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There are too many places in Europe (e.g. Dublin, Prague, Warsaw, smaller cities with job market dominated by one company/industry) where local branches of glob

There are too many places in Europe (e.g. Dublin, Prague, Warsaw, smaller cities with job market dominated by one company/industry) where local branches of global companies are the only viable places to work in.

mattmanser 9y ago
My local home town (20,000) had several small software vendors 15 years ago, so not buying you on that one. I also then lived 30-45 minutes from a large town (might be called city in the US, 200,000+) which had tons of them. I now live in a city smaller than the ones you list, Nottingham, and work with 3 different local companies as clients, 2 of them are 5 minutes walk from me. And I haven't tried to get a new client for like 2 years. Our job market is "dominated" by global companies like Capital One and Equifax, but I personally know of a bunch of local software companies crying out for devs, who ask me every time I meet them at a meetup if I know anyone. There are also tons of digital agencies these days in every locality, which employ lots of programmers. On top of that, a lot of businesses now need software internally, whether these are shitty positions is entirely dependant on how good the company is. A quick SO jobs search shows that Dublin has plenty of non global company jobs going. https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Dublin&d=20&u=Miles https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Dublin&d=20&u=Miles Within 10 seconds I find 2 Dublin founded companies looking for software devs in the last 2 weeks: Datahug - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/144383/start-building-a-social-graph-product-datahug?so=i&pg=1&offset=5&l=Dublin&u=Miles&d=20 https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/144383/start-building-a-socia... EmydexLtd - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/emydex-technology-ltd https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/emydex-technology-l... 2 Dublin companies are on this month's who is hiring: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819 Have you considered that it could be that you're not great at job hunting and networking?
- expertentipp 9y ago
  > Have you considered that it could be that you're not great at job hunting Among the few places I haven't yet applied to are Russian intelligence agency and South Pole Station. > and networking? Beat me to it. The best I'm able to do in this domain is arguing with strangers on the internet.
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    Honestly, it's just turning up to dev meetups for a year. A lot of local CEOs or CTOs will go to the meetups to try and meet new devs, as well as you meet a bunch of other devs and they'll never be resentful if you ask if there are any jobs going. Lots of companies do internal referral bonuses of a few hundred £/$/€ if an existing employee refers someone, so they're often keen to refer you! I actually got my first client at the first meetup I ever attended with virtually the first words I said to anyone. I sat down next to someone and the conversation went, "Hi, I'm Matt, I'm a C# dev looking to start freelancing", "Oh, hi, I'm Jon, we need a C# freelancer". Like I could list 5 local companies right now I know of off the top of my head that are always looking for devs and I personally haven't even been to a networking event for like 2 years. I've had some great nights too, some long interesting chats. One that always sticks in my mind is someone who'd just setup his own ML cluster on AWS and him telling me all about Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, which had just come out (wow, 4 years already). Or sometimes just having fun and a few drinks.

mattmanser 9y ago

My local home town (20,000) had several small software vendors 15 years ago, so not buying you on that one. I also then lived 30-45 minutes from a large town (might be called city in the US, 200,000+) which had tons of them. I now live in a city smaller than the ones you list, Nottingham, and work with 3 different local companies as clients, 2 of them are 5 minutes walk from me. And I haven't tried to get a new client for like 2 years. Our job market is "dominated" by global companies like Capital One and Equifax, but I personally know of a bunch of local software companies crying out for devs, who ask me every time I meet them at a meetup if I know anyone. There are also tons of digital agencies these days in every locality, which employ lots of programmers. On top of that, a lot of businesses now need software internally, whether these are shitty positions is entirely dependant on how good the company is. A quick SO jobs search shows that Dublin has plenty of non global company jobs going. https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Dublin&d=20&u=Miles https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&l=Dublin&d=20&u=Miles Within 10 seconds I find 2 Dublin founded companies looking for software devs in the last 2 weeks: Datahug - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/144383/start-building-a-social-graph-product-datahug?so=i&pg=1&offset=5&l=Dublin&u=Miles&d=20 https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/144383/start-building-a-socia... EmydexLtd - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/emydex-technology-ltd https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/emydex-technology-l... 2 Dublin companies are on this month's who is hiring: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819 Have you considered that it could be that you're not great at job hunting and networking?

expertentipp 9y ago
> Have you considered that it could be that you're not great at job hunting Among the few places I haven't yet applied to are Russian intelligence agency and South Pole Station. > and networking? Beat me to it. The best I'm able to do in this domain is arguing with strangers on the internet.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  Honestly, it's just turning up to dev meetups for a year. A lot of local CEOs or CTOs will go to the meetups to try and meet new devs, as well as you meet a bunch of other devs and they'll never be resentful if you ask if there are any jobs going. Lots of companies do internal referral bonuses of a few hundred £/$/€ if an existing employee refers someone, so they're often keen to refer you! I actually got my first client at the first meetup I ever attended with virtually the first words I said to anyone. I sat down next to someone and the conversation went, "Hi, I'm Matt, I'm a C# dev looking to start freelancing", "Oh, hi, I'm Jon, we need a C# freelancer". Like I could list 5 local companies right now I know of off the top of my head that are always looking for devs and I personally haven't even been to a networking event for like 2 years. I've had some great nights too, some long interesting chats. One that always sticks in my mind is someone who'd just setup his own ML cluster on AWS and him telling me all about Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, which had just come out (wow, 4 years already). Or sometimes just having fun and a few drinks.