Overall my experience in Helsinki has been hugely positive. I’ve been here now over a decade and have settled with work and family life.
Work life balance is great, there’s a beautiful outdoors to enjoy all year, and the people are warm and kind, if not difficult to start with.
All that said, there’s a lot of bullshit and hot air here in this thread:
- public healthcare is great until you have something difficult to work with or non acute. Enjoy the months longs waiting times to see a dentist.
- Yes, you can get by speaking English but your kid and partner might not. The tech industry employs foreigners here but there are countless people I know and hear of who end up here outside of the tech or sciences industry and cannot get work due to the language. Furthermore, don’t expect the same opportunities provided to Finnish speakers as you won’t get half the jobs at least. I work for an IT consultancy and only about 10-20% of client roles are available to me within the company.
- Winter here is shit nowadays. It used to be cold and snowy. Now it’s just like slushy and miserable
- Not all your services will be available in English. I have English banking for example but their department is slow and difficult to work with. Same with phoning utility services etc.
- Yes the language is hard but the main problem is finding time to learn it. Trust me, you don’t want to spend your free time doing it or you’ll just work and study and not enjoy the lifestyle here.
Don’t get me wrong. I love this place but look through the marketing and try and get some real experiences before you uproot your whole life. Happy to answer more questions here or privately (email through website in my profile).
As extra for the language. Even in tech you should just accept that you NEED to start learning Finnish. You don't have to be proficient speaker, but for normal office chat you need to be good enough to interrupt and step in with English if you want to participate.
I've seen many foreigners quit because they felt like they were intentionally left out of casual conversations, but you really have to understand that speaking in a 2nd or 3rd language for just casual stuff takes a lot of mental effort and if you are already working in a field that requires that effort lowering everyone's productivity to keep you in some nonsense about lawn mowers doesn't make sense.
Problem is that it's a super difficult language where you can't draw any help from any other languages you might now. Plus it's obscure and if you move out of Finland you'll likely never use it again. I can see why people don't want to invest huge amounts of time learning it unless they plan to stay for the rest of their lives.
Take this as someone who moved to Sweden and have learned a bit of the language, I don't speak Finnish but have had contact with it through Finnish friends for 5+ years now.
Finnish is hard just because it's too different from our Indo-European languages mental model.
On the other hand, Finnish is easy to pick up if you are going to study it because the written form is very close to the spoken one (even though spoken it will be more colloquial Finnish). If you learn the phonemes you will know how to pronounce words, easily, train your ears to its core minimal pairs and it will help a lot.
The grammar is logical, there are a few exceptions per case, it's just very different from Indo-European languages.
I agree that it's very obscure but I take that for Swedish with the silver lining that learning an obscure language will be, in the worst case, a good party trick.
> I agree that it's very obscure but I take that for Swedish with the silver lining that learning an obscure language will be, in the worst case, a good party trick.
It takes years to become conversational in a language with dedicated practice -- that's an immense amount of effort to put into a party trick for a person with a full time job and other responsibilities.
That is exactly why I said that I take that as a silver lining, I do.
It's my own personal silver lining because I value having a surprising obscure detail about my personality to show to people. It's a thing I enjoy doing, just for the sake of fun, taking someone completely by surprise in a nice way, e.g.: I went to visit Brazil only once since I moved from there, during this trip I met a Swede who lived in Brazil for 20+ years, who runs a Swedish-Brazilian restaurant quite far from major cities and surprising him with a conversation in Swedish was a very cool experience, both for him and I.
I create a personal justification to why learning Swedish could be interesting beyond using it in the country, even more when I moved and had no idea if I was staying here for long, why would I bother to learn it if I didn't find other motivations to interest me?
Learning languages is really interesting, it even helps to restructure your thoughts. People find different drives to do things, that's mine.
I think years is a bit on the high end of that estimate, especially with dedicated practice. I’ve seen people go from 0 to conversant in 60 days in English classes.
I'd guess that the people you've seen have at least one of these things, probably more:
1). Are proficient with another germanic language
2). Have lots of interaction with English even if they don't speak it (lots of folks read subtitles for English media)
3). Have learned a non-germanic language and have an affinity for picking up on language
4.) Have lots of time.
5.) Their conversational skills are limited to a few shallow subjects, and much variance on these cause them to trip up.
6.) You don't see deficits (can they spell? How is their grammar outside of simple conversation? Can they read as well as speak?)
On the whole, no one should expect to have easy conversations in 60 days, regardless of language. These are always exceptions, and are most often small talk instead of including a wide variety of subjects: Simply talking about your own interests in any depth takes some dedication, but hearing about other's interests takes more.
Years isn't on the high end: I took classes. 15-18 hours a week, with a transition to speaking practice in a nursing home (while performing some basic CNA-type work). 2 years of classes. For me, this landed me technically intermediate, but it still didn't take much to get out of my depth of knowledge. This is a pretty normal course. Some folks are faster, sure: But some are slower.
Minor nit. Finnish is not a Germanic language--though perhaps there are some parallels that benefit from knowing German or Dutch. It's a Uralic language so separate from the Indo-European languages that are the primary languages in Europe.
Please don't be snarky in HN comments and please omit personal swipes like "Once again, you are making things up." We're trying for curious conversation here.
Edit: we've had to ask you many times not to break the site guidelines. You've continued to make a habit of breaking them. I don't want to have to ban you so would you please fix this?
I'm not going to take my time to cover all of your points, I'm not using academic terms and yes, making up my own terms to put down what it's been my experience. Indo-European languages share a lot of structure and roots, similar ways of thinking even if phrasal structure are very different between Germanic and Latin languages, the same for Slavic ones.
I choose to do with my own time whatever I prefer, card tricks have been part of it, yoyo tricks in my childhood/teens, and so on. I'm not wasting years learning Swedish because I live in this country and I'm becoming a citizen, it's been a fun endeavour that I started with the mindset that in the worst case it'd be a party trick.
This is my experience, instead of being an ass, try to improve on top of it, you help nobody.
Now please, try to behave as is expected by the rules of this forum, I try to come here to have civil conversations and not expecting this place to devolve into some other cesspool subreddit.
It's not that difficult. Grammar is logical, few exceptions, not many hard sounds to learn for English speakers. I found it easier than Russian for example (took the YKI test for citizenship some years ago).
My inlaws are Finnish... the total lack of germanic/romance cognates makes it very difficult for me to remember any vocabulary. But I've never really put in a serious effort to learn it.
The cognates are difficult, true - there are quite a few old Indo-European words if you know where to look (kulta - gold, kuningas - king, ranta from Swedish strand, i.e. shore). That said, once you've built up a core vocabulary, it's quite easy to learn derived words. For example, kirja, kirjasto, kirjoittaa, kirje - book, library, write, letter. By comparison, you can see how much different all the equivalent English words are due to its mixed Germanic and French/Latin vocabulary, and how much a challenge that makes for non-native learners.
Cool examples! I can definitely see how Finnish would be easier to learn than English, assuming a lack of familiarity with related languages.
Greek is also very synthetic, so a little basic vocabulary goes a long way. I like the word for "waterproofing", literally "against-through-rain-making" (αδιαβροχοποίηση, a-dia-brocho-poiesi)
This has been my experience too. For me as a native Russian speaker, the grammar is fairly easy and logical, what trips me up each time is the vocabulary. I speak passable German and Spanish and those two help me a lot with other Europear languages. With Finnish, if I don't know a root/word, then I just don't know it and that's that.
I live in South India and I find Finnish easy to my ears (I speak Tamil) due to the double consonants and double vowels that Tamil shares.
In fact a Finnish friend of my dad's learnt Tamil via remote from one of our poets .. to get proficient enough to translate some ancient poetry into Finnish!
As a Finn, sometimes when I see a Tamil name I have to do a double take because at first I'll try to read it as a Finnish name. The written forms of the the languages seem to have eerie similarities, though I fully expect them to superficial coincidences.
Actually, the foundation you got with Finnish should be useful if ever you need to learn Turkish, Hungarian or Japanese. Natural languages are like programming languages in a sense -- Haskell doesn't get as much use as C++ but learning Haskell will make you better at C++.
A genetic relationship between Finno-Ugric and either the Japonic or Turkic language families, if it exists, is so weak that most scholars believe there is no evidence for it.
> A genetic relationship between Finno-Ugric and either the Japonic or Turkic language families, if it exists, is so weak that most scholars believe there is no evidence for it.
But from practical point of view, these languages share common features like: vowel harmony, phonetic writing, suffixal affixation, grammatical cases. These skills transfer easily over to the next language, once you learn them with one language.
(Not all languages mentioned share all the features.)
Turkish and Finnish do have the same word structure and very similar sentence characteristics. Both are agglutinative languages with vowel harmony and "floating" word order. Japanese is also agglutinative but lacks vowel harmony. I'd consider scholars who believe these languages are not similar to be quite wrong.
It's true that there is practically no common vocabulary between the tree though. (Hungarian and Turkish share some small amount of words due to relatively recent Ottoman rule, but that's about it)
An Italian friend learning Turkish complained mainly about having to wait until the end of sentence (The Turkish (and Japanese) sentences are canonically Subject-Object-Verb) to understand what's going on. And imagine a native English speaker's frustration when they realize groups of words can come in any order in Latin (and Turkish, and Finnish) and it's the suffixes that make up a word's function in the sentence!
So, my point was that being exposed to a language with a different grammar is simply good mental exercise and will come in handy when learning other, seemingly separate foreign languages, regardless of the amount of people who speak it.
It helps less than you would think. Finnish doesn't share any intelligible vocabulary with Hungarian beyond the loanwords that are also the same in English (let alone Turkish or Japanese which are entirely different language families).
Yes, there are grammatical similarities, no that won't help you much at all in understanding or talking to people...
Finish shares root of around 200 words with Hungarian, it's just the languages diverged and got influenced by their respective regions. For starters, both languages use different letters for the same sounds. Hell, Hungarian uses written form of sz for the regular s sound, and written form of s for sh sound. The long ő, in the end of a Hungarian word, has previously been a diphtong öü or eü and even more previously ev. Finnish e/ä is written as Hungarian under one letter of e.
Then you have switches from h to k, as in Hung. hal (fish) = Finn. kala
Then you have switches from f to p, as in fej (head) = Finn. pää, Hung. fészek (nest) = Finn. pesä
Or, the letter n in Finnish is often replaced by ny in Hungarian, as in Finn. niellä (swallow) = Hung. nyelni, Finn. miniä (daughter-in-law) = Hung. meny
Hungarian and Finnish diverged 4500 years ago, and they represent the opposite spectrum of the Ugro-Finn language group. There are 9 languages in the same language group, and the middle parts of it have more in common with both languages than Hungarian with Finnish.
> Finnish is hard just because it's too different from our Indo-European languages mental model.
I'd imagine having this experience sure helps. Lots of people struggle to give up relying on mental translations to/from thoughts in their first languages.
Can confirm, I have a few years of high school level education in Japanese and Finnish sounds right to my ears, until I pay attention and realize I don't understand it.
I never understood this attitude, which IMO is most prevalent in speakers of Romance languages and adjacent languages. What's the point of learning new languages if you're just gonna relearn 50 different varieties of Vulgar Latin. Is learning slightly different ways to conjugate and spell what is essentially the same word in a dozen different "languages" that interesting?
If however you are interested in reprogramming your language center then Finnish is intriguing, because of its foreign nature.
Spoken and written/theoretical Finnish are quite different. In practice you choose from a small subset of possible suffix combinations and this choice is informed by a lot more than you would first think based on how the theory is presented.
I'm a non-native Finnish speaker. I learned the language in my teens.
It's not a difficult language, at all. It is actually surprisingly simple. The problem is the obscurity - there is very little interest in Finnish as a second language, and the teaching community for it is small and hasn't developed the kind of resources that imperial languages that were taught to countless millions of people during the age of empires (English, Spanish, French) have available. There's just not been a long enough history of teaching Finnish to adults and the resources are poor. My recommendations if you want to learn it:
a) constant low-level exposure to local media - local television has foreign-language films in original language with subtitles - this is super useful as a way to pick up new vocabulary you don't encounter in your everyday life, such as "get to the chopper" :P
b) this is controversial but I think the standard language model used by linguists is too strongly inspired by Latin and a very poor fit for Finnish. I find trying to learn grammar formally is counterproductive and will set you back. Instead, think of the noun suffixes as a preposition equivalent. Trying to think of them as cases will mess with your progress
c) hang around people having conversations and listen. Don't try to understand, just get comfortable with the sound of it. One of the more difficult things with agglutinative languages (languages that stick things together, very roughly speaking) is parsing out bits of words. Early on I'd sit on buses a lot and eavesdrop on random conversations just to get comfortable with the language.
d) Language courses are a poor path to fluency. I know people who spent a decade and a half on language courses and were unable to effectively communicate. If you are in a language course, try to counter its effects by at least equivalent-time exposure to random conversation
e) Music is a great in - it's way easier to remember complete phrases as song lyrics than standalone, and you can listen to an album a few times and then try dissecting a particular song's lyrics to figure out what it's all about.
f) Your primary bottleneck as a beginner is vocabulary - ignore grammar at first, just collect as much vocab as possible. The grammar is so simple and structurally regular that you'll pick up most of it from context, but that only works if you know what the hell people are talking about. Collect words everywhere you can. Read comics, read newspapers. Read medication warning labels. Read user manuals. The latter two are especially useful because they're parallel text so you have the translations right there. Don't try to keep score of how many words you know, keep score on how many word roots you recognize on an average day.
g) Try transcribing things you hear. youtube-dl a news broadcast, play it at 0.75x speed and write it all down, pausing the video if necessary. Don't bother trying to comprehend everything, just write it all down.
h) Use Finnish in boring everyday stuff - supermarket checkout, for example. This is easy low-level stuff and you'll get functional at that level very quickly. Do this way before you feel comfortable. This will give you daily active low-level practice. Use Finnish for all interactions where it doesn't have severe consequences if you're misunderstood.
i) Use media targeted at children. Story books are a great way to get lots of simple vocab in, and also a bit of culture. Go to the library, pick up a bunch of books targeted at 6-12 year olds, read them all. Repeat.
j) It may appear superficially that all the vocabulary is weird and foreign but a whole lot of it is borrowed, just borrowed a long way back. Not so useful early on but you pick up some patterns eventually. A number of phrases are word for word translations from other languages - for example "elintarvike" (food products, groceries) is a word for word translation of German "Lebensmittel". Learning German after Finnish I found a lot of familiar phrases. Going further back, you see a ton of germanic roots in everyday words like "tuoli" (chair). It's not obvious at first until you look at the Estonian version "tool", which is an earlier form of the same word. That is of course an abbreviated version of "stool"/"Stuhl" which is clearly germanic. Again, this won't help you learn new vocabulary but it may help with the feeling of "what the fuck how do they come up with this shit" that you get on first exposure to a new language group.
Expect 18-20 months before you can make sense of most things your colleagues say. Going from there to fluent communication depends entirely on how much you actively use it. It's not hard, it's just that nobody has had a century or two of experience teaching it to adults, so you have to figure out ways of making it work for you. Have faith in yourself. Once you break through the initial "this is so weird" barrier, progress is quick and very rewarding.
> Try transcribing things you hear. youtube-dl a news broadcast, play it at 0.75x speed and write it all down, pausing the video if necessary. Don't bother trying to comprehend everything, just write it all down.
There is also nowadays Yle's Selkouutiset (Simple Finnish news). It's a short daily news bulletin of most important headlines read really patiently and while avoiding using any difficult words (i.e. only basic vocabulary. If complex vocabulary is needed the newscaster actually stops to explain what that word means in simpler terms.)
As a native speaker it hurts my head to listen to it for some reason when it comes on the radio. But I've heard from many Finnish as second language leaners that they find this public service resource really useful.
> b) this is controversial but I think the standard language model used by linguists is too strongly inspired by Latin and a very poor fit for Finnish. I find trying to learn grammar formally is counterproductive and will set you back. Instead, think of the noun suffixes as a preposition equivalent. Trying to think of them as cases will mess with your progress
Interesting point. This is what a lot of people learning the language tend to get overtly confused with. Perhaps your point isn't as controversial as one would think...
> j) It may appear superficially that all the vocabulary is weird and foreign but a whole lot of it is borrowed, just borrowed a long way back. Not so useful early on but you pick up some patterns eventually. A number of phrases are word for word translations from other languages - for example "elintarvike" (food products, groceries) is a word for word translation of German "Lebensmittel". Learning German after Finnish I found a lot of familiar phrases. Going further back, you see a ton of germanic roots in everyday words like "tuoli" (chair). It's not obvious at first until you look at the Estonian version "tool", which is an earlier form of the same word. That is of course an abbreviated version of "stool"/"Stuhl" which is clearly germanic. Again, this won't help you learn new vocabulary but it may help with the feeling of "what the fuck how do they come up with this shit" that you get on first exposure to a new language group.
hehe, yeah that's the second difficult part of the equation. Trouble is that we also borrow a lot from Swedish (which isn't too far from German, but still) and also Russian.
But you're right in that the word formations themselves are pretty logical (maybe this is a Germanic thing?) - for example, computer [tietokone] is literally "information machine", airplane [lentokone] is "flying machine", and my favourite example is the old word for television [näköradio] which is literally "vision radio."
About b) it's controversial because it's the standard model that is used by linguistics and is considered useful, and I think it's net-negative-value for education. That's why I want to make it abundantly clear that this is my opinion and it runs counter to the consensus in the linguistics world.
Yes but linguistics is about studying a language, not speaking it. As someone who has learnt a few languages non-natively, I never once spoke a sentence by thinking about the formal rule I'm supposed to use to produce it.
As in machine learning, just throwing a bunch of training data at my brain (in the form of complete, native sentences) way outperforms building a rule-based system to the point where I just don't bother learning any rules at all.
This is how I learned languages non-natively as well. But even learning a language natively is done that way: you don't give babies grammar books.
We do that as programmers as well: we get familiar with a syntax/grammar just enough so that we could get to reading source code, learning idioms to do things such as open a file, or make a request, or use a regex. The quick tutorial + cookbook works very well in programming.
This is one reason I lean towards Stephen Krashen's work on language acquisition, and his "input hypothesis"[0].
The way I learned every language was by consuming content that increased in complexity and variety. Patterns were acquired.
Having learned a tiny bit of Finnish myself, I totally agree with your points. And actually the „controversial” advices b), d) and f) combined with tips like a), c) and h) is very much what popular polyglots like Benny Lewis („fluent in 3 months“) teach for language learning in general if your goal is to actually speak the language.
I agree here. I feel in the places I've worked though, people have generally been welcoming and I have been able to get enough out of the "casual" side to enjoy it :)
As far as language goes, my advice for learning a new one would be the exact opposite of what you say. Force yourself to use the language all the time, everywhere. Otherwise people will just default to English with you, and you'll have a hard time learning the local language.
It'll be very stressful for a few months, but, in my experience, will get you conversing in about half a year.
As someone who has lived in this environment for this long, it doesn't work that way.
This is not a language that shares any traits with English. It is hard to get going, and the vocabulary takes a considerable amount of time.
You can't switch to Finnish at work, as you simply would not be able to get by, and you can't do it at home as it changes the dynamics of your relationship. This is not an excuse, it's reality.
I'm a native Finnish speaker near Helsinki. The problems you mention are definitely very common for skilled immigrants here - if you don't absolutely need to learn the language, you're not very likely to put yourself through the hardship it entails. Especially if you've already formed social bonds in English.
That's what I was trying to say. If you do want to learn the local language, you have to be willing and able to put up with it being pretty crappy for a few months. My experience has been that it's very hard to integrate a new language into your persona without immersing yourself in it. For most people it's not worth it if they can get by without. Completely understandable.
Now you've got me wondering if I should start thinking about how to teach Finnish to English-speaking professionals :D
I also learned Japanese to a professional level very rapidly by immersion (and focused study in parallel), but I was single and not working at the time, which was critical. If you have a full-time job (that you need to perform in your native language), you lose 50% of your immersion potential; if you have a (non-local) family, you likely lose the other 50%; now you are just spending scraps of time studying.
So I think in this context of a professional—who likely has a family—coming over to work, deanclatworthy is right.
It isn't the same thing, if you try to speak poor Finnish in Finland they just switch to English since most people speak English. In Japan most people don't even understand basic spoken English so getting them to speak Japanese with you is really easy.
Finnish kids have finnish-speaking parents, and spend their entire days immersed in the language, at home, daycare, or school.
Expats are most likely are in an English-speaking environment at work, where speaking Finnish at the level of a four-year-old is going to be a bit of a hindrance; no practice at home unless they have a Finnish partner, and no real options for social activities that will tolerate the learning curve, like children have.
And if it is anything like the Netherlands, any mistake you make will instantly and irreversibly switch the conversation back to English.
I moved to Finland, and then had a child. He's now nearing four years old and he's very bilingual - to the extent that he translates for me at times.
Children learn the local language, partly because of immersion, but also because they're corrected nearly constantly when they begin to speak. We forget that when they're capable of "good" communication.
I'm seeing interesting things here, I speak to the child exclusively in English and as far as he's concerned I speak/understand zero Finnish. I'm hoping I can start speaking more Finnish in the near future, he should be able to understand I'm "mostly English".
One obvious thing that really drives the language home is the notion of pronouns. Finnish has no gendered ones, so when he speaks English to me he'll be "Mummy is asleep, he will wake up soon?". I have to keep saying "Mummy is a girl, we say she". I've been doing that for 8+ months, and he still doesn't get it right. That's the level of repetition that's involved in learning a new language.. and even now it hasn't "stuck".
Finnish is notorious for its complex grammar. I'm half-Finnish and still cannot hold a real conversation even though I took classes for years when young. For Japanese one semester was enough to be able to hold a basic conversation when visiting Tokyo.
Only if you're from Estonia or Hungary. Finnish is so different from all the other European languages that it's like starting from zero. The letter system aside I've found Japanese much easier to learn and I'm half-Finnish (Swedish being my native language).
Learning Finnish takes time, dedication, and willingness to do it on one's own f you want to master it. I belong to the Swedish-speaking minority here, and there's plenty of people in the Swedish-speaking areas that know little to no Finnish, despite learning it in school and living in Finland.
If you want to learn Finnish, go for it. Just don't expect it to be easy. :)
Finnish belongs to a language group[1] that consists of just two other languages (Estonian and Hungarian). It's quite literally like nothing else.
Living in a neighboring country I understand nothing of Finnish. Spanish, Italian, French — I can make some sense out of it without knowing the languages.
I must however add that I've witnessed, more than a handful of times, English speaking knowledge workers moving to Sweden who continue speaking English and only English for years and years.
It comes with a social price though. You will never quite understand all the social codes or become a part of the social fabric. At many parties and dinners I've seen the whole group having to switch to English because there's someone in the group who has lived here for five or ten years and still haven't gotten around even attempting to speak Swedish. Everyone will switch but but it will be a different night, without all the nuances we usually enjoy. In the end everyone loses.
If you plan to stay, do everything to learn the language. You will be happier person in your new country.
That is slightly incorrect.
There are a bunch of languages in the Russian Federation/Scandinavian Peninsula that are very close to Finnish. Much closer than Hungarian itself:
You do not have to force yourself to use the language. It's a stressful, uncomfortable and not particularly efficient way of studying a language, especially for introverts. Some polyglots study this way, some do not - it's absolutely not a necessity. Some polyglots go by the motto: "if you can understand the spoken language, and you're able to write in it, then you're able to speak in it, too".
There is no shortcut to learning a new language - even if you're fluent in 9 languages, the 10th will still take 1000+ hours. The most efficient way appears to be a loop of listening and drilling vocabulary, particularly listening to excerpts that come with text transcription.
As an avid language learner myself, I would be inclined to agree, were it not for the fact that about half of my father's siblings really have no aptitude _at all_ for languages.
One uncle has been living in France for over 40 years, but anyone can still hear he’s a foreigner, most Dutch will immediately recognize his accent as Dutch, and many can immediately pinpoint the region he grew up in. (Part of the reason is probably: he himself doesn’t care. He just talks —sometimes with hands and feet— and his interlocutors manage to pick up enough of what he says to suit him.)
An aunt used to live in Brazil for years, and never could get the hang of Brazilian Portuguese. Her son has been living in Brazil for some 15 year now, and is still not fluent in the language...
People's ability to pick up languages can be totally unrelated to their general intelligence.
That said, I _personally_ agree that immersion is the best way of learning a new language. But it still does take time, and you've got to have the opportunity.
Not sure people are complaining as such. And these comments are on a piece from a country's government that is literally offering to pay people to move there.
It's more of a word of warning, Finnish is a difficult language for a native English speaker to learn compared to, say, French, or even Swedish. Something like Spanish is spoken by a massive number of people in multiple nations - Finnish only in one small one.
I try and get by with Finnish when I can, but at the end of the day I still have a rather taxing (hah) job to do full time and I came here by choice so I want to enjoy it.
I'm not sure the "even" is actually appropriate here. Both Swedish and French (along with probably every other Western European Indo-European language) are among the easiest for English speakers to learn. Swedish also has a disproportionate amount of resources online due in part to immigration patterns, as I understand it.
European countries are currently required to translate information about all government services to english because of the european "Single Digital Gateway". Well it's a goal; first mile stone comes in this december.
How is the need to learn the language even a negative? People complain all the time about people coming to their country and not speaking the language after decades, but then gladly move to a foreign country with no intention of ever learning the language. Very hypocritical.
You move to a country, you learn the language. If you don't, that's your fault and you have have to deal with it.
Yes, but:
In the case of Finland, it is made clear by advertising from semi/official sources (like this website), if not explicitly but very heavily implied, that you can move here and get by fine with English.
This is pretty much true, many people do. You can get your paperwork sorted, buy a car, a bank account, deal with the government and have a social life all in English. I have done.
But, all of the comments I'm seeing here are saying that while this is true, if you want to take the step forward into learning Finnish, it _is_ harder than other languages and that the resources around doing so as an adult are not as developed as in other languages. The fact that you don't strictly need to and that a lot of people have excellent English here anyway makes it harder, therefore active and sustained effort is needed on your part, you are not going to 'just pick it up'. If I had lived in France for as long as I have in Finland (not even a full year), then there is no question that my French would be at a much higher level than my Finnish is now.
> In the case of Finland, it is made clear by advertising from semi/official sources (like this website), if not explicitly but very heavily implied, that you can move here and get by fine with English.
Imo, that's just an excuse. I live in a country that has fantastic English speakers, don't even plan on staying here longer than 3 years and still took the time to learn the language (probably B2-B1 after 2 years). Sure, it's understandable that not everybody wants to do that, but it should be obvious to any foreigner that you lock yourself out of a multitude of jobs by not learning the language.
The only reason I'm saying this is because the top comment listed learning the native language as a negative, which imo it really isn't.
> If I had lived in France for as long as I have in Finland (not even a full year), then there is no question that my French would be at a much higher level than my Finnish is now.
That may be true for you, but definitely not for others. There are foreigners living in France that can barely count in the language. I've seen and heard that first hand. Some extreme example have been in the country a decade. It really depends on where you move to, where you work, who you surround yourself with, and how motivated you are.
In the US I (as a non-native speaker) was very pleasantly surprised that accents do not matter and mistakes that do not kill the meaning are universally tolerated. People would still gladly chat with you over beer, etc.
But that is not the case in some other countries: optional conversations suffer a lot if you, say miss a few conjugations.
As a Finn, I'd interprete this as trying to be helpful, and less about not tolerating accent. "Oh, they're struggling with Finnish, it's easier for all of us if I switch to English." In my opinion, this is one of the top reasons for difficulties in learning Finnish - it's difficult to get the Finns talk Finnish with you. One has to insist.
Interesting. Is this professional conversations or in stores / restaurants / on the streets? I thought English is not spoken by many folks over there, at least outside the IT/tech scene.
If you pick an average person under 40 they will have near-perfect English. Partly due to media, partly due to the internet.
English seems common in the groups of immigrants you come across too. I know people who've moved from France, etc, and there are lots of immigrants from various countries - many of whom speak their own language, and English as the second. Some go on to learn Finnish to a greater or lesser extent.
I've ordered food in restaurants, cider/whisky in pubs, etc, and had the server just reply back in English.
Me: "saisinko omena cidre?"
Them: "Do you want ice?"
On the one hand it is helpful at times, but on the other hand it is deeply frustrating. 90% of the staff at the local newsagents has pulled me aside on a quiet morning and asked "Do you prefer English or Finnish?" I say "Finnish", but to be honest the conversations I have with the shop-staff are mostly them reading the total, and asking "would you like a receipt/bag/anything else?" so it doesn't help me in any real sense, but it's nice they offer/ask.
I think if you tell people you want to practice your Finnish, and you're not in a busy restaurant / grocery store, they'll entertain you. Younger Finns just have stopped assuming that people would bother learning Finnish.
My experience at the store/ when ordering drinks has been that I'd get the replies more often than not in Finnish and had to switch to English myself when it was something that I didn't understand. Key is to get the pronunciation right - which is far easier as a German.
And yes, younger people know English well and will usually switch to English if you're struggling - unless they think that their English is too bad (which it usually isn't).
Sounds like you’re in tech, what range of salary have you seen for software engineers? I know London, Paris, a lot of expensive European cities pay a small fraction of what the Bay Area does so a lot of engineers would have to compromise quite a bit on disposable income and lifestyle.
I can only speak for those in the web tech industry, but salaries go from 4-6k euros. Take-home pay would be in the region of 2.5-4.5k most likely.
I've seen a lot of whining about the high taxes here, but honestly this is not a European way of thinking. You are safe here. You have a safety net if things don't go right in your work or health.
Taxes are also super simple. You tell the tax office your predicted income, you get a percentage and give it to your employer. You don't have any other dealings with them unless you need to adjust it due to change in income, or you have some expenses to lower your tax percentage before the end of the tax year. It's highly efficient and works well.
I am less concerned with the taxes, and more concerned that Amazon/Google/etc happily pay ten times that salary. It's literally an order of magnitude difference, and contracting hourly rates seems like a similar story.
I would happily pay 3-5x the taxes for a similar salary to emigrate, but if you offer me 1/10 the pay? That's tough. It makes me feel like there isn't a big market for my services across the pond.
It's a shame, because I love tech and I lean heavily left. But this has been the case for at least the past decade, and it shows no sign of stopping.
You are getting a lot of critical responses, and I hate to dog pile, but:
>Amazon/Google/etc happily pay ten times that salary
In the thread, they say Helsinki juniors start out at ~$3k/mo after taxes. In the Bay Area, let's say you are a junior at a FAANG and are getting $150k/year. This works out to $8k/mo after taxes. So the difference between a FAANG and Helsinki is more like 3x. Maybe, 4X if you account for bonuses/options. But it's not 10x.
Obviously, 3-4X is still a lot. If it's a choice between Helsinki and SF, SF wins hands down.
Problem is that most of the engineers working in the US are not working for a FAANG company in the Bay Area. If you look at what engineers are getting paid in places like Houston or Atlanta, you will find that juniors start at $60k/year, which is $4k/mo after taxes. That's very close to the reported $3k/mo rate for Helsinki.
There is this weird trend I noticed on HN. Whenever the subject of money comes up, people start casually quoting Bay Area numbers like they are representative of the industry as a whole. I don't think they are.
Keep in mind though that after a couple of years at a FAANG company, your pay scales much quicker than it would elsewhere.
That junior earning $150k/yr total comp is closer to $300k in a few short years.
At that point you're getting awfully close to the OP's 10x claim (Before taxes) but of course you don't subsidized healthcare, a useable pension, decent government services, clean/safe streets, etc...
After living in the Bay Area for a decade, I would pick Helsinki over any city in the Bay. Fool me once shame on me... fool me twice, well you can't fool me again :-)
Unfortunately, even for the same role, the 10x figure is painfully close to reality, once purchasing power of the actual disposable income is calculated.
Juniors don't start at $3k/mo after taxes, it's more like $2.5k. On top of that, there's ~20% VAT vs. ~5-10% sales tax in US. On top of that, the price level in Finland is notably higher (25% pricier according to PPP conversion factor). Also, practically nobody gets stocks or options here, and any kind of bonus pay is usually insignificant. There are much fewer options to live frugally. Majority of the sectors of the economy are dominated by monopolies, duopolies and silent cartels.
As a silly example illustrating the fact - a junior software engineer in Finland can purchase 0.52 Tesla Model 3s per year for his take home pay. The same engineer in Bay Area could buy 3, maybe 4 with stocks.
>There is this weird trend I noticed on HN. Whenever the subject of money comes up, people start casually quoting Bay Area numbers like they are representative of the industry as a whole. I don't think they are.
Americans (and capitalist supporters -usually people without a real capital-) are fixated with raw amounts of money. It's very different from European culture, where we usually consider many other factors as quality of life first.
Also they tend to consider us as poor. I've been told several times in conversations "nobody can afford iPhones in Europe" and other nonsense like that. Hey at least I never had to worry about getting medical treatment. I can perfectly afford a stupid iPhone if I want but there are much more important factors in life than "how many gadget can you afford to buy?"
This is a good exercise to make a rough comparison like ths.
However, actually a junior would make something like ~3k€ before taxes in Helsinki, not after taxes. The taxes are (very) progressive, at that income level it's something like 27% in Finland.
Take home alone is a meaningless number if you don't compare it against cost of living. This is a bit like asking "how much to fill up your car" without asking how big of a gas tank it has first.
You don't necessarily want to use that angle on Finland... the gas tank is pretty large and gas is highly taxed, both figuratively and literally.
In addition to the relatively small salaries, the cost of living is pretty high in the capital area. If you do move to some of the smaller cities your price-to-value ratio for living will go up way faster than trying to reach the same ratio by instead hunting for a larger salary around Helsinki.
But even then there's the purchasing power which is also relatively low everywhere. It depends on what you spend your money on, of course, but generally unless all you buy is telecommunication services everything feels pretty expensive. Moreover, the price difference to nearby countries and to the rest of the Europe is often so much higher that even if I'd very much like to support local Finnish business often there's just no way I'm going to justify that to my wallet.
> You don't necessarily want to use that angle on Finland... the gas tank is pretty large and gas is highly taxed, both figuratively and literally.
While the cost of car ownership and general cost of living is high, I'd like to point out that you don't necessarily need a car if you live and work in Helsinki. Or at least you don't need two cars in the household.
A bicycle is a perfectly viable option for transport for about 8 months of the year, or at least 6 if you're afraid of the weather (or can't change clothes at work). The bike paths are excellent and safe and if your route involves going through the city center, it's by far the fastest mode of transport (you can average 20km/h easily, can't match this by car or bus in the city). Bicycling may not be quite as good as continental Europe, but it's pretty good and the city is small enough to go everywhere by bike.
The rest of the year can be covered by public transport, which is very reliable.
Unfortunately COVID has hit the public transport in many levels, but hopefully that situation will get better. On the other hand, it did bring grocery delivery everywhere so that negates another need for a car.
Well, good luck hauling small kids, furniture, gardening or construction materials by bike or public transportation. Most of the adults are not singles in their twenties or early thirties, living in a rented flat.
Once you get a family or buy a house, owning a car is basically a must. And the price tag for it in Finland is very high. 1000e a year just for mandatory car tax, mandatory yearly checkup and liability insurance. ~70% of the price of gas is taxes. Cars themselves are so expensive that Finland has one of the oldest car fleet in the developed world (12.2 years).
> Well, good luck hauling small kids, furniture, gardening or construction materials by bike or public transportation.
I see plenty of parents with small kids in public transport, those that are using strollers don't even need a ticket. I even remember one co-worker telling that when he moved to Helsinki, he tried using car once to bring his kids to school & coming to work after. He switched to metro after that one attempt and said it made things much easier.
Furniture, materials etc. are not usually things you are transporting daily (or even monthly). Personally when I needed those, I just either paid for home delivery or rented car for few hours.
I won't claim that there are no need for car (e.g. there are some routes that take a longer with public transport compared to your own car & there are ares which don't have many connections available), but it's not as critical as some people might think.
I have plenty of friends who have kids, do gardening etc and don't own a car (or even have a license) in Helsinki.
Most people in Helsinki live in apartments so construction etc is not an issue. If you can afford a house in Helsinki, car ownership is not a significant chunk of your budget.
And I have plenty of friends who do have a car for kids etc, but only one car per household. Which is not viable in many places in the world or even elsewhere in southern Finland.
Unfortunately, this is the reality on the ground. Finland is the least densely populated country in Europe, and one of the most arctic countries in the world. A lot of the people simply need a car to commute to work.
Cars in Finland have not only a value-added tax (VAT) of 24% but also a separate car tax slapped on them. At the extreme cases this can result in over 100% additional tax to be paid on top of the retail price of a car.
Daycare and Healthcare for kids is cheap though. And you don't have to pay for good schools or move to another neighbourhood to get a good school. This far outweighs the cost of a car.
> You don't necessarily want to use that angle on Finland
I don’t have an angle other than “compare salaries against CoL, rather than looking at salaries alone.” I find it very interesting how the automatic assumption is that I’m arguing for or against Finland here in some sort of proxy left vs. right fight.
Yeah, many people from Helsinki who are good enough to get a job at Amazon/Google/etc are actually moving abroad to work for them, so it doesn't make sense to move to Helsinki if you could get a job like that. Though there are some good cities in Europe with tech giants and their good pay, for example London and Zurich.
Google, Amazon and Microsoft all have offices in Helsinki and are hiring a lot for their cloud businesses. For example we here at AWS consistently have ~10-20 positions open in our new Helsinki downtown office.
Oh, that's nice, I didn't know that! How big is your office? What I know is that Google does not hire software engineers in Helsinki. They have a small office, but it is only for sales people.
Growing fast into high double digit headcount. But we neither have software engineers in Helsinki - just Account Managers, TAMs, Solutions Architects, etc. AFAIK the closest location for SDEs is Berlin. Anyhow, thanks for noting the problem on that page, just created an internal ticket to get that fixed!
While most salaries fall into the aforementioned ranged, I'd point out that software companies in Finland with "scalable" business models, do have pay more inline with big tech companies.
Obviously there aren't many of these jobs but I'd point to gaming companies like Supercell and Seriously.
There are certainly exceptions, and I have a lot of respect for successful EU tech companies!
But I really dislike rat-races, so I tend to avoid areas with loads of competition. The US tech market is like a bottomless money pool, and it's hard to justify putting a lot of effort into moving somewhere that would tie you to a few well-paying employers.
I like working on and learning about things that benefit the people around me! But I also like relaxing and not starving. C'est la vie: it's not perfect.
Yes, it's mostly about purchasing power. Rent/property tax/insurance is expensive, but everything else is cheap and there's no VAT. Some states don't even have income taxes. We have insanely painful income inequality, but as shameful as it is, you can usually clear the hurdle prices with a 6-figure income.
I'm not an aristocrat and I oscillate between working hard and going off into nature for random periods of time, so I'd sure like to live somewhere with a stable safety net. But for now, the US seems cheaper even with its ridiculous baseline CoL expenses. I can buy vehicles on a whim and mess with them and bum around for years on 5-10hr/week gigs even after $Nk monthly expenses, which would be difficult in the EU. And if you can pay the exorbitant health insurance rates, the medical care is actually quite good.
I do feel bad sometimes, but it's not exactly easy to change your citizenship, and the whole political situation sure isn't my fault.
It's mostly an mentality / personality thing. To some the European way of "things" are a bit insulting, others like having the corall / safety net. I'm in your camp.
4-6k seems high even for Helsinki. For starting position you can expect 2-3k, then as you build towards seniority you can get to 4-5k range, but you can expect to work for 5-10 years before you get to that 5k/mo (before taxes).
Now all kind of exceptions will come out the wood works telling me how they are "easily" making 10k/mo by doing something and working for someone who they won't admit. Yes even I know someone who is (or at least was) making 10k/mo, but he was very specialized expert, actual 10x developer. Most people are making far less. 3k/mo seems like the most common salary (again before taxes) for generic tech job.
Starting salary is actually pretty much exactly 3k in Helsinki. In most companies as a pure software engineer you can expect the salary to top out somewhere between 5 to 6k. If you are willing to take on management roles you can go higher easily (especially in older/more traditional companies that don't believe in paying engineers that much).
If you are in a "high scaling" tech company expect the salaries to be higher as Helsinki basically competes with places like Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc in salaries for the skilled people to build that stuff. Still no Silicon Valley but really good if you factor in the cost of living/"free" services.
Another thing to add to the salary is that you are truly expected to only work 7.5h per day (8h minus a 30min lunch break). If you work more you will get paid for those hours. So if in SV in reality you end up working 60h work weeks you should be paid roughly 50% more when compared to the 37.5h work week here just from the hours alone. If you work on weekends then even more as those get extra multipliers in Finland.
Also things like being on the 24/7 on call rotation that I see as being advertised as "part of the job" in a lot of job adverts are actually paid time here. So basically you end being paid for the hours outside normal work hours at 50% of your salary converted to hourly salary.
Interesting, these seem somewhat comparable to Canadian pay levels! Canadian taxes are similar, and public programs are good by global standards but not nearly as good as Finland (e.g. free healthcare, no free daycare, University education costs the equivalent of ~5k euros per year in Canada).
As a beginning developer I made the equivalent of ~3k euro/month in Canada and worked my way up to 5k in 3 years.
With a bit of experience and luck one can then move to the US to make ~15k euro/month and pay 30% lower tax rate, at the expense of basically all functioning public institutions :)
This looks about right to me. To add for reference, something like 5200 € / month gross puts you to top 10% earners in Finland already. So it is an excellent salary to get locally.
I also know of a few developers making 10k€ / month but I have to say they're very rare to come across in this country.
> salaries go from 4-6k euros. Take-home pay would be in the region of 2.5-4.5k most likely
With 6k salary, you would likely be taking home at most 4k. 6k translates to about 75000 yearly (lomaraha, i.e. holiday bonus, is about 50% of single month's pay). With standard deductions, your tax rate would be around 29% (that's with 19% municipal tax, it varies a bit depending where you live) & you need to add 8.40% to that for retirement & unemployment (those are required). 6000*(1-0.3745)=3753. Additional 156 if you add 1/12 of lomaraha to that.
Some additional deductions can bring the value up a bit (transport, home office etc.).
Yes, but if you're starting a family, essentially free child care and schooling up to and including university is pretty nice. Hell, if you're accepted for full-time studies at University, the government pays you to keep studying (opintoraha).
If you're a single software engineer, don't come to Helsinki. Go to SV or somewhere where they pay you mid six figures to work your ass off 16 hours a day.
But if you're either too old to find that exciting or have children, Finland is a great place to live. Just the subsidised child care itself will make it worth it. No "college funds" either.
Once you get into the big companies, not all teams are work yourself to bone. Many people work 40 hour weeks (with an hour long lunch included in that time) and have very little to no responsibilities outside of core hours. Vacation time can be quite decent as well. (4+ weeks plus quite a few holidays)
Even the unicorn startups don’t always work you to the bone. Honestly, I see it more like many people who /want/ to do that end up in that position because they want that stuff. It makes them feel like they’re doing something with their life (usually because they have an empty life outside of work).
I mean, think about the effort it takes to get into some of these companies. You don’t do it because you’re just a regular person who wants a well paying job. You’re career oriented - your career dictates your life satisfaction. That’s why you’ll work yourself to the bone - because it’s what you wanna do. This area attracts that mentality massively.
Well, there's also a large cohort that has been told that they should be going to the best schools and getting the best grades and the best internships and the best jobs at FAANG etc. Then they end up writing internal CRUD apps or tweaking ad models to eke out 0.01% more engagement, but they keep grinding because that's all they've ever known.
If you're comparing 3k EUR takehome to a mid-level engineer in the bay area which is probably 15k USD (rolling in bonus + stock), that's 144k USD more per year take home.
Even for 2 kids at $24k per year ($48k total), you can cover childcare and have another ~$100k USD left over.
Child care here is around 250€/month with reduced cost for each kid beyond the first in daycare. Pre-school (Age 6->) is free as is school + school lunches.
Compared to what, a few thousand a month PER CHILD in the US?
Also birth and all pre-natal care etc. is practically free (tens of euros per visit max).
I would add to this, if you are software engineer in SV and can work remotely with your current company (and keep making SV money or close) - Helsinki is absolutely worth thinking about if you think you would enjoy a Nordic lifestyle!
Great startup/tech scene, close to nature, Finns are fun to hang out with.
Best experienced during the summer, but the 90 day relocation "trial" with everything organised sounds pretty good now too.
Also if you're working remotely, there really isn't a point in moving from another country to Helsinki. It's way too expensive.
For the price of a 1 bedroom flat in Helsinki you can get a hectare of land and a 100m2+ house a bit further up north. You'll still be practically next to Helsinki by American standards =)
You can get an apartment in the (actual) city center around 50m^2 for 900-1000 of that, food expenses I'd guess are around 500 (never tracked it) and that leaves you with 1500 to enjoy on life each month.
I purchased my place after about 5 years which is 5mins by subway to the center, and I pay around the same for my mortgage as I did on rent, except I am investing in equity now. I'm also set to make a large profit when I sell this place. I'm very happy with my entry into the property market here. It's completely infeasible to do this in cities like London or any major metropolitan area in the US.
But take home pay in Helsinki is basically rent+food+beer money. ´
Take home pay in the US is college money, rainy day money, retirement money...
Can't really compare take home pay in a welfare state with US take home pay. It's just not possible.
Now: if you plan to retire in the US, obviously your equation would be slightly different. Paying for an education in the US, then moving to a place where salaries are set assuming people get good pensions and free education, then moving back to the US where you again need retirement money - that's the tricky equation.
Looking at the Finland pensions [1], I'd think you would like to save extra for retirement. Max government pension is less than SSA benefit in the USA (€1,368 vs $3,113)
I've entered €6K/mo (the senior eng salary mentioned in this discussion, aka top 10% salary in Finland) and used €1414 accrued pension (* median value from the table for a person born in 1960) and got €1.9/mo for someone close to retirement.
So far I am not sure how easy it is to get to 4K/mo.
But my point was more about you mentioning retirement savings only for US workers. While median income earners will get very similar government pensions in both countries.
Yes obvioiusly the pension you get in a country is related to how many years you worked in that country. If I moved to Finland I too would get a lower pension than others when I retire in 25 years, but on the other hand I’d be getting a pension from the first 20 years of my career in my home country too. Taken together they’d (unsurprisingly) add up to the €4K or so I expect to get.
Similarly if you move there from a country with lower taxes/pensions such as the US you’d probably bring savings to compensate that you missed a number of years.
After all, these pensions based on number of years worked is often just a form of mandated savings from employers payroll taxes.
I think you have misunderstood me. The fact that someone worked their whole life while living in Finland is accounted for. I.e. the link you've shared includes average amount of accrued pension for each birth year. So if someone was born in 1960, joined workforce around 20 y.o., worked for 40 years they would have in average about €1414. If they continue to work until retirement earning 6K, their pension will grow to 1.9K.
If this 4K/mo is easily achievable only if you have another pension from a more generous country, then it is not proving your point much.
You've forgotten one major aspect of life so far north - the near absolute lack of sunlight in the winter which is about 5 months of the year.
My first year in Finland, i got SAD - seasonal affective disorder - and it was horrible. No amount of money or learning Finnish can address that. Oh and there's yet another downside to an ethnically homogenous society like Finland - you'll never be more than a tolerated person if you are a visible minority. Someone who's visibly different will never be a fully equal member of society.
Personally, this is why i much prefer life in the US or Canada despite all their downsides.
SAD is definitely a thing. Certain Lamps and Vitamins do help, though - so does a walk during lunchtime. I'll always prefer fewer sun hours during Winter over regular > 25°c (77°F) during summer.
I'm surprised about the second point though. Outside Helsinki, sure - but in HKI I've met enough non-white people who grew up there, speak Finnish and didn't feel like that at all. I felt like the language is more important for being considered a „proper Finn”.
Non-white immigration to Finland is relatively recent and has only been in small numbers so i think what you're referring to is just an anecdote. The immigration of Somali groups in particular has led to quite a lot of friction as detailed in this report
>The 2020 OECD report about Finland criticizes that their education is unevenly distributed. In an interview with the HPR, Michaela Moua, a senior officer at the Office of the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman in Finland, recognizes racially motivated guidance in schools, especially in the Finnish as Second Language studies: “Black and Brown students are often advised to take these classes even if Finnish is their first language.”
>She adds that “this shows how it is still widely thought that one cannot be a person of color and Finnish at the same time.”
At the heart of the problem is that Finnish identity overlaps significantly with Finnish ethnicity. So yes, i think your anecdotes are the exception, not the norm.
That reflects my experience of Finland as well. Although, in my 20th I found Helsinki a bit boring, but I'm sure it will attract lots of people.
Agree with you on language, indeed I can't get the logic of ppl, complaining about the necessity of learning the language of the country you're moved to.
> public healthcare is great until you have something difficult to work with or non acute. Enjoy the months longs waiting times to see a dentist.
Months long waiting times for a dentist? I'm not sure if that qualify their public healthcare as great. In a months time your dental issue might actually become acute.
There is no such thing as a non-acute dental issue. A filling can wait for a couple weeks max before possibly becoming a real acute issue. You are only aware of the cavity until it starts to hurt, which means already late.
A good rule of thumb is to have a CT scan every year for early detection. I have been doing it for the last 5 years and boy it did save me from lots of pain. Lots of cavities are hiding unseen and with no pain.
CTs indeed sound a little overkill. Aren't cavities entirely avoidable? As long as you can afford a healthy diet and have water/toothpaste you won't develop any?
When I book a dentist or an oral hygienist, the first available times are usually at miminum 8 months ahead. The cost is 60 €. This is at the public healthcare.
Granted, this is another Finnish city, not Helsinki.
> - public healthcare is great until you have something difficult to work with or non acute. Enjoy the months longs waiting times to see a dentist.
Months? What? Why? We have universal health care but the dentist is just days away... if you have pain, usually 1-2 day, or immediate extraction. I live in Eastern Europe.
Hi Dean, hope all is well! I don't think it's all that bad here.
Most employers offer private healthcare and even if you buy the insurance yourself its inexpensive. I also disagree that difficult cases aren't dealt with properly on the public side, in my experience it's been the opposite: simple cases are ignored, but serious ones are taken care of properly.
There's plenty of English language daycares and plenty of non IT jobs for non-Finnish speakers in both smaller companies and medium sized ones as well. IT consultancies are a different story.
Winter is no worse than in mainland Europe or Britain and if you go a bit inland, you see a lot more snow.
If you use a big bank like Nordea then you get great English service, at least in my experience, same goes for other services.
I grew up in Finland and wanted desperately to get away when I finished high school, but having lived in the UK, Germany and Russia and spent some time in the US, my views have changed.
An aside, if anyone reading this is interested in relocating here as a developer, we at Toughbyte can help. Here's a blog post we wrote on the topic:
As a Swede working with Finns constantly I find it hard to believe you can get by without knowing the language as most of the Finns I work with have pretty bad English, I work in IT consulting.
You don't need much to live in a place. I don't know about Finland specifically, but based on my experience when I didn't know the local language yet and that of friends.
"Hello, thank you, goodbye, yes, no, sorry, I don't speak Finnish, English?" is probably ok for everyday life, if you don't care about not fitting in.
And even that might not be necessary, most of the time you know what might be asked. E.g. if your getting groceries then pretty much every answer is going to be no from you. Just a head sign and a smile will work fine. Or just go to the self-checkout.
For administrative stuff, Google Trad (or similar) is often good enough. Especially nowadays where most things are online. For critical stuff (hospital, ...), they'll find someone that speaks English.
Funnily enough, it's the stuff like getting an haircut, going to the garage and other non-critical but non-automated/common tasks which are the most difficult. You start to dread those situations because you cannot make by with just smiles and yes/no.
Can you pay for private dentists, or similar, if you need more immediate service? And is the wait similar for major things like cancer, brain tutor, or heart surgery?
> Can you pay for private dentists, or similar, if you need more immediate service
If you need immediate service, you get to a fast track queue and can get free dentist care on the same day. If it's non-acute, you can go to a private clinic which is highly subsidized but does costs some money. But nothing like in the US.
> And is the wait similar for major things like cancer, brain tutor, or heart surgery
If you have serious acute illness, you will not be stuck in a queue. Such a situation would probably be grounds to a lawsuit.
No offense but OP is right and you are wrong. Health care in Scandinavia is great in many ways and not so great in others. People do suffer, even die, waiting in line for public treatment, and health care lawsuits aren't really a thing.
I live here. Never heard of anyone who died waiting for care. It's extremely rare.
There are sometimes investigative journalism of malpractice cases in the media, but that happens on the private sector too. Yes, many people are often frustrated when they have to wait for their non-acute check up times, but "people dying in queues" as something that would be normal here in Helsinki is a total myth.
Finland is not Scandinavia and its systems are not necessarily comparable. You have shortcomings in any healthcare system, but I'd take this and all its flaws in a heartbeat over the absolute shitshow that is the US healthcare system.
Finland is very much Scandinavia, but that's a complete side note.
The point is, it's absolutely not true that health care in Finland or the rest of Scandinavia is anywhere near as good as popularly imagined by Americans or even by many Scandinavians themselves. Anyone who moves to Scandinavia thinking the high taxes will give complete access to instant top notch treatment in case of cancer or many other conditions will have been straight up misled and deceived.
Pointing that out doesn't imply thinking US health care is preferable or better - I certainly don't.
> Anyone who moves to Scandinavia thinking the high taxes will give complete access to instant top notch treatment in case of cancer or many other conditions will have been straight up misled and deceived
If you want top notch anything, it's pretty obvious that the privilege is accessible only to billionaires. There's no roof on how much money you can spend on any service. The point of the public health care system is that a basic level of care is guaranteed to everyone, not to provide the most opulent service that money can buy.
It's a bit messier than that though. When spoken in English, Finland is often included in the term. However everyone here knows it's not realy. We instead use "Nordic countries" to include Finland and Greenland.
While not a part of the geographic area called Scandinavia, Finland is very much a Nordic country.
The healthcare system here is pretty comparable to the other Nordic countries, although there are some differences. The quality of care depends a lot on your particular health issues and the place you live, though.
Sure, people may be satisfied with their system, but that's all they know. And that goes both ways, for Americans and others.
As someone who has experience both the US system and a universal system, there are things you get in the US system (if you have insurance) that you won't get in other systems.
> As someone who has experience both the US system and a universal system, there are things you get in the US system (if you have insurance) that you won't get in other systems.
I've used the NHS and the parallel private system in the UK. With private medicine everything happens quicker: initial consultation, treatment, operation etc. Inpatients tend to get private rooms, with a food menu, and routine meds like sleeping pills are handed out more freely. However, there are things the UK's private system can't do, probably because it makes no commercial sense. The really big stuff - major surgery like transplants - only happens in the NHS. Roughly one third of UK govt spend is the NHS; ~130B GBP last time I looked. So only the NHS has the financial, human and technical resources for eg heart transplants. Another important point is risk appetite. Private hospitals can choose not to do risky stuff to avoid litigation. The NHS is govt backed, so can take more risk. Ultimately the NHS is budget constrained, so can choose not to offer new and expensive treatments. IMHO the US system can deliver better results than the UK if you're very wealthy. However the UK system will be better for 99% of the population. Disclosure: I'm a British citizen working for a US bank in London, and I benefit from my employer's excellent private healthcare scheme.
I think it's fair to say that the US has the very best healthcare available - but not for everyone and overall healthcare outcomes aren't that great when compared with a lot of other countries
> People do suffer, even die, waiting in line for public treatment
Never heard of anyone dying waiting for public treatment here in Finland. If you have some life threatening issue you will get treatment right away.
I would say the only one coming anywhere close to that here is the somewhat bad access to mental healthcare that can end up in suicide if left untreated. But based on the amount of homeless people with severe mental illness on the streets of America I don't think things are better there (though beating USA in health care is a really low bar)
Yes if you have some non-urgent problem you might have to wait a few months in the public health care (if you have the money/insurance you can go to the private sector)
It took me 4mo to get my old ankle injury that I've had since the teens, to get operated. I was in the lowest priority category and this happened just after Covid-19 hit. I got a quote from a private healthcare provider for the operation for 6000e. In the public one it ended up costing 120e.
Also, just as a sidenote, if you have no income other than governmental income support, Kela will pay these fees. So it is free for those who do not have the income to pay for it.
There are queues. If you have non-acute problems you might have to wait. Especially if you need a dentistry check up, you might get an appointment that's several months away. Though now with COVID the dentistry lines have become shorter
Finnish public healthcare does what any other public healthcare does: they will prioritize because there's infinite demand for services and limited resources, and they can't quicksort their customers by purchasing power.
So, if your condition won't get worse in a few weeks/months, you wait, and get the free healthcare when they have time (within some legal limits). They'll be too busy working on the more acute cases while you're waiting.
You can certainly pay for your own dentist visits. I do - not because the waiting lines (I could just book my annual check at the same time each year and get the visit roughly annually) - but because I trust my dentist, and I want the same person to do my teeth each time. Most people do, I think, because public dentistry services weren't included for adults for decades until 2000's or so. So, you would get public dentists till you're 18 and then pay for your private dentist after that. That actually worked pretty well in its time but now that everyone is allowed public dentist visits there are queues.
You can pay to see a medical doctor as well. There's a large number of private medical clinics that will take you in the very same day. Some people use their own money to buy that service but most commonly people use these via their employer's healthcare benefit or via private insurance. For example, if you have kids you can buy them a private insurance for 150-200€ per kid per year and should they acutely need a doctor you can just take them to any private clinic instead of waiting in the emergency reception in a public healthcare center or hospital. But if it's something really acute you'd be taken in anyway, so many people will just use the public service.
> And is the wait similar for major things like cancer, brain tutor, or heart surgery?
No.
For serious illness or acute accident that needs hospitalization, the public health care is excellent and fast. And it won't bankrupt you, even for the most demanding medical care (usually you pay small flat fee for every day you're hospitalized).
For non-urgent doctor's visits and routine dental care, not so much. Wait times can be long and the system can be quite frustrating. It's a bit better for children.
Most employers in tech sector (and most white collar work, even some blue collar work) will have additional health care benefits that will get you your doctor's or dentist's appointment faster from a private health care provider. You can get insurance or pay out of pocket too.
Regarding dentisty: Yes, but they can be pricy. I think I had some minor filling work done once and it ended up being around 200-300e.
There is absolutely no issue if your issue is acute or serious with the public healthcare. But as mentioned, if your issue is complicated (e.g. i have an undiagnosed hip issue for a year) it takes ages to get scans and such.
In Canada our wait times aren't so bad but the quality of service is much to be desired. A lot of the most talented move to the US for higher pay, which most 'average' people probably dont notice but as someone who takes pathology courses for fun online I've noticed we don't get the 'best'.
The major thing beyond that perception though is you get a ton of doctors offices who work like mills, they try to get as many patients as possible through each day as possible. Even 'family doctors' as a opposed to 'walk-in clinics' where you don't need to be a 'member' with a specific doctor.
It's because in Canada the get paid for 15 minute (or optionally 30min) chunks regardless if they saw you for 2minutes or 15 minutes. So there's always this underlying pressure to get you out the door.
You have to learn to really pressure them to take your conditions seriously and take them time to review your condition.
Don't get me wrong though, I'm otherwise a die hard capitalist for most areas and still think that public health insurance (not hospitals or doctors) is the moral and better choice. Healthcare insurance lacks many benefits of a market and places like the US meddle with them to death anyway where they aren't true markets, so they might as well be public. Just like prisons, some things should be run by the state, just very few things.
> A lot of the most talented move to the US for higher pay ... I've noticed we don't get the 'best'
That doesn't match my experience. Several of my classmates who went to major Canadian medical schools also had offers from "top" US schools but stayed in Canada because the quality of education is good and they didn't want to pay $300k+ for their degree. Maybe there's certain top specialists that can only be found at Hopkins or Mayo in the US, but that's not where most Americans are going (even within the 1%).
The doctors I've seen in Canada are equally competent to the American ones in my experience (at "good" but not "world-class" clinics), but I will concede that the American ones take more time with their patients and seem more aggressive with testing and treatment.
For years I read the US counterarguments that us healthcare is better than the countries with public.
Then I moved to CA and got health insurance from work, using UCLA health as my main network.
It's the exact same. I go to see my PCP and she's literally trying to just go through lists of things, is routinely late, and response to 90% of issues is a recommendation to go to another doctor.
Yes, you can pay for a private dentist, get seen very fast, and you even get that part subsidised by the government if you are a resident. It's quite cheap, and the dentists are excellent. I'm from Helsinki but have been living in London for the past 15 years - I still go back to Helsinki for dental work just because I trust the dentists more.
Cancer etc - yes, you get fast tracked on the public health care system.
Employers are required to provide occupational healthcare, which at least in my experience - of IT workplaces - provides quick access to care, dental or otherwise. Actually this is one of the pain points of the healthcare system here, the long wait times for patients without occupational healthcare.
It’s worth noting that the package provided by your employer varies hugely. Mine is flexible right now so if I’m sick I can see someone. Some are super strict about it only being workplace related.
> Some are super strict about it only being workplace related
AFAIK, that's illegal. Your employer might not cover everything, but your employer cannot dictate what service you can use. I've seen this before where my employer said "we have health care, but you are not allowed to use it". I later on learned that that's totally illegal, they just wanted to cut costs by hoping that people would comply.
Yes you can pay or have (cheap like 1k/year) insurance and get immediate service as well. There are private clinics that also work together with the public system.
If you get in a car accident, have a stroke, drug overdose or get cancer, you get almost free world class treatment in the public hospital urgently.
If you hurt your knee while playing tennis but it doesn't prevent you from working and living a normal life (but you can't play tennis with it), you go on the low priority surgery waiting list for public health care or get it faster from private sector via insurance or paying out of pocket.
My point is that you don't need the private health care, which also means they are not in a position to rob you if you choose to be their customer.
Even if you don't use the public health care it's there for everyone as a safety net in case something is not covered by your employer or insurance, you are between jobs etc.
I cannot use it to communicate and I speak English & French (not for some years though).
I can get by in restaurants and supermarkets but I stopped studying a year or two after moving here as I realised very quickly that I was spending my day's at work and my free time studying. If I had not done this, I would have definitely moved back home as I wouldn't have had time to appreciate the things I enjoy in life here.
The government here doesn't do enough unless you're unemployed to get you to learn the language. The courses at university are hard to get into and in demand and there's not intensive courses shaped around the realistic work/life schedule of technology professionals.
I don't know a single person who has learnt the language here to the point where they can use it professionally, who hasn't either a) studied intensively or b) been forced to learn it as part of being a student or c) had no choice (ended up outside of Helsinki in a place where English-language skills aren't as high).
> The courses at university are hard to get into and in demand and there's not intensive courses shaped around the realistic work/life schedule of technology professionals.
Sounds like a market ripe for disruption :) "Finnish for Tech Professionals"
I'm an American and with all its faults (and there are many) I do think Americans overestimate how long it takes to get routine stuff done elsewhere, or non-acute things that pop up and need addressed. It's really nice being able to call a doctor's office on a Tuesday afternoon and get an appointment for Wednesday morning.
I will say though that my dentist is very busy, and unless you're on a waitlist for cancellations they are basically booked solid 6 months out with all the routine cleanings and checkups. If you're lucky you might be able to get in for non-emergent stuff within a month but most likely you're going to wait 2-3 months to get a call of "we can see you in 45 minutes if you can make it in, I need an answer now because there are 6 other people to call on the waitlist."
I moved to Seattle from India 3 years ago and medical care does not exist in US. Most doctors are not taking in new patients and general consultations are months out. You go to urgent or emergency care because that is the only place that would see you and this is with a reasonable good insurance.
If I really have a serious injury or a life threatening emergency, I am confident I will get good care. But I would also be dreading the bill and whether I went to the right hospital in my network etc.
> I'm an American and with all its faults (and there are many) I do think Americans overestimate how long it takes to get routine stuff done elsewhere, or non-acute things that pop up and need addressed. It's really nice being able to call a doctor's office on a Tuesday afternoon and get an appointment for Wednesday morning.
Which country is this? This certainly isn't the America I live in.
Public healthcare in general is good, once you get past the first level to the actual specialists.
Public dental care sucks. For regular checkups and maintenance, go for a private clinic. Yearly checkups, cleaning, occasional minor patching cost me around 200-300 € (edit: if you shop around you can likely find cheaper; I didn't), and I've been much more happier with the whole process. Never got that "we haven't opened our next year's calendar yet, try calling us again in 3 months" from them I got used to at the public side.
For something more expensive, go to a private clinic for diagnosis and get a referral to a specialist at the public side (never had to, but I hear it works).
Isn't it the case in most countries? As a Brazilian, it's shocking to see the lack of dental care in virtually any other country (I've been to many and lived in a few).
In Australia they were charging me 7k AUD for wisdom teeth extraction, and they wanted to take me to a hospital to do general anaesthesia... nuts!
In Germany the cleaning procedures were super basic and the doctors were not very careful.
Beyond being very expensive, the dentists are scared of doing certain procedures. I wonder if it's due to liability, improper education, or something else.
Unfortunately many countries still don't treat dentistry as a vital part of your healthcare.
What time do the stores close in Helsinki? I heard in Sweden from a friend who lived there briefly that everything was dark and closed early like 6-7pm. The opposite of a place like NYC or even here in downtown Toronto where it's normal to find plenty to do until midnight.
They said it was some sort of strict cultural thing. Everyone wakes up early and you got to get used to that early schedule. And I've been a life long night-hawk.
Not talking just about bars either. I have multiple 24/7 convince stores and gas stations near by. And Uber Eats shows quite a few options at 1am on week nights.
Is this really a quality of life thing? Are you going to make your decisions about where your live because you have to run your errands before a certain time?
That said, there's no issue in Helsinki. Big shops and malls are open until 8-10, some smaller shops might close around 18 but they have to go home to feed their families.
The 24/7 lifestyle might be convenient, but I've never thought I might need it.
It used to be like this but this image is bit outdated. During recent decade laws got changed and grocery stores can be open now 24/7. Some of the stores do this. It’s not limited to convenience store sized stores so even some of the largest ones are open if you enjoy strolling alone food isles at 4am.
Other stores close 9pm. Bars are open till 2am, night clubs 4 or 5am. Some places stay open but they can’t serve alcohol in the morning hours. Getting food after 12am is trickier but there are restaurants that are open until 4am.
And it’s dark. And people on average go to work early and clock out early. And definitely not new york or berlin nightlife wise.
Talking about helsinki here pre covid regulations.
Edit: reading other comment, it’s true most speciality stores which only have one set of employees close 6-8pm. Larger chains are open till 9pm
Specialty stores usually close around 6-7 PM, larger ones at 8 PM. Grocery stores are usually open to between 8-10 PM. If you move here you want to be up early. At least if you like seeing the sun once every 6 months.
When I was in Finland I remember walking at night around the city and talking with homeless Finns and I was amazed that all of them spoke impeccable English and gave me a lot of tips.
Some friends of mine who moved for work to different European countries told me their companies would just provide language courses if the number of 'imported' workers were high enough. Is that not a thing in Finland? Seems like it'd be prudent for them, after spending money to get you to come over, to also give you a reason to stay with some anchoring language learning.
I’ve been here a lot less than that. My family circumstances and work brought me here at the start of the year from the UK which given everything that has been going on turned out to be perfect timing! Some thoughts:
- Work in tech, the company is as international as any back in London, just with a higher margin of Finnish people. Total compensation (take home / benefits / holiday) is pretty much comparable to places I worked in London. I’m
not a web developer.
- Not had to use healthcare luckily apart from paying for a COVID test so I could shorten the isolation period on my last trip back. It would cost you more to be ill here - prescription prices for one are higher than in the UK. It feels like a public insurance system and not a National Health Service. NHS has waiting times and I’m sure they do here. Private sector is more established.
- If I earned a couple of 10s of thousand euros either way (higher or lower) then UK taxes would definitely be cheaper but tbh as a portion of my salary it seems about the same. The high taxes manifest themselves as the ‘built in’ price for pretty much everything. Bell peppers (paprikas) are something like 3 times the price as the UK. Neither country grows them at any meaningful scale (crappy example I know)
- The country is effectively an island on the edge of Europe (Finland, not the UK). It has a small population so there isn’t really an economy of scale - this also makes things more expensive.
- Language is a pain. I went to a class to study the basics, and make an effort to pick things up. I can order coffee and beer in Finnish but a lot of the time they switch back to English. I can get the gist of a lot of conversations. Most of my friendship group are friends of my wife or other foreigners. Tbh most of my good friends in London weren’t British so that’s the same.
- Immigration isn’t really on the same scale as London. Yeah as a proportion it’s probably higher but it is a small number of people.
- Education is free in both (student loans in the U.K. are just a tax under a different name. It’s not a loan. I was also paid to do my PhD back there) But here you could choose to study a(nother) masters degree at any point in your life for basically free which would be very expensive in the UK.
- I’m writing all this from my perspective as someone who had a job lined up before arriving. If you are thinking of starting a new life here and you’re not highly employable but have bought in to the American hype about it being a land where the state will provide everything for you then you’ll get a rude awakening. Even as a (not any more) EU citizen I had to provide proof of income to fully register here which ironically the UK never required from EU citizens.
- I had to drive 20km to find a good curry last weekend.
Can't you pick up Swedish? It's a lot easier than Finnish and seems to get you by in Finalnd. My partner of > 6 years is a Swedish speaking Finn so I go out there quite a lot and haven't yet had to learn anything more than Kiitos!
I have been in Helski half the year as erasmus student. I really liked it there except how long is dark in autumn and winter. I feel depressed every autumn 1000 km south from there so autumn in Helsinki was really rough experience for me.
That are some really good points. I would also add, that while you lose on the money you could earn as a developer compared to eg SV (or Zurich), you get in turn a comfortable life without being forced into believing that money equals happiness. You won't live in poverty of course, but it's telling that many Finnish companies consider their cheap engineers to be one of their main advantages.
However, if you enjoy family life I would say Finland and Helsinki area are really great places to raise your children. If you enjoy getting rich as an elite programmer, maybe SV would be a better match.
I think part of it is cultural too, and if you are a sort of honest type who enjoys actually working socialism I think you'll find the way of life easier to adapt. Learning Finnish as an adult is difficult (especially if your SO is not a Finn) but certainly in Helsinki area there are a lot of companies that have only-English speaking employees. Really good tech-workers will always find a job if they can just bother applying hard enough. IT-consultancies here seem to attract most of the tech-talent.
> you can get by speaking English but your kid and partner might not
Living 10 years in a country and not learning the language is not only stupid. It is borderline creepy. I guess many locals end up seeing you as somebody who has an active dis-interest in their culture. No wonder you have trouble making friends!
Work life balance is great, there’s a beautiful outdoors to enjoy all year, and the people are warm and kind, if not difficult to start with.
All that said, there’s a lot of bullshit and hot air here in this thread:
- public healthcare is great until you have something difficult to work with or non acute. Enjoy the months longs waiting times to see a dentist.
- Yes, you can get by speaking English but your kid and partner might not. The tech industry employs foreigners here but there are countless people I know and hear of who end up here outside of the tech or sciences industry and cannot get work due to the language. Furthermore, don’t expect the same opportunities provided to Finnish speakers as you won’t get half the jobs at least. I work for an IT consultancy and only about 10-20% of client roles are available to me within the company.
- Winter here is shit nowadays. It used to be cold and snowy. Now it’s just like slushy and miserable
- Not all your services will be available in English. I have English banking for example but their department is slow and difficult to work with. Same with phoning utility services etc.
- Yes the language is hard but the main problem is finding time to learn it. Trust me, you don’t want to spend your free time doing it or you’ll just work and study and not enjoy the lifestyle here.
Don’t get me wrong. I love this place but look through the marketing and try and get some real experiences before you uproot your whole life. Happy to answer more questions here or privately (email through website in my profile).