a french developer with years of experience who has moved to tallinn: „i knew estonia was a place where life was booming“

Work In Estonia
Author Work In Estonia
Categories

Pierre Fouchet, a French developer, had been working as a developer in his home country for almost a decade, keeping both the national grid and a number of private companies running. Two months ago, however, he left his native soil to move to Tallinn and join the Tallinn office of software company Dynatrace.

After the last wave of Covid-19, Pierre Fouchet decided to resign from his job in south-east France to seek new challenges outside his home country. The criteria for a new place to live were good connections with the rest of Europe, opportunities for growth and overall quality of life.

Estonia as one of the options was no coincidence – Pierre had heard from friends that our IT sector welcomes foreign talent and that the environment here is conducive to rapid development. The prospect of a job also pointed in Tallinn’s favour. In Pierre’s previous jobs, developers were mainly concerned with meeting business needs, and the nature of the work was creating one micro solution after another day after day. His hopes for his new job were technical depth and the opportunity to tackle complex projects.

According to Fouchet, he spotted an advertisement on the Stack Overflow job portal for a senior developer position at Dynatrace’s Tallinn IT centre. Dynatrace is a technology company, founded in Austria but now listed on the NASDAQ, that creates deep tech solutions for managing cloud systems. Since Fouchet had previous experience with Dynatrace products, he didn’t need to think twice. “By the time the interviews were done, I was already sure that I wanted to move to Estonia. A job offer that is technically challenging and located in an exciting place doesn’t come along every day,” Fouchet added.

By now, Pierre has been a senior developer at Dynatrace for two months. He sums up his experience so far with an interesting comparison – life in Estonia is surprisingly easy and the day-to-day work at Dynatrace is pleasantly challenging. “Dynatrace manages huge amounts of data, much more than is typical for other technology companies. At some point, tasks become so complex that you have to build from scratch all the usual tools and interfaces to cope with these volumes of data. It’s often crazy, but I really enjoy it,” Fouchet explains.

Very little red tape

For those considering a move to Estonia, Pierre recommends taking things easy. Moving and settling in is very easy for a newcomer from the EU and, despite rising prices, the rental market is full of offers and there is little red tape.

The developer also compliments Tallinn’s facilities, “I was surprised to find that basically everything I would expect from a major capital city is available here. There are no problems with finding leisure and sports opportunities. It was important for me to find an opportunity to do climbing and there are several such climbing facilities in Tallinn.”

Pierre also pointed out that Dynatrace takes the recruitment process seriously and that once the offer has been accepted, the company makes sure that there is time to move and settle in the new country.

Flexible work organisation

Pierre also says that the employer’s commitment to a well thought-out working environment and flexibility is a special bonus. Everyone has the right to choose how they want to work, be it full-time in an office, from home or a combination of both. “For the last two years I spent too much time at home, my previous employers did not offer me the opportunity to work in an office. Here, I can be with my colleagues most of the time, but it’s not a problem to work from home if necessary.”

There are many reasons to work in an office, but one of the main motivators, according to Pierre, are his colleagues. “Of course, I’ve had nice coworkers in previous jobs, but here in Tallinn, they’re on a completely different level. To have so many experienced, smart and sociable people in the same team is a real ‘wow effect’ for me,” the developer added.