10 years ago I would strongly recommend my highly educated friends from around the world to give Sweden a chance, but now I advise more caution, as in "wait and see". There is definitely inertia in the process, but in my view, born and lived in Sweden 33 years, Sweden is unfortunately going downhill. I do not look forward to see what the future brings in 5, 10, or 15 years from now on. Me and my girlfriend have discussed moving elsewhere because we feel we do not get what we pay for anymore.
There are many fundamental issues that can only be solved by very unpopular political decisions, meaning nothing is done because it would be political suicide in the short/mid-term (the next 4-8 years).
1) While the Swedish state has strong finances, the Swedish communes (responsible for most of the practical welfare, like healthcare, education, and so on) are struggling significantly. Taxes likely need to be raised 5 percentage points over the next 10 years just to maintain the current level of welfare. And that is not factoring in the missing professionals, like teachers and nurses. These professions are very poorly compensated so a lot of them quit. On top of the issues with the communes, the Swedish households are among the most indebted in the world, due to cheap mortgages on houses and a housing bubble that is just slowly beginning to deflate. The next recession will be very tough.
2) Sweden has failed with immigrating all low-skilled refugees and economic migrants from third world countries. I think Sweden should be applauded for trying to do the humanitarian thing by helping people in need, but what has happened is that there have been too many low skilled people, too quickly for them to be absorbed into Sweden. This cohort of immigrants simply do not have the skills or education to not be an economic burden on the Swedish society. The costs are enormous. In Sweden the talk is about we've created an "ethnic lower class" that can only survive on welfare. The problem is a welfare state only works if a vast majority pitch in to the welfare state. This is a big contributing factor to many issues in Sweden right now. At the same time, the big unions and the Social Democratic party is hostile to skilled workers coming to Sweden because they may compete with the union members, leading to a lot of skilled engineers and similar being deported because of technicalities. So Sweden is basically doing the opposite of Canada: we are hostile to people who can contribute to Swedish society, but have been very welcoming to people who will never realistically contribute a dime to the Swedish welfare state.
3) There's shortage on housing in the big cities due to regulation and rent-control. There is absolutely no incentives to build new apartments because the return of investment is non-existing, and all the zoning regulations and similar makes it a multi-year project just to get permission to even start building. What happens is the only new apartment buildings being built are apartments that are so expensive only people the people who do not have a problem getting an apartment in the first place (due to being well off) can buy them. For the Swedish 99%, you either need to get lucky, take significant loans (which people have done due to almost 0% interest, which will be a catastrophe when the interests rates increase, which must happen within the next 5 years) or stand in the state apartment queue for 20-30 years. The only way to solve this realistically would be for the state to invest heavily in apartments, basically build away the shortage, and then remove the rent control. Finland did this. But it was highly unpopular.
If you are in the top tier of your profession and you can basically get a job in whatever country you please, I'd hang on moving to Sweden right now.
Are the costs of immigration really that enormous? We pay 15-20 billion SEK/year in bribes to the craftsmen sector in the form of ROT-avdrag, for example. How many non-working immigrants do you think that would pay for per year? There are plenty of immigrants who are capable of performing any number of jobs that can't get them because they wait forever to get into Swedish language classes and then they wait forever before receiving permanent residency here (why would a company hire you if you could be deported tomorrow?).
Do you know how many truck drivers we're going to need in 5-10 years for example? We're talking mid-five digit numbers. That's not unskilled labor as such but it's not a massive insurmountable obstacle either to educate these people to become truck drivers for example.
I have to say, this articulated a lot about what I felt as well. This is what I mentioned in the article that I don't agree with all the policies Sweden is taking, especially when it comes to immigration. You explained it much better.
Thank you for this "on site" description. Unfortunetely i think the same is happening in most modern countries in EU. And like you said - unpopular political decisions would result in political suicide (none of our current politicians want to do that - they only care about themselves thus even more populist ideas)
If you think about moving to Canada - think twice - it has its own issues. Its better to know them before moving there.
The recession is comming taking big leaps. Dotcoms colapse - i just hope it wont be the trigger - still need few years to buy a house and get myself into opsition where i dont have to worry.
Thanks for posting this. I've been planning for some time to move abroad. I want to live somewhere with (much!) lower population density than the south-east of England, with a temperate climate (though I don't mind cold winters), and with mountains.
It's realistic that financially I'll be where I need to be within the next couple of years. Sweden, along with Norway, has been on my list of potential destinations, so it's helpful to hear this perspective from somebody born and raised there. It's not going to stop me from continuing to consider, but rather make me dig a little deeper.
1) Taxes should indeed be reverted. Omitting the large tax cuts over the last 20 years or so distorts the context.
2) Apart from the fact that there's been a significant influx of refugees that entire point should be seen as pure opinion with little relationship to facts. It seems based on anecdotal stuff about a few individuals being deported on technicalities, and imo, it seeps with a disdain for non-economically viable refugees. That the big unions & the social democrats are generally hostile to skilled immigrants because of competition is also nonsense.
3) That it's a multi-year project just to receive permissions is hyperbole. However, I do agree with the solution here, apart from the need to abolish rent-control. That the state should plan & build rental apartments would also be a revert to how it worked before rather than a reform, and I agree with that. To abolish rent-control is a right-wing dream because it guarantees good housing in popular locations to wealthy people, to the detriment of working class people that have to move out due to the higher rents.
Did not expect such a positive post on Sweden given the negativity floating around these days. I made the decision to move back from a higher paying position abroad a few years ago, and most of it due to the points you bring up. Plus I'm Swedish so I can deal with the weather. In the end, a lower stress existence is more important to me than maximizing my earnings.
A lot of the complaining you hear from Swedish people is because they haven't really experienced anything different. They have no idea how comfortable life is here (still). As a parent, I can barely fathom raising a child in the US for instance. Even the best companies will give you 4 months paid time off, if you're one of the lucky few working for FAANG. What the hell do you even do with a 4 month old after that time's up? They can't fucking even crawl yet. Not to mention the healthcare situation. The relief to just be able to walk into any hospital and just give your person number, and everything is just taken care of. No $20k bill because the hospital is out of your coverage or whatever.
The main thing worrying me today is like you say, the immigration and crime situation. The current crime wave is not because of recent immigration but because of earlier waves. I don't want to find out what happens when 200k refugees and (mostly) their disillusioned sons turn to crime in about 18 years. Hopefully we can figure this out before then.
If you read crime statistics reports from places like BRÅ, violent crime is actually down especially in proportion to the increasing population levels.
Edit:
Also, to add, during the Syrian refugee wave of 2015/2016, the second largest group to come here after Syrians were repatriating Swedes. We didn't get 200K war refugees during the wave on top of our regular immigration. It was 200K including repatriating Swedes and the normal immigration we see year over year.
> A lot of the complaining you hear from Swedish people is because they haven't really experienced anything different. They have no idea how comfortable life is here (still). As a parent, I can barely fathom raising a child in the US for instance. Even the best companies will give you 4 months paid time off, if you're one of the lucky few working for FAANG. What the hell do you even do with a 4 month old after that time's up? They can't fucking even crawl yet. Not to mention the healthcare situation. The relief to just be able to walk into any hospital and just give your person number, and everything is just taken care of. No $20k bill because the hospital is out of your coverage or whatever.
FAANG employees are essentially the top rung of benefits in the US.
> One manifestation of equality in Sweden is that most companies are less layered and implement what’s called flat hierarchy. 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 larger, they can not be kept completely flat forever, but in regular big companies, hierachies are in many scenarios too excessive and 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 interested in having a better technical career. In China, managers enjoy much higher social status than engineers because of the power that hierachical organization enables. 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 an 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.
Interesting observation. If people are promoted to their "level of incompetence", perhaps not promoting people is indeed a solution...
As some of the comments show, it is hard to have a meaningful discussion on taxes without comparing what you get for them (or what you have to pay extra for in other countries). I guess software developers in most countries belong to the topmost income stratas and will manage a good life in any taxation system. For people who don't make as much it is much more complicated I guess.
> Top tier Chinese internet companies now offer higher salary compared to their Swedish counterparts
This surprises me since the Glassdoor salaries for a software engineer for Tencent in Shanghai is about 200k yuan which is about $30k. AFAIK in Stockholm you could easily net at least twice that.
That's because Glassdoor can be full of crap; it was useful a few years back but now it's flooded with HR spam that are fake reviews and damage control, and presumably a few fake salaries thrown in as well. Most salary numbers there seem to be posted by entry to mid level employees as well. Rarely ever do people from higher levels or getting paid a lot go on there to post what they make.
Glassdoor can be relevant for American salaries thanks to the sheer quantity of figures being posted, but I've found salary fields to be sparsely populated for Germany (where I live now), and a few European and Asian countries I've checked out. It's kinda dangerous in the sense you could look up figures on Glassdoor and 9 times out of 10, you'll end up lowballing yourself if you try to negotiate salary IRL based on what you saw there.
200k Yuan is entry-level salary. You can expect 30%-50% rise for a few years if you're really good. Top engineers command silicon valley level salaries, easily.
If I ever want to move back to China I can probably negotiate 2x-4x what I'm making now.
I don't know the details of the data in glassdoor, but most of my friends in China in the IT industry (at my age , usually senior devs) make more than my Swedish colleagues. And I worked in some of the best known companies in Sweden.
For anyone not from Scandinavian countries or not used to the low sunlight and mostly cold weather, the downsides from the long-term side-effects of living in Sweden such as depression, low vitamin-D state significantly outweighs any short-term happiness.
I know sweden is known for it's great work life balance, but I know of a co-worker who had a very different experience. he joined a start up and had to work extremely long hours 60-80 hours, people working weekends, much like it's done in the US. In theorey it's illegal, but what are you going to do? Things got so bad at that company, he needed to leave. You can't assume all companies are the same in Sweden.
You have a point but you argue it badly. Price of beer in a bar is a tourist measure. Wage of an engineer is a expat measure.
The article talks about living, working, procreating and eventually dying in Sweden, so lets talk about that.
Many things are expensive in Sweden. When we think about living, we must consider things that are not expensive. Swedish type system arguably very strongly directs and limits the choices from the economic perspective.
- Beer is always expensive but dental care is always cheap. You can't choose between chugging more beer and having hole in your choppers. You can choose to having the hole if you insist, but the beer is still expensive.
- You can't choose between more beer and good education and healthcare for your children. The Government has made that choice for you.
- Similarly you are forced to live with affordable broadband due to government regulation enforced on companies to protect the consumer.
The question of living is Sweden should be decided by thinking how much your own goals align with the government enforced baseline. Temporarily embarrassed millionaires don't want to live in Sweden.
On the other hand you have quite different mindset for work and parenthood. Everyone expects you to take at least half a year off work as a father. You still get payed during this time.
Tax is calculated for you, all you need to do is sign (with your mobile ID).
If you get sick you get payed after the first day. Hospital visit is about $8 per night. Doctor $20 per visit.
I guess someone has to state the obvious here. China has a totalitarian, one party government that puts a lot of efforts into total surveillance of their citizens. They are censoring the local intranet and even have "citizen scores" to create the worst dystopia possible. That alone seems like a good reason to work somewhere else.
Probably not. It depends from where you are moving but salaries in sweden are not that high and progressive taxation kills your chance of living a comfortable life. On top of that stupidly expensive housing.
[+] [-] bjornedstrom|7 years ago|reply
There are many fundamental issues that can only be solved by very unpopular political decisions, meaning nothing is done because it would be political suicide in the short/mid-term (the next 4-8 years).
1) While the Swedish state has strong finances, the Swedish communes (responsible for most of the practical welfare, like healthcare, education, and so on) are struggling significantly. Taxes likely need to be raised 5 percentage points over the next 10 years just to maintain the current level of welfare. And that is not factoring in the missing professionals, like teachers and nurses. These professions are very poorly compensated so a lot of them quit. On top of the issues with the communes, the Swedish households are among the most indebted in the world, due to cheap mortgages on houses and a housing bubble that is just slowly beginning to deflate. The next recession will be very tough.
2) Sweden has failed with immigrating all low-skilled refugees and economic migrants from third world countries. I think Sweden should be applauded for trying to do the humanitarian thing by helping people in need, but what has happened is that there have been too many low skilled people, too quickly for them to be absorbed into Sweden. This cohort of immigrants simply do not have the skills or education to not be an economic burden on the Swedish society. The costs are enormous. In Sweden the talk is about we've created an "ethnic lower class" that can only survive on welfare. The problem is a welfare state only works if a vast majority pitch in to the welfare state. This is a big contributing factor to many issues in Sweden right now. At the same time, the big unions and the Social Democratic party is hostile to skilled workers coming to Sweden because they may compete with the union members, leading to a lot of skilled engineers and similar being deported because of technicalities. So Sweden is basically doing the opposite of Canada: we are hostile to people who can contribute to Swedish society, but have been very welcoming to people who will never realistically contribute a dime to the Swedish welfare state.
3) There's shortage on housing in the big cities due to regulation and rent-control. There is absolutely no incentives to build new apartments because the return of investment is non-existing, and all the zoning regulations and similar makes it a multi-year project just to get permission to even start building. What happens is the only new apartment buildings being built are apartments that are so expensive only people the people who do not have a problem getting an apartment in the first place (due to being well off) can buy them. For the Swedish 99%, you either need to get lucky, take significant loans (which people have done due to almost 0% interest, which will be a catastrophe when the interests rates increase, which must happen within the next 5 years) or stand in the state apartment queue for 20-30 years. The only way to solve this realistically would be for the state to invest heavily in apartments, basically build away the shortage, and then remove the rent control. Finland did this. But it was highly unpopular.
If you are in the top tier of your profession and you can basically get a job in whatever country you please, I'd hang on moving to Sweden right now.
[+] [-] kungtotte|7 years ago|reply
Do you know how many truck drivers we're going to need in 5-10 years for example? We're talking mid-five digit numbers. That's not unskilled labor as such but it's not a massive insurmountable obstacle either to educate these people to become truck drivers for example.
[+] [-] hongchao|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pojzon|7 years ago|reply
If you think about moving to Canada - think twice - it has its own issues. Its better to know them before moving there.
The recession is comming taking big leaps. Dotcoms colapse - i just hope it wont be the trigger - still need few years to buy a house and get myself into opsition where i dont have to worry.
[+] [-] 0xfaded|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bartread|7 years ago|reply
It's realistic that financially I'll be where I need to be within the next couple of years. Sweden, along with Norway, has been on my list of potential destinations, so it's helpful to hear this perspective from somebody born and raised there. It's not going to stop me from continuing to consider, but rather make me dig a little deeper.
[+] [-] pascalxus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahaja|7 years ago|reply
2) Apart from the fact that there's been a significant influx of refugees that entire point should be seen as pure opinion with little relationship to facts. It seems based on anecdotal stuff about a few individuals being deported on technicalities, and imo, it seeps with a disdain for non-economically viable refugees. That the big unions & the social democrats are generally hostile to skilled immigrants because of competition is also nonsense.
3) That it's a multi-year project just to receive permissions is hyperbole. However, I do agree with the solution here, apart from the need to abolish rent-control. That the state should plan & build rental apartments would also be a revert to how it worked before rather than a reform, and I agree with that. To abolish rent-control is a right-wing dream because it guarantees good housing in popular locations to wealthy people, to the detriment of working class people that have to move out due to the higher rents.
[+] [-] vilhelmmoberg|7 years ago|reply
A lot of the complaining you hear from Swedish people is because they haven't really experienced anything different. They have no idea how comfortable life is here (still). As a parent, I can barely fathom raising a child in the US for instance. Even the best companies will give you 4 months paid time off, if you're one of the lucky few working for FAANG. What the hell do you even do with a 4 month old after that time's up? They can't fucking even crawl yet. Not to mention the healthcare situation. The relief to just be able to walk into any hospital and just give your person number, and everything is just taken care of. No $20k bill because the hospital is out of your coverage or whatever.
The main thing worrying me today is like you say, the immigration and crime situation. The current crime wave is not because of recent immigration but because of earlier waves. I don't want to find out what happens when 200k refugees and (mostly) their disillusioned sons turn to crime in about 18 years. Hopefully we can figure this out before then.
[+] [-] kungtotte|7 years ago|reply
Edit:
Also, to add, during the Syrian refugee wave of 2015/2016, the second largest group to come here after Syrians were repatriating Swedes. We didn't get 200K war refugees during the wave on top of our regular immigration. It was 200K including repatriating Swedes and the normal immigration we see year over year.
[+] [-] bitrrrate|7 years ago|reply
FAANG employees are essentially the top rung of benefits in the US.
[+] [-] dsajames|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munfred|7 years ago|reply
Interesting observation. If people are promoted to their "level of incompetence", perhaps not promoting people is indeed a solution...
[+] [-] hongchao|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tziki|7 years ago|reply
This surprises me since the Glassdoor salaries for a software engineer for Tencent in Shanghai is about 200k yuan which is about $30k. AFAIK in Stockholm you could easily net at least twice that.
[+] [-] digitalixus|7 years ago|reply
Glassdoor can be relevant for American salaries thanks to the sheer quantity of figures being posted, but I've found salary fields to be sparsely populated for Germany (where I live now), and a few European and Asian countries I've checked out. It's kinda dangerous in the sense you could look up figures on Glassdoor and 9 times out of 10, you'll end up lowballing yourself if you try to negotiate salary IRL based on what you saw there.
[+] [-] EastToWest|7 years ago|reply
If I ever want to move back to China I can probably negotiate 2x-4x what I'm making now.
[+] [-] hongchao|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chimtim|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkz|7 years ago|reply
Regarding depression, it would be great If you could state a source for the claim that long term residency in Sweden creates depression.
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4432023/
[+] [-] dorian-graph|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pascalxus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsajames|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dep_b|7 years ago|reply
It’s definitely a clean and well organized country with lots of nature. And it seems pretty great for tech.
But would never move there.
[+] [-] nabla9|7 years ago|reply
The article talks about living, working, procreating and eventually dying in Sweden, so lets talk about that.
Many things are expensive in Sweden. When we think about living, we must consider things that are not expensive. Swedish type system arguably very strongly directs and limits the choices from the economic perspective.
- Beer is always expensive but dental care is always cheap. You can't choose between chugging more beer and having hole in your choppers. You can choose to having the hole if you insist, but the beer is still expensive.
- You can't choose between more beer and good education and healthcare for your children. The Government has made that choice for you.
- Similarly you are forced to live with affordable broadband due to government regulation enforced on companies to protect the consumer.
The question of living is Sweden should be decided by thinking how much your own goals align with the government enforced baseline. Temporarily embarrassed millionaires don't want to live in Sweden.
[+] [-] Moru|7 years ago|reply
Tax is calculated for you, all you need to do is sign (with your mobile ID).
If you get sick you get payed after the first day. Hospital visit is about $8 per night. Doctor $20 per visit.
It all depends on what is worth for you.
[+] [-] badpun|7 years ago|reply
Also, check out taxes. I was offered a contract position in Sweden recently, and the total tax burden was around 55%. Thanks, but no thanks.
[+] [-] uvesten|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fdim|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway123322|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 13415|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theredbox|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|7 years ago|reply
You have not been in Sweden.