The tech scene in Norway is definitely nowhere near as good as Silicon Valley's. I live in Bergen, the second-biggest city in Norway, and the parts of the tech

The tech scene in Norway is definitely nowhere near as good as Silicon Valley's. I live in Bergen, the second-biggest city in Norway, and the parts of the tech scene I have seen here seem very old-fashioned compared to the US. There are a couple of companies exploiting web technology for all it's worth, but much of what is going on is just old-fashioned consulting related to Microsoft's platform. Opportunities for real start-up work with equity and the whole shebang seem pretty slim. Also, as dagw hinted at, the Norwegian oil industry has a tendency to suck in pretty much every talented engineer in the country. The oil industry is currently desperate for engineers and is importing skilled and ambitious people from all over the Northern hemisphere (Italy, France, Finland, even Thailand). I know people with degrees in applied mathematics who work with offshore oil drilling. The salaries and benefits you can get in this industry have a tendency to dwarf what you can expect as a salaried IT consultant. (For instance, the average salary for offshore oil workers in Stavanger is now more than 170,000 USD/year. Granted, offshore work pays better than land work, but many on-shore workers also have salaries in this range). It stands to reason that tech will attract less talented people with a competitor like this. However, I would love to hear it if someone could disprove my theory. I don't have extended contact with the Norwegian CS crowd outside of my own university.