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A guide to freelancing in Finland

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Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#131

Post by mongol »

ryanlol wrote: post #29
mongol wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the challenge with going freelancer will be with the things that are required of you as a corporate entity. Such as, reading up on legislation, accounting rules, dialog with tax office etc.

You can do all of those in English without any issues.

I seriously doubt it. Now these are not a finnish examples, but Swedish, but I challenge anyone only knowing English:

What is the salary tax breaking point for 2020?

When do you need to have declared and paid VAT during 2020 if you are one a 3 month schedule?

These are basic knowledge questions for a freelancer with a Swedish Aktiebolag, easily googleable in Swedish but challenging if you don't know it.

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#132

Post by pillefitz »

mindjiver wrote: post #13
shinryuu wrote: post #7

Awesome, now I wish there was a similar guide for germany :)

Yeah,as someone that did the switch from employment to self-employment in Germany it was not exactly straight forward.

As I'm going to be in the same boat soon, what were your issues in a nutshell if I may ask?

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#133

Post by fsloth »

enra wrote: post #81
fsloth wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lots of non-finns at my work who speak very little finnish. They seem to do fine. On the other hand integration to finnish society might be bit of a challenge unless you happen to find a sweetheart here. "or even Swedish, which most of them speak due to historical factors that I will politely gloss over" Most finns _don't_ speak Swedish, or it's very limited. It's a second language in law only because Finland…

As a Finn, this is great. I would just like to downgrade "strong support from Nazi Germany" just to support, and later a nuisance. Initially Germany and Soviets made the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact to divide the Europe. Nazis would get Poland and Soviets would get Finland etc. They were agreement at first, so Nazis stayed away for the Winter War (1939-1940) and Finland had to block attack on their own since most of the E…

Thanks, it's good to point out to an international audience that Finland was not enamoured with national socialism, but rather it was driven by the will to survive by any means necessary.

Strong or not, given the situation, I don't think Finland could have survived without german support. If we look this from a very high granularity level (like in a board game of Diplomacy) I think you also have to factor in the fact that the bulk of the red army was tied to battles against the axis powers elsewhere. So it's not just how much the germans actually poured material and men to finland, it's also about how much they tied the enemy forces elsewhere.

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#134

Post by skrebbel »

bernawil wrote: post #78
skrebbel wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, because Spanish has a few letters that change pronunciation depending on context, eg the g in guerra vs Girona.

doesn't depend on any "context" in that example. Both written and spoken follow strict rules.

Yeah that was badly worded. I meant context the way parsers/lexers use the term, not the common language speaker's definition of "the meaning of the surrounding words".

I meant adjacent letters.

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#135

Post by reitzensteinm »

fsloth wrote: post #130
reitzensteinm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were responding to a specific complaint, and I was responding to your response. European governments are throwing money at questionable startups in the hope of replicating SV. Being opposed to that is not the same as not believing in investment as a general principle (?!).

Ah, sorry. Your comment was just that "It's OK if nobody invests". I was responding to that in general principle. European governments are throwing money at all sorts of dubious things. I don't think being inept about how to create new business value is the worst thing they do. At least there is funding available. I suppose the thing that ires you is - is this funding inclusive or is it only supplied to cronies. Know…

I believe the programs are actually harmful, because they filter for different things than what it actually takes to make a startup work. You're teaching people to play games and jump through arbitrary hoops, rather than connect with customers and identify problems to solve.

And that's before you take in to account corruption and inclusivity. I do believe Europe (at least based on my experience living in Germany) makes effort towards inclusivity, but if you looked at where this money is going, it would be vastly weighted to the middle and upper class (though I concede I may be wrong on this point).

Given that you can easily bootstrap a tech company on the side with some contract work, my belief can be summed up as the practice is: 1) actively harmful 2) unfair 3) wasteful 4) unnecessary

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#136

Post by fsloth »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #135
fsloth wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, sorry. Your comment was just that "It's OK if nobody invests". I was responding to that in general principle. European governments are throwing money at all sorts of dubious things. I don't think being inept about how to create new business value is the worst thing they do. At least there is funding available. I suppose the thing that ires you is - is this funding inclusive or is it only supplied to cronies. Know…

I believe the programs are actually harmful, because they filter for different things than what it actually takes to make a startup work. You're teaching people to play games and jump through arbitrary hoops, rather than connect with customers and identify problems to solve. And that's before you take in to account corruption and inclusivity. I do believe Europe (at least based on my experience living in Germany) mak…

It sounds your argument is based on claims of hypothetical second order systems effects. I think that systems thinking is important - but makes it very hard to discuss further if the other party (me) is not deeply familiar with the domain (german economic life and people) which I'm not.

I.e. 'actively harmfull' -> but just dropping state investment won't magically teach peoples how to do business in a customer oriented way. So you need some second order effects to kick in (i.e. people would then focus on market needs more etc).

I can't really comment on that. I don't know the german psyche enough to postulate on the second order effects.

Most of german industry has been grown historically in a corporative manner, so I'm a bit skeptical you could drive US style individual entrepreunship in just by dropping this or that government program.

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#137

Post by alopex_plenus »

fsloth wrote: post #70
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Finland is a capital poor country but rich in ideas You can replace Finland with pretty much any non US country on Earth. I've met brilliant hard working people all over the world. The only thing they lacked to make it big was capital.

Well, depends what you compare with. Most european countries have a rich history of industrialization and colonization and hence quite a lot of private capital. Unlike Finland. Of course, there are lots of other dirt poor areas, but if you compare Finland to the segment where it's usually included, i.e. non-iron-curtain-enclosed European states, then in that category it stands out.

well, you could see Finland as halfway between the iron curtain and not-iron-curtain states. They split off the Russian empire just after WWI and barely avoided being taken back in the winter war. The Baltic states were less fortunate

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#138

Post by Hamuko »

euro_expat wrote: post #72
Hamuko wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European. I was under the impression you can start a business as long as you have a residence permit. https://www.suomi.fi/company/starting-a-business/foreign-ent...

I have no idea about Finland, but in Europe in general, you can't open a business cleanly without a permanent residence permit, which takes usually 5+ years to get. In Denmark where I've lived, it's about 9+ years last I checked, but Danes are super xenophobic, so they don't want you there period. The link you sent describes being forced to be approved by some board they have, so it also sounds like Finland has hurdl…

>In my experience, Europe is happy to skip out on the next Google if it means only the local get to play and win.

Wasn't Google founded by two citizens of the United States of America?

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#139

Post by mejutoco »

unclesams-uncle wrote: post #95
davnicwil wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a couple of counter examples, in case you weren't aware of them - Spain has an entrepeneurship visa, that any founder from anywhere can apply for. To apply I think you need to produce a credible business plan which shows it'll employ a certain number of citizens (I don't know if EU or Spanish specifically) eventually. - France similarly has an entrepeneurship visa for founders from anywhere. I believe one of…

I've been a US expat in Europe for almost 20 years now. I spent a lot of time in Belgium (to the point I became a citizen) and am now in Barcelona starting a FinTech. Europe lacks both a risk-taking mentality and the framework to foster real entrepreneurship. Spain was able to become much more competitive thanks to the austerity they were forced to go through post-crisis, but there are still way more bureaucratic hoo…

Incorporating an LLC alone (the equivalent of a c-corp is rarely used by startups over here) requires 3,000 EUR in the bank plus about the same amount in legal fees.

At least when I did start a Sociedad Limitada (LLC) around 8 years ago these 3,000 euro did not need to be provided in cash. Most -all? I cannot remember- of them could be the value of things you owned, like a computer (serial number provided). The valuation of the computer or similar was taken at face value. In case of debt from your company they would take these goods used as capital.

There are initiatives in some cities, like Barcelona Activa, so make it easier to start a company (simpler forms too) but overall I agree it is still a bit bureaucratic.

Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland

#140

Post by tsukurimashou »

rasjani wrote: post #59

Few foss projects and authors that started in this god forsaken country, Finland: Linux - Linus Torvalds. Finn Ssh - Tatu Ylönen. Finn IRC - Jarkko Oikarinen. Finn. Dovecot - Timo Sirainen. Finn. Robot Framework - Pekka Klarck. Finn. And maybe not fortune100 or even 500 companies but companies like Nokia, F-secure, Futuremark have had their global impact. And Yeah. These are old tech already but saying that no innova…

In Finland you have quite a lot of people with demoscene background as well, I heard they also have a big imageboard culture.
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