fjellstad.org

I’ve been working in Norway for six months now. It’s been an interesting experience, especially compared to my work experience in the US.

Salary
Salary in Norway and the US is about equal in monetary terms for software engineers. Now, it’s worth mentioning that as I write this, the USD is historical low compared to the NOK (although not as low as it was during the summer). Since most things are cheaper in the US (at least in CA), the actual purchasing power is better in CA than in Norway.

Benefits and bonuses
Healthcare is about the same in the US and Norway, the difference is who is paying for it. In the US, health insurance is paid for by the company you work for while in Norway it’s the State. Which means that in-between jobs, in Norway you would still be covered, while in the US you wouldn’t. The service is about the same (choose your own doctor etc).

As part of the package in Norway, I do get mobile phone and high-speed Internet access, even though I don’t work from home (the mobile has pretty much replaces the office phone for everybody in the company). These seems to be standard benefits in Norway these days. At least all the companies I interviewed with had it in their standard benefits package. I don’t believe high-speed Internet has become standard in the US, unless you work from home.

Vacation time is much better in Norway. In the US, I got 10 days of vacation each year. In Norway, I get 4 weeks (20 days) a year (plus 5 days if I have saved enough working hours). Meaning I can actually get away when I have a vacation (instead of a long weekend, which seems to be more normal in the US). Sick leave is not included in these four weeks of vacation. You also get the standard maternity/paternity leave in Norway (not existing in the US).

Working hours is a little saner in Norway than in the US, but I’m not sure it’s because I’m working for relatively big company, or because it’s just part of the working culture (not that many people work past 17:00)

There is a 3 months notice of leave in Norway (or at least at my Norwegian company). That’s somewhat weird coming from a State where employment is at-will. At the very most, I don’t think you have more than 2 weeks notice even at the most generous companies in the US. Not sure which is better yet.

Technology
Oslo is mostly a bank and telecom city. Along the coast, it’s mostly jobs in the oil industry. Silicon Valley is a lot more diverse when it comes to different industries.

The technology used is also much more diverse in Silicon Valley, where you can get work doing C++, Java, .Net, Perl, Python, what have you. Most of the jobs advertised in Norway was basically either Java or .Net (C#) jobs. Couple of companies, like finn.no, was Perl jobs. UNIX (Linux) and Windows are both present in Norwegian companies

The people and Work
The US, being the melting pot it is, is really diverse. At least in Silicon Valley, you basically get to know the world.

Norway is pretty diverse too, at least when dealing with technology. I work with Norwegians, English, Vietnamese, Bangladesh, Indians. Oslo might not be as diverse as San Francisco, but London and Paris is just a hop away.

English seems to have become the lingua franca when it comes to dealing with technology.

Engineers being engineers, there aren’t that much difference between an US nerd and an European nerd. Both are interested in technology and discuss it. Work culture itself (when thinking about the people/technology aspect) is not that different.

The company I work for seems to be really focused on the health of the workforce. When in the US, most tech companies have free soda and chips, the company i work for now is really encouraging us to eat healthy (free fruit basket once a week, free tea, coffee and water, but no soda), and have a balanced work life (discourage us from working too much overtime). In the US, it seems more companies are working people to death, mostly because there are other desperate people out there waiting for you job. It’s going to be interesting to see how the environment in Norway changes if there is a recession in the next few months.

Since public transport actually (more or less) work in Norway, I can take the train to work instead being stuck in traffic every morning and evening for hours. I love that part.

Conclusion
I do like working in Norway. I’m not as stressed as working in the US (mostly because of the visa issues I had when working there). There is some excitement in working in places like Silicon Valley, and stability in working in a country like Norway. I miss places like Fry’s Electronics or huge bookstores like Barnes & Noble or some of the more corner bookstores like the one in Mountain View. Working public transport really reduces the stress level.

Maybe it’s too early to make a definite conclusion, but so far so good…

I forgot my password.

I had this brilliant idea of protecting the documents on my laptop with encryption some time ago in-case it ever gets stolen. And of course, encryption is useless without a good password. And now I forgot the password. And the backup doesn’t cover the latest stuff…

At least I decided to cut down on the number of unique password I have to remember. If only I could figure out what the password was for this particular set…

After 14 years in the US, I’m going back to Norway

Hmmm… 8/8. 8 being a lucky number in Asian mythology, or stuff or something. Forgot about that.

Thinking about redesigning my website again. I want to do some more AJAX on the site, and I really need to rewrite the gallery section. Right now there is no text, and the gallery sucks… Probably would have make some more server side scripts, then.

Currently in Norway visiting the old folks. I’m going a little crazy. Need to get out, back home, to the US. I miss my car and TV, and just being alone. I really need to cut down how much time I spend in Norway.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost 6 months since I updated this site last. Time really flies when life is interesting. Not that I’m going to write much about that here (what do you think this is, MySpace?)

I’m not going to be able to graduate this spring as originally planned, mostly because I didn’t finish one of my required classes. Not fun. Looks like I will be graduating March next year. Oh, well…

I bought a new laptop, when the old one started dying on me (sorry, but a system shouldn’t shut down because of overheating just because I’m compiling the Linux kernel). I’m more or less happy with the buy. It’s a very nice system.

Otherwise, I spent the day today, learning about subversion. In fact, I moved the all the homepage files from CVS to subversion. One of the reason I hadn’t moved to subversion before was because there didn’t seem to be very good support for it in my favorite editor, Emacs. Fortunately, subversion does come with en Emacs extension that lets Emacs manipulate subversion repositories, even though it’s not as nice as the default revision control controls in Emacs (no ctrl v v).

So far, I really like subversion. It does let you do stuff that was hard to do in CVS, like deleting or moving directories or files. On the other hand, subversion does seem to impact your project layout, something that CVS never did (ie. branching and tagging is not meta data in subversion, but rather a copy of your trunk, intersting concept). I need to play with it some more before I know if I really like it, but so far so good.

I’ve been back in Norway for almost a month now. As much as I love my parents, living under their roof again is a pain in the ass. Now, maybe if you are from one of those Asian countries, you don’t mind living with your mummy until you get married, but I just find it really restricting. Maybe it’s because I’ve been living alone for so long. Or maybe because I spent a year at home least year. In any case, I’m thinking of spending a week off somewhere on the European continent, not Norway. Prague sounds nice, or Dublin… Haven’t really decided.

I recently purchased a iPod Color. Really happy about that. The battery actually lasted the whole trip from San Francisco, USA to Oslo, Norway, with stop-over in New York, a little over 12 hours trip. The harddisk is big enough so that I didn’t have to listen to the same song twice during that time. Pretty nice. The only thing I didn’t like was iTunes jukebox. Don’t see what’s so impressive about the program. It might have been great when it first came about, but something like amaroK has pretty much surpassed it now. It doesn’t matter really, since I spend most of my time in Linux, so I essentially use amaroK all the time. amaroK also automagically converts the music I have stored in FLAC format to mp3 that the iPod can play, something iTunes can’t.

I so love my toys…

Finished my first year of Graduate studies. One more year to go. It’s been interesting going back to school, meeting new people again, and just worry about learning stuff. Really enjoying myself. Well, it’s vacation time now.

Two programs that people who are running Linux should try out are amaroK and digiKam. amaroK is a really excellent music player, but a killer music management capability. Never used iTunes, but I think Amarok is probably one of the best out there. digiKam is a photomanagement program. Another killer app. Check them out.

Wow, time flies when you’re having fun. I felt like it was just yesterday that I wrote my last entry. So much has changed.

I’m currently back in the US, just finished by first quarter as a graduate student at Santa Clara U. It’s been really nice being back in the academia after four years in the business world. It’s nice to have a new perspective on the stuff we talk about in class.

I updated my webpage after looking at the great website at meyerweb.com. He had some great examples on what you can do with (X)HTML and CSS. Unfortunately, that means that older browser, and probably IE won’t render this site properly. Quite frankly, since this is a personal site, I don’t care too much. So, if this site looks funky, update to another browser (or this browser), or just live with it.

Well, that’s have to be it for now.

Well, so I got accepted to Santa Clara University for my master’s degree in Software Engineering. It’s going to be fun two years.

I actually spent six weeks in the Bay Area during Easter, just hanging out in the US. Very fun. I took my parents to Las Vegas, and we gambled and had lots of fun. And the fact that we came out slightly ahead was a bit surprise. Oh, and if you ever go to Las Vegas, the Venetian is highly recommended. You can actually get Norwegian newspapers there, although they are maybe a day late. Very nice.

I recently finished a book by Robert Kagan, called “Paradise and Power - America and Europe in the new world order”. It’s very interesting book that takes up the difference in philosophy between the two continents. I probably have to review it at a later time.

So, the year 2003 is almost over. And what a horrible year it has been. Starting with being laid off, leaving the US when I had begun nesting, then friends being attacked. Eartquakes, fires, war… Uncertainty of what the future holds. In many ways, it reminds me of 1993, when I was getting ready for college.

It hasn’t been all bad, of course. Being laid off meant I had a chance to really reading a whole load of material I just haven’t had the time to do (C++ have changed a lot since I really looked at it last). I also go the chance to get to the Class of ‘93 reunion, which was a hoot.

One thing I came to realize, though, was how much I really like living in the US, and the Bayarea in particular. OK, for someone who was raised in Norway, the weather in the summer was way too hot, and I miss the live feed of European football games, but in general, I just love the place.

I love the fact that I can get a Subway sandwich on a Sunday morning, eat dinner at a Thai place at night, while my trusted Tivo tapes the latest episode of the Simpsons. The bayarea is basically the world in a microcosm, where you meet people from all cultures. It’s just a great place to live and visit.

BTW, Firefly is out on DVD. One of the best shows that never was.