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Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

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Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#41

Post by jskrablin »

mrazomor wrote: post #9

The article doesn't touch upon some major pain points. While the sea side is nice, it heavily relies on tourism and short term rentals. A long term rental is difficult to find during the summer time and it's not well regulated. The capital (Zagreb) is overcrowded and its infrastructure is getting worse every year. I spent many years there. Now, I can't imagine living there again (judging by my occasional 1-2 day long…

The only real concern for remote workers is decent Internet connectivity. And that's a basically solved problem with 4G and/or Starlink. You can live anywhere you want... so why limit yourself to overcrowded capital with bad infrastructure? It's similar in Slovenia, everyone complaining about how bad prices in Ljubljana are but still fixated on living there.

It's been a while since I've been in touch with tech sector in Zagreb, but even then there were a lot of options ... Wouldn't say not much has changes in a decade or two.

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#42

Post by input_sh »

desireco42 wrote: post #4

Kudos to Croatia's tourism board or whoever ordered this article. It is nice place for digital nomads for sure. Belgrade is much bigger hub for example (Serbia) and more of Ukrainians and Russians moved there to work, but overall this creates positive climate for Balkans as a whole... Not sure what is happening in Bosnia for example.

Bosnia's too tiny and badly connected to be relevant.

Sarajevo's definitely the leader, with smaller tech scenes in Mostar, Tuzla and Banja Luka, but it's almost all outsourcing. A fair amount of those outsourcing companies were founded by Bosnian migrants abroad, "investing back" into their homeland by (ab)using cheap local IT labour. I'd have trouble naming more than 5 local IT companies that actually have their own products on the market.

For a drastic change to happen, loads of things would need to be improved: more datacenters, better interconnection (Sarajevo's just annoyingly difficult to reach from any direction), more than one decent IT college, Sarajevo's infrastructure is still lagging behind Zagreb's and Belgrade's (it was... a little more directly involved in the war, to put it mildly), and at least some sense of political stability on a national level.

Marginal improvements can definitely be observed if you follow closely enough, but I'd say it'd take another decade of investments before it stops feeling like a major disadvantage in comparison to even its neighbouring capitals.

Source: Bosnian, ~8 years in the IT sector in Sarajevo.

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#43

Post by jq-r »

maga_2020 wrote: post #40
INTPenis wrote: post #35

The keyword is hidden. I'm a digital nomad who recently moved to Croatia, but my incentive was that I have roots here and speak the language. So I'm using one of their smaller cities as a home base while I travel around in other countries. It's definitely a nice place to live cheaply if you can work remotely. And if you have a schengen citizenship it's even better. I always say that it's on the fringes of the EU. Sor…

Since you lived in other places, can you comment/compare on judicial system (level of corruption to get things approve, to have contract-related case litigated, medical malpractice issues, etc). Also schools for children (cases of bullying, subpar level of STEM education, etc)? Would be good to know of how these former Soviet block countries moved away from the almost universal corruption of basic institutions.

Speaking as someone from there. The judical system is actually very bad and very slow. We have 40 judges per 100K people, Ireland has 3. So if you have to litigate something good luck with that as it will take many years. If going after public service, there are very slim chances you'll succeed. There was a famous malpractice case where it was revealed that a hospital which the claimant was suing didn't have a malpractice logged in 20 years. So whatever happened it was a "complication". The guy did get some satisfaction after a lenghty trial, but after that there were very few malpractice cases that I know of. A now deceased neigbour of mine ended up in wheelchair after a routine hip replacement surgery and had 2 strokes. Sued them, and 10 years later lost because the court's medical expert is friends with the surgeon.

The corruption for a normal citizen is pretty invisible though (not the effects!). It happens on higher levels. And higher you go the bigger the corruption. So lets say you need a permit for something. You cannot walk into some office and offer money for them to get it done faster. Everyone is very suspicious of unfamiliar faces so you have to build a relation with a employee (or their boss), and then you can do it which of course takes time. But the N+1 time you do it its much easier... I think the general concensus is that the corruption actually got worse after the Yu breakup. In media you'll find egregious examples of government corruption but this very rarely gets prosecuted, even rarer someone has to go to prison for it. So for lot of politicians and public servants crime does pay off. Another problem is that a lot of corruption is legalized so you don't have much to look forward to.

Schooling is just not very good. I wouldn't say that I saw much bullying, not that it was unheard, but it was very rare. Curriculum on the other hand is based on rote memorization, anti-creativity, anti-leadership and obedience. If your kid is a genius it will actually have a good time because schools (and especially universities) over here want only those kind of students, everyone else can go dig ditches as they say.

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#44

Post by tadaima »

46d24 wrote: post #27
audunw wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you base this opinion on? Northern European countries consistently rank at the top of the world in ease of doing business https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index Some of them have more entrepreneurs per capita than USA. What you don’t have is the ability to attract a crazy amount of international capital to mega corporations like in California/Texas or some places in China. So it’s hard t…

To attract top tech talent you need to offer 200k per year at least. A salary like this in Western Europe pays 70% of taxes (UK is the most favorable one with "only" 50%)

Your numbers are plain wrong. France, Spain and Germany are at around 43%, worst case scenario.

As someone who pays tax in one of these countries and manages/recruits people across all Europe (as well as Americas and Asia) I can confirm these calculators are very accurate.

Taxes (incl. pension + unemployment + health insurance and other social contributions) for 200K euros annual salary, for a single, no-dependents employee (the most unfavourable situation)

Spain (1):

   Taxes: 81,915 EUR

   as % of income: 40.96%
France (2):

   Taxes: 87866.28 EUR

   as % of income: 43.94%
Germany (3):

   Taxes: 86,439.33 EUR

   as % of income: 43.22%
(1) https://cincodias.elpais.com/herramientas/calculadora-irpf/

(2) https://www.urssaf.fr/portail/home/utile-et-pratique/estimat...

(3) https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gross_net_calcu...

Quoting fantasy numbers with an air of authority, without sources and using an aggressive/dismissive tone throughout all your comments strikes me as pretty pathetic but, who knows, it might convince others.

(edited for layout fixes)

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#45

Post by jq-r »

foobarian wrote: post #3

It's like California but with Roman emperor's palaces and Habsburg vacation homes strewn around the shoreline. Happy to see this trend and hope it continues.

As a citizen I hope not. In the last 10-15 years the whole coast and islands got overbuilt with local and foreign owned buildings. The construction prices multiplied because of the difference in buying power. Why would a construction company work for a local investor for X amount of money if they can work for a German investor for multiples of X?

So a lot of young people emigrated as they got priced out of everything, while in "exchange" we got a bunch of rich, retired Germans and Austrians living in their newly build houses next to the sea for 3 months in a year (if that). Imagine living in Florida all your life and a bunch of very rich people from different country start buying properties and rising prices all over. How would you feel about that?

Its even worse because the local goverments usually incentivise this kind of "behaviour" with huge investments in tourism while completely neglecting their local population speeding up the whole process.

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#46

Post by jq-r »

throwaway_45 wrote: post #36
sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have different priorities than just money. I for one would never move to SV even if I get 3 times the salary there. There are a lot of other factors that make life great than just money.

On aggregate people go were the money is. There are exceptions, but greed motivates a lot of smart ambitious people.

Also when those very rich people start buying properties/coast/islands from people who "had different priorities" in couple of decades, the latter will have to rethink their strategy of letting go and not developing their biggest talents. But its going to be too late for that by then.

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#47

Post by 46d24 »

tadaima wrote: post #44
46d24 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To attract top tech talent you need to offer 200k per year at least. A salary like this in Western Europe pays 70% of taxes (UK is the most favorable one with "only" 50%)

Your numbers are plain wrong. France, Spain and Germany are at around 43%, worst case scenario. As someone who pays tax in one of these countries and manages/recruits people across all Europe (as well as Americas and Asia) I can confirm these calculators are very accurate. Taxes (incl. pension + unemployment + health insurance and other social contributions) for 200K euros annual salary, for a single, no-dependents e…

[flagged]

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#48

Post by 46d24 »

tadaima wrote: post #44
46d24 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To attract top tech talent you need to offer 200k per year at least. A salary like this in Western Europe pays 70% of taxes (UK is the most favorable one with "only" 50%)

Your numbers are plain wrong. France, Spain and Germany are at around 43%, worst case scenario. As someone who pays tax in one of these countries and manages/recruits people across all Europe (as well as Americas and Asia) I can confirm these calculators are very accurate. Taxes (incl. pension + unemployment + health insurance and other social contributions) for 200K euros annual salary, for a single, no-dependents e…

[dead]

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#49

Post by 46d24 »

tadaima wrote: post #44
46d24 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To attract top tech talent you need to offer 200k per year at least. A salary like this in Western Europe pays 70% of taxes (UK is the most favorable one with "only" 50%)

Your numbers are plain wrong. France, Spain and Germany are at around 43%, worst case scenario. As someone who pays tax in one of these countries and manages/recruits people across all Europe (as well as Americas and Asia) I can confirm these calculators are very accurate. Taxes (incl. pension + unemployment + health insurance and other social contributions) for 200K euros annual salary, for a single, no-dependents e…

[flagged]

Re: Croatia could be Europe's hidden tech haven in 2024

#50

Post by lopis »

jacquesm wrote: post #23
lopis wrote: post #21

They've been saying this about Portugal for years

And to some extent it is true, but fortunately Portugal is not so easy to overrun. The area in and around Cascais is very popular with 'expats' (aka immigrants). At 200K+ inhabitants it is large enough to have all facilities, quite warm and not so large that you get the trouble associated with large cities in the South of Europe. The fact that it always was fairly wealthy probably also helps.

The problem is that "expats" don't come create a tech haven. They come with remote jobs, earn good multiples of the local salaries, come increase rents, convert houses to temporary accommodation, fund the party scene, and then they leave. There has been no concrete signs of Lisbon becoming a "tech haven".
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