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Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

helsinkibusinesshub.fi

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Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#411

Post by zurn »

indecisive_user wrote: post #199
sellyme wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also pays for education, and you don't need to look at the US for long to see why it's worth investing in having literate citizens.

Is this supposed to be an insult to the US? The literacy rate is 99%, and a higher % of the population has a tertiary education than finland, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiar...

If you look closer at the list, the difference in completed tertiary degrees (against many other countries too) comes from the youngest age bracket. It's probably because in the US people tend to have short university educations that they complete young and move more quickly to industry.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#412

Post by kubav »

deanc wrote: post #190

Overall my experience in Helsinki has been hugely positive. I’ve been here now over a decade and have settled with work and family life. 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…

I have been in Helski half the year as erasmus student. I really liked it there except how long is dark in autumn and winter. I feel depressed every autumn 1000 km south from there so autumn in Helsinki was really rough experience for me.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#413

Post by plq »

waihtis wrote: post #311
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As extra for the language. Even in tech you should just accept that you NEED to start learning Finnish. You don't have to be proficient speaker, but for normal office chat you need to be good enough to interrupt and step in with English if you want to participate. 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 spea…

Problem is that it's a super difficult language where you can't draw any help from any other languages you might now. Plus it's obscure and if you move out of Finland you'll likely never use it again. I can see why people don't want to invest huge amounts of time learning it unless they plan to stay for the rest of their lives.

Actually, the foundation you got with Finnish should be useful if ever you need to learn Turkish, Hungarian or Japanese. Natural languages are like programming languages in a sense -- Haskell doesn't get as much use as C++ but learning Haskell will make you better at C++.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#414

Post by LockAndLol »

deanc wrote: post #190

Overall my experience in Helsinki has been hugely positive. I’ve been here now over a decade and have settled with work and family life. 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…

How is the need to learn the language even a negative? People complain all the time about people coming to their country and not speaking the language after decades, but then gladly move to a foreign country with no intention of ever learning the language. Very hypocritical.

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.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#415

Post by h0l0cube »

_2d30 wrote: post #366
h0l0cube wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting caught on semantics rather than understanding my argument. See my edit on the original comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25004980

Your edit is just as useless. Leaving NATO is not an inconsequential action nor do I see abandoning "The West" to be something likely to be well received by US voters. No one got caught up in meaningless semantics. It's just that your point doesn't carry much weight.

> Leaving NATO is not an inconsequential action

'consequences are relatively minor' != 'inconsequential'.

> nor do I see abandoning "The West" to be something likely to be well received by US voters

Opinion. May be right, may be wrong. Trump did in fact try this at one point, but it was shot down by the house. Doesn't really reveal how many voters would support it, though.

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/01/23/us-house-vot...

> It's just that your point doesn't carry much weight.

That's a baseless assertion until you explain why. Why shouldn't the US polity reconsider it's attachment to NATO? What are the bad outcomes? Bad for whom? And what are the good outcomes for citizens? (eg. say, for instance, but not exclusively, less taxes, or money spent better else where)

What does it mean to the people? That is the central question of democracy. And my ultimate point is that's what should be driving whether the US continues with NATO. And I think that carries weight with anyone who believes the US should be a democracy

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#416

Post by yason »

ashtonkem wrote: post #285
meekrohprocess wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am less concerned with the taxes, and more concerned that Amazon/Google/etc happily pay ten times that salary. It's literally an order of magnitude difference, and contracting hourly rates seems like a similar story. I would happily pay 3-5x the taxes for a similar salary to emigrate, but if you offer me 1/10 the pay? That's tough. It makes me feel like there isn't a big market for my services across the pond. It's…

Take home alone is a meaningless number if you don't compare it against cost of living. This is a bit like asking "how much to fill up your car" without asking how big of a gas tank it has first.

You don't necessarily want to use that angle on Finland... the gas tank is pretty large and gas is highly taxed, both figuratively and literally.

In addition to the relatively small salaries, the cost of living is pretty high in the capital area. If you do move to some of the smaller cities your price-to-value ratio for living will go up way faster than trying to reach the same ratio by instead hunting for a larger salary around Helsinki.

But even then there's the purchasing power which is also relatively low everywhere. It depends on what you spend your money on, of course, but generally unless all you buy is telecommunication services everything feels pretty expensive. Moreover, the price difference to nearby countries and to the rest of the Europe is often so much higher that even if I'd very much like to support local Finnish business often there's just no way I'm going to justify that to my wallet.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#417

Post by alibarber »

david-gpu wrote: post #393
deanc wrote: post #190

Overall my experience in Helsinki has been hugely positive. I’ve been here now over a decade and have settled with work and family life. 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…

Moving to a new country and complaining that not all jobs and services are provided to you in your own foreign language comes across as entitled. Of course you need to learn the language of the nation that hosts you. You are an immigrant.

Not sure people are complaining as such. And these comments are on a piece from a country's government that is literally offering to pay people to move there. It's more of a word of warning, Finnish is a difficult language for a native English speaker to learn compared to, say, French, or even Swedish. Something like Spanish is spoken by a massive number of people in multiple nations - Finnish only in one small one. I try and get by with Finnish when I can, but at the end of the day I still have a rather taxing (hah) job to do full time and I came here by choice so I want to enjoy it.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#418

Post by hopia »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #297
deanclatworthy wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak for those in the web tech industry, but salaries go from 4-6k euros. Take-home pay would be in the region of 2.5-4.5k most likely. 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,…

4-6k seems high even for Helsinki. For starting position you can expect 2-3k, then as you build towards seniority you can get to 4-5k range, but you can expect to work for 5-10 years before you get to that 5k/mo (before taxes). Now all kind of exceptions will come out the wood works telling me how they are "easily" making 10k/mo by doing something and working for someone who they won't admit. Yes even I know someone…

This looks about right to me. To add for reference, something like 5200 € / month gross puts you to top 10% earners in Finland already. So it is an excellent salary to get locally.

I also know of a few developers making 10k€ / month but I have to say they're very rare to come across in this country.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#419

Post by timonoko »

It might be advisable to think Finland as a small company, with its own language, laws and such sheiße. You would not invest your life, move the family and learn the language, if the company is run by evil clueless people. You should check the prospects of maintaining the reputed wellfare system. Then you might realize Finland is not part of Scandinavia or even Northern Europe much longer. It is becoming mediterranean, where life maybe less secure, but sun is always shining: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7iGWs3jawaMvq4H78

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#420

Post by nix23 »

rebuilder wrote: post #246
deanc wrote: post #190

Overall my experience in Helsinki has been hugely positive. I’ve been here now over a decade and have settled with work and family life. 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…

As far as language goes, my advice for learning a new one would be the exact opposite of what you say. Force yourself to use the language all the time, everywhere. Otherwise people will just default to English with you, and you'll have a hard time learning the local language. It'll be very stressful for a few months, but, in my experience, will get you conversing in about half a year.

Yes that, Exactly!
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