Ask HN: Geeks moving to the Netherlands | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Geeks moving to the Netherlands

17 pointsdanudey15 comments

Hey guys, my roommate and I have been mulling over this idea for a short time and wanted to get some input from the wider community, in hopes of getting more relevant information than Google is able to provide.

Background: We're both Canadian and 27 years old. He's a web developer, and I'm a Linux systems administrator. We both have a good deal of experience in our respective fields, though I also have experience in web development; neither of us, however, have university educations.

We can apply for working holiday visas, which get us into the country and let us work without having to go through the approval process, so getting into the country isn't the problem. What's tricky is that we don't know anything about the tech community in the Netherlands, and there's probably a lot more that we don't know we don't know.

I was hoping that the HN community could give us some pointers. What kind of jobs are out there? How do they pay? Where are they? Should we be looking in Amsterdam or Rotterdam or Den Haag, or perhaps somewhere else? What's the work situation like for IT people? Do people ever/often work from home? Is there anything else we should know?

I would like to know: Why the Netherlands? Any specific reasons?

I am sorry that I can not really give you any good pointers. I am German, all I can say that I consider my neighbours to be very friendly people.

Perhaps it is a good idea to contact xs4all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XS4ALL or perhaps send a mail to Rop (prominent hacker; seems to be a very nice guy) http://rop.gonggri.jp/

If it helps: from my experience most younger people do speak English.

No specific reason for the Netherlands, other than the easy availability of a working holiday visa.

I'd forgotten about XS4ALL, I'll take a look at them and see what they have to say.

I'm from the Netherlands and can recommend you to settle down in Amsterdam. There are a lot of tech startups/companies located there which have more interesting jobs than the local consultancy branches of big international corporations. If you can't find interesting jobs in Amsterdam there are various cities within a very reasonable distance such as Utrecht (25 min by train).

Some companies offer opportunities to work from home for 1 day a week.

Personally I'm a little bit jealous on the tech communities of other countries. They tend to have more interesting jobs and companies than over here. Search on crunchbase for some of the startups in Holland. Else you will most likely end up in some consultancy job or web design agency, which is fine, but it has to be your thing. For linux sys admins Amsterdam is also perfect since the majority of big hosting companies in Europe have servers in some datacenter in Amsterdam.

There are some ruby meetups around Amsterdam too as far as I'm aware, you might want to search for amsterdam-rb.

You should also look into the '30% tax ruling'

Basically the employer can reimburse the extra territorial costs of the employee tax free. To be able to do this the employee must hand over all the receipts and the employer must check and approve them. This can lead to a lot of work, especially if more employees are in a similar situation. To make it easier employer and employee can request the tax office (foreign tax office in Heerlen) to grant the 30% ruling to the employee for his activities for the employer. This way the employer can, once granted, pay out a tax free allowance of (roughly said) 30% of the salary of the employee. The 30% allowance will be included in the salary in such way that the costs for the employer will not be higher, while the employee has a higher net salary.

I'm in The Netherlands, and I recently checked for jobs: most are mid-career level in Java, C#/VB(6/.net) and PHP.

Work is concentrated around the cities Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Eindhoven. Most jobs I've seen currently are at small companies which may turn out a bit of a hassle since cultural differences can cause problems.

Telecommunications here provide a dense high-speed cable-network even in rural areas, but workfloor-traditions require lots of face-time.

Entrepeneurs are not keen on telecommuting by their employees. Large corporations are probably better organized so you can do work from home, but the coffee is usually free and commuting distances are rarely more than an hours drive (50km).

Wages for webdevelopment is between 2500 and 3500 euro per month for mid-career.

Look out for housing: it's extremely difficult to find a affordable and decent apartment - especially in the bigger cities. You could end up paying 1200 euro per month for a 3-room attic.

A friend of mine used to rent rooms to temp workers for a reasonable price. However, he is planning to move to Canada next year.

Check out unduchtables (http://www.undutchables.nl/) they have jobs for people like you, and they can probably help you with a lot of the other stuff. compared to Canada you'll find that housing is quite a bit smaller than you're used to. Especially if you want to live in or near the centre of any larger city. However, I would encourage you to compromise on space when searching for housing, rather than searching a large house in an unfortunate location. The city centres are a so much nicer place to live than the outskirts (in my opinion any way). Finally, cars are very expensive here, and trafic (especially rushhour trafic) is terrible. Being able to use public transport or a bicycle to get to work is a big (BIG!) plus, so try to look out for that when looking for work and a place to live.

Immigration policies have toughened up in recent years but coming from Canada it shouldn't be a problem.

Developers/administrators are needed in all major cities but I think Amsterdam would be your best bet. It's the most international city and certainly has to offer most culturally.

I don't know how Canadian taxes compare to those in Holland but in general taxes here are pretty high. You'll get quite a bit in return though.

I'll refer you to a recent article in the NY Times that details on the experiences of an US expat in Holland: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html...

Thanks for the link! Taxes in Canada aren't too unreasonable (sales taxes are at about 12%, income taxes in my tax bracket are about 25%).

If you come to the Netherlands, you will be qualified as highly-skilled migrants. In this case, you can't work where ever you want. There is a list of companies, institutions and organisations which have submitted a statement regarding the admission of highly skilled migrants. You can find it here: http://www.ind.nl/en/inbedrijf/wonenenwerken/kennismigranten...

I would recommend Utrecht as a city to live because of its central location. With in one hour you can commute to many major cities.

My understanding is that if we show up as working holiday participants, we can work wherever, but afterwards you can apply for a skilled migrant visa which is different.

And it's close enough to Antwerp, where you would go to the movies, because apparently there are no theatres in the Netherlands...

Interesting that you are having this idea... After reading an article that came through HN about the Netherlands a while back I had the same idea! Unfortunately I am a little tied down by friends and my girlfriend, but at some point it is still something I would like to do.

Where abouts in Canada are you? I'm in Toronto. Toronto HN meetup?

In Vancouver at the moment, not Toronto. I'd be tied down as well, but I'm bringing my best (guy) friend and my girlfriend with me. Makes it easier. ;)

My friend sometimes visits Holland for some projects. He manages development works here in İstanbul / Turkey and goes to Holland to deploy their solutions on the clients sites. He's mainly an expert on DB-systems and seems satisfied with that job because he keeps on doing it for years. I don't know anything more about Holland.

Last summer I did an internship in Den Haag with Streamtech. (http://www.streamtech.nl) I don't know much about the job situation, but it's a great place to live.

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