fassy

Well as an international company, we don't care. We have x staff positions for software development and y USD in budget. Paying our staff in and around SJC used to come at 5 times the cost of equally skilled software engineers in WAW about 5 years ago. Obviously, the company took the opportunity and opened an office in WAW, hiring staff. Now, 5 years later keeping those guys or backfilling for them if they leave we have to pay a significant higher wage. Actually higher than for teams in Germany or Austria. Which makes WAW becoming less and less attractive. Not just because of the higher cost, but also because its getting ridiculous hard to get good people.

GUWonder

Speaking of Stockholm, the ticket checkers are also back in force when using the Stockholm area public transit buses. For the last few months, the SL transit system was more or less only checking for tickets on trains.

NextWhiteDeath

There the difference at how we look at it. I'm looking at the view from the individual perspective. To them the choice more often then not is some other place in Europe and rarely going over seas.
About the other points. The cost in these kind of situation always go up as there is a mad rush for talent. I can bet that for your company part of the increase in cost is coming from having to start paying for the experience with the company.

fassy

Not sure I follow that reasoning? The WAW employees are looking at salary benchmarks and see they can get x on the free market while we pay them y. Then they either leave or renegotiate their contract.

Has nothing to do with "paying the experience within the company". I would say, it is a more enjoyable place than many other I have seen over the years and get the same message from almost all colleagues.

JR67

Does anyone have recent experience driving across the Öresund bridge? I have to drive over to Denmark Thursday morning (~8AM) and wonder what I should expect in terms of delays caused by the Danish border control?

GUWonder

nacho?

Next Thursday may be a somewhat different story than this past Thursday with driving at least, so I would probably pad in a bit more time over how things went this past Thursday.

If I take a car over Tuesday, I may be able to be useful for once.

nacho

Expect queue, we drove on July 24 and at the bridge around 9 when they only let in some Swedes. We queued about 35 minutes or so but I saw someone said there was a 4km queue slightly later in the day.

The problem with Danish passport control is that they have to check everyone and as there's no "Rřdbeder" passport lane which means that everyone is stuck in one queue. I assume the border crossing will be like hell next week as schools in DK start the week after (at least for my kids), which means people are returning to DK from holidays. At 8am you will have commuters who drive to DK to work and possibly Germans started heading home from Sweden via DK.

If you are driving from Germany to DK, don't cross the border on Saturday afternoon - that was HELL, we stuck for like 75 minutes 1km from the border and it's faster to walk across the border than driving across.

JR67

Thanks! I am curious what the back-up will look like this coming week, which seems like the worst possible time to travel... I am hoping that 8 am on a Thursday will be early enough that those traveling home will not have made it to the bridge yet so I mostly just deal with commuters. Hoping for someone to report how it is in the coming days.

We are traveling to Germany, but hopefully the return will be less of a queue than you suffered - we are taking the ferry Rostock-Gedser and our ticket is "supposed" to put us as first off the boat, so the queue should be behind us...

Thanks again!

nacho

Make sure you don't go back Saturday afternoon until after dinner time - we drove down again last Sunday after dinner 30km from the Danish-German border and we peeped what's like to go back and there was no queue. When we drove down on Saturday around 11am from my in-laws, the queue on A7 was all the way past the last exit in Germany - as soon as we saw that we knew we were screwed and we had to head up at 14.30 from Neumunster outlet and didn't get to my in-law until almost 18.00. With 3 and a half hours without much traffic I can do all the way from Bremen to my in-laws.

We drove back Wednesday and no queue whatsoever on A7 (normally that has the longest queue) - they practically waved everyone through regardless of registration plate.

I don't know how flexible your ferry ticket is, if it's not flexible, make sure you leave plenty of time. If your ticket is flexible, then you just catch the next ferry in 2 hours. We used to do that when the kids were younger and from Copenhagen there's a 1,5h drive down to Gedser. Traffic on the motorway until the last stretch is no big deal but once it turned into a single carriage way then it depends on whether you have a big truck driving in front of you.

JR67

My research today via Google Maps shows that the delays are somewhere between 26 minutes and 1:10 minutes, So if I have a ferry time 11;00 from Gedser and leave Vellinge a little before 8AM I should be fine. Right?

JR67

Found a way to avoid the queues on the bridge. Asked a friend about his opinion... He just said "Screw the queues and stay in one of my hotels (he has a few in central Copenhagen) and I will take you out for dinner." I said "Yes, thank you." :-)

GUWonder

The time to cross into Copenhagen in recent months has varied a lot during the morning, but I am not sure I would be willing to pack/unpack for an additional night if I can help it when so close yet so far from home. But then again good company, dinner, a free night and getting closer to the trip destination is a compelling offer when having to make a specific ferry departure.

Are you taking something that shows you’re a Skane resident, just in case you’re asked? It could be that Skane and Blekinge residents may still get into Denmark faster at times.

JR67

Ordinarily I agree completely with the extra night issue. In this case there are two compelling reasons to do it: First, it is a getaway without the kids, so another night is a huge plus. :-) Second, we haven't been out with these friends all summer thanks to the border closing, so it is a double win,

We are bringing a "personbevis" downloaded from the tax authority, which should be enough if I understand correctly. Is there something else that would be needed?

fassy

The personbevis is good enough. I don't think they ask for it at the moment but some weeks back when DK opened up for Skane-residents I had to cross a couple of times and they always asked for a person- or hemortsbevis.

Funny enough since the PDF is not even signed or in any way tamper proof. Everyone could just make one up.

JR67

I thought the same thing this morning when I printed it... Anyone with beginner computer skills can fake it. But then again - if you have a Swedish ID it is enough to get you into the country, and the Danish requirement of 6 nights in the country for Swedes from non-border regions is just a shameless grab to boost hotel occupancy. There is absolutely zero reason for the requirement, and if they are worried about virus transmission they should want to LIMIT duration of stay...