Best Startups to Work for in Stockholm

Almost every single M.sc course at KTH is in English.

No. Almost every MS program and course at KTH is in English, even for Swedish students. Swedish students who are doing their MS are typically in a 5 year degree program where you do your BS and MS combined. The first 3 years (BS portion) is in Swedish and the last 2 years is in English.

It is expensive to live there. If you're a programmer, you will live a far more comfortable life living and working in Poland than you would in Sweden, despite how much Swedes tend to look down their nose at the Polish.

I speak from experience.

If you're working a low/zero skill job, you would be far better off in Sweden, although the market is extremely competitive.

Sweden has a major problem with housing, so you can forget renting an apartment in a major city — you will spend roughly 18 years on a waiting list to be able to rent anything in the centre of Gothenburg. This isn't hyperbole.

Just about everyone speaks English. Some younger people actually speak English more correctly than a significant proportion of the English population in England. Unsurprisingly, learning Swedish language and culture helps you blend in. It's not a particularly difficult language anyway.

No, Sweden is my fourth country to live in but I haven't worked in another European country. It can be expensive to live here yes; despite my salary being decent-but-not-lavish I still feel comfortable affording whatever I need to live and "play". In addition to what I consider a decent salary, six paid weeks off (with extra pay for vacation days + public holidays), various company subsidized benefits, nice public infrastructure, healthcare, etc all go to help with that. I guess the other responder's standards may be different, but personally as a programmer my living here feels very comfortable.

I can speak specifically to the game development industry here which is very welcoming to expats. I get the same sense from the wider tech industry but have no direct experience outside of game development and attending more general tech meetups and conferences in Stockholm. The vast majority of people speak English and are happy to do so. Many people say that at least in this kind of industry there's almost no point learning Swedish as everyone speaks English around the studios, but I disagree with this and am starting to take Swedish lessons next week (took me long enough after >6 years...)

In general I find the majority of Swedes have been very welcoming (as a caveat I say this as a very white-European looking Ukrainian, so it is easy for me to blend in aside from my language and I can't speak for people of color). The things that tend to really hit people the most here are the feeling that Swedes are _cold_ and the actual cold winters. People here may not be as outgoing with strangers as they were in Alabama or Australia (both places I've lived before Sweden), but I find they are polite and there are plenty of opportunities to meet people with similar interests. I think not speaking the language also places an additional barrier that a Swedish speaker may not have when it comes to meeting Swedes - they say it doesn't matter, but in the end if you have to say "Sorry I only speak English" when a local _does_ approach you with a comment in Swedish you can see how it would immediately potentially put a break on the interaction. Another reason I'm finally going to start taking my Swedish learning seriously!

will fix

> Sweden has one if the longest working weeks in the EU. Normal work day starts at 8am.

We're talking about startups on a website mostly for programmers, right?

Programmers enjoy nearly free work schedule. I've seen people come at work at 7 in the morning and leave at three in the evening. Or come to work at 10 and leave at 7.

Second, work-life balance is paramount in Sweden. No one will bat an eye if you have to pick your kids early from kindergarten/school, go to a doctor's appointment, take a day off because you're sick etc.

The government even tries to combat exploitative employers by making it mandatory that employees take at least 20 days of vacation a year.

On the contrary, Swedes work some of the fewest hour per person in the OECD. The only people that work fewer hours than the Swedes are Germans, Danes, Norwegians, and the Dutch: https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

> Normal work day starts at 8am.

No, not necessarily.

Most of my career has been spent working in Sweden and/or for Swedish companies.

At only one company of the several I have worked for — my first programming job — were employees expected to arrive at 08:00.

All the others have started at 09:00, with a fair degree of flexibility.

This isn't to say Sweden is some paradise — it categorically isn't — but let's at least be accurate with our numbers.

What is wrong with starting at 8? I start closer to 7 so I can go home a bit after 15. Some of us use flexible work schedule to get longer afternoons. You need to look at more than when it is normal to start working in the morning, like total hours/year and how flexible the schedule is

>Sweden pushing itself as a good home for startups seem to largely correlate with becoming a worse place to live in, and therefor to a large extent be posturing.

This isn't, implicitly, true. For Stockholm, sure. What about a city like Växjö? Or Motala? There are very decent areas to live in Sweden, close to booming tech start-ups, and aren't suffering the same plights that the capital is seeing.

Admittedly, the points-system is a bit of a pain-in-the-ass and they seemed to have a plan for it, when it first started, for newcomers to the country; however, that plan doesn't work-out so well in the terms of today.

To point: Sweden, in general, doesn't suffer from all of the plights seen in Stockholm. If Stockholm is your goto, then by all means, you should be aware of them; but a larger portion of Sweden doesn't see the same problems (yet).

Yes, usually there is a thing called tjänsteledigt. Which basically means that you can ask your employer for a ”pause” in your employment. I believe they are required by law to let you keep your employment.

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Where do I start if I want to look for jobs there? Are most jobs mainly in Stockholm? Is it different in Gottenburg or Malmo?

Well that email was wierd.

> taking the fight with the governmental authority handling immigration.

What ? which fight ? unless you recruit "world class developers" with a year experience in JS paying them half of the average rate with no insurances then there are no fights.

Myself and colleagues, all have worked in normal places that payed decent salaries and all the needed insurances and all got their work permits and permanent residencies approved without problems.

Actually Software development is in the "needed professions" list meaning that you can apply for a permit while you are in Sweden.

Yeah, Spotify is too big to fit the list.