Moving to Ireland (opens in new tab)

Granted, a community is only a small part of an overall industry, but an industry without community is lacking heart and soul.

And I can say, with authority, that Dublin has a vibrant tech community. My company, Engine Yard, runs or hosts two meetups a week in our Dublin office, covering subjects such as Ruby, PHP, Node JS, Scala, as well as database, Open Data and designer / UX oriented meetups.

If you want to come to any meetups on these subject, or become more involved in the Dublin tech community, drop me a line - eamon@engineyard.com.

In addition, for the past three years, I've been running Pub Standards Dublin, the largest monthly gathering in Ireland of developers, designers and anyone interested in tech - we get about 150-180 each month. See http://pubstandards.ie/ or https://twitter.com/pubstandardsdub for details, you're welcome to join us any time.

I'm sorry you feel that things are "stagnant and dependent on cheap non-EU labour". I don't feel the same, and I invite you to come out, meet your peers and properly engage with your local tech community.

You wont regret it :)

I can only speak for Dublin and I'd guess other comments are also referring to the capital. Some points I would add:

On top of tech giants mentioned previously, more recently: Airbnb, Dropbox, Qualtrics (Announced friday)

Large number of high quality domestic companies. Intercom, Datahug, Logentries...

Massive amount of free networking events. Great sense of community and willingness to help among them.

Several high quality incubators. NDRC, Wayra

Great government support & funding. IDA & Enterprise Ireland

Europe's largest technology event is held here. This October will have ~10k attendees, 8k flying in from outside Ireland. Disclosure: I work here

There's an article about moving to Ireland in Hacker News top 10

A few links published in the last 7 days alone:

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/tech-f... http://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/item/34294-ndrc-rec... http://blog.websummit.net/2013/09/19/a-letter-to-irish-start... http://connormurphy.blogspot.ie/2013/09/a-letter-from-irish-...

It use to be a case you can count the tech groups on one hand (for me anyway)! Also there are many entrepreneurs meetups happening around town as well. It's really exciting to be in Dublin at the moment, although I do wish the same amount of activity would happen in other cities/towns around the country.

As many mentioned before me, go and check out the meetups around town (via meetup.com, lanyrd.com and sign up to Dublin StartupDigest). This all leads to a vibrant tech community (good cafés also helps). I might warn you though, there is something happening most nights every week. Enjoy!

sounds like a meaningless platitude to me. From my experience most companies have huge difficulties finding good irish candidates because they are both just low in numbers and inclined to immigrate to London.

What I meant more so was that government policy seems to be pushing Irish innovation into a corner, while cheerleading a 'knowledge economy' that probably doesn't jive with our ideas of what a knowledge economy is. You only have to look at the recent reductions in the wage-floor for importing tech workers, on a fast-track visa scheme, from outside the EU, to see what I mean. If we had a thriving tech sector then why are wages stagnant? Why did Sean O Sullivan bleat on about needing to issue, what was it, 15k visas to non-EU people per year? We have a massive EU wide workforce, with massive unemployment and masses of graduates graduating each year. A significant number of STEM grads leave the industry because they can't find work, and yet we don't have enough workers? And if we don't have enough workers then why do they need to lower the wage floor for importing people? Shouldn't wages be rising?

Government policy is purposely driving wages down. Jobbridge internships have been extended to 18 months, and I fear for the effect that this is going to have on the country, in terms of brain-drain for graduates, and general morale.

It sounds like you guys all feel good about our tech sector. I'm glad, because as well as the above, all i've heard for the last 10 years is how terrible our graduates are, and how companies are annoyed that they have to spend money bringing people in from elsewhere. This isn't true of course, they don't have to, it's just part of the same 'we only want geniuses' narrative that's taking place in the US and elsewhere, which is handily also stagnating wages. I could link to probably 50 interviews and articles (if i had enough time) from CEO's of Havok, Demonware, Paypal, Google etc etc saying how poor our country is for talent, and whether you feel good about our tech sector, the statements coming from our indigenous companies, and MNC's, don't make me feel good.

So i'd suggest that if the sector is thriving, it's in spite of our culture, political climate (except for corporation tax), and whatever else, rather than being a thing that was destined to happen.

Anyway nevermind that, if anyone has any more suggestions for meetups, i'd love to hear them. Thanks for all the suggestions so far.

Get out there, meet people and I'm sure you'll have a different perspective

The amount of meet ups help make the IT industry in Ireland thrive. There barely goes a week without there being an event on sometime even three to four each week.

I live in Belfast, and there isn't the same variety of big tech, but still tonnes of IT jobs

If I lived in Dublin, I'd go all out to work at Google, or maybe Twitter..

My first interview in English was over the phone and it was really stressful. It was enough to go to the second round (I didn't get the job though).

The upcoming interviews will get better. If you read HN and comment in English, that's enough to give it a try.

Why don't you try updating your monster account first, or uploading your cv elsewhere? You will eventually get called by agents and convincing them that you up for the job would be a very good test to your language skills.

I'm also an foreign IT professional coming from Portugal, so good luck my friend. If we made it then you can do it as well.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/types_of_emp...

http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/en/Start-a-Business-in-Ire...

If you're looking to work, you need a company to sponsor you, there's a green card programme, and in practice, it's not that difficult to get in if you're a programmer with a CS degree or equivalent experience. Sure there are forms and red tape... but it's not as many hoops to jump through as moving to the US.

More info on work visas / green cards for Ireland here: http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/migrant_work...

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/money_and_tax/tax/incom...