Getting a Linux admin job in Europe?

[Nathan England]

The way the German landscape for IT workers is, the company must prove
they cannot hire a national to perform the work and your skills are
required. Once the company does that, they must "sponsor" you and or a
person must sponsor you. They must prove sufficient income to fully
support you in the event you lose your job.

Once that is complete, the rest is a blast! As it has been said, yes,
you will need to learn the language. Germany has a lot of "young" IT,
so in the IT field you will not be in too terrible shape as you learn
it, but you will need to learn it! Make sure you know which dialect
you will need also before you start trying to learn. There are two
primaries and they are not identical!!! It is not a latin based
language like Spanish, Italian and Mexican, where you learn one and
you can skim by on the others, the two varying dialects in Germany are
different enough that will need to know the difference. Granted, I do
believe once you get a handle on it, you can distinguish between the
two and understand both.

You also have to remember, the German Chancellor just said the
multi-cultural system has failed. The melting-pot mentality is no
longer a go there and they are requiring the proper language. So you
will need to show you are willing to assimilate to the German culture.
Which shouldn't be too hard, the German culture is vastly superior to
any other culture in the world... Just ask any German, they'll tell
you!!!! lol
<flame retardent suit on>

Rosetta stone has  a really good German program. I had my daughter on
it and in a few months she was going to town! The hardest thing I
recall was learning to deal with the
reallybigwordsbecausetheyliketojumblewordstogether. Once you get
passed that, or used to that, it will be a LOT of fun. So, in the
words of the great SUSE lizard... Have a lot of fun!

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 10:58 PM, S Kreimeyer <skreimey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't spend much time in Germany, but you will have a very difficult
> time if you only speak English. Larger cities have a high percentage of
> English speaking people, but more rural areas have very few bilingual
> residents. Also, in eastern Germany older adults (35+) are less likely
> to know English, since it wasn't taught in schools in that region until
> a few decades ago. If you plan on staying there for a while, then you
> will probably find yourself in situations where you need to know German.
>
> The good news is that the language isn't terribly hard to learn (though
> I'm far from fluent). Many words are easily identifiable to English
> counter-parts. I found Rosetta Stone extremely helpful as an
> introduction to the language. I would invest in a grammar book or a
> formal class, though. German grammar rules are very hard to intuit from
> an English-speaking perspective (separable prefixes were a mind-blow for
> me), which is how Rosetta teaches.
>
> I'm afraid I can't offer much insight into the IT job situation. I've
> been told that there is a dearth of engineers in the country, so that
> might extend to other technical professions, like IT.
>
> I hope that helps.
>
> On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 22:20 -0700, Brian Weaver wrote:
>> Anyone know the ins and outs of landing an IT job in Europe.
>> Specifically interested in Germany.  Anyone here done it? Is knowing
>> German a must ?
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>



-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nathan England
I believe in the Constitution and the 4th Amendment. I am innocent and
have nothing to hide, but NO agent of the state crosses my threshhold
without a valid warrant signed by a judge and properly submitted. If
we fail to exercise our rights, we lose them.