
A guide to freelancing in Finland - sam_hosseini
https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-finland
======
climate_realist
I think people here who look at Finland and Europe in general and see these
social programs to help you get ahead are rather blinded by the reality that
they only exist for Europeans. As a US citizen who lived in Europe for 5
years, I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the
EU, you can only work for a European. It makes no difference if you have a
great idea, or even your own funding, you won't get the legal permission to
found a business in Europe unless you basically got a European to found it for
you and then you can be their employee. This is basically why the tech scene
in Europe is more smoke than heat, it only allows the local talent to be
successful, which we all know leads to subpar results. It is also why you
really don't see any actual innovation come out of Europe.

~~~
throwaway13337
I am also an American who lived in Finland, Austria, and Denmark for,
cumulatively, over 5 years. I now own and run a small but successful
bootstrapped American SaaS.

What bothered me is that in all the above countries, they try to encourage
entrepreneurship through rigged government programs. These programs offer
grants and other benefits to 'the right kind of startups' \- usually ones that
are fashionable because the subject is currently hyped - ai, climate change,
etc. Bureaucrats who know nothing about business pick whom to award grants
through bullshit means. I imagine there's a lot of 'who you know' going on,
too.

That wouldn't be so bad but, because these countries have such high taxes and
other restrictions, the only benefit to starting a business there are these
programs.

With these countries, it's not important that your startup is actually making
money as long as you can brag about how you're changing the world at parties.

Finland's startup culture is especially bad in this department. It was
disappointing as Finland is otherwise awesome.

~~~
euro_expat
This is also my experience. In Denmark they have a startup scene of sorts, but
they literally only fund startups that are by the "right" people or are
trendy. I never saw anything get funded on merit, just if you are Danish and
in particular, if you came from the elite socioeconomic strata. I never saw
any interest in if the idea was sound, if the kid applying for the money
actually knows anything about it, etc. It always seemed like if you were a
rich white guy, they had cash to throw your way. And yes, its 100% a case of
winners being picked, which is why almost none of these companies actually
works. They think that just because the kid is Danish that the market wants
his idea. They are usually wrong.

~~~
amylene
To be fair, this is how it works in the US too. Just some of the values are
changed.

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rasjani
Few foss projects and authors that started in this god forsaken country,
Finland:

Linux - Linus Torvalds. Finn Ssh - Tatu Ylönen. Finn IRC - Jarkko Oikarinen.
Finn. Dovecot - Timo Sirainen. Finn. Robot Framework - Pekka Klarck. Finn.

And maybe not fortune100 or even 500 companies but companies like Nokia,
F-secure, Futuremark have had their global impact. And Yeah. These are old
tech already but saying that no innovations came out out of Finland or Europe
is just plain bullsh*t.

~~~
fsloth
I'm a bit familiar with finnish industrial history. Finland has a history of
massively innovative companies that were decades ahead of their competition in
several sectors. The thing that they did not have, was capital funding, so
they could not grow, and experience of global markets to have the know how to
grow. So they remained small shops, with one or two big industrial clients who
did not care to help them grow, and the world caught up with them.

The ones that managed to grow, are exceptions. Nokia and Kone are probably the
more familiar ones (look at the next elevator you ride, there's a 50/50 chance
it's made by Kone).

Finland is a capital poor country but rich in ideas.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
_> Finland is a capital poor country but rich in ideas_

You can replace Finland with pretty much any non US country on Earth. I've met
brilliant hard working people all over the world. The only thing they lacked
to make it big was capital.

~~~
fsloth
Well, depends what you compare with. Most european countries have a rich
history of industrialization and colonization and hence quite a lot of private
capital. Unlike Finland. Of course, there are lots of other dirt poor areas,
but if you compare Finland to the segment where it's usually included, i.e.
non-iron-curtain-enclosed European states, then in that category it stands
out.

~~~
alopex_plenus
well, you could see Finland as halfway between the iron curtain and not-iron-
curtain states. They split off the Russian empire just after WWI and barely
avoided being taken back in the winter war. The Baltic states were less
fortunate

------
outime
I’ve been a freelance in Finland for some time and was surprised by how easy
setting everything up electronically was and how little I had to pay if my
income was low in the beginning. I was also very surprised to see how helpful
the tax office ( _Vero_ in finnish) is, even for questions that could be
answered with “hire an accountant” but thanks to their help, I was able to do
it on my own. I even made a mistake once and they let me know and fix it
without consequences.

Compare this to my home country (Spain) where you have to pay a rather high
fixed fee every month despite having no income (a typical situation at the
beginning of any business), the amount of paperwork and unreadable legalese
together with the unwillingness of the tax office to help you out with most of
the stuff.

On a side note this guide looks great and wish I had such thing when I started
out!

~~~
unclesams-uncle
Spain really needs to fix its autonomo system to let people add to the economy
without being overburdened with taxes and paperwork.

I remember reading that PSOE wants to amend it, but I don't know how much of
that was just campaign rhetoric.

------
shaneprrlt
It's incredible that Finland gives you a monthly grant to become an
entrepreneur. Definitely wish something like that existed in the US, even if
only possible at the state level.

~~~
hedgew
It's probably one of the better government programs, though as a programmer
you'll pay the entire grant's €2500-5000 value in one month of taxes.

~~~
vekker
If I read it well, this grant is personal income though.

If the company has to pay 2-5k in monthly taxes, that will be on its revenue.
If you have no revenue yet, then I don't imagine you will have to pay that
much in taxes

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irrationalactor
Anybody have experience as to whether this applies to an American living in
Finland?

Due to FATCA and the US's draconian tax laws around ownership of foreign
investment assets...I'm wondering if it wouldn't make any sense to try to
start a Finnish company while holding American citizenship. Assuming it would
be a tax nightmare if you start producing any real income.

~~~
hopia
Why would you want to start a Finnish company? For targeting purely Finnish
clientele?

~~~
irrationalactor
From the guide it sounded like you need a Finnish limited liability company to
be able to service domestic Finnish clients.

Or would Finnish companies be able to pay an on-site freelancer with an
American LLC just as easily?

~~~
hopia
I don't see why not. In fact, it would be "cheaper" for them because they do
not need to pay the value added tax to your non-EU company. Sure they'd get
that eventually back from the tax office if they were paying just another
Finnish company, but it would still take a bit of time.

------
xondono
It would be amazing to have a collection of guides like this sorted by
country!

~~~
sam_hosseini
Agree fully! Couple of people have explained interest in forking this for
their respective country! I hope it goes forward and they'd do it.

------
lawlorino
This is really great, thank you. Maybe I missed this bit but I noticed the
guide doesn't touch on language issues at all, how hard is the transition for
someone who doesn't speak Finnish?

~~~
krageon
Finnish is an absolutely atrocious language to learn for most people (unless
you are already familiar with learning a language with a completely different
root, and even then). That part will be hard.

I can't comment on the practicality of surviving with only English (or even
Swedish, which most of them speak due to historical factors that I will
politely gloss over), because I haven't tried.

~~~
skrebbel
>absolutely atrocious

I just want to underline that, unlike most European languages, Finnish grammar
is highly systematic, and so is Finnish pronunciation. Very few exceptions, it
feels almost mathematical in nature.

There's quite a _lot_ of grammar, putting off non-nerds who think "cases" are
hard because after all, they _are_ hard in eg German and Latin (they're
peanuts in Finnish). But for a geek with mathy tendencies, Finnish grammar is
a warm shower compared to eg Polish or French or, for that matter, English.
It's all so super consistent, it's as if it's a designed language.

A fun exercise when learning Finnish is writing a tool that can conjugate
verbs or nouns, which is totally feasible in an evening or two, showing just
how straight forward the grammar is.

The pronunciation is also super consistent and phonetic, which means that if
someone teaches you a word or a name, you can simply hear how it's spelled.
This makes it much easier to remember the word, since you can store the sound
and the letters visually in memory, even if nobody writes it down for you.

Another fun hobby project is coding a Finnish speech synthesizer. You could
just have it concatenate audio fragments for each letter. It'll sound like
shit but it'll actually be understandable.

The real challenge with Finnish is the vocabulary.

(source: I'm Dutch, lived in Finland for a year half a life ago, tried to
learn the language, walked away speaking it close to accent-free and knowing
all the grammar but still not able to understand shit because seriously not a
single word is anything like anything else I knew) (except appelsiini)

~~~
jolmg
> if someone teaches you a word or a name, you can simply hear how it's
> spelled.

Is it like Spanish where you can also know how a word is pronounced by how
it's written?

~~~
skrebbel
Even better, because Spanish has a few letters that change pronunciation
depending on context, eg the g in guerra vs Girona.

~~~
bernawil
doesn't depend on any "context" in that example. Both written and spoken
follow strict rules.

~~~
jolmg
The context they mean is probably the adjacent "u", which is true and is
involved in the strict rules you speak of.

There is ambiguity with "x", though. I don't know if there are strict rules
surrounding it. I know of 3 different sounds for it:

* Like Spanish "j", English "h" as in México, Xavier, Oaxaca

* Like Spanish "ch", English "sh" as in Xoloitzcuintle, Xela

* Like English "x" as in excepción, exacto

------
versale
Awesome! I wish there were a similar guide on how to establish a cooperative
of freelancers in Finland.

~~~
sam_hosseini
Would you like to open an issue on Github and start discussing it?

~~~
versale
Opened one. Unfortunately I'm not very knowledgeable about cooperatives, just
pondering the idea.

------
ronyfadel
Can we please have a guide like this for every (selfishly: European) country?

------
tomashubelbauer
I hope this will start a trend. A tech meme of sorts - virally producing
amazing and useful content with the same theme. :)

~~~
sam_hosseini
It's gone semi viral I guess.. cuz it's now trending on github and it was #1
on /Finland subreddit when I posted it 3 days ago. I'd personally love to see
this for other countries, maybe specially Nordics ones cuz that's easier to
implement cuz of the similarities I think.

[1] [http://github.com/trending](http://github.com/trending)

------
kharak
This is great. How many people have solved similar problems to this and not
written anything down? How often are the same problems solved, over and over
again? You did a great service and I hope it catches on.

I'm just wondering, will the people who would benefit the most from your guide
actually find it?

~~~
sam_hosseini
I have to be explicit as I have been in my guide [1] that I did it for both
selfish and selfless reasons. So it has not been done in pure good will :),
but I think it can be thought of as maybe a good sweet spot of serving the
community and benefitting from it at the same time.

About finding it, yes. It's gotten #1 on /Finland subreddit, I myself have an
extensive network in Finland, and it's gone relatively big on twitter and
linkedin. So given the size of Finland and the software dev community, I think
word of the mouth will eventually spread it to most people who are interested
in freelancing.

[1] [https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-
finland#now-t...](https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-finland#now-
that-youre-here)

------
shinryuu
Awesome, now I wish there was a similar guide for germany :)

~~~
mindjiver
Yeah,as someone that did the switch from employment to self-employment in
Germany it was not exactly straight forward.

~~~
pillefitz
As I'm going to be in the same boat soon, what were your issues in a nutshell
if I may ask?

~~~
mindjiver
I got different answers from the people I talked to, the lawyer, accountant
and insurance broker all told me different things, i.e. if I was to start a
GmbH, a Gewerbe or be Selbständig/Freiberufler. In the end I went the
Selbständig-route and it has been good so far.

Also since I have been 100% working for US based companies remotely I needed
to figure out tax implications and there most of the time I had to research
things own and explain to my accountant due to the the accountant not knowing
English. I guess I could find a better accountant but now after a year the
accountant knows how things work and I'm too lazy to switch now.

Other than that getting the insurances in place and bank accounts took some
time, but not too bad in the end. But a guide would have helped. :)

------
s_dev
Contracting in Ireland:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/bk8pmo/getting_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/bk8pmo/getting_started_contracting_in_ireland_guide/)

------
nizmow
This is a fantastic and detailed guide. I'd love something similar for
Australia.

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dgellow
That’s awesome. I would love something like this for other Germany

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nerdomancer
Awesome! I wish there was something similar for the Netherlands.

~~~
sam_hosseini
Would you be interested in forking it for Netherlands yourself and maybe
divide the work between your peers to get it up and running? :)

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Outpox
Thanks for sharing!

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khnov
Very nice and detailed ! I wished for a french version of this that could be
very helpful to me. keep up!

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Jsharm
This is awesome, if only there was something like this covering Ireland...

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bilekas
Step 1) Move to Finland!

~~~
sam_hosseini
haha :) well, the target audience of the guide is for people who already live
in Finland :) [https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-
finland#how-c...](https://github.com/sam-hosseini/freelancing-in-finland#how-
can-this-guide-solve-the-problem)

------
zadkey
Thank you very much!

