... 1-2% if at all).
If you want to convert what that means to SF terms, using the last year's USD/EUR FX rate and some cost of living stats from Numbeo, you'll find that you can multiply a Helsinki monthly salary in Euros by 12.5 and then again by 2.02 to arrive at a yearly USD salary in SF equivalent (there is a quirk about vacation money in Finland, hence the 12.5 instead of 12 months).
So the Finnish tech pay scale scales to.... 75kUSD - 150kUSD if you were in SF, given FX and Cost of Living adjustments outlined above *
In SF you're looking at 100kUSD - 250kUSD per year, and lower taxes across the board, realistically. In SF if you agree to a 120-150k salary, you're either quite early in your career or are one of the first employees at the company and receiving a handsome options grant. (and again, in Finland, you won't get nearly the same options, think missing-a-zero territory, really).
Which brings us to our second point. Talent pool and work ethic.
I've spent the last couple years hiring in tech extensively in Helsinki. I know the talent pool reasonably well. There are certainly some diamonds in the rough but on the whole it's very weak.
Anyone who can get a job in the US has already done so and left, not just because of the massive economic incentive, but also because A-players want to work with other A-players. Smart motivated people want to work with other smart motivated people. The best want to learn from the best. It's as simple as that.
Most of the people you'll work with in Finland are very nice, but more than a few are also keeping detailed records of their contractual 15 minute coffee breaks. It's a "punch in. do work. punch out." kinda place on the whole. There are obviously exceptions and I am exaggerating a bit to get the point across, but the overall vibe is that going the extra mile is rare and frowned upon (you wouldn't want to make everyone else look bad!).
The same work ethic issues seem to apply to founders, who are often all too happy to put the brakes on their company to take a monthlong vacation in the summer. While that's great for work-life balance it's just not business smart if you're trying to get a startup off the ground.
On the other hand, is it a nice place to live? Yes, yes it is. Stuff just works. You're not accosted by homeless people on your way in every day. You get the sense that perhaps those taxes are actually buying something useful and relevant.
oh well...
Sounds legit
Lindedin = Scam.
Four seasons is a joke. It's basically 50 shades of winter and autumn interrupted by about 3-4 months of weather worth enjoying outside. It can get warm and humid but typically not for very long.
July and August are reliably nice mostly and you get basically ~20 hours of daylight around that time. June you can get lucky, anything else is an outlier. E.g. labor day celebrations (first of May) are a bit of a toss up on whether it will be nice enough or whether you still get snow. Mostly people just go outside anyway. But early spring kind of weather is the most generous thing you could say about the weather around that time: mostly not great but you get a few nice days once in a while.
The weather is one thing; the darkness is another. The two combined make for a miserable season that pretty much lasts from September to April. On the tail end of that is where you can expect winter conditions but these days even that is not a guarantee in Helsinki. The last few winters have been very mild; which in Helsinki means it is dark, wet, and grey for 8 months. If there is any Snow, you'll hate it by April because it will have been melting and freezing up non stop since February. Most Finns don't wear their outdoor shoes indoors for this reason.
Not everybody deals with darkness easily. I never had much issues with it but I definitely saw this affect others around me. Calling Finland the happiest place on earth deserves calling out its relatively high suicide rate (though a bit lower than the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...). There are "happier" places in Europe with arguably a lot more economic baggage to justify higher suicide rates. It can be a happy place and it definitely was for me but not everyone is happy.
Otherwise good to know is that if you are used to the byzantine bureaucracies of e.g. the US, Germany, etc. Finland is going to be a refreshing change. There's not a lot of it and what little there is is simple, efficient, and fair. Moving in and out of Finland were by far the easiest moves I've done (including domestic ones in the Netherlands, my home country). Basically, you enter the country, report to the police and then you are issued a person number and a Kela card which provides you access to things like healthcare and other things run by the government. That's pretty much it. Moving out amounted to a couple of phone calls to update my address.
All, in English, of course, because nobody is expected to even be capable to learn enough Finnish and if anything Finns are super pragmatic when it comes to these things. I never had a need for Finnish interpreters to do anything. Even when officially it's not supported, you can always find English translations for e.g. tax forms and extensive documentation. I did my taxes using the Swedish forms (second official language, a bit easier to parse) and those translations without an accountant. In Germany where I currently live, I'm completely helpless without an accountant even though I can read German quite well.
Quality of life is high. The VAT is high. The taxes actually aren't that high. If you are coming from e.g. California and add up all the little state, federal, council, and other taxes, it's ballpark going to be not very pretty (or so I'm told by friends who spent time there). Add healthcare to the mix and it gets brutal and that's before you take care of your pension (if at all). Finland sort of aggregates all of that and does not charge you separately for those things. If you do the math, it's not a bad deal for most people. You can get better deals elsewhere in Europe but a comparable lifestyle requires 5 figure salaries in the US because stuff just is universally expensive there.
- The cost of living is on par with some of the most expensive cities while being a small town at the ass end of Siberia.
- The incredibly aggressive Finnish income tax (and high tax on everything basically) means that no matter how much you earn at the end of the month you're basically broke
- Helsinki features in the top 5 of world's coldest capital cities. In winter you can expect down to -30 and a whipping wind from the Baltic sea. Summers are only 2-3 months when it can be pleasant.
On the plus side it's actually quite international. Some 20% of Helsinki residents are foreigners. So you can easily get by by not speaking Finnish. It's also very walkable and public transportation is adequate so no car needed (also that'd cost you an arm and a leg)