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Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

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Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#101

Post by vacri »

kartan wrote: post #58
jandrewrogers wrote: post #30

The gap isn't the pay or the training per se. A growing issue I see frequently is that companies need more highly experienced (read: senior) people, and are willing to pay for it, but there is no fast pipeline from "no experience" to "highly skilled" even if companies did invest in training. Meanwhile, the existing pool is much too small to meet demand; redistributing the talent won't address the underlying issue. Co…

King hired in Barcelona a lot of highly senior developers, people that were leading protects, being architects, etc in other companies. How? Better pay, better conditions and it gives more autonomy to the developers. A fraction of them are talent brough from abroad because they wanted to live in Barcelona. So it is less hard to find talent when you are willing to be competitive.

> willing to be competitive.

On the other hand, it's not like businesses have a big bag of gold that they can simply choose to dip into to increase salaries, especially for the smaller shops.

Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#102

Post by tassl »

altoz wrote: post #8

You have two groups: 1. 5 million unemployed people 2. very highly sought after workers The employers complaining about people in group 2 being scarce are merely not paying enough. The workers complaining in group 1 need more skills that the market wants. They're at different ends of the spectrum. Other than that they live in the same country, they really don't have much to do with each other. Whether you can convert…

Born in Barcelona, living in the US.

I am not sure the real problem is as described in the article. While there is a percentage of the population with no real skills, there are highly skilled people with either no work or working on positions for which they are overqualified (frequently non-permanent employees [1]).

I know people that are doing "fine" by Spanish standards, which is around 30K/year, but the majority of my friends and university classmates are making way below that bar. Most of them with the equivalent undergrad + master.

If the problem was "just" the lack of preparation among the youth, I am pretty sure that migrants would have trouble finding jobs on other countries (UK, Germany are the most frequent "destinations"), which is not the case. In my opinion, there is a big cultural problem; long hours, low salaries (employer) and a lack of culture for optimizing work hours (employee). If we add this cultural problem to the incompetence of the Spanish government, that basically prioritizes building pharaonic public structures (like the high speed train) or taxes technology (solar panels [2]) instead of investing on technology and/or innovation we have the current situation.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/12/18/459854096/s... [2] http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/10/spain-a...

Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#103

Post by themartorana »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #86
macspoofing wrote: post #22

This was a frustrating article to read. I got the sense the author missed something. Spain is part of the EU common market which numbers 500 million people - how is it that this is only a problem for Spain, and why can't they recruit fellow EU citizens to make-up the shortfall?

This assumption is the same mistake made by almost all supranational federalists. Europe is composed of different countries with vastly different languages, cultures and economic conditions. Just because they're technically "joined" together via treaties doesn't mean labor is going to naturally distribute throughout the union.

And yet they thought a shared currency would be no big deal.

Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#105

Post by charlesdm »

scribu wrote: post #95
charlesdm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. Just compare salaries of software engineers in most EU countries with salaries in the US. If you're a good developer, 99% of the time it's better to work remotely from Europe for a US company. It really is a simple problem to solve -- pay talented people in Europe more. And yet, for some reason, this is often dismissed by CEOs as a ridiculous statement. They're probably the same people who think you need 1…

> It really is a simple problem to solve -- pay talented people in Europe more. Playing devil's advocate: If we limit the discussion to pure tech companies that target a global market, then yes, it is that simple. But there is a vast majority of companies that do not belong to that category, yet require software developers. I'm thinking primarily of Spanish software agencies that have other Spanish companies as clien…

There's often still significant leeway. I'm based in Belgium - most senior developers probably make between €3-4000/mo (before tax) here. That's for guys in their mid 30s, early 40s. So a bit better than Spain.

My cousin's husband owns a small agency (15-20 people) and sells one developer at €2.000 a day on €500k-1m projects. I think on average they're billed out around 150 days a year, so grossing around €300k per developer, per annum. Paying developers more would mean less profits ending up in his pocket.

Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#106

Post by charlesdm »

jules wrote: post #40
charlesdm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered working remotely for a US company? I know a guy making €7 or 8,000 per month, after tax, living in Paris. Best of both worlds: amazing quality of living, cheap cost of living + healthcare, lots of spending (or investing) money! Seems to be working well for him.

Is the cost of living in Paris less than a normal US city?

In this case, not much. I was referring to Spain wrt the cost of living, my bad.

Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#107

Post by NetStrikeForce »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #28
zeveb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm wondering what is the cognitive dissonance with employers who are unwilling to train workers. I mean, I understand the reasons if you're a an SMB, but large corporations used to train their employees or hold something close to apprenticeship programs. It was far less common for people to change jobs back then, too. Neither employers nor employees feel any real loyalty towards one another, so investing in one an…

> "It was far less common for people to change jobs back then, too. Neither employers nor employees feel any real loyalty towards one another, so investing in one another feels foolish. There's nothing to incentivise someone to stay once he's learnt the skills he needs to get a position elsewhere." Sorry, I still don't understand this attitude. I live in the UK, it's common here to have at least some level of on-the-…

Job culture in the UK is soooo much better than in Spain. I've worked on both places, so this is first hand experience.

In Spain I would get sent to a training, because we needed to have someone certified on that product to get discounts, then the company would ask me to sign a contract to either stay with them at least two more years or pay a 2k fine. The idiots only tried to do this after the training, thinking otherwise I might just refuse to get trained. Of course I refused to sign, but I was only one of the few who would refuse.

In the UK I even get to choose my training. Not just technical, but also on soft skills. Even training that I might not apply in my current role, but I might need to move to a new role.

The biggest shocker for me was the manager-employee relationship. In Spain the manager owns you. In the UK the manager is a team member with a very specific goal: make you and your team successful.

And don't get me started on leaving the office before your manager does... Of course he would be the biggest sucker (otherwise you don't get to be a manager) and won't leave until 8pm. Leaving shortly after your shift ended was frowned upon by colleagues and verbally challenged by managers:

- Where are you going?

- Home.

- Don't you have work to do?

- Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow again.

That company was terribly toxic and I have seen it destroy several families and people's health.

Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#108

Post by vacri »

BjoernKW wrote: post #60

Language is a large part of this problem, not willing to pay market prices is another. Why else would recruiters have to look for candidates in Argentina when there's a huge amount of suitable candidates in the EU with an automatic work permit?

Argentines speak fluent Spanish, and will be able to understand complex and subtle business requirements presented in Spanish.

Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#109

Post by smsm42 »

agumonkey wrote: post #51
charlesdm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered working remotely for a US company? I know a guy making €7 or 8,000 per month, after tax, living in Paris. Best of both worlds: amazing quality of living, cheap cost of living + healthcare, lots of spending (or investing) money! Seems to be working well for him.

Is he a very special kind of dev ? Why would an US company go to that length to hire someone.

I know a lot of US companies hiring remotely. Two reasons: 1) costs (you're not competing with Google and Facebook on salary, at least not directly) and somewhat related 2) bigger applicant pool. This is especially true if you're looking for specific skills - much easier to find somebody if you're looking at 10x market. For many developer positions, having a person in the office is not much better than having remote employee, and may be both more expensive. You don't really have to be "very special", just plain good, and there are a lot of good developers all over the globe.

Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

#110

Post by charlesdm »

agumonkey wrote: post #51
charlesdm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered working remotely for a US company? I know a guy making €7 or 8,000 per month, after tax, living in Paris. Best of both worlds: amazing quality of living, cheap cost of living + healthcare, lots of spending (or investing) money! Seems to be working well for him.

Is he a very special kind of dev ? Why would an US company go to that length to hire someone.

He's good, and he's paid a SV salary.
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