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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

#271

Post by selmat »

casta wrote: post #177
themartorana wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2000-3000 Euro/month is incredibly low. Fresh devs around here go for $50k+ annually, and experience costs 6 figures easily (and I'm in Philadelphia, I'm not talking SF/NY numbers). Edit (pressed submit early): some companies use remote workers to reduce costs, but I wouldn't expect to pay such a low $36k max in Europe. Remote, if managed well, is just as good as in-house. You're not worth significantly less.

I don't know how it works in Spain, but in Italy the cost of an employee is probably much more than his/her salary. The employer gives you a salary, then they have to pay on top of it ~30% of INAIL, INPS etc. (pension, health "insurance" including sick days and so on) and ~10% of TFR (fund you get back at the end of your career.) In the U.S. those are costs you have to remove from your salary. So, 3000 euros a month…

Cost of employee is always higher than salary. Bear in mind that employee have to pay (feed) himself, government, management, company revenue etc. It's simply not possible to create business value 10 000 € and get all of them into own pocket. At least not as standard employee.

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

#272

Post by ZeroGravitas »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #112
themartorana wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Don't get me started. Economists from around the world were adamant that the Euro was a terrible idea when it was founded. Binding dozens of wildly differing economies to one currency controlled by one central bank has always been a pipe dream, but it takes decades for it to start to unravel.

The politicians knew a shared currency without sharing other aspects was a bad idea, but they gambled that as the problems became manifest, they would be solved by greater unity.

Maybe that was stupid, but it's a different kind of stupid than not listening to the economists.

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

#274

Post by tluyben2 »

wastedhours wrote: post #257
knocte wrote: post #243

> Pimentel’s client asked him for list of candidates trained in “Agile” project management techniques for helping companies boost their productivity by using more I.T. systems. The client was offering as much as 200,000 euros ($220,000) a year -- almost 10 times the average salary in Spain. > But such people are thin on the ground in Spain. It takes at least eight months for an experienced software developer to earn…

200,000 euros is possible for what's essentially a contract digital transformation consultant, and there are agile qualifications on offer - and when you're dealing with the enterprise, they're often more valued than experience.

It is possible, but that's a very niche market. When you need people who can deal with multiple layers, including senior execs, and run tech teams, you are usually not looking for developers anyway. I don't find it very strange there is a shortage of those; I think you'll find that in most countries. It depends on the exact job description as this is all a bit vague though.

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

#275

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

hexagonc wrote: post #149
MawNicker wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, they cannot really appreciate the quality or even the speed of my work. Clueless people abound. Many "10x programmers" aren't anywhere near 10x faster/better/etc in an environment full of 1x programmers. I think "exponential" would be a better description than 10x. If you watch them in the short term they look similar to the 1x programmers. If you distribute their exponential gains over the whole team then this…

I think you can easily be a 10x developer, since 10x is relative. Especially in a world awash in bad developers. Just being familiar with the right algorithms and software approaches vis-a-vis your co-workers will do that. I've seen "enterprise" code that was doing tons of string key-value pair lookups using arrays. Just converting those to hashtables could very well speed up the app by 10+ times if the key-value loo…

10X technical developers are not that rare, because 10X really just means someone who is significantly more competent and experienced than average.

10X business value developers are incredibly rare.

10X managers are rarer still.

You could probably fit all the world's 10X executives into a small lift without worrying about getting the doors closed.

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

#276

Post by NetStrikeForce »

franciscop wrote: post #240
_mikz wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are on Ruby, Sinatra, Rails, Nginx, Lua & not afraid of new technologies. Our open positions are on https://www.3scale.net/about/jobs/ We're based in Barcelona, but had remote workers in the past and still might be opened to that after some warmup time. On some hiring sites we were publically posting 50k EUR for Senior Backend Developer. Being here for 5 years I can say there is plenty of growth space for good dev…

But the problem I see is that the top people you might want would have no problem finding a similar position in a US company for 2x-3x that salary. So what how do you compete in the global economy with a 50+% salary cut? Do most of your developers only speak Spanish? Or do they have their roots firmly set in Spain (family/friends/relationships)?

I had the chance to interview (and get offered) by a company in the area. For context, I'm from the area but have been living abroad for some time now.

The internal recruiter was honest with their problems finding talent abroad: People have families and, even though there are cheap flights inside Europe, if you have a partner and maybe kids things change. Life there is great with a good salary, but chances are your partner also has a professional career. If it's outside IT, your partner is pretty much screwed: Little jobs, terrible salaries, no English-speaking outside IT and a disdain for foreigners in more traditional industries. "Why hire a foreigner when I can hire someone local?" seems to be an acceptable attitude for a majority of the population, even though we're talking about people with the right to work, so there's no extra effort, paperwork or burden to the employer.

On the other hand, you have beach, culture, food, night life, mountains (even the Pyrenees), a cosmopolitan city in such a tiny radius that you can enjoy each of those every so often. Plus an international airport that can get you in a few hours anywhere in Europe and North Africa. And it's cheap to live there.

If someone is wondering now why I didn't go back, these were my concerns: Career development (none was offered) and stability. I'm up for well paid risks, but if that position disappears (it was newly created) I have to move country again. Such a pain in the ass.

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

#277

Post by patrickaljord »

NetStrikeForce wrote: post #121
patrickaljord wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit will happen in 2 years at best. Even so, the UK would still offer work visa to skilled EU workers, there's nothing stopping them from doing that, in fact this is what they said they were going to do. Does everyone really think Brexit is some kind of apocalypse or something for the UK? They love money as much as anyone else and want to remain the finance capital of Europe because money.

Yes, but big part of the people that voted Leave are not the people that do business or that like money above other things. Many Leavers I've talked to justify their decision on "border control" and "sovereignty". They have been given the power to decide and apparently they were "better off with a grand or two less" (sic) "than being slaved to the Eurocrats" (sic). The problem with visas is that if I have to go throu…

EU citizens probably won't event need a visa, just a passport. Especially from rich western EU countries, like it was already the case before Schengen.

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

#278

Post by NetStrikeForce »

flexie wrote: post #256
vemv wrote: post #29

Spanish dev here, 3 years in the business, been twice a freelancer and twice an employee. My main complaints: - The maximum salary a developer can earn at any given company is almost written in stone - around 36000 euros. Every public job posting will have that figure as the max. When it's higher, they'll water it down in the interview. Why? Probably because they don't have the notion of a 10x programmer at all. We a…

36,000 euro in, say, Valencia, that's close to 100,000 dollars in San Francisco when adjusting for purchasing power. Not great but certainly not that bad either. For someone with three years experience. I know a team of developers south of Valencia who make way more than that. They work out of a mansion with an infinity pool. Doing simple websites. Whereas 36,000 euro in Southern Spain (where the unemployment is high…

> I know a team of developers south of Valencia who make way more than that. They work out of a mansion with an infinity pool. Doing simple websites.

Sounds like a great setup to raise a family... not.

Just saying, what sounds amazing for young and single white guys might not be great for the rest of the population. Wouldn't it be better if each of them could have their own flat and privacy for the same price?

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

#279

Post by jordinl »

znq wrote: post #171
vemv wrote: post #29

Spanish dev here, 3 years in the business, been twice a freelancer and twice an employee. My main complaints: - The maximum salary a developer can earn at any given company is almost written in stone - around 36000 euros. Every public job posting will have that figure as the max. When it's higher, they'll water it down in the interview. Why? Probably because they don't have the notion of a 10x programmer at all. We a…

There are few, although not many counter-examples. We run Mobile Jazz [1], which is an international boutique agency with headquarters in Barcelona. We're trying to treat our employees extremely fairly and have managed to gain some of the best talent not only in Spain, but also internationally. Here some of the things we do: - Pay fair salaries: 54k€ / year (before tax) for those that work full-time - We distribute t…

54k is still less than what I make working remotely for American companies...

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

#280

Post by tluyben2 »

charlesdm wrote: post #14
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…

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…

> If you're a good developer, 99% of the time it's better to work remotely from Europe for a US company

Again, how do people get those jobs? I have a lot of friends in the underpaid situation and they applied for stuff on HN; most of them don't hear anything back or have problems with the interviews. They are very good devs though. Loyal too; don't think they would ever leave once on board.

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