One day, Parallels decided to meet the needs of those employees who had already worked for the company for a long time and did not want to change it, but at the same time wanted to change their place of residence in order to be closer to the West, have an EU passport and be more mobile and independent in their movements.
Thus, the idea was born to expand the geography of its presence and open a Parallels R&D center in Estonia.
Why Estonia?
Initially, different options were considered, located not so far from Moscow: Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia. It was in favor of Estonia that almost half of the country speaks Russian, and you can get to Moscow by any night train. In addition, a very advanced e-government model operates in Estonia, which greatly simplifies all organizational aspects, and real work is underway to attract investors, start-ups and other promising projects.
So, the choice was made. And now - about the relocation to Tallinn through the mouths of our employees, who tell which of their expectations came true and which did not, and what initially unpredictable difficulties they had to face.
Alexander Vinogradov, Cloud Team Frontend-developer:
I moved alone, without a car, without animals - the easiest case for moving. Everything went very smoothly. The most difficult part, perhaps, was the process of dismissal from the Moscow office - I had to sign a lot of different papers documents and be at the right time in the right place to meet with the relocation manager. I ran into the only surprise at the bank when we were asked for a little more documents than was previously required. But the guys quickly got their bearings, and after a short wait, I had all the necessary documents and a residence permit in my hands.
I can't remember that during the whole time of the move I encountered any difficulties here. Maybe there was something, but apparently I didn’t realize yet that it was a difficulty)
What was a pleasant surprise? First of all, I was pleased with the silence around. The silence is such that at first I could not sleep because of the ringing in my ears. I live in the very center, but the road to the airport by tram is 10-15 minutes, to the port and bus station 10 minutes on foot - all trips around Europe have become much easier and faster. Sometimes you don’t even have time to realize that you were somewhere far away on a trip, because after the plane or ferry you literally immediately find yourself in your apartment.
The main difference between Moscow and Tallinn is the rhythm of life and atmosphere. Moscow is a huge metropolis, and Tallinn is a quiet European city. In Moscow, sometimes you already come to work tired because of the long journey and the clogged transport cars. In Tallinn, my way from my apartment to work is 10-15 minutes in a half-empty bus cabin - “from door to door”.
I won’t say that I suffered greatly from a lot of stress in Moscow, but if you can live without it, then why not? In addition, the pluses that I described just above came. I guessed that it would be something like this, but that it would be so good - I could not even think. The second moment is working - I became closer to the people with whom I worked closely while in the Moscow office, but then the distance was much greater, now the interaction process has improved significantly, which I am very happy about.
Small life hacks: when looking for housing, pay attention to its novelty - in old houses you can stumble upon unexpectedly very high cost of utilities. It takes about a month until I receive a local bank card, and here - never an advertisement - the Tinkoff card made my life easier. Paying her and withdrawing cash without commission this month.
All of the above is just my personal opinion. Come and make your own.
Sergey Malykhin, Program Manager
Actually, the move itself was relatively easy.
And, to a large extent, thanks to the support provided by the company.
It was a very smart move on Parallels’s part to hire relocation specialists in Estonia – the company Move My Talent – who helped us a lot at first: they provided the required information, held seminars for us and family members, gave lectures – about Estonia, Estonians, local mentality, culture, the intricacies of local laws and official procedures, the peculiarities of the city districts of Tallinn, etc.), went with us to government offices and helped to draw up documents, took us to view apartments for rent.
In Moscow, almost all the paperwork (Estonia work visa, medical insurance, etc.) was done by HR Parallels employees.
We didn’t even have to go to the embassy – they just took our passports and returned them a couple of days later with six-month work visas.
We ourselves only had to make the final decision, pack our things and go.
Perhaps the decision was the hardest one to make.
In fact, at first I did not even want to go, because by nature I am a fairly conservative person who does not like drastic changes.
I hesitated for a long time, but in the end I decided to treat it as an experiment and an opportunity to shake up my life a little.
At the same time, the main advantage I saw was precisely the opportunity to escape from the frenzied Moscow rhythm of life and move on to a more measured step.
From what was not easy and surprised - unpleasantly surprised by the disgusting quality of local medicine. Moreover, the equipment purchased with European grants is often very good. But there are not enough medical specialists. Sometimes you have to wait 3-4 months for an appointment with a specialist doctor paid by the local health insurance fund (the Estonian version of the MHI). And sometimes you have to wait for a paid reception for months. Good specialists seek to get a job in Western Europe (mainly in neighboring Finland and Sweden). Remain either old (age) or mediocre (qualification). Paid medical services at the same time are quite expensive. Medicine in Moscow seems to me to be much better and more affordable.
Another problem for me was the originality and slowness of the local service: from online stores to car repair shops, kitchen companies, furniture sales, etc.
In general, they are at the level that was in Moscow in the early 2000s. When compared with the level of service in Moscow or St. Petersburg now (even with all the known shortcomings of the latter), the comparison will clearly not be in favor of Estonia.
Well, here's an example: I had to fix the headlights in the car.
I turned to the local Opel officials, explained that I wanted to sign up for the diagnosis and repair of headlights, and at the same time do scheduled maintenance.
Dropped off the car. Without waiting for a call by the end of the working day, I call them back almost before the closing time - they say: “lock it up, gottoffo”.
I'm coming. I look at the bill - there is only the amount for changing the oil in the engine. I ask: “and the headlights?” In response: “farrry? ahh... ah yes! farr…. don’t rapottayut!” Phew. And that's how it is almost everywhere. However, the situation is slowly starting to improve. It's better now than it was 4 years ago.
From pleasant impressions - I really like the fact that Estonia is a small country and Tallinn is a relatively small city with a calm / unhurried rhythm of life, without traffic jams. Local residents, however, can argue with me (they consider Tallinn a city with a frantic pace), but when compared with Moscow, the difference is very noticeable.
Much less time was spent on moving around the city. Here in Tallinn one can manage to do three orders of magnitude more things in an hour than in a whole day in Moscow. In Moscow, I sometimes spent up to 5 hours in total just to get to the office by car in the morning and return back in the evening. On the best days - 3 hours of pure time by car or 2 hours by public transport. In Tallinn, we get from home to office in 10-15 minutes. From one remote end of the city to the other can be reached in a maximum of 30-35 minutes by car or 40 minutes by public transport. As a result, each of us had a lot of free time, which in Moscow was spent on moving around the city.
I was surprised that in Estonia you can live quite normally without knowing the Estonian language. In Tallinn, approximately 40% of the inhabitants are Russian speakers. Recently, their number has increased significantly due to immigration from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The older generation of Estonians (40+) in most cases still remembers the Russian language (since the times of the USSR).
Young people, for the most part, do not understand Russian, but they communicate quite tolerably in English. Therefore, you can always explain yourself in one way or another. True, sometimes you have to do this in sign language, when the interlocutor does not know either Russian or English - this happens mainly when you encounter people without higher education. We live in the Lasnamäe area (the locals often call it Lasnogorsk) - this is the Tallinn area with a compact and most massive population of Russian-speaking residents. Something like "Little Odessa" on Brighton Beach. Many residents “don’t go to Estonia” 🙂 and don’t speak Estonian on principle. Unfortunately, this is one of the problems: if you want to learn Estonian, say, in order to get a permanent residence permit after 5 years, or change citizenship - alas, the Estonian-speaking environment that would motivate you to learn and use the Estonian language, here you won't find. At the same time, the Estonian part of society is quite closed and does not strongly strive to let Russian speakers into its circle.
A pleasant surprise for me was free transport, in which, moreover, there are not so many people (because there are not many people in Estonia at all) - the total population of the country is about 1 million 200 thousand. The locals, however, actively scold their transport, but nevertheless it runs very carefully, most of the buses are new and quite comfortable, and they are really free for local residents.
Surprised and pleasantly pleased with the quality of dairy products and local brown bread. Local milk, sour cream, cottage cheese are really very tasty, the quality is much better than domestic. Black bread is also very tasty - for 4 and a half years, we seem to have tried not all available varieties yet 🙂
Pleased with local forests, and swamps, and generally good ecology. Most of the swamps have special educational trails: wooden decks that you can walk on (sometimes they are wide enough even to walk with a pram). The swamps are very beautiful. As a rule, 4G Internet is available everywhere (even in the center of swamps). On many educational trails in the swamps, there are posts with a QR code, by which you can download interesting information about the flora and fauna of the places you are near. Practically in all forest parks and forests there are special “health paths” - routes equipped and illuminated in the evening, along which you can walk, run, ride bicycles. In most cases, you can always find well-equipped driveways to the forest with free parking and places for a fire / barbecue / barbecue. In summer, there are a lot of berries in the forests, in autumn - mushrooms. There are a lot of forests in Estonia, but not so many people (yet) - so there are enough gifts of nature for everyone 🙂
There are many opportunities for sports in Estonia: if you want, you can just walk or run through the forests and along the coast, you can ride a bike, rollerblade, windsurf or yacht, or Nordic walking (with sticks), or ride a motorcycle, everything is nearby, and no one steps on the heels (because there are few people) and there are a lot of equipped places. If there is not enough space in Estonia, you can go to neighboring Latvia or Finland 🙂
It was also surprising that the Estonians, who have a reputation in Russia as slow people, turned out to be not at all what they are usually represented in jokes. They are not slow at all! They speak slowly only in Russian (if you are lucky and you get someone who knows Russian at all), and then because Estonian is very different from Russian and it’s just hard for them to speak it.
Life hacks for those who want to move to Estonia
First of all, realize what exactly you are looking for / what you are striving for when moving to a new place and try to understand whether your move will help you achieve your goal or vice versa will complicate everything. It is better to spend time on this reflection in advance than to become depressed after the move, when it turns out that expectations do not correspond to reality.
Perhaps, for someone after Moscow, the unhurried rhythm, compactness, a small number of people may not seem like a virtue, but a disadvantage and will be perceived as boredom and lack of drive (some colleagues have experienced this).
Be sure to plan in advance with your other half what she will do in Estonia. This must be done in order to prevent possible breakdowns into depression from loneliness. It should be noted that in recent years the situation with communication here has improved significantly. The Club of Women Programmers appeared - a Russian-speaking community of expats, consisting of wives / girlfriends of guys working in Estonia in the IT / Software business. They have their own Telegram channel where you can just chat, ask for advice or help. In addition, they constantly meet in person in Tallinn cafes, arrange parties, bachelorette parties, go to visit each other. The club is exclusively for women: men are strictly prohibited from entering (they kick you out in 5 minutes). Many of the visiting girls, having learned about him, begin to communicate and receive useful information about the move and adaptation even before leaving home. It would be useful for your wife / girlfriend to chat in advance in the chat of the Club of Women Programmers; believe me - this is a very useful source of advice and any kind of information.
If you have children who are moving with you, or you are planning to have a child soon after moving, talk to the guys who already live here with small children. There are many nuances here. Alas, here I cannot share here useful life hacks on this topic, since by the time of the move our daughter was already an adult and remained in Moscow.
If you travel by car and plan to bring it with you, you don’t have to bother with registering it here: in principle, it’s quite possible to drive here on Russian license plates (many do). However, registering a car is not so difficult. But the rights after 1 year of permanent residence will have to be changed; this is also not difficult, but keep in mind that you will have to hand over your Russian license to the Estonian police (however, no one bothers you to get a duplicate in Russia later).
In general, in Estonia, your own car is not so much needed - as it is very convenient to get around the city by free public transport or by taxi (which is sometimes cheaper than gasoline + paid parking in some places, especially in the center). And if you need a car, it’s enough just to rent it for a while; however, alas, such a service as car sharing did not take root in Estonia (too few people). Therefore, think carefully - is it worth it to go here by car or, perhaps, it is better to sell it at home, before leaving. At the same time, some guys go to Russia exclusively by car. If you plan to travel like this, of course, it is better to have your own and, moreover, with Russian numbers, since entering the Russian Federation in Estonian is a headache.
Be sure to think about where you will put a large amount of suddenly appeared free time: you will definitely need some kind of hobby - sports, drawing, dancing, raising children, whatever. Otherwise, you can go crazy (there are bars and nightclubs here, but their number is small and, most likely, you will get bored pretty quickly).
If in doubt whether you need it, come visit the Tallinn office, see for yourself, ask colleagues questions before making a decision. When the company was planning to open an office here, we were given a 4-day study tour. Actually, it was after that that I made the final decision to move.
Source: habr.com