Work in Sweden

A few years ago, I suddenly received a call from a recruiter with a proposal to work in Sweden in a “well-funded startup” (funny that he found my resume on Odesk, where I had a profile for a long time, but not a single completed project). I must tell you that in this country I already had to work earlier, although, being in a protracted business trip, as an employee of a Russian company, I already had a good idea about life in Sweden. Since then I have got children, and therefore I had to discover many realities of Swedish life for the first time.

Working conditions

By the way, the recruiter sent me a funny video about Stockholm , which has not lost relevance to this day.

After communicating with the recruiter, I was sent a test task, and after it was completed, I had a Skype interview with HR and the technical director. In my opinion, I wasn’t able to show off at the technical interview, but it was quite satisfactory for the Swedes, and I received an offer with some of the following conditions (by the way, many Swedish “well-funded startups” offer similar conditions): work in the central part of Stockholm, help with registration of a visa and renting an apartment, payment of tickets for the whole family, 1000 Euros of lift (all prices are further written in euros for ease of perception, especially since the crown rate to the euro in recent years is relatively “round”), the purchase of equipment for working in € 2000 euro, smartphone with a paid contract, gymnasium payment, 30 calendar days of vacation, additional medical insurance and life insurance, additional pension accruals.

Moving

After thinking for a while, I decided to change the situation :) The whole visa took about two months, no particularly exotic documents were required, the whole family had to travel to Moscow for a biometric work visa (and you could only take prints and pick up the finished visa) However, later I learned about the existence of a visa hack, with which you can get a work visa already in Sweden. The apartment had to be chosen remotely, from photographs. Based on previous experience, I already knew that it’s not worth getting used to choosing an apartment - demand greatly exceeds supply, and therefore I approved the option of a three-room apartment for 1,200 euros per month, relatively far from work (45-50 minutes) but on an idyllic island and next to by the forest.

Upon arrival, we handed over documents for a local ID card, which is required for opening a bank account and processing many other things, and I went to work, where I was given the computer hardware and telephone I ordered. It is worth noting that many Swedish IT-companies are multinational and their language is English. For example, in the company where I started work, there are more foreigners than Swedes, and in my team, the back end, there were no Swedes at all, but there were Turks, Italians, Romanians, Indians, Russians and Armenians. The company was experiencing a period of rapid growth of the user base (100 million users at that time, almost 300 million now), and the old PHP backend written by the founding fathers could hardly cope with the load. We had to pull it apart on Java microservices, reorganize the data storage schemes and do a lot of interesting things.

Salary costs

A little distracted by the description of the salary and cost realities of Sweden. The Internet claims that the average salary in Swedish IT is 58,000 USD / Year / Gross, or 4,000 euros per month, which is quite similar to the truth. The tax depends on the place of residence, and now it is about 30% for Stockholm. Subtract from the remaining approximate cost of rental housing (600 euros per room, 900-1400 for 1-3k apartments) and we get ... not such a large amount. Is it possible for her to live a family of 4 people? Sure you may :)

The cost of food-clothes is quite at the level of Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Most likely, here you will not have expenses for a car - there is no special need for them, the transport of Stockholm works very efficiently and comfortably, if you have small children, you can move around with a sidecar without having to complete every minute of Hercules’s exploits. The cost of adult medicine is minimal, 30 euros for one visit to the doctor, until your costs exceed 130 euros per year, after which the treatment is free. Medical procedures, even complex ones, are free, but sometimes they have to wait, say, a month. Children's medicine is free, including all medications , dental procedures, and even the making of glasses.

To give birth in a separate ward with a toilet and a shower in Russia now costs quite some interesting money. How much does it cost in Sweden? Not at all.

You pay only for the cohabitation of the spouse in the ward about 50 euros per day. Including feeding! I note that the question of where to put other children at this time does not arise either, it is customary to be at the hospital with the whole family :). Kindergartens are free, but may charge a small fee for a part of the day if one of the parents does not work. Additionally, you may be collected once a year 15 euros for a gift to teachers. Schools are free, including all stationery, trips, excursions, and meals (some Swedes admitted to me that they remember school years with gratitude just for the delicious and abundant food). Buy special school clothes are not required. Replaceable shoes are not required, in the classes the children wear socks. The extra fee is paid, but is more than compensated by child benefits (100 euros per child per month).

And even for a child from another country up to the age of eight, you can take almost a year of maternity leave.

If you are a young non-family man and rarely get sick, then you may ask yourself: “what is the use of all this freebies?”. No sense.

Sweden is not a very profitable country for singles.

Families with children get the maximum benefit from the social system, especially when both parents work.

Kindergarten Schools

Well, back to the biography. The typical waiting time for an ID card is two weeks, but you can start looking for a kindergarten or school even earlier if you can't wait. Generally, in different municipalities there are different ways to enroll in a school or kindergarten. As a rule, this is a kind of “public services portal”, where you select 5 options from the list and wait for an answer. The answer may be “we take you”, and maybe “you are in the line, your place ...”. If there is a queue everywhere, you should choose the other 5 options. Usually a place in the garden is fast. Kindergartens are private, as a rule, with a small number of children, but for you they are as free as public ones. In kindergarten, children usually rent from one and a half years. To school - from six (zero, optional class).

The whole system of education is well adapted to children without knowledge of the Swedish language (as far as it is generally possible for the higher grades).

In case of difficulties, the school will provide free accompaniment of the child with a translator for the period of adaptation. Anyway, you can order a free translator for any official meetings with teachers (and doctors). However, the vast majority of Swedes are fluent in English. If your child is 11 years old and he does not speak English, then it is better to send him to school at the Russian Embassy (paid). By the way, in a Swedish school a foreign student can optionally take additional free lessons of the native language. We got into a Swedish school somewhere a couple of weeks after sending the application, and it took longer to get a kindergarten just because we didn’t immediately realize that we were expanding the circle of searches. You can go to any garden in which there are free places, and stay in line, waiting for the best options. Looking ahead, I will say that both children began to speak Swedish after about a year and a half.
Well, if the child gets sick, it just stays at home with one of the parents and the missed work day is paid by the Swedish insurance system (not 100%). Provide "sick" is not required. After recovery, the child simply goes back to school or kindergarten. In general, there is no concept of "medical reference in the garden." And no one will ask you to sit at home if the child is slightly coughing or snotty. I note that Swedes rarely get sick at all and this also applies to children.

By the way, Sweden is one of those countries where a child of eight may himself, one go to school. And one to return. And walking without adult supervision. Just like in the USSR ...

City

Probably the first thing that people notice when leaving the airport is clean air, but they often recall it with nostalgia when they find themselves in some other country. In the summer, despite the northern sun, it is very easy to get a tan - there is no usual city mist that disperses the sun's rays. Large tracts of forest are relatively close to any area of ​​the city. Hares, roes, and sometimes foxes wander into the streets. In the forests there are a lot of blueberries and lingonberries, hiking trails are marked. There are very interesting trails for mountain bikes. Near the houses often planted cherries, plums, apples. And almost no one collects them.

Is it boring in Sweden?

Stockholm offers the usual set of entertainment in the capital, as a rule, people who have moved have complained due to the loss of social circle.

Dating alone will not occur, unless you are by nature a sociable and charismatic person.

Conscious work on establishing and maintaining connections is very useful for you both for entertainment and for a career. Usually it is easier to make new acquaintances among fellow expats than among Swedes.

How does it work there?

In Sweden, they joke that only here you can hear : “I’ll stay at work today, before 18 do not wait”. Typical working day from 8..9-17. As a rule, at 16:30 people start to disperse. The more foreigners in the company, the more it is customary to stay there at work - they cannot get rid of bad habits :). In general, a very relaxed pace of work, rarely there are emotional conflicts.

Hierarchy in companies is weak, fewer people tell you what to do.

The initiative is seen and encouraged. It is very useful not to keep in oneself discontent with, say, some processes in the company, but to convey them constructively to the management, for example, by “catching a button” of the director.

The Immigrant Question

Yes, there is such a letter. Certainly not as scary as Russian media like to write about. A freebie is a freebie, but you can only have a normal standard of living if you work. And visitors learn the language (for free), get an education (for free), find a job, somehow integrate into society. Everyone has different odds. But somewhere in this policy mistakes are made. The city has areas with a predominant immigrant population, and no one is happy.

And if you want to change jobs?

The first visa is given for two years and is assigned to the employer (the wife’s visa does not have such a restriction). The second two-year visa already allows you to freely change jobs. But in general, the work can be changed and being on the first visa - just in this case, the new employer needs a few more gestures. For a good IT specialist to find a job already in Stockholm is easy, as a rule, a LinkedIn profile attracts many recruiters. What do wives? The first step is to decide which language to learn, Swedish or English. IT professionals can do without Swedish. The rest is better to go for free courses, if approached responsibly, then for the year it is possible to achieve an acceptable level. Then you can start looking for work if the specialty allows, or you can go to get a Swedish higher education.

Apartment purchase

Having lived two years in Sweden, many people think about buying an apartment. In general, there is a queue in the country for housing, (in fact, it is a social lease) and, it is quite possible to get an apartment in a year or two in a queue. Only here it will be by local standards somewhere very far away - an hour and a half to the center. And the usual rent from the owner is difficult to find.

In Stockholm, expensive housing (~ 250k euro for 2-3kk), it is worth getting to some other city, and you can find the same two times cheaper.

To purchase it is enough to have a permanent job and save up 15% of the apartment value. Typical mortgage rates 1.45-1.65%, until recently, most buyers paid only interest and did not pay the cost of housing itself. The real estate market is very lively, if anything, to sell an apartment is easy. At the same time, taxes are paid only if sold at a profit (and did not spend the money to buy another property).

And even further?

After 4 years of work, a perpetual visa is issued, a year later you can get citizenship. To abandon the Russian is not required.