Märt Ridala's thoughts

The information in this post and the links were updated on 18th of July 2014. In my opinion Estonia is a good place for IT specialists to find a job and work in! Especially in the situation when the (youth) unemployment is rising and in many European countries there is no sign of it easing.  I promoted the idea to the Estonian IT companies in one of my recent posts . With this post I want to give my contribution to the exchange of talent inside EU. I hope this helps at least a few people.  This post is definitely not an official guide, but more of a friendly advice. If you have any questions regarding moving or any important information that could help others then please comment this post!  This post focuses on moving to Tallinn. Tartu, as the second biggest town in Estonia, is also an alternative with Playtech and Webmedia as the biggest IT sector employers there. The first thing you need is a job .  If you are an IT specialist with a university degree ther...

I acknowledge that with this topic I might wander to an area of strong emotions. Nevertheless I think this is a topic that should be discussed and there is a lot win-win opportunities here. I will start by a few background facts: In 2006 a population analysis of Estonia was made that you can read here  According to the analysis by the time I will retire somewhere in the 2040's the Dependency rate will increase from the current 47% to 70% in Estonia. This means that 30% of the population will be working age and all the rest will be either children or retired. Instead of 614 000 persons working we will have approximately 300 000 people in the working age, but approximately the same number (700 000) people depending on them. So if we would like to keep the current level of pensions (a pathetic 300 euros/m), social support, education, roads, military etc we would have to double the taxes. In 2045 you will pay 66% social tax, 40% VAT, 42% income tax. So if your employer would pay ou...

“The world is flat” was a book and an idea presented by Thomas Friedman in 2005. The concept of the flat world means that globalization has changed our world economics drastically by creating international and even intercontinental supply and support chains. Global competition between companies, teams and even people has made many things cheaper, ideas and innovation travel faster, but it has also caused jobs to move and the environment to suffer from consumption, logistics and travelling. But how flat is the world really? Is it flatter in some parts of the world? How is the situation in the Nordics and Baltics? Here is my perspective to it and I hope to bring it some insight from my experience of moving on an international assignment from Tallinn to Stockholm. Why a multi-national company should move people? The reason is pretty obvious. This is the best way to get people to work together and share ideas and experiences. Videoconferences, telephone meetings and visits do help, ...

E-services are among the most important sources of economical efficiency. In Estonia 3 small, but innovative e-steps were taken in December. Here is a small summary of them. Firstly of course the population and housing census! The census will take place between 31.12.2011-31.03.2012 and hopefully all the inhabitants and housing of Estonia will be counted. During January it is possible to participate on the E-census and "count" your family and household through the Internet. This is of course much more efficient than having the interviewer visiting your home. By now over 190 000 people have been enumerated. That is approximately 13,5% of the population. The goal is to count more than half of the population over internet. One can follow the status of the census (and count yourself if you are an inhabitant of Estonia) here http://www.stat.ee/phc2011 . I participated on the e-census and it worked fine. Although there were a lot of questions, I was happy that I could answer t...

The global economic situation has been gloomy in the last months and the newspapers are full of economic misery coming mostly from Greece and Italy. But things are not all bad! In Estonia we have had many great economic developments overall and especially in the IT and technology sector lately. Here is a list of some of them: The Seedcamp event in London was overwhelmed by "the Estonian Maffia", with 4 out of 20 participants and 2 out of 3 winners coming from Estonia . Fortumo, the mobile payment provider, was selected as the best Estonian company by Enteprise Estonia. This marks a significant shift of focus to young and innovative startups by the society and government. The delegation from Brussels is looking for premises for the European IT agency in Tallinn. We hope to have many European IT specialists and decision makers moving to Tallinn. (Tallinn is a nice town with a pretty Old Town so why not.) Flybe, Utair and Estonian Air have opened many new flightroutes t...