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?

> - How easy have you found finding tech jobs in Sweden, do you have any advice for good places to look?

There are a few good places just north of Malmo, in Lund (which is an exceptionally nice place to live), but there are also good places for IT in Lulea (where google and facebook operate), and Gothenburg. It's very spread out.

The only one I don't recommend it stockholm, the wages are higher but you pay more outgoing in rent by a wide margin, and "first hand" apartments are basically impossible to get there.

> - How does the pay compare to other countries/cities you've worked in?

I used to live/work in Helsinki and London, now I work in Malmo. I'm working in a sector with historically low wages and I earn about 30% less than I did in London. But that is almost perfectly in line with cost of living. Other sectors pay much better. I would be better off here than London if I chose something other than video games as an industry.

Helsinki was very comparable to London in terms of salary/cost of living.

> - Do you speak Swedish at work/is it possible to get by without being fluent in Swedish?

I don't speak Swedish at all, the only issue is my banking which is all done in Swedish.

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?

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!

Easy answer: you don't.

Stockholm is the worst place to go in Sweden in terms of cost of living, and yes, it's impossible to get an apartment there.

Luckily the tech scene is very spread out, Lulea, Gothenburg and Lund all have a variety of tech.

I'm very active in Frankfurt and the attention we've been getting for the past few weeks is insane. Frankfurt as a FinTech Hub is already being shouted from the rooftops here, but with Brexit it seems that Investors start to actually believe that in droves. Crazy Times for me.

I heard a news report about Frankfurt being smaller than Charlotte, North Carolina, so it can't possibly absorb all of London's financial companies anytime soon. It was certainly a lesson in geography, as I'd always thought of Frankfurt as a larger city.

You are absolutely right, peoples perception of Frankfurt is mostly wrong. But the size of Frankfurt largely contributes to the quality of life here. You can very easily traverse the city by bike, the public transportation is fast and quick, and the big banks attract lots of capital. By day Frankfurt grows to about 1.5 Million people who just come to the city to work here, so it feels much bigger while still having everything happen on a rather small scale.

The biggest downside would probably be that Frankfurt is at the top of nothing. We have very good theatres, very good restaurants, nice outdoor activities, but compared to other cities, you don't come here for any specific thing, you come here for the sum of things that make it a very attractive city to live in. The airport is reachable very fast from the city center, i was able to traverse between a Frankfurt Office and a London Office in about 1:20 door to door, so its geographical location makes it also very attractive when visiting or working somewhere else on the continent. As local novelties DECIX is located here and many large Data Centers have popped up all over the area, so if you are interested in Infrastructure there's a lot of jobs and know how in the city.

Frankfurt is very much embedded in its surroundings, with many smaller interconnected towns and several mid-sized cities within reach. [1] This gives access to up to 5.5 million people, 2.2 million in Frankfurt's close vicinity. Many of those happily change city for work, especially since the distances are quite short. Traffic is usually a worse problem for travel time than distance.

You also have the somewhat unfair situation of smaller towns right next to Frankfurt offering lower corporate taxes (part of which is levied by the cities) while taking advantage of Frankfurt's infrastructure (which is also paid with the corporate taxes paid in Frankfurt). This attracts a lot of businesses, of course, and on paper detracts from Frankfurt's size when all that separates them is one Autobahn.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Rhine-Main

Londons financial area is basically City ("the square mile") and Docklands - two tiny little parts of town, so if you're going to go by size it's meaningless to compare all of London.