Living in the Netherlands
From a perspective of a Software Developer hailing from Serbia
Disclaimer: Everything that you read in this is article is my personal subjective opinion and does not necessarily reflect attitudes of BUX or in that matter objective reality that might be wildly different.
After working for a couple of years as an iOS Developer in my home country, Serbia, I decided that it was time for me to move on and try my luck somewhere else. To leave all of my friends, family, places I like, basically everything what was my life up to that point was not an easy decision to make. What brought me to this decision was the lack of opportunities for professional development in my home country.
As is the case with other “developing countries”, Serbia doesn’t have a strong and diversified economy. This directly reflects onto the Software Development industry, which I was a part of, in the way that most of the work available is second-hand contracting work for foreign companies, popularly known as outsourcing.
Working as an outsourced Software Developer certainly has its benefits, and may be a dream job for many, but after a couple of years of doing the same old pattern over and over again, I felt that I had enough. My biggest issue was that I never really felt like a part of the team, and I never owned the product I worked on. I was simply somebody's temporary hired worker with little or no right to have an opinion of my own. I just did what I was told, and then a time would come to move on to another project, where the same things would happen. All of this is coming from an experience of working in two different companies full time, and working for a couple of other companies as a freelancer, for international clients from almost every continent.
What I really wanted was to have my opinion appreciated and to contribute in a meaningful way to a product that will influence the lives of people with considerable impact, and would be something new, modern and cool. In short, I wanted to be in the middle of happenings in the global economy as an equal player, as much as it is possible.
I found all of that and more here, in the Netherlands, by working at BUX, and I want to share my story with you, and hopefully help you to do the same.
Why did I choose the Netherlands?
On my journey to accomplish the goals I mentioned, the first challenge I had was to pick a country. My (and maybe tomorrow yours) reasons for picking the Netherlands are:
- Strong economy - Netherlands is a small country that has had a very strong economy for a very long time, and it’s only getting stronger. This directly reflects upon jobs available for Software Developers. Some of the hottest European startups and larger companies are headquartered here (BUX, Booking, Philips, ING and many others). Also, a lot of international companies have their European headquarters in Amsterdam (Uber, Tesla). There is no shortage of work, and there is a plenty of opportunities.
- It’s an (almost) English speaking country - you will be hard pressed to find somebody in the Netherlands who doesn’t speak at least a little bit of English. Especially in Amsterdam, everyone will address you in English, and you can do just about anything you want without having to know the Dutch language.
- Working culture - despite what many might think, working culture in the Netherlands is quite relaxed, and work/life balance is excellent. You will (almost) never work more that 8 hours per day, and many companies offer the opportunity of working as little as two or three days per week. Many of my colleagues (and in general a lot of people here) work only four days a week because they want to spend more times with their families. After five o’ clock, you don’t send emails, or call anyone regarding work, it’s simply not done here. There might be rare occasions when you might have to do some overtime, but for my first year here I’ve yet to see it happen to me.
- Way of life - simply said, it feels good to live here. There is a lot of other expats, from all over the world, so even if you don’t hit it off with the locals, you can easily find new friends. Everywhere you turn you can see a lot of different cultures mixed together. In the same street you can easily find Japanese, Indonesian, Lebanese, Serbian, Turkish and other restaurants, all next door to each other. There’s a tons of clubs and bars for going out to, a lot of cinemas, theatres, museums, and all kinds of cultural manifestations all the time. It’s not nearly like this in all the cities in the Netherlands, but Amsterdam and other big cities nearby are generally nice places to live. It’s Friday today, as I am writing this (during the working hours, using a “hackathon day” that we have at BUX every second week, that’s used for personal development), and I already went out in the evening three times this week, to a cinema, all night drinking session in a local bar, and a relaxed dinner in a ramen restaurant. All that while having a plenty of time to do my work, chores, exercise, and everything else you need to do from time to time. That’s possible because of the way how life works here, everything is relaxed, you can go anywhere in a short amount of time, and there is a plenty of choices, no matter what you like.
- Simple immigration - immigrating into the Netherlands for Software Developers is usually done through the “Skilled Migrant” programme, that enables easier immigration procedure and a lot of benefits, such as lower taxes for first eight years here (to compensate for higher living expenses), easy exchange of your driver’s licence for a local one, and many others. Just for example, you can use this website to calculate a difference between a normally taxed salary and a “Skilled Migrant” salary.
- Commuting to work and anywhere else is easy - being able to have a 15 minute door to door commute is nothing to sneeze upon. In most cases, you should be able to afford to live less than 10 km away from your work, and with excellent biking infrastructure and mild (but often rainy) weather, that means that most people bike to work here. Since moving to Amsterdam, I have biked to work (and everywhere else) almost every day, saving a lot of time and money, and also shedding a good bit of fat. On the other side, if you don’t like biking, public transportation is also quite good, and the whole country is quite small and excellently connected (about two and a half hours to go across the whole country by train). You don’t need a car here.
- Close to home and just about anywhere else - international transportation is also very good, with Schiphol airport having direct flights to about anywhere on the planet. There are also a lot of cheap European flights daily from Eindhoven (I can often get a low-cost flight return ticket to Serbia for about €30, and that’s about 1.500 km). Rail connection to the rest of Europe is excellent, with cities such as Paris, Brussels, Berlin, London only a couple of hours away by train. On the other hand if you are more of a car person, Dutch highways are of excellent quality and cover every corner of the country, and connect to major European highways.
Immigration procedure
A first step is obviously finding a job. After securing a job contract, your company starts a procedure to get your papers in order. Depending on the country you are coming from this can be more or less complicated. In my case, as someone coming from a non-EU country, the process consisted of a couple of steps, such as going to to embassy of the Netherlands, waiting for their approval, arriving here, registering, etc. In some other case it might be as simple as signing and opening a bank account here. Anyway, you shouldn’t worry too much, because all of this is handled by professionals who offload the brunt of immigration-related work from your back. All you have to do is follow the instructions given, which usually ends up in signing some papers, and providing a couple of papers such as your birth certificate and passport. Because the procedure is wildly different depending on country of origin, i won’t be going into more details. If you decide to apply for a job at BUX, rest assured that everything will be done by our HR specialists in the most convenient way possible.
Finding a place to live at
Due to the amount of expats arriving here all the time, the rental property market is inflated with prices, and finding a nice place to live at might present a challenge. Prices vary wildly depending on the location. A 80 square meter furnished apartment might vary from €1.000/month in a smaller city like Zaandam, to up to €2.000/month in Amsterdam. Also, a lot of apartments are not furnished, up to a point of having no floors or lightning. Expect to spend a lot of time looking for a nice apartment, and possibly furnishing one. Good thing with companies like BUX is that we can provide you with temporary accommodations until you find a nice place to call home. Also, buying a property is quite easy, because the initial costs are quite low (you pay only the tax and procedure costs, you don’t have to pay even a 1% of the property price), and interest rates are around (or under) 2%/year.
Some websites to checkout for home finding are:
There are also a plenty of Facebook groups, but you should be careful with these because there’s a lot of scammers around.
Commuting
As mentioned above, you can go about your commute in a couple of different ways. Public transport is available in different forms such as subway, tram, bus and train. You can buy an OV-chipkaart that is valid on all forms of transport inside the country. It also offers daily/monthly passes, subscriptions and discounts. Going from South to North it would take you about two and a half hours to go through whole of Netherlands, at most. Living 80 km away from your work is doable here, although you don’t really need to do it, since as a Software Developer you can easily afford to live in less than 5 km from the city centre where your office might be located as is the case for me at BUX. I bike everyday possible, and it takes me about 15 minutes door-to-door for about 4 km distance. Asides from being a short commute it’s also a very nice form of exercise. I never biked before, and I must admit that I was a bit sceptical about it, but since starting to do this kind of commute I wouldn’t switch back to using public transport or a car if I don’t need to. It’s simply not comparable. Everywhere you go there are separate bike paths, so it’s also quite safe, and there is place to park your bike just about everywhere you turn.
Weather
Most people will tell you that the weather here is bad. I think there is more than that to it. Climate is quite mild, it’s never too hot or too cold, but the humidity in the air is quite high also, which sometimes contributes to experiencing the weather more profoundly than it actually is. Also, it’s quite rainy, but the rain is never too strong, it’s mostly an easy drizzle, and it doesn’t really stop you from going outside.
All in all, I would warmly recommend Netherlands, and especially Amsterdam to anyone. It’s generally a nice and relaxed place to live in, with a lot to offer.
