
Ask HN: Cities underserved by tech jobs? (Europe Edition) - lui8906
This question was asked last week and basically asked, which tech cities in the US are hidden gems and often overlooked. Atlanta and a number of other cities were posted and at least how the commenters described them, they sounded like very liveable places.<p>Which got me thinking, are there overlooked tech cities with good pay, affordable living etc. in Europe?<p>tldr: Cheap, good tech cities to live in Europe?
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a-saleh
I live in Brno, Czech Republic. It is ~400k city, that grows by another ~100k
when students return :-)

Tech scene: * We have Red Hat, Net Suite/Oracle, GoodData, Seznam (local
search portal, still somehow competing with google), and few smaller startups
and local it shops. * I did work at Red Hat for 6 years here, and the office
was nice :-) * You would find expats in larger corporations, you can get by
speaking mostly english in larger corps (i.e. I had a manager who relocated
from New Castle to Brno)

Salary:

From what I heard, based on your role, seniority and skill in salary
negotiation, you get between 1000 and 4000 eur/month pre-taxes. So far I don't
know many friends that would make more, but I have met few people that do
consulting/own small game companies, that make N-times more. Cost of
employment (social security, medical insurance, taxes) are around 40%, and as
an employee you don't have many ways to lower that. Some companies allow to
have you work as a contractor. Beware that being a contractor that is
effectively an employee is illegal ;)

Cost of living: * it is a student city. If you are content with single room in
a shared flat,that would cost you ~200Eur/month, a two/three bedroom flat,
depending on location, 500-700Eur/month.

* lunch during lunchtime costs you around 4Eur. Dining around 5-10. Loaf of bread costs ~1Eur.

* There is decent public transport, year-pass for the whole city costs between 100 and 200 Eur.

* I use Eur for the sake of comparability, Czechs still have their own Crown as currency.

Entertainment:

I don't really go out much these days, but Brno has good beer, and cheap if
you like lagers (0.5l around 1E). There is several tearooms with high quality
tea, some serve sheesha as well. Coffe snobs can find their coffe. There is
board-gaming scene. There is climbing scene with several clibming/bouldering
clubs. Rest I don't really know, but most of the things you'd imagine some
subgroup of those ~100k students might want in the city, you can find here :)

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EnderMB
Bristol is probably the biggest tech hub in the UK outside of London. It's
considered an expensive place to live, but you can find affordable housing if
you're willing to live on the outskirts in a less desirable place, with the
added benefit of house prices continuing to rise in those areas.

I've never lived there, but I've worked with Serbian developers that say that
Serbia is fantastically cheap, and has a number of tech jobs available due to
outsourcing to the country.

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alexgmcm
I moved to Barcelona after finishing University in the UK, the pay is pretty
good in multinationals taking into account the cost of living but the rent has
been soaring recently. The weather is nice too.

I used to live in Edinburgh and that is also an excellent city with a much
better cost of living than London and still pretty good companies and salaries
(including the financial sector). Doesn't have such great weather
unfortunately.

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phakding
What's the higher range of the salaries in Barcelona. I work in USA, east
coast and with 10+ years of experience, salaries can go as high as 200K+. How
does this compare to Barcelona or other European tech cities? I am curious.

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a-saleh
In your case I would try to relocate. I worked at Red Hat and from what I
heard you could relocate from i.e. US to Czech republic and retain your
salary. This was rare and I am not certain about the specifics, but I have
seen it happen several times.

~~~
phakding
Unfortunately, I don't work for a multinational.

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wprapido
Bucharest, Timisioara, Belgrade, Zagreb, Osijek, Sofia, Madrid, Barcelona, are
fairly livable, yet they all boast a decent tech scene.

I can provide intel on Bucharest, Timisoara, Belgrade, Zagreb and Osijek.

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lui8906
Would love intel on Bucharest. I visited last year and was positively
overwhelmed with how friendly the people were and how cool the cafes and
restaurants were. How is the tech scene and daily life there?

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wprapido
I can provide on Timisoara. My experience with Bucharest was rather limited
while very positive.

Most tech scene in Romania is outsourcing and there is some R&D for major
players.

Romanians are by and large friendliest Eastern Europeans.

Timisoara is a nice second tier city. Many low cost flights across Europe and
Middle East. Many places are also reachable overland (I'm closer to Timisoara
than I'm to Zagreb, my country's capital). Food is brilliant. So are the
coffee and the wine. Dating scene is also great. Music scene is amazing as
well. If you go entrepreneurial, or just wanna outsource, the talent pool is
exceptional.

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enrmarc
In Germany I'd say Cologne.

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_august
Can you post a link to the US thread?

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lui8906
Yes sure, my mistake I should have included it in the original post. Here it
is:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17729579](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17729579)

