
Ask HN: Anyone moving their company out of the UK following Brexit? - Keats
Between Brexit, the Snooper&#x27;s Charter and the fact that we are 2 EU migrants we are thinking of moving our company out of the UK.<p>I&#x27;ve seen a few places that look interesting and would fit our requirements (basically being able to do everything in english and not having to live there):<p>- Ireland<p>- Estonia (saw http:&#x2F;&#x2F;howtostayin.eu&#x2F; this morning)<p>- Singapore (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ghost.org&#x2F;moving-to-singapore&#x2F; for an example)<p>Any other place in the EU with a good track record on surveillance laws would be good as well.<p>Is anyone in the same situation or has done this kind of move?
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gravypod
I know this might sound ignorant but can you not stay in the UK and just trade
with the EU? I mean I buy stuff from European countries and I'm in the US. Why
can't you?

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anon1385
There's a greater than zero chance that EU residents will lose the right to
legally reside in the UK.

The new PM has threatened it, and when she was called out her response was
"What you want to let _criminals_ stay in the country?!". So yeah…

~~~
ddebernardy
Yeah, but she's just posing and is not credible in this respect. It's a bit
like hitting the nuclear self-destruct button or something. Germany and France
are making it quite clear that access to the common market includes reasonably
free movement of people, compliance with EU law, paying into the pot, and
sorting out the situation of UK residents in the EU (also a problem) and EU
residents in the UK. Methinks the chance that EU residents will lose the right
to legally reside in the UK is close to nil - at the very least those that are
there already.

What will more likely happen is that the UK will get a deal a bit like Norway
or Switzerland where they basically apply EU laws and without having a say on
what they are, and business as usual will resume in the name of keeping the
City intact - with UK voters more disgruntled than ever.

~~~
jonknee
> Germany and France are making it quite clear that access to the common
> market includes reasonably free movement of people, compliance with EU law,
> paying into the pot, and sorting out the situation of UK residents in the EU
> (also a problem) and EU residents in the UK.

That's all well and good, but all of those things are what people were voting
to get rid of with a Brexit vote. It will be a tough sell.

~~~
ddebernardy
Indeed, but that's what awaits them. Hell will freeze before the UK gets the
EU perks without the costs, if only because the EU leaders are adamantly
determined to set an example to flush any "let's leave the EU" incentives in
other countries. For better or worse the UK will serve as an example that
other nationalists will turn to and say "hell no we don't want this after
all". The deal the UK will get will _not_ be something to be looking forward
to.

I for one am fully in support of putting them in the same position as Norway,
and that's probably more than EU politicians will be happy to accept. That is:
UK pays EU fees without the discounts they've negotiated for years on end,
complies with EU laws, and gets free market access in exchange for freedom of
movement. And without voting rights. There has been no shortage of walking on
eggs since the UK has been around in the EU. And the voters were still
unhappy, so if anything, good riddance. Then again EU leaders aren't very open
to this idea insofar as I understood, because it's a great deal.

Another scenario would be to give them the same deal as Canada: apply EU laws
just like Norway, and pay into the EU, without any vote. Oh wait! Yeah, voters
will _not_ be happy. But hey, they're the ones accepting that their
politicians lie to them.

Yet another scenario is that the UK does _not_ leave the EU. It might happen,
after all. Will that be democratic? No. But it will be "constitutional", if
one can use that word for a country that has none. Yet it certainly might be
the lesser of all evils.

Truth is we don't know, and "tough sell" is not part of the equation. The UK
is not in much of a position to negotiate. Especially with the quack they put
at the top of their Foreign Office - who somehow managed to insult just about
every foreign nation out there before even getting his new job. Credit to the
new PM in this respect: she's making the chap own it.

~~~
kyriakos
currently the most likely scenario is that UK will prolong the uncertainty as
long as it benefits them, ideally until the market stabilises.

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SEJeff
Consider Berlin, besides being very cheap, it is a great place for startups.
It also happens to be easy as everyone speaks English.

~~~
Keats
Can you do government interactions in english as well (think HMRC, tax etc)?
The other guy in the company is german so it's not a huge blocker but I don't
speak german myself and it would be nice to understand official documents

~~~
Kliment
Government interactions in English are functionally impossible. I'm happy to
help out with stuff like that (tax stuff, company formation stuff, work
permits, citizenship, any other related bullshit) for anyone moving to
Germany. I had someone help me like this when I moved here and I'm happy to
pay it forward.

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dijit
The Financial hub in Frankfurt will likely attract the more serious and large
businesses in the banking industry.

As for myself, personally, I was already abroad when the ship sank so all I
have to do is not return. Come to Sweden my fellow expatriots! lots of tech!

~~~
jcoward
If you don't mind I have a few questions about working in tech in Sweden:

\- How easy have you found finding tech jobs in Sweden, do you have any advice
for good places to look? \- How does the pay compare to other countries/cities
you've worked in? \- Do you speak Swedish at work/is it possible to get by
without being fluent in Swedish?

~~~
edutechnion
The most important question: how do I find an apartment to rent in Stockholm
city center without Swedish connections and without spending more than 1/3 net
pay?

~~~
robotresearcher
It's the same all over. In what capital city of a major democracy are there
jobs _and_ affordable apartments?

I initially meant that rhetorically, but now I'm actually interested to know.
Maybe there are good non-govt jobs and low prices in smaller capital cities
like Ottawa (<0.8M) and Canberra (<0.4M)? Educate me!

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ihaveajob
I'm going to go ahead and throw in Granada, Spain as a lovely place for tech
startups. Good university, livable college town, cheap cost of living, and not
a lot of competition for talent.

~~~
heelhook
Are you from/living in granada by any chance? I just moved to Granada and
would love to know more about the local tech/entrepreneurial scene.

~~~
ihaveajob
I'm from Granada, but I moved to California 15 years ago. I keep in touch with
friends, some of them have their own company
([http://www.celtiberian.es/](http://www.celtiberian.es/)). Ask away if you
have any questions. :)

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saosebastiao
The surveillance state is a legitimate fear, but people are seriously
overblowing the business threat of Brexit. Trade still exists. It won't be any
more difficult to trade with the EU than it currently is to trade with the US.

If anything, there are probably some very real long term benefits that can
come from this. Smaller governments (Geographic and demographic small, not
%-of-GDP small) have some serious benefits in terms of their ability to adapt
to the world around them.

For example, a floating currency means that your currency can adapt to your
conditions, and not your conditions weighted by your economic impact relative
to your peers. A floating currency would have benefited both Greece _and_
Germany during their last economic conundrum.

Another benefit is that it is much harder to hide corruption as well as
nominally-legal forms of corruption like pork-barrel spending. Special
interest groups become much more limited in scope. Democracy is more
accountable because it is smaller and can command more attention.

Think of any reform attempt like you think of refactoring code. Which program
can handle simple refactorings better? The 20k LOC program, or the 2m LOC
program? I would be willing to bet that most 2m LOC java programs are still
stuck on java6, java7 if they're lucky. If the US were more federated than it
currently is, we probably would have switched to the metric system sooner. We
probably would have overhauled health care sooner (we might have had 50
different types of health care systems, but we would have reformed them in the
80's instead of 2010 and we would have a very clear picture of which reforms
worked well and which ones didn't). It will _always_ be easier to get 50m
people on board with an idea than it will be to get 500m people on board. In
fact, it might even be easier to reform the ridiculous surveillance state that
the UK has going.

Brexit might have been led by despicable (IMO) rationales, but from a
business/economic perspective the negatives are overblown and nobody is
talking about the benefits.

~~~
runamok
Didn't the UK already have the benefit of a floating currency since they use
the pound instead of the euro?

~~~
saosebastiao
They did, but there was a regularly debated possibility of adopting the Euro.
Now that possibility doesn't exist.

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ecliptik
Not moving, but it seems some companies are not planning to open offices there
anymore, like Rancher,

\-
[https://twitter.com/smw355/status/746204644947296257](https://twitter.com/smw355/status/746204644947296257)

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seikatsu
This question has come up so often in last few weeks that we gathered some
reading and tooling to help pragmatic post-Brexit decision making, here:
[https://teleport.org/brexit](https://teleport.org/brexit)

~~~
teh
This is a great resource, thank you!

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ajeet_dhaliwal
No one knows what the new arrangement will be yet (including with existing EU
migrants) so would you not be better off waiting until you know what is
actually going to happen? Unless of course you already have good reason to
want to leave.

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nickpsecurity
I'm curious what Europeans think about that howtostayin.eu link? Someone sent
it to me this morning. Reminds me of the old Perpetual Traveler and offshore
schemes except this time for an unexpected goal haha.

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groundCode
Personally, I'm basing my startup on the brexit fallout depressing the value
of the pound, making outsourcing development to the uk cheaper than ever :) to
wit I have set up [http://brexitlabs.com](http://brexitlabs.com)

In all seriousness, I don't have a company to move, but I am seriously
considering moving. I have a family here so it isn't as simple as pack up and
go, but I've emigrated before so....In the meantime, parody seems my best bet.
:)

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roryisok
Come to Ireland, we'd love to have you! 100% English speaking, culture very
similar to UK, but our cities are not franchise laden cookie cutters of one
another. Dublin is expensive but Cork, Galway, Sligo, Donegal, pretty much
anywhere else is affordable and easy to reach. The people are friendly, the
food is good, and there's lots to do.

~~~
secfirstmd
Can't agree more!

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vasco
In Malta you also get to do everything in English and foreigners with
companies have nice tax breaks.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
The internet is _terrible_ though. Everything else is pretty good.

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lefstathiou
For clarification, is anyone on this thread in the process or committed to
moving their company out of the U.K.? Realize there is plenty to speculate
about and there are many great alternatives, curious who is actually doing it.

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squeral
What about Lisbon? Portugal is very, very cheap compared to London and Berlin.

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cttet
I read the ghost article but they mentioned many times that the country "Must
be outside the EU", which is like the Brexit impact is not enough ...

~~~
Keats
They were mostly complaining about the VAT MOSS, which is very annoying by
itself

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jasonvorhe
How about Amsterdam?

~~~
jypepin
Yes I just moved to Amsterdam (after 4 years in SF, 10 years in Montreal, and
growing up in Paris before that) and it all seems way better than expected so
far.

Everyone speaks english, most services also offer communications in english
(bank, etc.) so really I don't find myself stuck trying to translate Dutch all
the time (until I learn it) and tech seems to grow a lot here. While working
in the city, I can see a lot of local tech and SV tech (Uber, booking,
Atlassian, etc.).

It's also super cheap overall, and most foreign skill workers get 30% of their
salary tax free.

As to move your company, I quickly looked and it seems like the taxes for
companies in Amsterdam is easy and nice. 20% on the first 200k, 25% for the
rest. And apparently lots of things deducible.

~~~
joesmo
How do you find the take-home part of salaries compared to the US? I'm
considering moving, but from what I've seen, they're only about half. Still
considering as I work remotely, but that may not be the case forever.

~~~
jypepin
if you take the same base salary and apply the 30% ruling, it's roughly the
same. You take a little more home in amsterdam.

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sebastianconcpt
Doing the Brexit means wider economic freedom not narrower, isn't it? Then
what's the main driver to move out UK after Brexit?

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secfirstmd
Yep, moving www.secfirst.org to Ireland in the next few weeks.

Many reasons:

-Brexit - London doesn't just seem like the place it once was years ago. The shine has gone from it.

-Surveillance - IP bill etc. We build open source technology for human rights defenders. We don't want to be based in a place where people might try to compromise Umbrella etc ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella))

-Talent - most of our team is either Irish or in some way Eastern European. We want to be able to continue to attract and work with people like that.

-Eurozone - sterling is just a mess at the moment

-Business - Corporate tax in Ireland is low and there is a good small tech sector. Also small but decent grants via www.idaireland.com www.connectireland.com www.enterprise-ireland.com

-Personal - Dublin has been (who knows in the next few months) really on the way up for the past year or two. The atmosphere is amazing. It's gotten very cool and tolerant (Gay marriage referendum was very symbolic of that). Also we don't have a far right/left the way that the rest of Europe has. Irish people continue to be awesome to work with and mostly, great fun to be around.

If your thinking of Dublin and looking for more info, drop me a mail to the
place in my intro...

There are inevitably going to be some negative things people will mention
about Dublin, as this topic came up before on HN so i've reposted my response
here:

\----- Some of the negativity doesn't make sense. The piece about not living
in the city centre and instead the suburb commuter towns is madness. Totally
the opposite. The commuter towns to Dublin are boring as hell, housing estates
with very little services. Inner City Dublin is rejuvenating very fast, and
parts of it feel like a smaller, more intimate version of Shoreditch or
Williamsberg (except with better pubs and bars!). You can basically walk
across most of the city within 45 mins.

Transport is poor compared to European standards and the cost of living is
quite high. But if you live close to the city in Dublin it's not bad and it's
a great place to socialise and be within 45 minutes of nature. It's probably
one of the few capital cities in world where it's not unusual to strike up a
conversation with a random person beside you on a bus. Also it's a pretty easy
place to do business. Our nature is humourously sarcastic and not liking
authority which means we are pretty good problems solvers and management tends
to be quite flat. The software is also small, so your only ever really a
phonecall away from having a pint with whoever you need to speak to in the
whole sector - from a graduate you met at a conference to a government
Minister.

People also work to live not live to work (like the US) which makes a big
difference. Also a big part of worklife is around interactions with colleagues
- it's basically an assumption that most offices are full of at least a few
characters who like to have the "craic" and banter. When working abroad I
found I really missed those tiny interactions you have on a daily basis in
Ireland - e.g someone telling you a story and making you laugh. Even in London
you don't get that. It's not something you can pickup by getting an MBA but it
makes such a big difference to the quality of life - compared to a stale work
environment.

~~~
blibble
> It's gotten very cool and tolerant (Gay marriage referendum was very
> symbolic of that).

this is a bit of a stretch, the politics are still very much driven by
religion (e.g. abortion requires a trip abroad, normally to the UK).

the UK parliament passed gay marriage before, and it didn't require a
referendum (as it was uncontroversial amongst the electorate)

~~~
secfirstmd
Agree on abortion. Ireland had to have a referendum as it was a constitutional
issue. I'm not saying Ireland is Amsterdam, just a very different place to 20
years ago.

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simonswords82
No

