what about my chances?

[lualua]

Hi,

I'm quite young (21) but already with quite long professional programming career (4+ years) programmer from Estonia. I wonder which are current demands for programmers in UK, is it common to hire foreign professionals?

My work experience include 2 years building software for one of Estonian largest hospitals using Delphi/Oracle9i and also writing complex software for medical equipment communication.

Currently a sub-contractor for a software company, writing large business-critical solutions for top500 companies in Estonia. Using mainly .NET /SQLServer and I want to stick on .NET programming in the future. I can do my job well and I'm most certain I can do very well in UK as well.

How much does companies in England appreciate archievements in school years? I.e. I have been representing Estonia in many international programming contests during high-school, for example winning bronze medal in Scandinavian Programming Olympiad. Is it worth mentioning in CV or job experience is much more important?

[rebeccaloos]

yes there are plenty of foreign programmers in UK companies, many of them with English not as their first language.

(and your English seems excellent anyway)

I have come across lots of Russian, Polish, French and Italian programmers, not to mention Indians, Nigerians and Antipodeans whom I classify as "native English speakers", so there is no problem here in company culture with hiring foreign programmers.

What you've done at school I think won't interest recruiters much unless it is to do with team management and/or programming ability. Clearly your scandinavian programming olympiad falls into that category, so I think recruiters here would be very interested by that - please put it on your CV.

Because of your age and the difficluty recruiters will have checking your reference, you will be taken on ability alone, so it can be that you will start at low rates/wages - but if you're good, you'll be able to increase rates / get salary raises quite quickly, as companies in the UK are reasonably good at rewarding talent (this is just my experience speaking) - but you have to be ready to move around though - or threaten to do so.

One last thing: as Estonian, check that you can work here without a visa. I know you have joined the EU recently but I wonder whether Western European countries have an exemption that will delay the automatic right of Eastern European workers to work anywhere in Western Europe. I am not sure though - worth just checking.

[Underscore]

As you are estonian....do you have a sister? I'm looking for a live-in cleaner.

[NOTiFY]

But how did Estonia do in Eurovision?