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Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

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Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#111

Post by blocked_again »

xodast wrote: post #18
nabaraj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to someone about tech culture in Germany earlier. How easy is it to get a tech job out there?

When I looked into it there were a couple of issues: Visas they will be different for wach person but for most people but if you're not under 30 and not from a western country it is a hassle Jobs : a lot of jobs require German and the ones that don't you'd face more fierce competition which drives down the wages considerably. Wages: on average is lower by 20-30 percent than Toronto, 50-60 percent than sf again taking…

Since you mentioned Toronto, how easy is to get a job in Toronto if you don't have a work Visa or PR, is not from North America and have like 1 year of work experience?

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#112

Post by ryan-allen »

thewizardofaus wrote: post #64
dtkav wrote: post #34

I just moved to Hobart, Australia from SF. It's quite affordable. I pay A$400 /mo rent in a share house, and walk 20 mins to a downtown co-working space every day (also A$400 /mo). Lifestyle is pretty incredible. It's small, but still a state capital city, so there's plenty going on. Hobart is also the home port for the Australian and French Antarctic programs, so a lot of smart folks come through. Plus it was a tria…

As a fellow Aussie living on the main land - Tassie is absolutely gorgeous. I'd love to work remotely from Tassie and live on a big farm. Oh boy... One can dream.

Remote role with NBN, it's probably do-able!

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#113

Post by SiqingYu »

jpatokal wrote: post #40
sitepodmatt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of co-working and reasonable hotels around Cyberjaya, good food, fast internet, it is a bit boring though for SE Asia.

The nice thing about KL is that it's the home base for Air Asia, so there are dirt-cheap flights to anywhere in Asia, most of which (Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, southern China) can be reached in under 4 hours by plane.

Two downsides: * Non-English speakers. * High housing prices.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#114

Post by _mrmnmly »

pzduniak wrote: post #47
msadowski wrote: post #22

If you feel adventurous you can consider moving to Poland. I would recommend Krakow. Most young people will speak English, there are couple of top Universities there (PK and AGH for technical schools, UJ for humanities, medicine and some tech too and UE for economics). The tech scene seems to be constantly growing, with lots of international companies having their offices there. As a senior dev in Poland you can earn…

Avoid working for local companies in Poland unless you like low pay. Just find yourself a nice remote gig (there's plenty of them if you know how to find them) and live like the top .001% of the country or whatever. There's a good reason why being a "digital nomad" is becoming more and more popular. Healthcare starts at ~$130/mo if you manage to not pay for the retirement fund scam (rarely possible), goes up to like…

agree. I'm from Poland but since the beginning of my programming career I've been working mostly for abroad companies (because of earnings).

And about the politics... Only people that want to play into 'politics' game really cares what's happening here - other people just don't care and live happily.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#115

Post by siquick »

p2detar wrote: post #108
cleansy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. But definitely try to get a remote SE job there. The pay is laughable compared to for example Berlin. Which is also a great city to work and live in.

Not sure if it is much of an English-speaking friendly place, though. After visiting Barcelona and Valencia, I definitely think that without learning Spanish one can hardly thrive in these cities.

If you move to a city and don't attempt to learn the local language then yes you won't get the full experience. But you can definitely get away with minimal Spanish here, being seen to be making an effort is more important than fluency.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#116

Post by bogdanu »

cleansy wrote: post #97
siquick wrote: post #90

Barcelona - one of the best all-around cities in the world (climate/culture/architecture/world proximity/quality of living/beach/mountains) and a growing tech scene. Very easy to pick up development work here for a local company, you won't be required to know Spanish/Catalan for a job. The only downsides are that the pay is relatively low (€43k average for SE) and it can be quite difficult to find a place to live wit…

I second this. But definitely try to get a remote SE job there. The pay is laughable compared to for example Berlin. Which is also a great city to work and live in.

I saw some jobs in Berlin that payed around 70K Eur. Assuming it's before taxes, it means that after taxes it's around 3.8k/month; a bit low if you ask me.

I know pay is not the only factor, but heck, I make half in my home country, but the living costs are far lower (and I don't even pay rent).

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#117

Post by whitef0x »

From what I've seen, Chile is a relatively safe and intellectually free place to live. They aren't as progressive on LGBTQIA tolerance as say the west coast of the US, but they are slowly getting there.

It isn't dirt cheap though. A house in a nice part of Santiago will cost you around 300-500k (USD).

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#118

Post by stagas »

siquick wrote: post #90

Barcelona - one of the best all-around cities in the world (climate/culture/architecture/world proximity/quality of living/beach/mountains) and a growing tech scene. Very easy to pick up development work here for a local company, you won't be required to know Spanish/Catalan for a job. The only downsides are that the pay is relatively low (€43k average for SE) and it can be quite difficult to find a place to live wit…

Barcelona is an amazing city to live in but with the recent Airbnb market growing the rents have become way too expensive. You should expect around 1200 euro/month for small apartment for a single person.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#119

Post by tormeh »

bobthepanda wrote: post #21
nabaraj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to someone about tech culture in Germany earlier. How easy is it to get a tech job out there?

Not local, but I try and keep up from time to time, and I have seen a lot of hand-wringing on the Internet about how low Berlin tech wages are.

It's not that bad. Expect 50k EUR for a junior position.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#120

Post by ACow_Adonis »

dtkav wrote: post #34

I just moved to Hobart, Australia from SF. It's quite affordable. I pay A$400 /mo rent in a share house, and walk 20 mins to a downtown co-working space every day (also A$400 /mo). Lifestyle is pretty incredible. It's small, but still a state capital city, so there's plenty going on. Hobart is also the home port for the Australian and French Antarctic programs, so a lot of smart folks come through. Plus it was a tria…

I live across the pond, and though I love Hobart and tassie, intellectual is not exactly in the top 10 words I'd expect most people to use to describe most australian culture, let alone in its smaller cities.

Edit: which is mainly why I'm in Melbourne.

Edit2: though to be fair, looking at half the suggestions so far, no one seems to be taking said criteria very seriously.

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