Most of us who work in payment systems care a lot about precision and reliability.

That is almost all Nordic countries, and all of Scandinavia.

(My team built the MediaLive service)

I live and work abroad and Turbotax requires a US billing address to pay the fee of using Turbotax. :facepalm

All the other self-service options do not work and I’m not sure if the risk is worth it to file it myself.

To my fellow Expats, what are you doing?

I’ve enjoyed the innovation of the progressive web from jQuery to Angular, but React burnt me out.

I learned the hard way that investing too much time and innovation into a JavaScript framework is a net loss.

And it was always painful when the next person rewrites it into the next “thing”.

I think it comes down to mindset. For example You have what you need to live, but the things you want are expensive.

Housing is a problem, but it seems that is a problem almost everywhere. That said, it is not always “easy” to obtain what you want, but I think that is good for society. For example the second hand market is strong.

I’m not sure if that answers your question.

Varnish Software had a job posting in Norway and I asked them if they would consider a US candidate. At that time I was living in the US and was looking for opportunities to immigrate to Norway (or Finland).

After I accepted the position they helped with the “skilled workers visa” process.

Moving abroad has a lot of logistics. Depending on your situation in the US, I suggest to sell, rent, or store your belongings in the US and only bring what you can as luggage on the Airplane. In my case, we had an estate sale, asked family to hang on to sentimental items, and gave away everything else. When we left the US to fly to Norway, we had 5 suitcases of what we needed/wanted.

My partner (at that time) and I had a 6mo old child.

We started with an Airbnb in the Sagene area of Oslo. After landing we rented a car and drove to the Airbnb.

That turned into a 6mo rental (outside of Airbnb) as we explored the area for either an apartment to rent or buy. Again, it helped to have minimal possessions as we moved around to find the area that suited us and our family. Eventually we settled in an area called Torshov.

June or July is a great time move, the city is calm and almost everyone is on summer holiday.

It can take several months before you are in the banking system to receive your salary, so in advance you will need to have a buffer of savings and to keep a bank account in the US.

Forward all your mail in the US to family, friend, lawyer, or service to keep you informed. Forwarding mail to Norway is possible, but it will be delayed by at least one month, which can be a problem for any bills that are due.

You can’t really compare dollar to krone the difference of a US salary to a Norwegian salary.

I’m not sure how to explain it for those who haven’t lived in the nordics, but you don't need a high paying income to live a good life.

We built this together at a previous organisation and moved all the internal and external services at that organisation to this system (It allowed the org to satisfy the ISO27001 requirements).

After being in operation for a couple of years, we have collected a lot of insights and feedback on what to change/improve for the open source version.

This summer I’m setting aside some time to work on making those changes for an open source version of what we call “Vanir”.

(Seems like good timing with the initiatives in EU to take back some ownership of the cloud stack).

No LLM or AI magic. Just simple state machines, extendable configuration, and a lovely GUI (web-based, no JavaScript).

The tech stack is python3, postgresql, ansible, and django.

Thank you for the kind words my friend. I enjoyed contributing to TinyKVM during my time at Varnish Software. It is nice to see that you are able to present and share it with the community.

We have an access road behind the building that is between the building and the green space. This access road is gated and is used by all of us residents (especially the kids).

The green space has plenty of things to share (garden areas, berries, fruit trees, barbecues, tables, chairs, etc...) My 5 year old son has a lot of friends who live in our area and he's able to just be himself running around, climbing trees, digging in dirt, and exploring his world within a safe community.

The density and use of space is much more efficient than what I was previously used to in the Pacific Northwest. During the last five years of living in Oslo, we have only needed a car when visiting friends at their cabins. I feel privileged to live a car free lifestyle.

I think that I'm still at the A level (A1/A2). My auditory processing disorder adds an extra variable that I'm still learning how to work with as an adult. If anyone (in Norway) knows of someone who has or is interested in APD (https://www.statped.no/horsel/andre-utfordringer/auditive-pr...), please reach out to me.

Anyways, always happy to see Norwegian related news in HN.