15 ms·
Depending on your ability to work remotely, I would make the "case" that you should consider Portugal. Lisbon and Porto are super popular with ["digital nomad"
by nelsonic 8y ago
Depending on your ability to work remotely, I would make the "case" that you should consider Portugal.
Lisbon and Porto are super popular with ["digital nomad"] remote workers who work for international companies so earn in USD but spend [much less] in Euros for a superb lifestyle.
There's a reason @paddycosgrave moved Web Summit to Lisbon.
It's one of the cheapest cities in Europe and [unlike Barcelona] everyone speaks English. There is a good "tech scene" and a fantastic work-life-balance; surf, great food & warm/welcoming people.
A few things to consider that many people over-look:
+ Socio-Economic and Political stability.
+ General safety/security and crime levels.
+ Sanitation and healthcare availability/cost.
+ Availability/cost of healthy [organic/unprocessed] food.
+ Lifestyle to actually live in the place: is it "cheap" but a nightmare to live there?
+ Contract-law for short-term apartment/room rentals.
Portugal will exceed your expectations on all of these.
Portugal is very welcoming to US citizens, you won't have any "visa issues" the way you will in many of the [superficially] "cheaper" Asian countries.
If you want your budget to stretch much further, consider Braga. The cost of living is less than a third of SF, internet is fast and you get most of the benefits of Porto & Lisbon (or can reach those cities with a short train journey).
Note: I am [slightly] "biased", my Wife and I have recently "escaped" from London [after working there in tech for 10 years] and we are busy setting up a Co-living/Co-working House in Braga: https://github.com/dwyl/home https://github.com/dwyl/home
We will be opening at the end of this month and our target cost per month [1Gbps Internet, all bills, cleaning & gym included] is $300 (USD).
We chose Braga because it has all the "ingredients" for an awesome place for tech/creative people to escape the bigger cities and focus on their work while still having access to all the amenities great healthcare, superb organic/vegan food and good libraries/meetups/etc.
- arountheworld 8y agoI think there is something missing in your story. My Portuguese friends who fled Portugal to London paint different picture of their lovely country. Maybe there are different rules to foreigners there?
- fimdomeio 8y agoProblem being that they are portuguese. Things look a lot better if you're foreigner, keep work connections to the outside can avoid the new crazy renting laws that make it easier to put people out. For a lot of locals living in the big cities gentrification context is pretty much 2008 crysis part II.
- rolleiflex 8y agoThis is awesome. I live in SF, and have a base in Istanbul, which is from what I heard, similar to Lisbon in many aspects — but I would be hesitant to recommend it without at least a willingness to learn Turkish. There are some digital nomads here in HN based in Istanbul, though. Nevertheless - my point was, you’re living my dream and I’ll definitely give a visit when my life allows for a Portugal trip. Never been yet.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- isostatic 8y agoIstanbul (and all of Turkey, obv.) is run by a dictator who tortures detainees, and arbitarilly arrests journalists and human rights workers https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia/turkey/report-turkey/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia...
- cies 8y agoIt's okay to mention this, but not fair to omit comparison with the US while the two were originally compared. The scale may be different, but the situation in the US is not to good either on these topics, and has been deteriorating lately.
- jjeaff 8y agoI'm not aware of any journalists or political opponents being arrested or tortured in the US.
- BurnGpuBurn 8y agoJust leaving this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)#...
- 8y ago
- brianmcc 8y agoThanks for this - been to Portugal a few times on holiday and love it, seems a perfect place too from which to work remotely given decent internet speeds etc. Not familiar with the towns and cities so good to have Braga now as somewhere to look at!
- galfarragem 8y agoI understand skipping Porto and specially Lisbon as prices literally skyrocketed in last years. I also understand that Braga is maybe the cheapest relevant city in Portugal, but despite that I would pick Coimbra for the intellectual vibe.
- nelsonic 8y agoAgreed, Lisbon and Porto have become more expensive in the last couple of years but still way more affordable than SF/NY etc. [Sadly] while AirBnB has made it easier for "tourists" to visit the cities it has accelerated the [ridiculous] house-price inflation, especially in short-term apartment/room rentals often pricing "locals" out of the market completely. Coimbra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coimbra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coimbra is a lovely city. It was second on our list precisely for the "intellectual vibe" (as you say). What "swayed" our decision toward Braga was: + Much Closer to the Porto international airport via Bus, Train or Uber/Taxi. So getting to London/Paris/Frankfurt/etc. is a lot easier. + More existing companies both tech and traditional e.g: Bosch & Primavera. So the MeetUps are more "practical". + Lower latency and generally faster Internet. Our plan in Braga is to "recover" abandoned buildings (which are currently empty/unused) and renovate them into amazing places to live & work for "location independent creative/technology professionals". We are morally against Landlords/investors who are simply buying up the stock of available "rental" property and jacking up the prices so locals can no longer afford them.
- andrepd 8y ago> Much Closer to the Porto international airport via Bus, Train or Uber/Taxi. It's 50mins train and 15mins uber, from Coimbra to OPO.
- nelsonic 8y agoYes, the train from Coimbra to OPO is a good option. But having to use two forms of transport when there is a "Get Bus" (direct airport bus) between Braga and OPO for €8 which is basically door-to-door for us. For reference, the car journey time at the 120kph highway speed limit between OPO and Coimbra is 125 mins see: https://goo.gl/maps/xosQureNf3x https://goo.gl/maps/xosQureNf3x By comparison the journey time (by car) between Braga and OPO is 39 mins i.e. less than half. see: https://goo.gl/maps/bN8GFy2UJoq https://goo.gl/maps/bN8GFy2UJoq Trust me, we have done our homework on this. This was a major deciding factor. We still have a company in London and we need to go there frequently for in-person client meetings. Otherwise Coimbra would have been a no-brainer. Our "sister company" has just opened a Student Residence in Coimbra: https://www.studentville.pt/en/cidades/coimbra https://www.studentville.pt/en/cidades/coimbra We would have benefitted hugely from being there. Much love to our Coimbra friends! :-)
- ur-whale 8y agoHow is the income tax situation in Portugal?
- galfarragem 8y agoPortuguese IRS: https://github.com/galfarragem/learning-notes/blob/master/notes-portuguese%20tax%20system.md#irs-imposto-sobre-o-rendimento-das-pessoas-singulares https://github.com/galfarragem/learning-notes/blob/master/no...
- ur-whale 8y agoSo basically, if you make more thank 50k euros per year, you start working for your own benefit around mid-june. Yeah ... pass.
- eclat 8y agoYup.
- andrepd 8y agoYes. Unless you live alone in the woods drawing no benefit from the democratic, rule of law, first-world country you live in, paga e não bufes, which translates roughly to "cough up".
- ur-whale 8y agoThere are democratic, rule of law, first world countries that work way better than Portugal in pretty mcuh all areas you care to look at and where the top income tax bracket is less than 30%. This is not about paying taxes, it's when those taxes are essentially wasted by the giant administrative leeches that runs countries like Portugal.
- andrepd 8y agoIf you're saying that mismanagement and corruption are issues, then yes, of course you're right. But then again, remind me how much is the top bracket in Belgium? Austria? Germany? Denmark? Sweden? Much better run countries (in superficial evaluation at least), yet all have 50%+ tax rates at the top.
- fireattack 8y agoWhy did you italicize so many words?
- pandemic_region 8y agoItalian heritage.
- nelsonic 8y agoexactly! but seriously, it's just a [bad] habit ... thanks for pointing it out. hope it did not detract from my message.
- ledneb 8y agoYou wrote a great response! Assuming you genuinely want feedback on it; your writing style does detract a bit from what you're saying - the emphasis and braces don't read like native English. My advice is try not to use quotes, italics and braces at all - go cold turkey! Then you'll probably find yourself using them when you actually _need_ them. :)
- bookofjoe 8y agoA bit OT: "Using an exclamation point only serves to call attention to the writer."—Miss Steiger, 10th grade English, Washington H.S., Milwaukee, 1964
- elyobo 8y agoI find it hard to read, because I find myself mentally pausing and stressing those words in my head and there are a lot of them! Also the square brackets and the quotes around words that don't seem to warrant them - I'm not sure what you mean by them and so I'm not certain whether I'm getting the same message that you're intending to convey. If I can just ignore them it seems to read better but it's hard work to do so, but maybe that's just me :)
- e4325f 8y ago
- eloycoto 8y agoHi, I'm living a bit north, Galicia, and I still think that Braga is one of the most undervalued cities in Portugal, it's kinda cute, warn, has a lovely downtown. You made an awesome decision. :-)
- isostatic 8y agoPresumably (as a non EU citizen) one would need a self-employed visa and residence permit. It's easy (currently) for those of us in the UK, but from April, or for people from outside the UK, countries just haven't really caught up to the remote working situation.
- pcardoso 8y agoI came to the discussion to see if Portugal was mentioned, and was pleasantly surprised to see it as the top-ranked comment. I will just add my suggestion of a another city to the mix: Aveiro. Small yet not too small, cheap, a short hop from Porto, 2hrs away from Lisbon, with trains and good highways, a very tech oriented university, excellent food, close by the sea and a huge lagoon good for all kinds of watersports. I work for an US based company from here, and I used to live in Lisbon for 10+ years. Love Lisbon, but my quality of life here in Aveiro is so much better.
- Matheo05 8y agoYou'd still choose Lisbon over Paris right? ;-)
- santialbo 8y ago> and [unlike Barcelona] everyone speaks English Do you have any stats proving that? Just asked a portuguese friend living in Barcelona and said that is a quite bold statement.
- sanedigital 8y agoI'd second this. Almost everyone in professional circles speaks English in Barcelona. I would say on average Portugal has much better English penetration than Spain, but Barcelona is definitely an exception.
- jonathanstrange 8y ago> I would say on average Portugal has much better English penetration than the rest of Spain I'm sure it's just a slip of tongue but never ever say things like that in Portugal...
- severine 8y agoYeah, Portugal isn't part of Spain.
- nailer 8y agoWeird historical fact: they shared a king for a little while a few hundred years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_Union
- katzenjam 8y agoI think the GP intended "the rest of Spain" to mean "Spain excluding Barcelona", rather than "Spain excluding Portugal". But I read it as "Spain excluding Portugal" the first time too.
- bogomipz 8y agoI think you need to read both sentences together. I believe the OP is just excluding Barcelona from the comparison of English speaking between the two countries.
- jonathanstrange 8y agoI live in Lisbon and work as a foreigner at one of Lisbon's universities and can confirm that the living quality in Lisbon is absolutely top. It's a fantastic city. And our bridge is similar to yours - looks smaller but is longer! Caveats: - If you intend to work within Academia, you may occasionally have to deal with fairly incompetent professors. It depends on the research unit and area, but there tends to be a certain amount of people who got full tenure in the past by connections and self-publications only. Needless to say that there are also some very good people. For example, at our institute about 50% are foreigners with excellent publications in English. - Rents have skyrocketed during the past years in all beautiful areas of Lisbon. It's still not even comparable to SF, of course, but you need to calculate around 800 for a decent 2 room apartment. Housing prices have also gone up, but if you have the money it would be a safe investment - they'll continue to rise for quite a while. (Is there any major capital where they don't rise?) - Social hierarchies and "respect" (in the sense of brown-nosing) are generally more important than in the north of Europe. Portuguese are very friendly towards foreigners, but they can be rather unfriendly among themselves. It's a kind of social pressure and artificial politeness/respect that can be very unappealing in the long run. You can never say straightforward to your boss what you think, no matter how right you are. Critique always needs to be very indirect. I cannot say anything about the startup scene, because I'm not familiar with it. I suppose it's generally harder to obtain VC funding or bank credits than in the US. Starting a company is very easy, though, for a small company it suffices to hire a freelance account. IRS is also outstanding and can be done online within 5 minutes. The only downside is that as a foreigner you don't get a citizen card, which means that you have to go to local authorities in person instead of doing it online, too. Traditionally, Lisboagas (for natural gas delivery) and the Social Security authority suck, every other authority or company I've dealt with in the past 10 years was super-friendly and professional. Overall, I can totally recommend Lisbon for anyone who wants high quality of living combined with low costs of living. I have no plans of ever moving away again and instead plan to open my own little software company in case my postdoc funding ever dries out - so far it's still going well in Academia though.
- scrollaway 8y ago> Is there any major capital where they don't rise? Athens. I need to leave that country for my own sanity and I'm currently on the lookout for a new one to move to. All this talk about portugal is very tempting :)
- C1sc0cat 8y agoNot sure you will get sv salary in dollars working in Portugal :-) having said that I got pitched a 100K (euros) Job in Portugal a couple of months ago so it looks like tech skills are in short supply
- spdionis 8y agoThe GP is talking about remote work.
- C1sc0cat 8y agoI did realise that the GP wanted to have their cake and eat it -but why would anyone pay full SV rates for a contractor in a different country. If they are cool with remote working why not hire much cheaper remote workers at eastern European rates.
- Namari 8y agoClearly, they're really efficient, especially Poland.
- bogomipz 8y ago>"Portugal is very welcoming to US citizens, you won't have any "visa issues" the way you will in many of the [superficially] "cheaper" Asian countries." Can you elaborate on this? Wouldn't a U.S citizen still be limited to only 90 days in the Shengen zone every 180 days? Or is there some type of freelance visa?
- epynonymous 8y ago+1 for portugal, i was actually in lisbon for a few days this summer, first time, i really liked what i saw, was more on vacation than for work, but definitely had a few escalations that forced me to get on the internet and everything was fast. people are friendly, costs relatively low, i stayed in 2 different parts, but near my hotel there was a large huawei office (not that i'd ever consider working there), but it tells you that some big, multi-national companies are there. i also heard that if you buy a 600k usd house in portugal, you could register for eu citizenship, please someone confirm.
- rdfi 8y agoI think what you are referring to is the golden visa program (or Resident Permit for Investment program): https://www.expatica.com/pt/visas-and-permits/golden-visa-portugal_1042263.html https://www.expatica.com/pt/visas-and-permits/golden-visa-po...
- Namari 8y agoFrom what I heard from Portuguese people, it's 500k investment and you can get the visa.
- edsonmedina 8y ago500k EUR (roughly 575k USD)
- Namari 8y agoYes I meant Euros ;)
- madeofpalk 8y ago> There's a reason @paddycosgrave moved Web Summit to Lisbon. Because the tax payers are paying €110m for it? http://www.thejournal.ie/lisbon-web-summit-new-ten-year-deal-4265941-Oct2018/ http://www.thejournal.ie/lisbon-web-summit-new-ten-year-deal...
- alvar0 8y agoExactly, the same reason some hyperloop stuff is probably going to get done in southern Spain. Europe is only good for short vacations and subsidies. Except maybe London. If they finally escape from the EUSSR
- sverhagen 8y agoAdd the US to that list. Amazon HQ2 is a race to the bottom; I'm sure there's other criteria, but at some level that's also just squeezing the most benefits out of the contending cities or regions. And that's just a high profile example.
- point78 8y agoLmao. Spoken as someone who doesn't understand healthcare, education or basic social services. Eu dominates the US for quality of life and standard of living.
- rataata_jr 8y agoNot for long
- agentdax5 8y agoCare to elaborate? I would love to see some real plans to change my mindset on where the U.S. is heading. This is probably considered off, so message me
- dnautics 8y agoAt some point the bureaucratocracy is going to get top heavy. Already the economy is showing signs of being anemic. Common strategy by bureaucrats for curing anemia is top-down investment, which means stealing from the poor (via inflation) to water the privileged. It's inevitable.
- adamcharnock 8y agoGlad to see this as the first comment I read. Im currently sat in Portugal on 4ha of land I have brought over near Fundão. It is more out of the way, but still has excellent access to cities. Plus it is absolutely beautiful. I’m a freelance software developer and can happily work out here even on a plot of land which has no power/net connection. The 3G/4G is great, and everything easily runs of a single solar panel. This isn’t my long term plan, but does me well when I come out here for a few weeks at a time. Long term there’ll be a house etc. If there was a coworking space in Covilha / Castelo Branco I’d be very keen. Otherwise I may start a little coders retreat or some such :-)
- andai 8y agoIf no house, what is your solar panel currently attached to? That sounds like an interesting setup.
- adamcharnock 8y agoSimply propped up facing the sun. Sat on the ground. Super simple, but rather effective.
- stevejb 8y agoNot OP, but I have done work with literally a camping solar panel charging a 12V battery and a car power -> laptop power adapter. The setup cost me approximately $1000 AUD. I use the solar power for other things as well.
- nik736 8y agoWhere's the blog post? :-)
- adamcharnock 8y agoSince you ask: https://blog.adamcharnock.com https://blog.adamcharnock.com But this reminds me I haven’t posted for ages!
- nunoferreira 8y agoAs a born and raised in Braga I can confirm all of this. Also Braga as a background in IT sector for a few decades now. Mainly because of University of Minho.
- hycaria 8y agoI'm not really confident about the quality of the cultural life in Portugal (let alone Braga). Do musicians tour there ? What about the classical music offer (a good marker in my opinion of intense cultural places) ? How many art museums, do they host touring exhibitons ? Also education is not very convincing (considering op might want a family). Universities in Portugal are not that great nor renowned. Many qualified young people go work abroad by lack of local opportunities. I've also heard that healthcare is messy if you can't pay. It doesn't sound like a healthy country to me. I guess Portugal is good enough if you just want sun, decent food, cheap QoL and good internet, but I wouldn't consider it a thriving intellectual place by any means. But maybe in OP's words, good intellect = finding a sufficient concentration of other engineers. Then it might be enough.
- galfarragem 8y ago> Universities in Portugal are not that great nor renowned. I disagree. Universities are not the problem. General school is. As a rule of thumb, public universities are better than private ones and the opposite on general school.
- hycaria 8y agoAt least in my domain (veterinary, idk about medicine but if the same, that's frightening), they have seemingly no selection and numerous universities are offering the degree (even much more than smaller countries). So their degree is shit (no time for practice, only theoretical and you'll learn more once in the job), there are too many of them anyways and they can't find jobs. Also can't think of any portugese scientist, or portugese based lab renowned for anything in biology or computer science.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cuspycode 8y ago> Also can't think of any portugese scientist, or portugese based lab renowned for anything in biology or computer science. Fernando Pereira comes to mind: he made significant contributions to the early development of logic programming (e.g. C-Prolog) and natural language processing, as well as other AI research.
- garyclarke27 8y agoYes Portugal is a good choice now, I moved here 1 year ago from UK because of various factors, Brexit, tax, quality of life etc also because I believe it will be a great location to recruit IT talent to. I live in Cascais which is a bit expensive, (still much cheaper than San Francisco of course) but has wonderful quality of life for family, Capital city amenities next to beach. Great infrastructure, motorways, ultra fast cheap fibre to home, good IB school for kids, quality cheap fresh food, esp fish and veg. Retail items are expensive, high VAT, no Amazon (yet rumers will come soon) Services cheap, private medical cover including dental, for family of 4 unbelievably cheap, less than 200 Euro pm, i paid nearly that much for just dental in UK, the free public healthcare and schools are also apparently good. Property prices going up v fast, many Brazilians moving here to avoid crime and Scandinavians to avoid Tax. Dividends are Tax free from the UK for 10 years, 20% on local income. EU passport if you spend 500k on property - 1 or more units, inc home or investment - is booming as a result - they collect lots of VAT so is good strategy for Portugal considering it was like Greece 4 years ago. 1 downside is insane price of large or fast cars, so lots of dangerous small old cars, also they are totally inept drivers for some strange reason, you see accidents nearly every journey, feels 100 times more often than UK, though stats show only 10 times worse, similar to US apparently - apart from that feels like a very safe country, locals are v friendly and welcoming and most speak English. Oh and I forgot to mention nearly 300 days sunshine pa vs 120 in Wales is so nice, hard to feel down in Estoril with Azure sky and ocean, sea is a bit chilly but stops it getting to hot.
- markdown 8y ago> no Amazon Really? I live in a developing country middle of the Pacific Ocean and I regularly buy from Amazon with no issues. How come Portugal doesn't have Amazon?
- asmosoinio 8y agoI think that has to mean no Amazon Prime or similar? I buy things from Amazon.de to Finland very often - often no extra cost for shipping and good prices. Also EUR prices without extra taxes for me. So while Finland does not have "Amazon" (amazon.fi is a redirect to amazon.de) - I can still buy things from there very easily.
- mhjas 8y agoI have had my eye on Portugal for a number of years, but there are a few things that seem less than ideal. * Cost of living for a good quality of life still being relatively high or rising, especially in Lisbon and other tourist/expat areas. And a second tier city in Portugal is much less of a clear choice since that is comparable to a lot more places. * The tax system being very complicated. One can always argue about how much tax to pay, but few people want a complicated tax system, especially not as a foreigner. (And is usually an indication that other systems are complicated as well). * The tech scene not really happening. Despite the usual "next Silicon Valley" it doesn't really stand out from anywhere else as far as I can tell. There might certainly be things I don't see, but at least initially it doesn't seem like Portugal rise above the competition to the extent that you wouldn't have to consider quite a few other options.
- nik736 8y agoI agree with you regarding the cost of living but the tax system is similar to a lot of other countries within the EU.
- newintellectual 8y agoWhile earthquakes are a worldwide risk, not all risks are equal. Anyone pondering living in Lisbon should become familiar with the history of the city and the seismic events which affected it - i.e., that the city was pretty much totally annihilated in 1755 by a large quake and tsunami. That threat is still there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
- pteraspidomorph 8y agoPortugal has a complicated tax system? I always thought it was fairly simple compared to how certain foreigners describe theirs.
- arijo 8y agoThe tech scene in Lisbon and Porto IS happening - just take a look at companies like Farfetch, Outsystems, Talkdesk, Feedzai, Unbabel and many other smaller startups w/their HQ based in Portugal. I myself work at a Porto based startup (Bottlebooks) w/American and Slovak founders. Portugal has everything going for it to be the California of Europe - highly educated (and english speaking) youth and a will to conquer the world. We welcome any foreigner willing to work hard and contribute to a creating a great place to live :)
- fgheorghe 8y agoThat's interesting, as the USD is cheaper than a EUR and generally speaking life is more expensive in Europe than in the US. Would be curious if there are stats on how much a remote worker gets in USD in Portugal.
- balladeer 8y ago> Portugal is very welcoming to US citizens What about people from other part of the world? Asking since you live there. Any resource you would recommend to have a general idea?
- nelsonic 8y agoGood question! I'm simply highlighting the fact that US citizens are welcome in PT because there's always been a "special relationship" between the two countries for various historical reasons. Portugal is one of the most welcoming countries to people of all nations. You will never be unwelcome here regardless of where you are from. There are communities of people from the Middle East, Nordics, Indian Sub-continent, China, Africa (South America, obvs) and if you go out to the "trendy" parts of town and listen to the range/variety of accents it's every bit as "cosmopolitan" as London's Shoreditch/Soho! Just book a trip and see for yourself! ;-)
- _kwmj 8y agoThank you :-) > Just book a trip and see for yourself! ;-) Yeah, it's been pending since college. My Euro Trip. Now I can't even blame affordability :)
- niccolop 8y agoYou could say all of this and more of a number of Spanish cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, and Seville. International cities, thriving technology hubs, connected airports, visa issues really are not a big issue. We have a completely international team based in our Spain office.
- CalRobert 8y ago"@paddycosgrave moved Web Summit to Lisbon" The wanton incompetence of the RDS and Dublin's general inability to get anything done, not to mention mediocre transit and eye-wateringly expensive accommodation?
- jayalpha 8y agoI wanted to buy an apartment in Lisbon (I speak Portuguese). Forget it. You don't get anything decent below 500k (speak Golden Visa Program). Big chunk of change for a comparably poor country. "visa issues"? Portgual is Schengen. You need a residence visa if you want to live there. Possibly but far from trivial. On the other hand, if you want to buy real estate anyway and can cough up 500k you can go the golden visa route. You may be too late for Lisbon. Also, Overtourism becomes a problem. Braga sounds interesting. Had not time to go there. Wanted to check out rafting. Also, summers may be milder.
- edsonmedina 8y agoYou can also get a Golden Visa if you buy property in an urban rehabilitation area (or any property with more than 30 years) for 350k. If you don't need a golden visa, you can buy a very decent flat in the outskirts (within 30 mins - 1 hour commute) for less than half of that.
- jayalpha 8y agoGolden Visa is irrelevant for me. Trust me, I checked the prices in Lisbon for some time. What do you consider "outskirts" of Lisbon? Sentubal?
- baby 8y agoI can't agree more. I worked in both Chicago and London; Portugal (perhaps Lisbon) seemed like the kind of place I would go to do remote work from if I were to move in Europe.
- elhudy 8y ago>and [unlike Barcelona] everyone speaks English. I was only in Lisbon for 4 days (loved it!), but did run into some off-hand issues with language barriers. Cab/uber drivers in particular seemed to know little to zero English. With that being said, once we got a rental car I greatly appreciated the cutthroat driving style of the Portuguese - damn they are good drivers.
- kpennell 8y agoHow hard is it get a remote working visa or something similar to Germany's freelancer visa?
- PascLeRasc 8y agoWhat do you think of the bicycling culture in Braga/Lisbon/Portugal in general? Are there a lot of protected lanes, do you feel like bikers are respected on the roads, etc.
- eclat 8y agoYeah, as a Portuguese person living in Lisbon and having worked in the tech scene here, I can say avoid Portugal if you're looking for a SV type scene. The level of anything going on around here is far lower. Sure the weather is the best I've ever experienced on earth, the food is great, and the cost of living is low. But on the other hand you have an ecosystem that is nothing to write home about, culturally it's good but not great like London or NYC, academia is lackluster (no world-class universities in any subject, bar 1 MBA), not very international, not a whole lot going on in general. Portugal is a great place to come on holiday, go surfing, go sailing, and retire. It's not an intellectually stimulating place, and the general level of competence in everything from local government to enterprise management is extremely frustrating. I would say to OP that usually if a place is interesting, it won't be cheap as there is more demand for it. Maybe look at Oxford, UK, Bristol, UK, Edinburgh, UK, or Rotterdam, NL as secondary cities with still enough going on. Apparently Bordeaux is nice but I have never been so can't say.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago>I would say to OP that usually if a place is interesting, it won't be cheap as there is more demand for it. You do have a point there, but I think what skews this picture somewhat is language barriers. Everyone learns English in school and English is the language of academia, so all else being equal, the demand for English speaking locations is bound to be greater than for other destinations.
- arisAlexis 8y agoIt happens a lot that foreigners find places awesome where locals find the opposite even given two quite similar persons.
- barcoder 8y agoHow do I sign up?
- bogomipz 8y ago>"Portugal is very welcoming to US citizens, you won't have any "visa issues" the way you will in many of the [superficially] "cheaper" Asian countries" Could you elaborate on this? Are there options that exist that Non-Portuguese tech workers can look into? Something like a freelance visa or a start up visa? Do such things exist? Cheers
- stefek99 8y agoWOW. Went through rabbit hole. So much love ! ! ! (beautiful home)