work in denmark

[chef]

have just had a call offering work for 3 months in denmark, starting asap

any advice from those in the know?

trying to decide what rate to quote to them, i currently charge circa £500 a day for work in UK via an agency (obviously that's not concrete dependant on location, role etc.) that goes up to £800/£900 a day if direct with the End Business

thoughts?

[Francko]

have just had a call offering work for 3 months in denmark, starting asap

any advice from those in the know?

trying to decide what rate to quote to them, i currently charge circa £500 a day for work in UK via an agency (obviously that's not concrete dependant on location, role etc.) that goes up to £800/£900 a day if direct with the End Business

thoughts?

I wouldn't go. Think about the risk having to sit next the threaded and listening to his boring stories all day long. Not worth a million quid a day.

[oracleslave]

I only ever did a 1 week gig in Denmark last year. Got slightly more than my UK rate. Got pissed most nights which is not cheap over there so make sure any rate is excluding expenses!

[threaded]

Loads of work in Denmark. Truth be told most Danes work for the state in one way or the other or are 'unemployed' (they have a fancy way of hiding the really high level of unemployment) so most of the real work is done by foreigners, and there are an awful lot of foreigners.

If you're not expecting to stay long use your UK company. If less than 3 years, try and get on the experts tax rate. If longer get yourself a good accountant.

Learn the language as soon as you can, it is pretty hard unless you can get on a course, as no two speak it quite the same, but the more words you know the less often you'll suffer a violent assault for being a foreigner (only had one myself last year, but have already had one this year). Remember that we're all black to them. Can be an enlightening experience, but many ex-pats really hate it and leave quickly. One kommune is practically impossible for a foreigner to get to live, can't remember it's name right now, it's up north a little from København and there're a good few IT companies there, so if you find it difficult to register and find somewhere to live local to your work, don't fuss it, you'll just have to commute. As many Danes will tell you, if you don't like it you can always fsck off back to where you came from.

There's this thing called 'Jantelov', which is a flowered up jealousy thing. You've never met jealousy in all its green eyed glory as you'll find here. So, if you get asked about your car: you don't have one. If asked about how much you're paid: complain the dustbin man gets more. If given 2 weeks to do a 5 minute task, take 3 weeks. Remember to say how marvelous everything is, for example, when tripped up by rubbish in the street say how at least they're cleaner than where you come from. They know it's all bollox, but is Jantelov.

They all like to think they are the best in the world at what they do. Truth be told there are quite a few good ones but they've mostly left the country, and the rest suffer serious insecurity issues, and need their egos stroked constantly. Never, ever, point out just how appallingly bad the 'thing' your working on is. Give quiet suggestions about how it might be improved, and make that look like it was someone-else's, preferably some danish co-workers, idea.

Management is often barking mad. Many managers pride themselves on having zero technical knowledge. Meetings, they love meetings. Often times you'll maybe have two 2-hour progress meetings a day and they'll be baffled as to why nothing is getting done. For which reason never, ever, go on a daily rate, always an hourly one. They will rack up the hours if they can get away with it.

Oh, and it isn't England or anything like it.

threaded in "måske" mode

[threaded]

Ratewise: the £500 is a junior support monkey, for a developer you're lookin' to double that at least. There is a serious staffing problem for every company in Denmark. One company I could name, which does most of its business outside Denmark, will only employ native Danish speakers in Denmark, and yet complain regularly on TV about difficulties in getting staff, loonies.

[Shimano105]

Doing your best to keep the gigs for yourself threaded or what?

It sounds truly awful over there - any other reality checks about supposedly idyllic Mainland countries?

I thought binge drinking, bigotted violence and anti cyclist drivers were just a UK thing - according to our Gov't anyway (excuse to tax our guilty conscience no doubt).

[threaded]

Cyclists get it easy in the UK. Have you ever heard of cyclists getting fired on with a machine gun?

Do you know Denmark is the only country where the cyclist accident rate goes up when they build cycle-paths. And from what I've seen, several times, because the car-drivers deliberately mount the cycle-path and ram the cycles from behind.

Again it's Jantelov, just because you're on a bicycle doesn't mean you can go faster than a car stuck in a queue, some care-in-the-community-types really hate that, and will attack you. So it's best to go for away from the road cycle paths if you like to go fast, but then watch out for the dogs...

[tim123]

Ratewise: the £500 is a junior support monkey, for a developer you're lookin' to double that at least. .

I find that hard to believe.

Over this side of the "sound", senior development engineers are lucky to get 650 SEK ph, so that's the equivilent of 400 GBP pd.

It's only a 30 minute train ride, if they could two and a half times their money for that trip, they'd be over like a shot. And many of them have at least a passing knowledge of the 'other' language, as they'll have been watching Danish TV since they were two.

The agency that placed me here has clients in DK, as do all the other preferered supplier, some of which are consultancies placing their 'employed' staff at the same rate as me, so there can't really be that much difference in the rate in DK, maybe 20% more but not 150%.

tim

[threaded]

I have two swedes in this office, also have several danes that've moved across to Malmo, Lund etc. because it's cheaper to live there, but work here.

Maybe we're talking different levels of ability? I'm talking banking and finance.

[chef]

thanks threaded,

this is specialised IT work for an international pharmacutical co. that make panadol, aquafresh and lucozade as well as cold & flu sachets.

the work will be for just 3 months so i was planning on working through my co. How is that taxed? i.e do i pay danish taxes or british?

no plans to relocate to denmark so it will simply be weekly flights, hotels and taxi's rather than renting, settling down etc.