How I went to work in Denmark
Two weeks ago, I started working at the Danish company " Secunia ", and I want - like many people in Habrovsk, who have left to work abroad - to share my experience. I'm not sure which hub it should be related to, but it seems that previous similar stories were in the “Offices of IT-companies”.
It all started when Google AdWords showed me a link to the " Senior Reverse Engineer and Vulnerability Researcher " job. Just at that time I was looking for a new job, and Google, apparently, subtly analyzed my search history and the contents of the last letters; or maybe just lucky. This vacancy is still open; and if any of you get settled on it, mentioning me as a recommended person, then I will get some nice bonus. So don't be shy.
In early November, I sent my resume for review, and received two test tasks in turn. Both were similar: a piece of disassembled x86 code was given (one task was in C, the other in C ++). It is necessary to restore the source and find in it possible vulnerabilities and other problems. From the moment the code is received, until the report is sent, it is given an hour. The length of the code is about a hundred commands. In fact, it took me about twenty minutes to parse it, and about twenty minutes to write the appropriate C / C ++ code. Nothing complicated for anyone who ever tried to poke around in other people's programs.
')
At the end of November, I had - successfully coincided - a trip to Scandinavia was already planned; and on that single day when I was in Copenhagen, I decided to drop by at Secunia, almost without warning. New luck: it was on this day that some builders cut down the Internet with an excavator, and all employees sat idle. Therefore, the CTO was free to talk to me. He made a very serious impression on me, but I have not seen him since then; and with my current boss, we then exchanged perhaps a few words. They said that they would send me the last, most difficult and important task, and after that they would finally decide on my candidacy.
This last assignment was sent to me in early December. It was necessary to find a specific version of Adobe Reader, take a ready PDF file that brings it down - and write a detailed report on why this happens. The mission was given the day, with the comment "do not hurry, do it well, you can in four hours - excellent, in six - acceptable." It took me about eight hours with coffee breaks. I sent the result, and waited.
For a month there was no news from Secunia, and I had already managed to get another job, when they called me and said that they were ready to take it. In mid-January, I received a scanned signed contract, and went with him to the Danish embassy to issue a work permit. In early March, the documents were ready. I finalized the last month at the job where I settled in January - and on April 1, the day of fools, I packed my bags and went to a new place.
Secunia attracts many specialists from abroad - probably only a quarter of Danish employees; mostly Europeans, but there are also from various other distant countries. Therefore, the integration of foreigners for this company is a usual thing. For four months, new employees have the opportunity to live for free in a “service apartment” - a huge, three hundred meter, for five, in an old house in the very center of the city, on Strøget pedestrian street - according to Wikipedia, Europe’s largest market street.
Our apartment seems to be refurbished from a former attic, so some rooms (including mine) have no windows in the walls, there is only a frosted hatch in the ceiling for light. And I like it more: the neighbors, who got rooms with windows, cannot fall asleep without earplugs because of the round-the-clock din of the shopping street. But they are glad that it is full of cafes, bars, shops within a few minutes walk.
For four months we will have to find the apartment ourselves. They warn that there are few rental apartments in Denmark - most of them live in their own apartments - and therefore it may not be easy to find.
In the first working week, an HR employee takes the new arrivals to register with Borgerservice - something like ATC, only much friendlier and more efficient. There, practically without queues and without filling out meaningless pieces of paper, they issue CPR-Nr (Centrale Personregister-nummer) - a number for taxation, social insurance and all that. It is needed when contacting any official structure. The websites of all state services, as well as Internet banks, can be accessed using a one-time password card (NemID), which is sent free of charge after registration. NemID passwords legally certify the connection between the CPR-Nr and the Internet user, therefore, by and large, you need to come personally to Borgerservice only once - to get CPR-Nr. Russian bureaucrats have someone to learn! Even opening a bank account is carried out via the Internet, using NemID.
Unusually in Denmark with taxes and vacations. Taxes are calculated for the year, so each month a “approximate” amount is deducted from the salary - about 35% - and at the end of the year either an underpayment is charged or an overpayment is returned. And it’s not the employer who pays for the holidays: every month a part of the salary is paid to the employee’s account in the state “vacation fund”, from which the employee can take money for the vacation next year. It turns out that in the first year at the new place of work, the Dane receives in the bill of vacation what he earned in the previous place; and those who come to Denmark from abroad in the first year should get by with unpaid leave.
But they promise that there is free universal medicine. Pah-pah, that is not needed.
Secunia office is located in a modern building of glass and metal, on the territory of the IT-university, in two metro stations from the "service apartment", or 20 minutes by bike. (Danes take cyclists very seriously: for them there are dedicated lanes and traffic lights, and in the mornings even bicycle traffic jams occur.) Photographing in the office itself is prohibited by security policy, therefore I only have photographs from the lobby.
The security policy in Secunia is largely draconian: for example, to enter the office, you need both a RFID card and a six-digit code. There are no trash cans near the desktops so that confidential documents are not thrown there by mistake - only into a shredder. Work is performed on "thin clients", in which even cmd.exe is prohibited by the policy, not to mention the change of settings. Something in their system of thin clients does not cope with the unbridled growth of the company, and several times an hour the system hangs for a couple of seconds. Terribly annoying when you are immersed in work. They promise to figure it out.
I am still far from reversing, which I was hired for: so far I have been taught the formalities of how to write security advisories correctly, and my everyday work is reduced to copy-paste from one advisories to another. I have already started writing a script that will copy-paste the data for me - only tsss, and then all of a sudden and the writing of scripts by the security policy is prohibited.
On the first working day, new employees are given a brochure “everything you need to know about working at Secunia”. In it, I was especially amazed by the printout policy: “try to print without color and on both sides of the paper” - despite the fact that the pamphlet itself is printed with blue links and red footers, and on one side of the paper.
Blinds in the office are automated and descend / ascend themselves depending on the light outside the window, and there is no possibility to manually adjust their level. The same is true with air conditioners: they are controlled from somewhere from the central console, and in order to change the temperature in any one room, you need to write a statement to the authorities and wait for it to reach the technicians.
All reversers - about twenty people - are sitting in one spacious, half-dark room; but jobs are placed so that no one bothers anyone. There is no one near me, not directly opposite me, or behind my back. The tables nearest to me are either three steps sideways or two steps forward.
Employees are offered a solid lunch, for which the company deducts a symbolic 400 kroons ($ 70) per month. On Fridays, a corporate evening is held twice a month with light drinks and snacks. Every morning they bring a basket of fresh fruit to the office, and once a week in addition to them a tray of fruit cocktails. But, for example, high-calorie snacks (cookies, chocolates, or some snacks) are not delivered to the office at all. From sweet to tea - only refined sugar.
Regarding the language: all communication, internal correspondence and internal documentation in the company - in English; English proficiency is one of the criteria for hiring. Nobody forbids, of course, chatting in other languages ​​to those who find an interlocutor, and in the corridors conversations in Danish or German are often heard. There is no urgent need to learn Danish, but the state subsidizes language courses for all those who have recently arrived, and I am going to use this opportunity. After four years in the country, those who pass the exam on knowledge of language and culture will receive the right of permanent residence; in the meantime, as a temporary resident, I will have to apply every three years to renew my work permit.
Work searches
It all started when Google AdWords showed me a link to the " Senior Reverse Engineer and Vulnerability Researcher " job. Just at that time I was looking for a new job, and Google, apparently, subtly analyzed my search history and the contents of the last letters; or maybe just lucky. This vacancy is still open; and if any of you get settled on it, mentioning me as a recommended person, then I will get some nice bonus. So don't be shy.
In early November, I sent my resume for review, and received two test tasks in turn. Both were similar: a piece of disassembled x86 code was given (one task was in C, the other in C ++). It is necessary to restore the source and find in it possible vulnerabilities and other problems. From the moment the code is received, until the report is sent, it is given an hour. The length of the code is about a hundred commands. In fact, it took me about twenty minutes to parse it, and about twenty minutes to write the appropriate C / C ++ code. Nothing complicated for anyone who ever tried to poke around in other people's programs.
')
At the end of November, I had - successfully coincided - a trip to Scandinavia was already planned; and on that single day when I was in Copenhagen, I decided to drop by at Secunia, almost without warning. New luck: it was on this day that some builders cut down the Internet with an excavator, and all employees sat idle. Therefore, the CTO was free to talk to me. He made a very serious impression on me, but I have not seen him since then; and with my current boss, we then exchanged perhaps a few words. They said that they would send me the last, most difficult and important task, and after that they would finally decide on my candidacy.
This last assignment was sent to me in early December. It was necessary to find a specific version of Adobe Reader, take a ready PDF file that brings it down - and write a detailed report on why this happens. The mission was given the day, with the comment "do not hurry, do it well, you can in four hours - excellent, in six - acceptable." It took me about eight hours with coffee breaks. I sent the result, and waited.
For a month there was no news from Secunia, and I had already managed to get another job, when they called me and said that they were ready to take it. In mid-January, I received a scanned signed contract, and went with him to the Danish embassy to issue a work permit. In early March, the documents were ready. I finalized the last month at the job where I settled in January - and on April 1, the day of fools, I packed my bags and went to a new place.
Accommodations
Secunia attracts many specialists from abroad - probably only a quarter of Danish employees; mostly Europeans, but there are also from various other distant countries. Therefore, the integration of foreigners for this company is a usual thing. For four months, new employees have the opportunity to live for free in a “service apartment” - a huge, three hundred meter, for five, in an old house in the very center of the city, on Strøget pedestrian street - according to Wikipedia, Europe’s largest market street.Our apartment seems to be refurbished from a former attic, so some rooms (including mine) have no windows in the walls, there is only a frosted hatch in the ceiling for light. And I like it more: the neighbors, who got rooms with windows, cannot fall asleep without earplugs because of the round-the-clock din of the shopping street. But they are glad that it is full of cafes, bars, shops within a few minutes walk.
For four months we will have to find the apartment ourselves. They warn that there are few rental apartments in Denmark - most of them live in their own apartments - and therefore it may not be easy to find.
In the first working week, an HR employee takes the new arrivals to register with Borgerservice - something like ATC, only much friendlier and more efficient. There, practically without queues and without filling out meaningless pieces of paper, they issue CPR-Nr (Centrale Personregister-nummer) - a number for taxation, social insurance and all that. It is needed when contacting any official structure. The websites of all state services, as well as Internet banks, can be accessed using a one-time password card (NemID), which is sent free of charge after registration. NemID passwords legally certify the connection between the CPR-Nr and the Internet user, therefore, by and large, you need to come personally to Borgerservice only once - to get CPR-Nr. Russian bureaucrats have someone to learn! Even opening a bank account is carried out via the Internet, using NemID.
Unusually in Denmark with taxes and vacations. Taxes are calculated for the year, so each month a “approximate” amount is deducted from the salary - about 35% - and at the end of the year either an underpayment is charged or an overpayment is returned. And it’s not the employer who pays for the holidays: every month a part of the salary is paid to the employee’s account in the state “vacation fund”, from which the employee can take money for the vacation next year. It turns out that in the first year at the new place of work, the Dane receives in the bill of vacation what he earned in the previous place; and those who come to Denmark from abroad in the first year should get by with unpaid leave.
But they promise that there is free universal medicine. Pah-pah, that is not needed.
First working days
Secunia office is located in a modern building of glass and metal, on the territory of the IT-university, in two metro stations from the "service apartment", or 20 minutes by bike. (Danes take cyclists very seriously: for them there are dedicated lanes and traffic lights, and in the mornings even bicycle traffic jams occur.) Photographing in the office itself is prohibited by security policy, therefore I only have photographs from the lobby.The security policy in Secunia is largely draconian: for example, to enter the office, you need both a RFID card and a six-digit code. There are no trash cans near the desktops so that confidential documents are not thrown there by mistake - only into a shredder. Work is performed on "thin clients", in which even cmd.exe is prohibited by the policy, not to mention the change of settings. Something in their system of thin clients does not cope with the unbridled growth of the company, and several times an hour the system hangs for a couple of seconds. Terribly annoying when you are immersed in work. They promise to figure it out.
I am still far from reversing, which I was hired for: so far I have been taught the formalities of how to write security advisories correctly, and my everyday work is reduced to copy-paste from one advisories to another. I have already started writing a script that will copy-paste the data for me - only tsss, and then all of a sudden and the writing of scripts by the security policy is prohibited.
On the first working day, new employees are given a brochure “everything you need to know about working at Secunia”. In it, I was especially amazed by the printout policy: “try to print without color and on both sides of the paper” - despite the fact that the pamphlet itself is printed with blue links and red footers, and on one side of the paper.
Blinds in the office are automated and descend / ascend themselves depending on the light outside the window, and there is no possibility to manually adjust their level. The same is true with air conditioners: they are controlled from somewhere from the central console, and in order to change the temperature in any one room, you need to write a statement to the authorities and wait for it to reach the technicians.
All reversers - about twenty people - are sitting in one spacious, half-dark room; but jobs are placed so that no one bothers anyone. There is no one near me, not directly opposite me, or behind my back. The tables nearest to me are either three steps sideways or two steps forward.
Employees are offered a solid lunch, for which the company deducts a symbolic 400 kroons ($ 70) per month. On Fridays, a corporate evening is held twice a month with light drinks and snacks. Every morning they bring a basket of fresh fruit to the office, and once a week in addition to them a tray of fruit cocktails. But, for example, high-calorie snacks (cookies, chocolates, or some snacks) are not delivered to the office at all. From sweet to tea - only refined sugar.
Regarding the language: all communication, internal correspondence and internal documentation in the company - in English; English proficiency is one of the criteria for hiring. Nobody forbids, of course, chatting in other languages ​​to those who find an interlocutor, and in the corridors conversations in Danish or German are often heard. There is no urgent need to learn Danish, but the state subsidizes language courses for all those who have recently arrived, and I am going to use this opportunity. After four years in the country, those who pass the exam on knowledge of language and culture will receive the right of permanent residence; in the meantime, as a temporary resident, I will have to apply every three years to renew my work permit.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/142088/
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