Contracting in Ireland:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/bk8pmo/getting_s...
A guide to freelancing in Finland
51–60 of 149 posts
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finnish is an absolutely atrocious language to learn for most people (unless you are already familiar with learning a language with a completely different root, and even then). That part will be hard. I can't comment on the practicality of surviving with only English (or even Swedish, which most of them speak due to historical factors that I will politely gloss over), because I haven't tried.
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…
Very interesting, thanks for the history lesson!
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#53It's incredible that Finland gives you a monthly grant to become an entrepreneur. Definitely wish something like that existed in the US, even if only possible at the state level.
It's probably one of the better government programs, though as a programmer you'll pay the entire grant's €2500-5000 value in one month of taxes.
If I read it well, this grant is personal income though.
If the company has to pay 2-5k in monthly taxes, that will be on its revenue. If you have no revenue yet, then I don't imagine you will have to pay that much in taxes
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#54I think people here who look at Finland and Europe in general and see these social programs to help you get ahead are rather blinded by the reality that they only exist for Europeans. As a US citizen who lived in Europe for 5 years, I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European. It makes no difference if you have a great idea, or even your own funding, you…
That's not true. American entrepreneurs can acquire Dutch residency for the purpose of starting a business in Netherlands. Access to Dutch social services is a different thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT
(edit, I see now that someone else has pointed out the same thing)
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#55I think people here who look at Finland and Europe in general and see these social programs to help you get ahead are rather blinded by the reality that they only exist for Europeans. As a US citizen who lived in Europe for 5 years, I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European. It makes no difference if you have a great idea, or even your own funding, you…
Fintech in the UK looks pretty innovative to me, banking in the US is embarrassing.
everything pales in comparison to Vanguard and its innovative ownership and strategy.
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#56I’ve been a freelance in Finland for some time and was surprised by how easy setting everything up electronically was and how little I had to pay if my income was low in the beginning. I was also very surprised to see how helpful the tax office (Vero in finnish) is, even for questions that could be answered with “hire an accountant” but thanks to their help, I was able to do it on my own. I even made a mistake once and they let me know and fix it without consequences.
Compare this to my home country (Spain) where you have to pay a rather high fixed fee every month despite having no income (a typical situation at the beginning of any business), the amount of paperwork and unreadable legalese together with the unwillingness of the tax office to help you out with most of the stuff.
On a side note this guide looks great and wish I had such thing when I started out!
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#57I think people here who look at Finland and Europe in general and see these social programs to help you get ahead are rather blinded by the reality that they only exist for Europeans. As a US citizen who lived in Europe for 5 years, I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European. It makes no difference if you have a great idea, or even your own funding, you…
> It is also why you really don't see any actual innovation come out of Europe.
There's actually quite a lot of incremental innovation happening in Europe, but they're in non-consumer spaces so they're less visible.
But you're right, a lot of European innovation is in the area of refining and improving proven ideas. The pool of technical expertise in Europe is vast and strong so it makes sense to leverage the competitive advantage there.
The U.S. on the other hand is much stronger at defying norms and inventing completely new categories.
U.S. companies know this, so the joke in industry is: invent in the U.S., perfect in Europe (setup R&D labs etc.), and manufacture in China.
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#58I think people here who look at Finland and Europe in general and see these social programs to help you get ahead are rather blinded by the reality that they only exist for Europeans. As a US citizen who lived in Europe for 5 years, I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European. It makes no difference if you have a great idea, or even your own funding, you…
I am also an American who lived in Finland, Austria, and Denmark for, cumulatively, over 5 years. I now own and run a small but successful bootstrapped American SaaS. What bothered me is that in all the above countries, they try to encourage entrepreneurship through rigged government programs. These programs offer grants and other benefits to 'the right kind of startups' - usually ones that are fashionable because th…
Well, the thing is, investment requires capital.
Finland really does not have it. This may feel odd, but really, Finland is capital-poor country.
Unless government invested, nobody would.
In places like England with lots of private capital it makes sense to leave investment to the markets. But like I said... that market of capital just trying to find the best investment, does not exist in Finland in massive scale.
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#59Few 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 innovations came out out of Finland or Europe is just plain bullsh*t.
Re: A guide to freelancing in Finland
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am also an American who lived in Finland, Austria, and Denmark for, cumulatively, over 5 years. I now own and run a small but successful bootstrapped American SaaS. What bothered me is that in all the above countries, they try to encourage entrepreneurship through rigged government programs. These programs offer grants and other benefits to 'the right kind of startups' - usually ones that are fashionable because th…
I agree. I think that a problem in the EU is the wide abundance of government subsidies. The intentions are good but in fact it messes up the mechanism of natural selection in startups. Companies that haven't managed to raise money from private investors because they shouldn't really be funded (for various reasons e.g. their business model isn't viable, not a good team, or have exterior obligations and aren't fully c…
"Companies that haven't managed to raise money from private investors"
This comment is a bit off topic for Finland. It does not have large capital markets looking for a good investment. It's a capital poor country.
Which is a good thing to know, if you come here looking for startup funding. The reason you don't find strong local seed funding is not because government blocks them. The reason is there is no capital for seeding, so to speak.