John Biggs asks "Honestly how many brits are in Krakow and looking for work?"

It's an honour to be regarded as an authority by Techcrunch's John Biggs so rather than just answer in the thread, I am making a blog post. John posted the below in a thread here by Maciej Serafin who is looking for a native speaker freelancer.

I am an authority on Brits in Krakow...

Who are the Brits in Kraków?
English teachers....  Kind of obvious.  the local rate $13-17/hour goes quite far here.

People with Polish partners, who prefer it here to where ever they are from

People working for international businesses

According to Andrew Hallam of Aspire.org.pl - which generated the above slide - about 15% of the staff in the Business Process Outsourcing/Shared Services sector are foreigners which means about 2000, but companies like Cisco have put major research centres here, like their Cyber Warfare/Security/whathaveyou monitoring centre, thanks to the admirable work of the likes of Ramon Tancinco   They are more than 75% foreigner. and have 2000 employees so it adds up.

Academics 
Trustafarians  - like Rastafians but living on trust funds from mummy or whoever..

Adult  Polonia -  people who made their money elsewhere, tried to retire here, but ended up working.

Entrepreneurs  - it's cheaper to start your business here as an entrepreneur than in major western European countries, Your money goes further.

Freelancer translators -  Your clients can be anywhere

Other freelancers like Jason Sanderson who sound edits  Jason Harbinger's hit podcast The Art of Charm live in Krakow
Paul Pearson - who does Krakow Startup TV and TEDxKazimierz is a film producer who works locally and internationally.
Many others

Stag Nighters  no comment.  Almost as ashamed of them as of Brexit.

Dodgy Brits with criminal records

In principle you might think you ought to be able to outsource your English language content creation/news gathering to a English language low cost country. I tried  years ago when I was running PMR but wasn't happy with the results

People who get stuck here
They arrive, think it is great, settle in, have a kid or two, get divorced, and then realise they can't afford to leave

According to Sam Cook of ProjectKazimierz podcast, the "East is the New West", the land of opportunity. (btw can we interview you for Project Kazimierz John? )

If you mix local and international income., live smart,   - and for sure - content creators can do that  - why not?  you can live better in Kraków than in many places on the same income.

At the same time if you don't think about what you do, who you work for and how to keep your income higher than your outgoings, you are going to be fucked, possible faster and more nastily here, than in a  high cost country.  You can always vote for some crazy politician who blames immigrants, foreigners and the EU,  promises to make your problems go away...

Brits can come here live and work without a visa - for now. Thanks to Brexit this right is being given up, so if you are reading this in 10-20 years time,  things will be different. There may be British economic refugees here, if we aren't all fleeing from an even more dangerous neighbour.  A lot of tech businesses will be forced out of the UK by Visa issues, or racism. For sure some of them will end up here in Kraków where they will be welcome no matter what nationality they are.

This article reflects my views on Brexit

In the meantime, I would underline that through our thriving Startup Community, and local as well as international investment, (and not just in Kraków), that Poland is very much open for business. Getting working visas is a lot easier than in the UK or USA. The government seems pretty committed to that.  We may have a political problems but they are nothing on the scale that face the UK or maybe the USA, provided we are not invaded in which case all bets are off

Please come to one our Open Coffee Krakow - or Krakow Enterprise Monday events or indeed my the newly launched Cambentrepreneurs first meeting in Edinburgh in two weeks

It doesn't really matter what nationality you have in my eyes, it's just about the contribution you make, (and I don;t know how many Brits there are in Kraków)