Work in Lithuania | Hacker News Reader

Work in Lithuania

workinlithuania.lt

39 pointsignasl49 comments

I moved to Vilnius from Sweden four months ago and enjoying it a lot so far. A lot of the things from the website are true - low costs (I pay 500e for 2-rooms in city center), very safe city, lots of green. Can get anywhere within 30 min and I walk to work every day. Working in here might be a pay cut but the low costs make up for it. Tech is much more well-compensated here than other industries.

My perception is that Lithuania (and Baltics in general) is suffering a lot more for its reputation than it should. Society has developed very quickly the past 10 years and the reputation doesn't reflect today's reality here.

If anyone is interested to learn more, feel free to pm me. We're also currently hiring Fintech Industry Manager to my team: https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/102620285653394118-i...

Fellow Lithuanian here living in Denmark. Did you try exploring Lithuania, like visiting other cities? If so, did you like it?

It's flattering to hear that Vilnius is improving and you are enjoying living there.

Haven't had the time yet, but will make sure to make it out to the seaside this summer. Looking forward to visiting Klaipeda and Nida!

I'm Indian, and I've been considering a nomadic working lifestyle. Do you see a lot of ethnic minorities there? Is the culture welcoming to other ethnicities?

It's still fairly homogeneous society compared to many other European countries. The language is also very different to other European languages, so it helps to pick up a little bit of Lithuanian to understand more here.

I believe it's slowly changing and you can see some non-Europeans coming for study exchange and to work for international companies, but it's far from what it's like in e.g. Sweden, Netherlands or Germany.

However, Lithuania is quite diverse in the sense that it's a crossroad between Central Europe, Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. Having many influences from Nordics, Russia, Poland and Germany. Many people in Vilnius speak several of the following: Lithuanian, English, Russian and Polish.

All young (below 45) people speak English, older generation (45+) might speak Russian instead of English as second language.

So Lithuania is cheap and all, but the website and the job offers clearly fail to mention how much you get paid. Also, of course living in the city center of Vilnius is cheap, but compared to a similar 500k pop city in let's say Germany* and adjusted for the wages, it's absolutely not special. Plus the lower absolute wage will be a problem when you want to retire in a western European country.

The financially smartest (IMHO) way is to live in .lt when you have a remote job/contract.

* I pulled up numbers about Nuremberg which has roughly the same population, average income and average apartment costs are, relatively speaking, the same. However as mentioned above you will safe less towards retirement in absolute terms, limiting your choices later on.

For software development jobs across Europe you typically make at least as much or more in cheaper countries, as salaries are not significantly lower. Things are not in your favor for other fields though.

The big question is that how much pay cut are you willing to take? Surely this will not match what people are getting on other richer countries in the EU.

Not to mention remote work for the US. You get 5 time the french pay in the bay, 3 times if you remove health insurances, taxes and retirement savings.

And then one can live anywhere they please :)

Maybe get a remote job for the US and live in Lithuania. Win Win.

> Maybe get a remote job for the US and live in Lithuania. Win Win.

Only if the company is willing to go through the legal hoops to make this happen.

It's the same as hiring an immigrant on US soil. Something companies in the Bay are happy to do, since their hiring can't keep up with their needs.

But for other companies, you can make it easier: just frame it as a freelancer gig.

What do you mean they are the same? Hiring an immigrant who is legally authorized to work in the country is different than figuring out the target country's tax laws. It's the same reason American companies tend to disallow remote work from places they don't have a physical presence.

Where do you get those

The same way you get the other ones, but you have to contact american companies.

The front page talks about how cheap everything is, but the job postings don't seem to list the offered salaries.

It's weird that this website seems to target people from countries much richer than Lithuania.

From the footer:

"Work in Lithuania is an initiative of the Foreign Investment Development Agency Invest Lithuania which aims to encourage professionals from abroad to pursue their careers in Lithuania."

Why is that weird? Specialists could form a nucleus around which more jobs form. If I were looking for work I'd rather work in Lithuania than San Francisco.

Because salaries in Lithuania are much lower than in Western Europe (which has much lower salaries than SF).

And no, the lower cost of living doesn't completely offset that. Unfortunately Eastern Europe is still less developed and poorer than the West.

Average salaries and individual salaries are not the same thing.

I can't help but notice the absence of minorities on this website.

Edit:

Like it or not, people of different colours bring culture and a welcoming variation to a city. I get it, the French are minorities in Lithuania but you're nitpicking, being ignorant and missing the point.

There are 12 picture with exclusively white people. Why would any who isn't white want to move there is that's the only group represented.

What do you mean by that?

Non-whites

Lithuania is not the US. You saw Swedish and Italian people on the website, in Lithuania they are minorities.

What do you mean by "minorities"? Do you mean "non-white" people? If so, then sure, but most of eastern Europe is fairly homogeneous in terms of skin color.

I take argument, and actually some offense to your comment because there could definitely be maligned groups in the website. Polish people deal with discrimination in many parts of Europe even today, and Lithuania has a history of this (read about the Lithuanization of the Polish). I have Polish ancestry and have been in situations where I've been told to keep quiet to avoid problems.

Skin color doesn't always show the battles that people fight against discrimination every day.

To be fair though, last time I went to Poland (Krakow 2011) they were super-racist.

One of our friends was black, it was very scary at times. Lots of skin heads, random people spitting at our friend, getting followed by gangs of people.

I have no idea what it's like in Lithuania, but there can still be some pretty extreme racism going on in E.European countries.

Me and my brother went to woodstock in Poland and it was not a welcoming experience at all (We are black)

Brit living in Vilnius. It's true you don't get many people with dark skin here, but people are friendly and I don't think they would behave that way. They may stop and stare, but it's more out of interest. For context, my wife's grandma lives in a village and has only seen black people on TV.

I have a couple of Indian friends who live here and they don't have any issues. To be honest I'd say this country is more welcoming to foreigners than the UK.

I've been to Poland quite a few times (love it!) and, as a mixed race (western european + west african heritage), the worst racist comments and treatment I received was, ironically, from a jewish person in Krakow's jewish quarters - (if he was actually jewish is anyone's guess). I'd agree that it's a generally racist society but I wouldn't go as far as saying super-racist, but then again, I was never spat at. Of course I could come up with dozens of anecdotes, like a woman refusing to shake my hand saying "I don't touch black people" after shaking everyone else's hand in my group, but I'm not comfortable generalising since almost everyone I met was super welcoming and friendly, without a hint of hatred or disgust. Let's not judge a country by a few rotten apples!

> Skin color doesn't always show the battles that people fight against discrimination every day.

But it is the biggest factor. An instant identifier to discriminate against.

so you think people should use a token black person even though that’s not representative of the actual minorities. don’t you think that’s racist in itself?

A city which want's to become powerful much have representation for everyone.

It'd be nice if that was true but its not. A lot of Asia being a perfect example.

Well... I can't deny that.

One thing that always surprises me is the inability of many Americans to accept that the whole world is not US. We are simply not fighting the political and racial battles that they have. In order to be a citizen in a globalized world, one has to be able to see things from perspectives of different societies, not impose their own perspective on everyone. I agree that the original comment about racial diversity makes sense in US and I would completely agree with it if the site was about US or similar countries where there are significant visually-distinguishable minorities. However, it simply doesn’t make sense in Lithuania. Also in many other EU members

I'm not from the US. I live in France.

the french history of black slavery is worse than that of the US, which is why there is a considerable black minority in france. this is not the case for lithuania, or many other european countries.

Well, that's going to be hard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_contemporary_ethnic_gr...

"Main minority groups include Poles 234,989 (6.7%), Russians 219,789 (6.3%), Belarusians 42,866 (1.2%), Ukrainians 22,488 (0.7%) and Jews 4,007 (2001 census data)."

(https://minorityrights.org/country/lithuania/)

So, how did you figure out from the photos that those people are not among Lithuanian minorities?

> I can't help but notice the absence of minorities on this website

Aren't a region's minorities a product of its composition? White people are minorities in Asian countries.

False equivalency.

What do you mean by that?

White people in an Asian country is not the same as an Asian in a "White" country. White people used to be colonial masters in most Asian countries and the reverse is not true.

This isn't an Asian country...

It is not an Asian country, but it is a country where both the majority (Lithuanians) and minorities (mostly people from other European countries) visually look the same. You can distinguish them by languages they speak, which is something we cannot infer from photos on the website.

For example, I am a Croatian expat in Czech Republic. The only way Czechs figure out I'm not one of them is when they try to talk to me in Czech. Tell me how to represent that in a photo.

I would also be a minority in US, but no one would consider me as one only because I'm white. And that's called being racist.

so you think all of those people are lithuanian? you sure there’s no poles, russians, ukrainians, etc? how would you know?

just because people aren’t varying shades of brown doesn’t stop them being a minority

Different skin colors does not always equate to a diverse, better actualized, or welcoming society. Culture and attitude do, and for the US that includes skin color as a marker for varying lived experiences. Assuming varying skin color is the full explainer of a positive society is cart before horse, as other comments have sufficiently explained.

We should make sure that folks are welcome, but drive by critiques aren't going to get us there.

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