Mastodawn

I don't normally post here or anywhere really, but I'm genuinely at a loss. I'm a systems administrator and a devops engineer looking for work somewhere that isn't where I live right now. Main motivation is looking for a safer space as a trans person and some other personal reasons. Existing where I am now only makes me spiral more and more into bad mental health space.

While I am an EU citizen technically, I feel like every attempt I make at looking for work hits a wall almost immediately due to language requirements. And while I'm not opposed to actually learning a new language, it would be nice to find somewhere to put a foot in the door and work on my language skills after I'm a tiny bit confident it's a place that fits me.

Maybe I'm just naive and this isn't generally something that exists, but I feel like I hear of people working for english speaking companies often enough so surely it's a thing. But if so, where does one actually find such places?

Show thread

PingZing Mar 3

@espyeen Can only reply with my own personal experiences, standard disclaimer, no idea how transferable these are, I moved here ten years ago, etc etc

I'm an English speaker and moved to Helsinki, and have had steady work in programming the whole time. So far what's worked is looking for international companies, or bigger companies. Anything that has an office in multiple countries is probably going to either use English as their official business language, or be fine working with people who do.

...also, trying to get an interview, let alone a position, while not being physically present in the country sucks *ass*, and is gonna just take a lot of perseverance. It took me something like six months of sending job apps constantly, and that was when the market was good. Stick with it.

Show thread

🌈 Espii 🏳️‍⚧️Mar 4

@PingZing Thank you for your insight! Even if it's from a while ago it's still appreciated.

Looking for larger and intl companies makes sense, though I seem to struggle to actually zero in on those when looking in the usual places with job offers. The few times I actually applied to such I just happened to know the companies existed already so I went straight to the source.

And yeah, I absolutely believe that not being physically present makes everything harder. That sounds rough.

Thank you again!

Show thread

PingZing Mar 4

@espyeen oh, yeah, absolutely dig out the various companies'' "Careers" pages. It's more of a pain than centralized job listing sites, but the hit rate tends to be higher. It does mean you have to do some research legwork to find out what companies even *exist*, which can be difficult.

Show thread

🌈 Espii 🏳️‍⚧️Mar 4

@PingZing Yeah honestly that was my main motivation for even writing this post. I'm not sure where to begin looking. I've previously attempted applying to larger companies that I've personally heard of, but those are few and far between, which doesn't feel consistent or reliable enough.

Show thread

Joe W

@espyeen @PingZing Norway has jobbnorge.no - the Nordics are pretty good when it comes to using English in daily life. Knowing the local language is absolutely encouraged, but at least the Scandinavian languages are not too difficult to pick up.

Good luck!