- How easy have you found finding tech jobs in Sweden, do you have any advice for good places to look? - How does the pay compare to other countries/cities you've worked in? - Do you speak Swedish at work/is it possible to get by without being fluent in Swedish?
There are a few good places just north of Malmo, in Lund (which is an exceptionally nice place to live), but there are also good places for IT in Lulea (where google and facebook operate), and Gothenburg. It's very spread out.
The only one I don't recommend it stockholm, the wages are higher but you pay more outgoing in rent by a wide margin, and "first hand" apartments are basically impossible to get there.
> - How does the pay compare to other countries/cities you've worked in?
I used to live/work in Helsinki and London, now I work in Malmo. I'm working in a sector with historically low wages and I earn about 30% less than I did in London. But that is almost perfectly in line with cost of living. Other sectors pay much better. I would be better off here than London if I chose something other than video games as an industry.
Helsinki was very comparable to London in terms of salary/cost of living.
> - Do you speak Swedish at work/is it possible to get by without being fluent in Swedish?
I don't speak Swedish at all, the only issue is my banking which is all done in Swedish.
Luckily the tech scene is very spread out, Lulea, Gothenburg and Lund all have a variety of tech.
I initially meant that rhetorically, but now I'm actually interested to know. Maybe there are good non-govt jobs and low prices in smaller capital cities like Ottawa (<0.8M) and Canberra (<0.4M)? Educate me!