It is expensive to live there. If you're a programmer, you will live a far more comfortable life living and working in Poland than you would in Sweden, despite how much Swedes tend to look down their nose at the Polish.
I speak from experience.
If you're working a low/zero skill job, you would be far better off in Sweden, although the market is extremely competitive.
Sweden has a major problem with housing, so you can forget renting an apartment in a major city — you will spend roughly 18 years on a waiting list to be able to rent anything in the centre of Gothenburg. This isn't hyperbole.
Just about everyone speaks English. Some younger people actually speak English more correctly than a significant proportion of the English population in England. Unsurprisingly, learning Swedish language and culture helps you blend in. It's not a particularly difficult language anyway.
As someone who grew up in Sweden, allow me to push back pretty hard on some of this :)
"the cost of living in Sweden is, on average, 20.9% lower than in the United States, while renting is 57.5% lower"
Maybe in USD terms, but within the local context, and frankly compared to other European countries, Sweden is not cheap, in fact it's incredibly expensive, and any savings you eke out will not be worth much abroad
"Sweden is well known for its free healthcare"
The healthcare is public and universal but mediocre at best - unless you get optional private addons, you're extremely lucky to get any care at all, whether at the ER or waiting in line for elective surgeries etc etc
The higher education, gender equality, generous parental leave systems etc etc are undeniably great and well functioning, and there's no arguing with the life expectancy figures
But I don't understand how Sweden can score well in Politically Stable or Safe - it's neither of those things
Add in the extremely long, dark winters and not-that-great weather even in summer, a culture of social isolation and more and all in all while it has its ups it's far from the most liveable place in the world IMO
that said I love these studies because they're always food for thought - what are HackerNews most livable places in the world?
As a Swede who's been in the US for 5 years, what you say is true, but it's more nuanced than that. If you're poor, Sweden is so much better than the US, not even in the same league. As a software developer though, you'll earn roughly twice as much, enough to cover all the benefits of living in Sweden and probably quite a bit more. Engineers and technical people are not paid what they're worth in Sweden, I have no idea why.
But then again, you'll be wealthy in a hugely unequal society. The benefit of the Swedish system is that everybody gets those benefits and safety net, improving the society as a whole.
Here are a few other benefits of living in the US:
- THE place to be if you're in tech, there will never be an Apple or Google coming out of Sweden unfortunately
- More interesting career opportunities, you can do anything you want (if you're prepared to move around)
- Much more, better and affordable food
- Going out, eating, drinking, doing stuff in general doesn't break the bank
- You're not patronized in the same way (systembolaget, overbearing regulations etc, "we know what's best for you")
- Better weather (depending on where you are)
- A society much more friendly to immigrants (maybe counter intuitive). This is a big one. As a native Swede, you don't realize how much discrimination there is in Swedish society, even for highly educated professionals. People have to change their last name to something Swedish-sounding just to get an interview. In the US, nobody gives a shit where you're from, as long as you know what you're doing.
All in all though, I've decided to move back, for many of the reasons you listed, as well as a relatively sane political system, move vacation, parental leave and ease of travel. The biggest factor though is being closer to family and friends.
No, Sweden is my fourth country to live in but I haven't worked in another European country. It can be expensive to live here yes; despite my salary being decent-but-not-lavish I still feel comfortable affording whatever I need to live and "play". In addition to what I consider a decent salary, six paid weeks off (with extra pay for vacation days + public holidays), various company subsidized benefits, nice public infrastructure, healthcare, etc all go to help with that. I guess the other responder's standards may be different, but personally as a programmer my living here feels very comfortable.
Sweden has a pretty easy immigration path, is fairly friendly to immigrants, most natives speak English, and has a large tech community with not enough local talent.
I lived in Sweden for seven years, and this is so far from the truth it's hilarious.
Relative quality of life is garbage in Sweden for a tech worker. Your life will be not that much better than if you work in Carlings selling plaid shirts to hard-rock hipsters.
My Swedish friends have decent jobs and still live unglamorous, frugal lives. As soon as I left Sweden, my quality of life completely transformed for the better.
Language is something I would relish learning in the actual setting of Sweden. Having learned Japanese for three years in Japan, it was (and remains) a difficult thing to master and I suspect conversational Swedish would be simpler to pick up, at least. My short time spent in Sweden, the people I met were very happy just to hear my few halting phrases of their language, as are my Swedish friends here, in California. That's always encouraging.
About housing (and prices of things overall), yeah, I suppose things are reasonable relative to our respective hometowns. My impression was that local salaries were also lower, though. My recollection from a couple years ago was that front-end devs (my current employment, 6-ish YoE) were making around SEK 400k-500k/year, which is a good deal less than my current salary. Perhaps my view of tech salaries is highly skewed due to my location, though. Also, this conversation does revolve around remote work, so maybe a moot point.
Cultural life in Stockholm is rather quite good for a town of its size, and you have plenty of nature around you to compensate for not having quite as many bars as London.
Racism is sadly on the rise, but not as bad as in many other societies. Anecdotally I have immigrant friends and visitor friends, from backgrounds that would invite racism, who say that they feel less discriminated in Sweden than in other Euopean countries. No place is perfect though, you just have to select the drawbacks you want to put up with.
More importantly for Hacker News readers I consider that the startup and investment community to be fairly insular and limited in scope in Stockholm compared to other places I have worked, particular London, West/East coast US. But no surprises there, it is a lot smaller after all.
I'd only recommend moving to Sweden, if you have a family and want a stress free 37.5 hours job. Practically free, but very good healthcare and education for your kids, high pensions and unemployment benefits.
But on average you'll have to live in a lot smaller house/apartment, make less money after taxes, suffer the cold climate (unless you love winter sports). The startup scene is 1/1000th of the Valley.
I, as an American, decided to move to Sweden for all of the reasons GP posted, and despite your list of supposed downsides. A few observations after six months here:
* The Swedish summer more than makes up for the dark winter. Not that much colder than Chicago either.
* Taxes are high, but the benefits you get from the taxes are astounding, especially from an American perspective. Great roads, clean cities, amazing public transit, free healthcare, etc.
* Six weeks of vacation, over a year of maternity leave, etc. Enough said.
* Yes, the rental market in Stockholm sucks.
Honestly, Sweden is truly a democratic model that other countries should try following. I'm very happy with my decision to move here and wish I had discovered it sooner.
Better wages sums up most of what I've heard from people living in Sweden. They must be staying in Sweden rather than moving to Norway for a good reason though.
My anecdata says otherwise. I still work for a Swedish company and visit frequently. I still know many tech workers who's lives are miserable, quite frankly.
If you go to live and work in Sweden, where will you actually stay? You can't rent an apartment — the waiting list is around 16 years for a decent apartment in the city. It's even several years wait to rent an apartment in the ghetto.
How did your colleagues find apartments? If they didn't buy places or have apartments provided through their employer, I'm guessing they're sub-letting through Blocket.
Native Swede here, I agree. Sweden is quite easy to get into if you are on the shortage occupation list, which you are.
Once in Sweden you will either fall in love with the on the surface reserved people, or if you don't, work 5 years, apply for citizenship, then be a Swedish citizen (best passport in the world for traveling along with U.K. passport) and automatically a E.U. citizen, which means you can work anywhere in the E.U. without any limits at all. As a E.U. citizen and especially Swedish citizen it can be easier to get into the U.S. and Canada, I hear anecdotally. There are also sizable communities of almost all war affected ethnicities in Sweden you can socialize with. Stockholm is the most international city, you can live there a life time on English alone and not feel left out too much. Everywhere also you can still live on English alone, but the social life with locals will suffer if you don't learn Swedish, IMHO. All Swedes know English, but you will miss out on little chats etc. Also minorities often communicate more in Swedish than their native tongue, especially children of immigrants, so paradoxically to connect with your own kin, you also need to learn Swedish. Integration issues varies from place to place, there are some problems with racism especially towards people of color, but far from as much as in Germany. Also the racism is kind of specific and weird, if you are black but from the U.S. you are still almost celebrated by the Swedish locals.
TL/DR: Sweden is awesome. Easy to come in, if you love it, you will love it a lot. If you don't, become citizen then move on to the rest of the E.U.
Partner would have been happy to stay with me in the UK but I was blown away by the beauty of Scandinavia when I visited, and am so glad she relented.
Average quality of life in the nordics is massively better than the uk. It’s not even close!
Wages are lower in absolute terms but not qualitatively and we probably couldn’t afford to move back to the uk and have any semblance of same standard of living. We are now trapped in a utopia and happy about it.
More than half of programmers here are immigrants. Shop staff happily talk good English. There really isn’t any barriers finding good work.
There's every chance I have a better personal cultural fit with the Swedes, but that's very much a personal thing. In my experience English is more widely spoken in Sweden than in Spain, which also makes it easier for me. I think the economy in Sweden is stronger.
Post-2015 Sweden is quite difficult to immigrate to if you aren't doing it via a skilled employment visa. The requirements, along with the amount of time it takes to get simple things working properly (like a social security number and a bank account) once you do get here are cumbersome. Plus housing is an issue, you will find that it is quite a struggle to get a permanent rental contract in the major cities like Stockholm and Malmö. The language is also quite difficult for us English speakers to learn because everyone loves to practice their English with you so even when you attempt to speak Swedish they recognise you are an English speaker and change languages.
Despite its complex challenges, Sweden is in a better position on housing than many other EU countries.
Only around 8% of Swedes live in households spending more than 40% of disposable income on housing, compared to 15% in the UK and almost 40% in Greece, according Eurostat data.
Swedes are also less likely to live with their parents than any other young Europeans.
But until recently, getting a well-maintained, rent-controlled apartment straight after school is something some Swedes have just taken "for granted", argues Liza, a 37-year-old tech worker, who didn't want to share her last name.
She moved to London from Stockholm last year, and believes Swedes complaining about housing shortages would do well to put their struggles in a wider context.
"In the UK, apartments are often super old and not of good standard, even though the rent would be much more than in Sweden."
I used to live in Sweden (I'm American). Sweden is supposedly one of the most immigrant-friendly nations in Europe and even they are getting worn down by the non-integrated immigrant population (1 million out of 9 million total population). Swedes speak English exceptionally well which is the only foreign language most foreigners know (no one comes in knowing Swedish). The extra layer of language barrier is an issue (for Swedes and immigrants).
For a highly trained (grad school+) immigrant, being limited to one small nation was a big limitation (this was before the common EU passport).
As far as preparation for world business, I can't see why any Chinese student would want to learn anything but English.
No idea how immigration status changes post-graduation. Universities were free (or if you prefer, included in everyone's taxes).
I speak from experience.
If you're working a low/zero skill job, you would be far better off in Sweden, although the market is extremely competitive.
Sweden has a major problem with housing, so you can forget renting an apartment in a major city — you will spend roughly 18 years on a waiting list to be able to rent anything in the centre of Gothenburg. This isn't hyperbole.
Just about everyone speaks English. Some younger people actually speak English more correctly than a significant proportion of the English population in England. Unsurprisingly, learning Swedish language and culture helps you blend in. It's not a particularly difficult language anyway.
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