<commit_before>---
layout: post
category: Sweden, Work
title: Worth moving to Sweden as engineers?
---

**TL;DL**, Even though wages have risen a lot for engineers in fast growing economies like China
or India, depending on who you are, Sweden might still be a very attractive place to work and settle
because of the following reasons:

* High life quality
* Rewarding working life with flat hierachy
* Equal and efficient society with [Nordic model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model) welfare system

----
<br/>
Is it a good idea to work in Sweden as software engineers? As a Chinese guy who worked here for
a long time, here is some of my (unstructured) thoughts.

It was certainly a much easier choice when I decided to stay and work in Sweden 10
years ago, back then [Ericsson](https://www.ericsson.com/en) had a much stronger employer brand than
[Huawei](https://www.huawei.com/en/) even within China. Swedish entry level salary for a software
engineer was about 3 times more than what top tier companies in China could offer. Plus, I was young.
The sheer thought of experiencing the Swedish working life made me excited.

Things has changed quite a bit in the past 10 years. China more than
[trippled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China)
its GDP. Tech giants such as [Huawei](https://www.huawei.com/en/), [Baidu](http://www.baidu.com),
[Alibaba](https://www.alibaba.com), [Tecent](https://www.tencent.com/en-us/), etc had transformed
themselves into world class companies and become very attractive employers. Startups are booming as well,
roughly half of the world's [Unicorns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_(finance)) emerged in the past
decade are [from China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_companies).

Having witnessed all these, I would be lying if I said I never questioned my decision 10 years ago.
From the bottom of my heart, I still do think I made the right decision, but with the realization
that Sweden is perhaps not the best fit for everyone who considers to work abroad, especially for
those of us coming from developing countries with rapid growth rate.

### Live

Top Chinese internet companies now offer higher salary compared to their Swedish counterparts. But comparing 
incomes between Sweden and China or USA is pretty much like comparing apple to oranges without also taking
into account the expenditures.

Comparitively speaking, swedish salary is discounted for the following reasons:

1. Employee, together with the employer, have already paid for many high quality services provided by 
the Swedish welfare system such as one of the most generous parental leave schemes in the world and all
levels of free education for the next generation, etc. Swedes don't need to save up a lot like their
peers in China or USA for those purposes.
2. More [income equality](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html)
through tax, e.g. engineer is not paid 10 times more than the cashiers like in China.
This is not everybody's cup of tea, but its benefit especially when it comes to social stability and harmony
is often times under appreciated. In my opinion, equality is one of the most important reasons that makes
living here a pleasant experience for expats.
3. Employees enjoy minimal of 25 days of paid [annual vacation](https://www.unionen.se/in-english/annual-vacation). 
In many cases it could be more depending on circumstances, e.g. my wife has 38 days of paid annual vacation.

One of the biggest living cost in Sweden is housing, so does in China. As a matter of fact, if you are looking to
buy, the real estate price in some of the bigger Chinese cities has already become higher than Sweden so it is
not too much of an issue. The subsidized housing loan (right now it stands at [around 1.x%](http://www.nasdaqomxnordic.com/bonds/sweden/mortgagerates))
also makes things a lot easier. It is a bit trickier though for rentals since it is not always easy
to find one and the [price-to-rent ratio](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-rent-ratio.asp)
is much higher in Sweden than China, so expect to pay a bigger portion of your salary on that.

Other living costs such as food and transportation is expensive too, but with a reasonable salary you could live
comfortably well. In general, swedish population enjoy [very high](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings#) standard of living.

Most of the Swedes are ok with paying a lot of taxes. Ideology aside, people do get a lot of value out of it. Social security
is pretty robust and provides a solid safety net in case of unemployment, sickness/disability or hard economic situation in
general. High quality health care is virtually free and equally accessible for the entire population. When it
comes to having a family, Swedish welfare system provides one of the best support in the world. New parents receive
up to [480 days paid parental leave with an optional 3 months unpaid leave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security_in_Sweden#Parental_benefit) combined.
[Child allowance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security_in_Sweden#Child_allowance)
is also given out to help alleviate the burden of raising children. Parents do not need to set aside money for
their children's education since it is pretty much free from day care all the way up to the college. College students
usually receive [financial aid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden)) to cover living
expenses in the form of grant and low interest loans.

Our son Filip was born a little more than 2 years ago, we are so extremely grateful for the level of support
we received from the social security system. From the prenatal care and testing during my wife's pregnancy
to the final delivery at hospital, the entire process was carefully planned and well structured. It removed a lot
of uncertainties and alleviated much of our worries as first time parents. On top of that, we don't need to even
think about the bills. Before Filip turned 15 months, we took turns to take paid parental leave to stay home with him.
Even though I work at an early stage startup, people understood and respected the situation. After he turned
15 months, we sent him to day care which costs around 1200 SEK per month including breakfast and lunch. Considering
the fact that we also received about 1000 SEK child allowance every month, it is basically free. 

Raising kids could have been so much harder had we stayed in China. We might have to pay a lot more with services
of lesser quality. Grandparents are supposed to be the "free" day care by social contract and if that for some reasons doesn't
pan out well, it would quickly become problematic. Good quality educational resources per capita is much more scarse in China.
It seems to be an endless battle for both parents and kids to get a spot in a decent school every step of the way.
Things are just so much eaiser in Sweden.

Couples are encouraged to both work full time in Sweden since it not only promotes gender equality but also brings more
social prosperity. So when you move to Sweden with work permit, your spouse can easily obtain a work permit as well.
Free day care (almost) is another thing designed to give couples financial incentives to both work full time.
Also, taxation is not calculated at the family level but at the individual level, which financially discourges
single income families. Good to keep that in mind.

One thing that I really appreciate Sweden is that it is a well functioninng and structured country, you don't
have to maintain extensive connections (or [guanxi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi) in Chinese) to get the
basic stuff done. Most of the things can be solved by following the rules which are usually well defined. In
my mind, needing to maintain unneccessary connections is a form of social cost and the society would
be better off without it. If you think you'd rather spend your time on stuff that matters to you, you'd
appreciate that as much as I do. Things like the punctual and pervasive public transportation is another
manifestation of that.

One caveat is that in countries like China, due to the much weaker social safety net, people take more responsibility
of their financial future, usually through the means of saving. In fact, in average Chinese saving rate is about
[three times](https://data.oecd.org/natincome/saving-rate.htm) more than that of Sweden and is among the highest in the world.
Usually a big part of saving is allocated for Children's education, marriage or when serious sickness strikes themselves
or their parents, most of which is not an issue in Sweden. However if you do have siblings you need to support or 
aging parents whose health insurance isn't that great in your home country, Sweden might not be the best option for you.

### Work

Sweden is the home of builders and is one of the
[most innovative](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-korea-tops-global-innovation-ranking-again-as-u-s-falls)
economies in the world. [Established companies and brands](http://brandirectory.com/league_tables/table/sweden-2016) aside, Sweden produced
[4 Unicorns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_companies#Unicorns_list) in the past 15 years, which
is perhaps the [highest per capita](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-stockholm-became-a-unicorn-factory/) among all countries.
Due to the relatively small domestic market, even Startups are aiming internationally at very early stage. So engineers might have
a bigger chance of joining a journey that makes a global impact than most of the countries.

One of the manifestation of equality in Sweden is that most of the companies tend to be less layered and employs what's called
[flat hierarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization). Employees are trusted to be involved directly in the decision
making process rather than being instructed by layers of supervisors. Of course as companies grow they can not be kept completely
flat forever, but even in big companies hierachies are in many scenarios counter-productive. As someone from a very hierachical society
like China, I really enjoy working in Swedish companies, partly because I am not that interested in climbing up the management ladder
but more wanting to have a better technical career. In China, managers enjoy much higher social status than engineers because of
the power that hierachical organization enabled. Many good engineers are "forced" to take on a management position even if it turns
out to be a bad fit and waste of talent. In my opinion, one of the reasons that Sweden became one of the innovation center in the world
is because engineers can just focus on their technical career without getting too much social pressure to become something else.

Work life balance is great in Sweden. You are not expected to work over time in almost all of the companies in Sweden.
In contract, working under high pressure is not uncommon in many Chinese tech companies. [Huawei](https://www.huawei.com/en/) is noterious
for expecting employees to work overtime on a regular basis, an important part of its [wolf culture](https://huaweico.wordpress.com/our-culture/),
[Xiaomi](https://www.mi.com/global/) even has something internally called the 699 rule (working 6 days a week, from 9am to 9pm) before they went public.
If you are the type of people who enjoy and thrive in this type of environment, most of the Swedish companies are probably not for you (except
for some early stage Startups, even that is voluntary). Personally, I believe a culture that encourages people to focus most of their concious time to work might
be neccessary in some circumstances and could give companies a competitive edge. But at a macro level, good work life balance makes happier employees
and citizens, reduces social frictions, and ultimately benefits the entire society in a sustainable way. 
<commit_msg>update living in sweden post<commit_after>---
layout: post
category: Sweden, Work
title: Worth moving to Sweden as engineers?
---

**TL;DL**, Even though wages have risen a lot for engineers in fast growing economies like China
or India. From my perspective as a Chinese guy working here for a long time, Sweden might still be
a very attractive place to work and settle depending on who you are for the following reasons:

* Very high quality of life
* Work in one of the most innovative economies with flat hierachy
* Equal and efficient society with [Nordic model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model) welfare system

----
<br/>
It was certainly a much easier choice when I decided to stay and work in Sweden 10
years ago, back then [Ericsson](https://www.ericsson.com/en) had a much stronger employer brand than
[Huawei](https://www.huawei.com/en/) even within China. Swedish entry level salary for a software
engineer was about 3 times more than what top tier companies in China could offer. Plus, I was young.
The sheer thought of experiencing the Swedish working life made me excited.

Things has changed quite a bit in the past 10 years. China more than
[trippled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_China)
its GDP. Tech giants such as [Huawei](https://www.huawei.com/en/), [Baidu](http://www.baidu.com),
[Alibaba](https://www.alibaba.com), [Tecent](https://www.tencent.com/en-us/), etc had transformed
themselves into world class companies and become attractive employers which offer very competitive
compensation. Startups are booming as well, roughly half of the
world's [Unicorns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_(finance)) in the past decade are
[from China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_companies).

Having witnessed all these, I would be lying if I said I never questioned my decision 10 years ago.
However, from the bottom of my heart, I still feel furtunate that I made that decision, but with
the realization that Sweden is perhaps not the best fit for everyone who considers to work abroad, 
especially those of us coming from developing countries with rapid growth rate.

### Live

Top Chinese internet companies now offer higher salary compared to their Swedish counterparts. But comparing 
incomes between Sweden and China or USA is pretty much like comparing apple to oranges without also taking
into account the expenditures.

Comparitively speaking, swedish salary is discounted for the following reasons:

1. Employee, together with the employer, have already paid for many high quality services provided by 
the Swedish welfare system such as one of the most generous parental leave schemes in the world and all
levels of free education for the next generation, etc. Swedes don't need to save up a lot like their
peers in China or USA for those purposes.
2. More [income equality](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html)
through tax, e.g. engineer is not paid 10 times more than the cashiers like in China.
This is not everybody's cup of tea, but its benefit especially when it comes to social stability and harmony
is often times under appreciated. In my opinion, equality is one of the most important reasons that makes
living here a pleasant experience for expats.
3. Employees enjoy minimal of 25 days of paid [annual vacation](https://www.unionen.se/in-english/annual-vacation). 
In many cases it could be more depending on circumstances, e.g. my wife has 38 days of paid annual vacation.

One of the biggest living cost in Sweden is housing, so does in China. As a matter of fact, if you are looking to
buy, the real estate price in some of the bigger Chinese cities has already become higher than Sweden so it is
not too much of an issue. The subsidized housing loan (right now it stands at [around 1.x%](http://www.nasdaqomxnordic.com/bonds/sweden/mortgagerates))
also makes things a lot easier. It is a bit trickier though for rentals since it is not always easy
to find one and the [price-to-rent ratio](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-rent-ratio.asp)
is much higher in Sweden than China, so expect to pay a bigger portion of your salary on that.

Other living costs such as food and transportation is expensive too, but with a reasonable salary you could live
comfortably well. In general, swedish population enjoy [very high](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings#) standard of living.

Most of the Swedes are ok with paying a lot of taxes. Ideology aside, people do get a lot of value out of it. Social security
is pretty robust and provides a solid safety net in case of unemployment, sickness/disability or hard economic situation in
general. High quality health care is virtually free and equally accessible for the entire population. When it
comes to having a family, Swedish welfare system provides one of the best support in the world. New parents receive
up to [480 days paid parental leave with an optional 3 months unpaid leave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security_in_Sweden#Parental_benefit) combined.
[Child allowance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security_in_Sweden#Child_allowance)
is also given out to help alleviate the burden of raising children. Parents do not need to set aside money for
their children's education since it is pretty much free from day care all the way up to the college. College students
usually receive [financial aid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden)) to cover living
expenses in the form of grant and low interest loans.

Our son Filip was born a little more than 2 years ago, we are so extremely grateful for the level of support
we received from the social security system. From the prenatal care and testing during my wife's pregnancy
to the final delivery at hospital, the entire process was carefully planned and well structured. It removed a lot
of uncertainties and alleviated much of our worries as first time parents. On top of that, we don't need to even
think about the bills. Before Filip turned 15 months, we took turns to take paid parental leave to stay home with him.
Even though I work at an early stage startup, people understood and respected the situation. After he turned
15 months, we sent him to day care which costs around 1200 SEK per month including breakfast and lunch. Considering
the fact that we also received about 1000 SEK child allowance every month, it is basically free. 

Raising kids could have been so much harder had we stayed in China. We might have to pay a lot more with services
of lesser quality. Grandparents are supposed to be the "free" day care by social contract and if that for some reasons doesn't
pan out well, it would quickly become problematic. Good quality educational resources per capita is much more scarse in China.
It seems to be an endless battle for both parents and kids to get a spot in a decent school every step of the way.
Things are just so much eaiser in Sweden.

Couples are encouraged to both work full time in Sweden since it not only promotes gender equality but also brings more
social prosperity. So when you move to Sweden with work permit, your spouse can easily obtain a work permit as well.
Free day care (almost) is another thing designed to give couples financial incentives to both work full time.
Also, taxation is not calculated at the family level but at the individual level, which financially discourges
single income families. Good to keep that in mind.

One thing that I really appreciate Sweden is that it is a well functioninng and structured country, you don't
have to maintain extensive connections (or [guanxi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi) in Chinese) to get the
basic stuff done. Most of the things can be solved by following the rules which are usually well defined. In
my mind, needing to maintain unneccessary connections is a form of social cost and the society would
be better off without it. If you think you'd rather spend your time on stuff that matters to you, you'd
appreciate that as much as I do. Things like the punctual and pervasive public transportation is another
manifestation of that.

One caveat is that in countries like China, due to the much weaker social safety net, people take more responsibility
of their financial future, usually through the means of saving. In fact, in average Chinese saving rate is about
[three times](https://data.oecd.org/natincome/saving-rate.htm) more than that of Sweden and is among the highest in the world.
Usually a big part of saving is allocated for Children's education, marriage or when serious sickness strikes themselves
or their parents, most of which is not an issue in Sweden. However if you do have siblings you need to support or 
aging parents whose health insurance isn't that great in your home country, Sweden might not be the best option for you.

### Work

Sweden is the home of builders and is one of the
[most innovative](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-korea-tops-global-innovation-ranking-again-as-u-s-falls)
economies in the world. [Established companies and brands](http://brandirectory.com/league_tables/table/sweden-2016) aside, Sweden produced
[4 Unicorns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_companies#Unicorns_list) in the past 15 years, which
is perhaps the [highest per capita](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-stockholm-became-a-unicorn-factory/) among all countries.
Due to the relatively small domestic market, even Startups are aiming internationally at very early stage. So engineers might have
a bigger chance of joining a journey that makes a global impact than most of the countries.

One of the manifestation of equality in Sweden is that most of the companies tend to be less layered and employs what's called
[flat hierarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization). Employees are trusted to be involved directly in the decision
making process rather than being instructed by layers of supervisors. Of course as companies grow they can not be kept completely
flat forever, but even in big companies hierachies are in many scenarios counter-productive. As someone from a very hierachical society
like China, I really enjoy working in Swedish companies, partly because I am not that interested in climbing up the management ladder
but more wanting to have a better technical career. In China, managers enjoy much higher social status than engineers because of
the power that hierachical organization enabled. Many good engineers are "forced" to take on a management position even if it turns
out to be a bad fit and waste of talent. In my opinion, one of the reasons that Sweden became one of the innovation center in the world
is because engineers can just focus on their technical career without getting too much social pressure to become something else.

Work life balance is great in Sweden. You are not expected to work over time in almost all of the companies in Sweden.
In contract, working under high pressure is not uncommon in many Chinese tech companies. [Huawei](https://www.huawei.com/en/) is noterious
for expecting employees to work overtime on a regular basis, an important part of its [wolf culture](https://huaweico.wordpress.com/our-culture/),
[Xiaomi](https://www.mi.com/global/) even has something internally called the 699 rule (working 6 days a week, from 9am to 9pm) before they went public.
If you are the type of people who enjoy and thrive in this type of environment, most of the Swedish companies are probably not for you (except
for some early stage Startups, even that is voluntary). Personally, I believe a culture that encourages people to focus most of their concious time to work might
be neccessary in some circumstances and could give companies a competitive edge. But at a macro level, good work life balance makes happier employees
and citizens, reduces social frictions, and ultimately benefits the entire society in a sustainable way. 

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