Post: #1

Currently working in the City, here in London. 26 with ~4 years experience.

Does anyone have experience working abroad in non-English speaking country? I think moving to Paris for a few years - two-three years - would be a decent amount of time to learn a new language etc, plus it's only ~two hours to London by train.

Any advice, experiences etc?

Post: #2

(02-17-2013 03:17 PM)brucebanner Wrote:  Currently working in the City, here in London. 26 with ~4 years experience.

Does anyone have experience working abroad in non-English speaking country? I think moving to Paris for a few years - two-three years - would be a decent amount of time to learn a new language etc, plus it's only ~two hours to London by train.

Any advice, experiences etc?

You can learn enough in less than 6 months if you take the right approach. In software engineering, English is more or less the norm, so you are set at work.

Post: #3

Software Engineer here but I'm sticking to North America and the US until I get out and I have some side hustles taking off for me.

Post: #4

As a software engineer you already know that English is the language that every programming language is written in. So take a breath and relax Start learning french and immerse yourself in it.


Also - as a Russian speaker, I am VERY familiar with how cyrillic characters are represented, misrepresented, and the troubles that come with dealing with different encoding (The ones I dealt with are KOI8R, Win-1251 and UTF8 - which everyone should be using. ). In any case, I know that there are some weird characters in the french alphabet: é, î , « for example. It's not really a "skill" to brag about, but when you're actually working, figuring that shit out can sometimes take a lot of time.

Post: #5

Might consider a role at a Investment Bank in Budapest.
Or are there other places to consider.

Post: #6

Sign up for some french courses and study each day a bit outside of work. You be pretty decent after 4-6 months. This should be a fun experience fun actually and don't know you're freaking out. Even then most business people speak English.

And personally I wouldn't go with IB. You'll make good money but you'll never have any time to spend it. But you have to make that choice. I do however know too many of my friends burning out after a year.

Post: #7

(02-22-2013 08:41 AM)brucebanner Wrote:  Might consider a role at a Investment Bank in Budapest.

I would stay in London, since it's the financial center of Europe. Make money, save money (hard when you live in London), make contacts, and then go party in Eastern Europe whenever you find some time.

I realize this is not easy, since City boys work all the time. Instead of working for an IB, you could try to work for tech companies that sell services / software to IB's.

Post: #8

Engineer your own software for an existing market and sell it worldwide. The difference between software engineers and software companies is the market.

Post: #9

Quote:Might consider a role at a Investment Bank in Budapest.

Go for it, totally. You want to learn Hungarian, right? If you don't learn the language, or even try, you won't even date in there. Get some language right, and you will be unable to leave the city. You will fall in love with it.