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Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

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Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#491

Post by Kliment »

waihtis wrote: post #456
Kliment wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a non-native Finnish speaker. I learned the language in my teens. It's not a difficult language, at all. It is actually surprisingly simple. The problem is the obscurity - there is very little interest in Finnish as a second language, and the teaching community for it is small and hasn't developed the kind of resources that imperial languages that were taught to countless millions of people during the age of empi…

[fyi: native Finn] > b) this is controversial but I think the standard language model used by linguists is too strongly inspired by Latin and a very poor fit for Finnish. I find trying to learn grammar formally is counterproductive and will set you back. Instead, think of the noun suffixes as a preposition equivalent. Trying to think of them as cases will mess with your progress Interesting point. This is what a lot…

About b) it's controversial because it's the standard model that is used by linguistics and is considered useful, and I think it's net-negative-value for education. That's why I want to make it abundantly clear that this is my opinion and it runs counter to the consensus in the linguistics world.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#492

Post by eru »

herbstein wrote: post #448
eru wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence me saying 'on average'. In a sane country, you can use insurance to convert variable payments into average payments (plus a bit of overhead). Or, you just self-insure for dental, if you make a reasonable amount of money or have some savings. (It's much more feasible for dental where the realistic maximum amounts are still quite small, compared to cancer treatment or similar.)

> In a sane country, you can use insurance to convert variable payments into average payments Consider tax paid healthcare to be a public insurance plan that doesn't need to skim billion dollar profits from their "customers" then.

Health insurers profits are a small fraction of overall healthcare spending.

In general, I'd prefer services with competition and that you can opt out of.

Having said that, Singapore's system works fairly well in practice. But it's not at all like eg the NHS.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#493

Post by eliseumds »

jusssi wrote: post #397
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…

Public healthcare in general is good, once you get past the first level to the actual specialists. 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 opene…

Isn't it the case in most countries? As a Brazilian, it's shocking to see the lack of dental care in virtually any other country (I've been to many and lived in a few).

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.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#494

Post by ptero »

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 do people respond to imperfect Finnish?

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?

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#495

Post by mehukatti »

Laakeri wrote: post #354
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…

Yeah, many people from Helsinki who are good enough to get a job at Amazon/Google/etc are actually moving abroad to work for them, so it doesn't make sense to move to Helsinki if you could get a job like that. Though there are some good cities in Europe with tech giants and their good pay, for example London and Zurich.

Google, Amazon and Microsoft all have offices in Helsinki and are hiring a lot for their cloud businesses. For example we here at AWS consistently have ~10-20 positions open in our new Helsinki downtown office.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#496

Post by throwawayzRUU6f »

_RPL5_ wrote: post #391
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…

You are getting a lot of critical responses, and I hate to dog pile, but: >Amazon/Google/etc happily pay ten times that salary In the thread, they say Helsinki juniors start out at ~$3k/mo after taxes. In the Bay Area, let's say you are a junior at a FAANG and are getting $150k/year. This works out to $8k/mo after taxes. So the difference between a FAANG and Helsinki is more like 3x. Maybe, 4X if you account for bonu…

Unfortunately, even for the same role, the 10x figure is painfully close to reality, once purchasing power of the actual disposable income is calculated.

Juniors don't start at $3k/mo after taxes, it's more like $2.5k. On top of that, there's ~20% VAT vs. ~5-10% sales tax in US. On top of that, the price level in Finland is notably higher (25% pricier according to PPP conversion factor). Also, practically nobody gets stocks or options here, and any kind of bonus pay is usually insignificant. There are much fewer options to live frugally. Majority of the sectors of the economy are dominated by monopolies, duopolies and silent cartels.

As a silly example illustrating the fact - a junior software engineer in Finland can purchase 0.52 Tesla Model 3s per year for his take home pay. The same engineer in Bay Area could buy 3, maybe 4 with stocks.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#497

Post by finn_american »

ptero wrote: post #494
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 do people respond to imperfect Finnish? 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?

They immediately reply in English and have little tolerance for someone speaking their language with even a vague accent.

Have seen it many times.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#498

Post by refurb »

jnurmine wrote: post #470
refurb wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland was basically blocking the Northern approach during the Siege of Leningrad which lasted 2.5 years and killed almost a million Russians.

Finland was really between a rock and a hard place, as the international community was basically a lame duck after the Soviets attacked Finland in 1939 by staging a false flag in the small village of Mainila. Although some in Finland tend to forget it, Sweden provided substantial amounts of men and material which helped a lot, but it wasn't quite enough. The only other player with enough muscle was Germany, to which…

I get that Finland was in a crappy position during WW2. Aligning with the Nazi's was a matter of realpolitik.

And I agree that their involvement in the Siege of Leningrad amounted to a blocking force, but mother of god, that blocking force contributed to an absolutely horrific existence for the civilians inside the city.

One could maybe argue that if the Finns didn't help the Nazi's the Nazi's would have been enable to lay siege to Leningrad anyways, but the Finns are definitely tainted by their involvement.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#500

Post by Broken_Hippo »

ranman wrote: post #485
Err_Eek wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that it's very obscure but I take that for Swedish with the silver lining that learning an obscure language will be, in the worst case, a good party trick. It takes years to become conversational in a language with dedicated practice -- that's an immense amount of effort to put into a party trick for a person with a full time job and other responsibilities.

I think years is a bit on the high end of that estimate, especially with dedicated practice. I’ve seen people go from 0 to conversant in 60 days in English classes.

I'd guess that the people you've seen have at least one of these things, probably more: 1). Are proficient with another germanic language 2). Have lots of interaction with English even if they don't speak it (lots of folks read subtitles for English media) 3). Have learned a non-germanic language and have an affinity for picking up on language 4.) Have lots of time. 5.) Their conversational skills are limited to a few shallow subjects, and much variance on these cause them to trip up. 6.) You don't see deficits (can they spell? How is their grammar outside of simple conversation? Can they read as well as speak?)

On the whole, no one should expect to have easy conversations in 60 days, regardless of language. These are always exceptions, and are most often small talk instead of including a wide variety of subjects: Simply talking about your own interests in any depth takes some dedication, but hearing about other's interests takes more.

Years isn't on the high end: I took classes. 15-18 hours a week, with a transition to speaking practice in a nursing home (while performing some basic CNA-type work). 2 years of classes. For me, this landed me technically intermediate, but it still didn't take much to get out of my depth of knowledge. This is a pretty normal course. Some folks are faster, sure: But some are slower.

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