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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

#531

Post by sampo »

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…

> Enjoy the months longs waiting times to see a dentist.

Unless you're in a financial hardship, you could pay about 100€-200€ for a private dentist in Helsinki.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#532

Post by sampo »

meekrohprocess wrote: post #261
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,…

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…

> I am less concerned with the taxes, and more concerned that Amazon/Google/etc happily pay ten times that salary.

6k€/month is $86k a year. Ten times that is $860k a year, almost 1 million a year. How many years do you need to work to get to that level of salary?

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#533

Post by ptero »

finn_american wrote: post #497
ptero wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting. Is this professional conversations or in stores / restaurants / on the streets? I thought English is not spoken by many folks over there, at least outside the IT/tech scene.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#534

Post by eldaisfish »

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…

You've forgotten one major aspect of life so far north - the near absolute lack of sunlight in the winter which is about 5 months of the year.

My first year in Finland, i got SAD - seasonal affective disorder - and it was horrible. No amount of money or learning Finnish can address that. Oh and there's yet another downside to an ethnically homogenous society like Finland - you'll never be more than a tolerated person if you are a visible minority. Someone who's visibly different will never be a fully equal member of society.

Personally, this is why i much prefer life in the US or Canada despite all their downsides.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#535

Post by enriquto »

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…

> you can get by speaking English but your kid and partner might not

Living 10 years in a country and not learning the language is not only stupid. It is borderline creepy. I guess many locals end up seeing you as somebody who has an active dis-interest in their culture. No wonder you have trouble making friends!

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#536

Post by numpad0 »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #441
plq wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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++.

It helps less than you would think. Finnish doesn't share any intelligible vocabulary with Hungarian beyond the loanwords that are also the same in English (let alone Turkish or Japanese which are entirely different language families). Yes, there are grammatical similarities, no that won't help you much at all in understanding or talking to people...

From GP:

> Finnish is hard just because it's too different from our Indo-European languages mental model.

I'd imagine having this experience sure helps. Lots of people struggle to give up relying on mental translations to/from thoughts in their first languages.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#537

Post by sellyme »

refurb wrote: post #490
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.

I hate to see intellectually lazy comments like this on HN. It could have been phrased in a much more engaging tone rather than an attempt to "score points".

I'm Australian, I have no interest in scoring points for Finland. It's an honest representation of the differences in how those two countries are seen by an international audience.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#538

Post by enriquto »

mapgrep wrote: post #221
timsally wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I was an American, I wouldn't want to be footing the bill for Global Security either. There is a deep and nuanced conversation to be had here, though I will say fourstar already made one important point very succinctly. [1] I will point out that it has been the position of the American people since WWII that we are happy to foot the bill for global security. So while you might not feel that way, Americans feel d…

Ww2 in Europe was largely won by the USSR. Britain and the US opened a western front quite belatedly after years of begging by the USSR, after the Soviets sacrificed 15+ million lives to turn the tide, and after a lot of wasted time focusing on minor gains in North Africa (at Churchill’s insistence). Combined US and UK military’s deaths were less than a tenth those for USSR. We love to pat ourselves on the back with…

> Finland incidentally was a key ally for Hitler in his attack on the USSR.

It is extremely callous to Finland to put it that way!

The USSR attacked Finland while Germany and the USSR were allies against Poland. Understandably, Finland defended itself from this attack and entered into a defensive war with the USSR. Two years later, while this war was still going on, Germany attacked its ally the USSR. Thus Germany and Finland became allies by accident, because they were both fighting the same country. As the Russians started defeating Germany, the Finns expelled the (very few) German troops that they had allowed into their territory, who had to escape to Norway (still occupied by Germany) through the north.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#540

Post by ghaff »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #500
ranman wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fe…

Minor nit. Finnish is not a Germanic language--though perhaps there are some parallels that benefit from knowing German or Dutch. It's a Uralic language so separate from the Indo-European languages that are the primary languages in Europe.
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