OT, I hope you don't mind me asking, how does this work out for you? I have some reasons to consider moving to Finland but the language barrier seems very rough. Is it even possible for the average hacker to get by with just English?
It's been good so far but luckily my partner is Finnish so that helps quite a bit. I'm also taking classes and trying to use the language when I can. I've learned French and Dutch to conversational level in the past, but I've found Finnish to be much much harder.
In terms of life, generally in Helsinki or maybe the other big cities you could get by just fine with english only. I know a few folks at work who've been here a long time and have survived ok! In terms of written information everything is in Finnish or Swedish but occasionally (and from what I gather, increasingly) in English. I've found pretty much everyone in a customer/client facing position speaks very good English too.
The one situation that comes to mind where it's genuinely quite difficult is grocery shopping and following cooking instructions. Since I like to cook I enjoy trying new things but Google translate is totally hopeless. Thankfully I've found translating the Swedish to English seems to work OK.
> I've learned French and Dutch to conversational level in the past
They are both neighbouring contries of the UK, with similar idioom. Finnish is another league. Congrats BTW, many English native speakers these days try but, in my experience, use English in business settings only.
