Love / Should I bring gifts? - help with a Polish wedding [46]

I didn't whip up this controversy. It was plenty whipped up before I arrived. And the fact that you consider anything I've written as controversial in the least is, frankly, depressing. Maybe we made a mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place if we've devolved to the point of shaking down wedding guests for cash.

Work / Salary for a senior software engineer in Poland [195]


Sorta true, except for Wrocław and Kraków, which are just a smidgen less expensive than Warsaw, if at all. I was just talking to a friend who moved back to Wrocław from Warsaw, and he was shocked by how high prices were. Essentially the same as in Warsaw.


Agree. Even in Warsaw, it would be phenomenal for a late-junior to early mid-career staff analyst, unless they possess skills and experience that are truly desperately in demand. 20 k is more in line, as you say, with senior management.

Love / Should I bring gifts? - help with a Polish wedding [46]


You have absolutely no right to expect an answer. You don't even have the right to ask. Just who do you think you are, putting the poor couple in such an awkward position?

And if you don't know the couple well enough or care enough about them to figure out what would be an appropriate gift without asking them, you probably don't know them well enough or care enough about them to attend the wedding in the first place. Your obligation would end at sending your regrets and best wishes.

Love / Should I bring gifts? - help with a Polish wedding [46]


The custom in Poland is that when the young couple invites anyone to their wedding, they have absolutely no right to expect any gift from them whatsoever. They are obligated to be effusively and eternally grateful to even those guests who do not give any gift other than the honor of their presence, which is, exactly all that the young couple is allowed to ask for in the invitation.

Any mention or talk of gifts between the young couple and their guests is considered extremely rude. Beyond the pale, regardless of who initiates it. Even if a guests asks, all the couple can respond is "Your presence is the greatest gift you can give us. Nothing more is required or expected". Full stop.

If the couple would be disappointed that a particular guest did not give a gift, it was a major breach of etiquette to invite that person in the first place. It's hard to go lower than to invite people on the presumption that they will give a gift. That is an enormous insult.

A wedding is given by the couple of their own free will to celebrate their special day with those they love, expecting absolutely nothing in return. It is not a moneymaking opportunity. No one owes them anything. They alone bear the responsibility for the cost of the wedding, of the honeymoon, and of their future life together. They cannot pass the cost on to their guests. That would be monstrous.

If anyone is kind enough to help them out of the kindness of their hearts of their own free will with a gift of the guest's choosing, the couple is obligated to thank them from the bottom of their hearts, exactly as they are obligated to thank each and every guest who shows up without a gift, or who doesn't show up yet sends their kind regards.

Pretty much the same as in any other northern European and English speaking country.

Of course, that's the ideal. In reality, people can be pigs.

UK, Ireland / Non EU parent of Polish child [12]


It's been like that ever since we came down from the trees and spread out across the savanna. Nothing new, really. Especially about the fact that each generation makes exactly the same complaint about the next.

Work / Salary for a senior software engineer in Poland [195]

You pay about a third of your gross salary in taxes, so multiply your desired net salary by 1.5 to calculate the gross you should be asking for. 12 to 14 k net would be 18 to 21 k gross.

UK, Ireland / Non EU parent of Polish child [12]


Actually, she is still quite far from coming out of that marriage. This is going to have long-lasting consequences for her, the OP, and, sadly, the child. Also, considering how selective and coy the OP has been in revealing key information about the case, I highly doubt that the version we can piece together from his story even remotely resembles what took place in real life. For all we know, there might well never have been a fraudulent and/or bigamous marriage at all.

UK, Ireland / Non EU parent of Polish child [12]


I'll second that. This is a classic case of thinking with the wrong head.

Genealogy / The village of Surazkowo in Poland (Chomczyk, Czaban, Sawicki) [20]


Dubček is a Slovakian name, not a Polish one. The Polish equivalent would be Dąbczyk. And it's anyone's guess what religion its holder had. Families often changed religious affiliation, so there is no way to tell someone's religion from the name alone. You would need actual records.

Love / Should I bring gifts? - help with a Polish wedding [46]

Where did you get that from? The average gift given by non-family members in the States is only about 300 PLN ($79). 400 to 500 PLN is pretty extravagant in Poland.

Work / Salary for a senior software engineer in Poland [195]


Sorry, Pooja. I misread. I thought you had been offered that much already. Terri is right. You are probably expecting too much.

Also, if they ask you for your salary expectations, always kick the ball back to them and ask them how much they are offering. And then tell them you will take a few days to consider their offer. If you reveal your expectations first, you lose any advantage you have and are negotiating from a weaker position. Any employer that tries to take advantage of your weaker position is probably not an employer you would want to work for anyway, so you lose nothing by sticking to your guns and asking them how much they are offering. Or ask them for 20 k and see how they react. If they want you, they will respond with a counter offer that's probably a bit higher than they would have offered in the first place.

Work / Salary for a senior software engineer in Poland [195]


It's lower, but not very low. Some things are cheaper. and some things are the same or even more expensive. Assuming you are single male, renting a basic one-bedroom apartment will set you back 2000 to 2600 PLN a month, rent, administration fees, and utilities all included. More if you expect more comfort, and less if you are satisfied with a studio apartment. Food, household items, clothing and the like will set you back anywhere from 1000 to 3000 PLN a month, depending how often you go out. Then you have to deduct the cost of your travel, relocation, visa and residency permit.

That leaves the rest as either fun money or potential savings.


That is real good for the Polish market. It will enable you to save up a substantial amount of money.

That is, again, assuming you are a single male. If you're bringing a wife along, it's still pretty good. Kids that have to be put in private English-speaking schools will cost a lot, though. That is one thing that is quite expensive in Poland.

Also, you mentioned wages and cost of living, but neither of these is important in itself when determining whether a job in another country is worth it. The only number that matters is how much you can put into your savings account at the end of the month.

Someone who can get about 20,000 PLN a month in Poland should have little difficulty getting twice or more that in a richer country. Even with the higher cost of living there, it might well turn out that your savings potential is greater, even substantially so. So make your decision based on savings potential, not wages or cost of living.

Love / Should I bring gifts? - help with a Polish wedding [46]


A norm is not the same as an obligation. They are two different concepts. A gift is, by definition, 100% voluntary and optional. Once it becomes expected or mandatory, it ceases to be a gift and becomes a mere "entrance fee". I've always given generously at any weddings I have attended, but that was solely my choice, purely as a sign of my good will and best wishes for the happy couple. If I were made to feel obligated, I would not accept the invitation, and indeed have declined invitations for that very reason.

I was hit up for cash for confirmations several times in Poland. By mothers, not the kids themselves. I just politely pretended I did not hear the request. Ghastly "custom".

Love / Should I bring gifts? - help with a Polish wedding [46]

It's always rude to invite someone to your wedding in order to get any kind of gift out of them, cash or otherwise. If you invite someone to your wedding, the obligation lies totally on your side to entertain them as best you can without expecting anything in return. Guests are never obligated to give a gift. Their presence is gift enough. They are not obligated to "pay for themselves". That is the couples responsibility.

If the couple is not prepared to fund a large wedding, then they should scale back, invite only those guests whose presence they would appreciate regardless of whether they bring a gift, and provide for their guests as best as their means allow, even if that means hot dogs and soda pop. Gifts should be treated as extras.

Sorry, but weddings as "crowdfunding" is vulgar to the extreme.

Love / Should I bring gifts? - help with a Polish wedding [46]

I can't think of anything more crass than giving or expecting money as a wedding gift. That's the bottom of the barrel as far as etiquette is concerned, including, yes, in Poland. It's certainly not a "tradition".

If anybody inviting me to their wedding even so much as intimated that they would prefer cash, it would be the very last time we spoke. Ever. And if I cared for someone so little as to think about giving them cash for their present, I wouldn't be inclined to accept their invitation anyway.

Study / MSc in Electronics and Telecommunications at Poznan University of Technology, Poland [2]

Why Poland, of all places? There are dozens of countries with better higher educational systems and much better employment opportunities, especially in technical fields. Your chances of getting financial assistance or a part-time job are practically zero. The quality of courses taught in English is generally low, and as for learning Polish, that's going to take you several years of very hard work; it's a perversely difficult language. R&D money is scarce, as are good jobs. Any degree you get would likely not open up any more doors than a degree from a good university in your own country, so your return on investment is likely to be minimal, at best, and probably even negative.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but, with precious few exceptions, there isn't much reason for foreign students to study in Poland when so many better opportunities exist elsewhere, including, in your case, in Sri Lanka. Your time would be better spent exploring those.

Work / Salary of a customer service representative in Krakow [28]

Anywhere from 2500 to 5000 PLN gross a month, the higher value if you have real IT education or experience, the lower value if you don't have any RELEVANT experience.

Your bachelors and masters probably won't add very much, unless they are in IT, which will enable you to eventually work help desk. Otherwise, you're being hired solely for your accent, not your brain. All you would be doing is following a prepared script, either in marketing surveys ($ucks), sales leads generation ($ucks bigtime), or low level debt collections ($ucks rotting dead donkey nuts, might as well just shoot yourself and get it over with already). It's a monkey job, and, like a monkey, you will be paid in peanuts. That's why they moved the job to Poland in the first place, so they can pay as little as humanly possible.

The job will do little, if anything, to fatten your savings account, and experience in call centers will do little to enhance your resume. And, at the pay you'll be getting, you'll be living like a monk.

Might as well stay at home with mom and dad, work as a burger flipper or shelf stocker to earn some cash, and work on getting some education and qualifications that actually mean something on the real world job market or spend your time building up a personal network so that you can find a real job. What fields are your bachelors and masters in?

Language / I need to be encouraged to properly study this beautiful language - Polish [8]

Here's a clue, kid. "Love" and "passion" (in quotes) only get you so far in real life. They do little more than get you out of bed in the morning. Real motivation comes from need. If you truly need the language, you'll be motivated to learn it. If not, then chances are slim that you will stick with it though the thousands of hours of hard and frustrating work that lie in front of you, especially if all you do is "love the way it sounds and the way it's written". Learning a language well is a serious investment, and requires prodigious amounts of time, energy and pain. Without an abundant payback dangling in front of you, you'll soon give up.

Real passion comes from putting in those thousands of hours of hard and frustrating work. It a reward, and a badge of honor, not a motivation, for the suffering you put yourself though, for all the blood, sweat and tears. In fact, "passion" means exactly that, "suffering". And true love involves a whole lot of painful self-sacrifice that leaves you deeply wounded for the rest of your life. That's why older people like me want to puke when we hear younger people talk about "love" and "passion". When you have experienced the real thing, the kiddie version becomes little more than a sick joke.

Read your other message about the girl, too, and have to say that you have a lot of silly, romantic ideas that need to be flushed down the toilet soon for you to survive and be happy in this world. "Brave Warrior"? How much more romantic can you get?

Wake up and smell the coffee, kiddo! Life is not a dream. Especially adult life. It's not fun and games, but deadly serious business. Life has a way of dealing with romantic types, and it ain't pretty. Romantic types are the toilet paper that real life wipes it a$$ with.

If you want to learn Polish well, it's simple. Not at all easy, but very simple. Read, read, read books in Polish until your eyes bleed for three or four years and you'll be reasonably fluent. Look up every single word you do not know, or that you are not completely sure of, in a very good dictionary. After you've read twenty or so books, listen to audiobooks by the dozen, many hours a day, every day. As for grammar, get a good grammar book like Oscar Swan's and read it once every couple of months. At first, only five percent or so will stick, then ten, then fifteen and so on. Rome wasn't built in a day, and native Poles took many years to become fluent and proficient in their language. You have to do all the work they did in a much shorter time.

If you're happy about all the work, frustration, suffering and sacrifice that lie ahead, great! You may indeed someday achieve your goal. No guarantees, you may die tonight, but chances are in your favor. If not, things look bleak. It's not the message you wanted to hear, but it's the one you needed to hear.

Work / Senior system administrator in Wroclaw - is 7500 OK? [29]


US average for a senior systems administrator is $105,290. according to GlassDoor:

glassdoor.com/Salaries/senior-systems-administrator-salary-SRCH_KO0,28.htm

And, of course, he has a very good chance of finding work and getting a visa to the US or any other rich Western country.

Work / Senior system administrator in Wroclaw - is 7500 OK? [29]

I gave him the best advice I could give: forget about wasting time on this lousy job, and concentrate on finding a much better paying job in a richer country, which he will find if he seriously looks.

Work / Salary expectations in Poland [373]


The situation is much, much worse in Poland. Poland is a country that people leave to find work in richer Western countries. There's little incentive for Westerners to move to Poland. Wages are very low, the cost of living is rather high compared to wages, and savings potential is downright abysmal.

Good luck with your business!

Work / Graphic designer looking for work in Poland [14]


There's no shortage of graphic designers in Poland, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. Far more people graduate with degrees in this field than there are jobs available.

Don't waste your parents money. Study engineering instead. Especially petroleum or geological engineering. Your lifetime earning potential will be many times greater than for a graphic designer.

Have to agree that Saudi Arabia or another rich Moslem country would be the best place to do that. Or in one of the richer Western countries like Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, the UK or the US, if you can afford it. I can't see a degree from a photography school in Poland being worth much on the job market anywhere in the world. Even if you were to get into a serious art academy, it would also probably be not worth the investment.

Also, Polish is not an easy language to learn. In fact, it is one of the hardest. It will take three or four years of hard work to develop passable speaking skills.

Work / Salary expectations in Poland [373]

If it's your first job and your bachelor degree is not in IT engineering, then that's probably the best you can expect, at least until you get experience and move into commissioned sales.

If you have a degree in IT engineering and previous real experience, it's pretty low.

The time to negotiate your wage was before you took the job. Once they have you on the payroll and in Poland, they have little incentive to substantially increase your wages. The primary, and even only reason this job is located in Poland in the first place is so that they can pay very low wages, and that will be their main motivation in any negotiations they conduct with you.

The only thing that will help is if you develop a solid sales record, and that will take time. And lots of hard work. But then, once you get a solid sales record, you won't be interested in this employer anymore.

It's OK as a first non-engineering job if you seriously intend to aggressively pursue a career in sales. Otherwise, it's just an extended paid "working vacation". You would probably be better off staying in the Netherlands and building up your qualifications, or reschooling into a more profitable field.

I take it that you know that Katowice is far from the most pleasant city in Poland. But then, at the money you're making, you wouldn't be able to really take advantage of what the more attractive cities have to offer, so you won't notice much difference.

Work / Senior system administrator in Wroclaw - is 7500 OK? [29]


It's crap. It's a measly $23,000 for a job that pays $80,000 to $120,000 in the States, and about the same in the other richer countries. That's less than a street sweeper or burger flipper makes in many cities. If he got a job in a richer country, then he could easily save as much as he would make in Poland.


Why come to Poland at all when he could just as well go straight to a richer country? He doesn't need to "get his foot in the door" at all. He has real experience to sell, and will have no problem selling it in a richer country. Why work for lousy peanuts when he can work for real money? Why eat cabbage and potatoes when he could eat steak and lobster?

Life / Living Expenses in Krakow [42]


Yes, they are indeed a very special case. They do not associate with any other women except those in their own caste/class/clan, which makes the pool of potential social contacts for them in Poland either very, very small indeed or totally non-existent, considering how few Indian women their are in Poland to start with. As for socializing with Poles or other foreigners, forget about it. That just ain't gonna happen. They never "settle in", just bide their time until their husbands find a better job in a better country.


No, it doesn't just help, it is essential. No money, and she might as well be in jail, or married to a lighthouse keeper on some remote island of the coast of northern Norway with only awks and puffins for company.

And even money doesn't help much when you don't speak the language. Once was hired to teach English (absolute) to the wife of a stinking rich Swiss bank vice president. The only language she could speak was Swiss German. She couldn't even speak Standard German, and told me that the German women she had met in Wrocław laughed at her or just plain couldn't understand her (I have to admit that her attempts to speak Standard German amused me, as well). We had a great time together, as I showed her the city, but in the end, I was her only social contact, and that was not enough. She went home for Christmas and never came back.

Now multiply her frustration and loneliness by a hundred, and you'll get an idea of what the wife of a poorly paid Indian has to face in Poland.

Work / Senior system administrator in Wroclaw - is 7500 OK? [29]


No, it isn't, especially for a foreigner who does not have the network of family and friends to rely on. I lived eight years in Wrocław myself, and twelve years in Poland, so I know the cost of living from the standpoint of a foreigner myself, and it is shockingly high compared to local wages.


He's not an "average Pole", and anything that applies to them, does not apply to him and his family.


I lived in Kzięże Małe for a couple of months. It's on the very fringe of the city, and not an easy commute. It's basically more village than city, and the nearest parts of the city are a horribly ugly series of big boxes and strip malls, and then the dreaded Trókąt Bermudzki, or an industrial district if you go the other way. Not a good place to live for a foreigner and his family. I found living in the unspectacular, but central and well-connected Strzepin-Mikołajów heaven compared to living out there.


Not after you deduct the cost of travel and relocation to Poland for him and his family, he won't. No matter how smart or lucky he is. No matter how much (or how little) cabbage and potatoes he and his family eat. And even if he did, 200 Euros a month is pathetic for a senior network system administrator. That means he would be trapped, and unable to either seek better work elsewhere, or relocate there if he did find something better.

Seems like everyone keeps ignoring that he has to pay for his relocation costs, and that they have to be deducted from his earnings in Poland. And that working in Poland represents a totally unacceptable opportunity loss compared to working in the West.

No use trying to put lipstick on this pig. There is nothing about this job offer that is remotely tempting, even for an Indian.

Law / Polish citizen moving back from USA to the EU (Ireland or Netherlands) with American partner [31]


Love that. Mine is "dumber than a box of rocks". And that was exactly my point; someone who did really know where her towel is wouldn't need to ask for info about health insurance.


You know that I always appreciate the opportunity to slap some sense into poor, misguided young'uns.

Law / Polish citizen moving back from USA to the EU (Ireland or Netherlands) with American partner [31]


Which means she's either a really hoopy frood who really knows where her towel is, or that she's completely and utterly clueless.

Work / Senior system administrator in Wroclaw - is 7500 OK? [29]


Indeed, this is one of the biggest problems about living in Poland, and Wrocław in particular. I am paying just a little more for a much nicer apartment here in a relative expensive area of the States than what I paid for a basic but "decent" apartment in a blok in Wrocław. Wrocław is the second most expensive city to live in Poland, just a tad behind Warsaw.

The other big problem with Poland, and the one that is more important for the OP, is savings potential, which in his case is zero or less. Add in the cost of losing his home court advantage, and he may well end up poorer than he is in India.

You forgot that the cost of his relocation for himself and his family has to be deducted from his wages. And also presumably assumed that his wife is going to be content with sitting at home with nothing to do and no money to spend on her own social life or hobbies. By Christmas she is going to be begging him to let her fly back home to India, at exorbitant expense.

Work / Senior system administrator in Wroclaw - is 7500 OK? [29]


It's a very expensive place to live, relative to prevailing wages. It's only cheap to live if you are earning a Western salary. The cost of living in Poland is staggeringly high for those earning Polish wages, and savings potential is abysmal.

Everything else you have said is totally irrelevant to the OP's case.