Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by pvaldes » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

throwaway_9191 wrote: post #365

pvaldes wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try getting a job in the public administration in Spain without speaking Spanish, in France without speaking French, in Italy without speaking Italian, in the UK without speaking English... see the pattern? Yes, I see it, and is not the same as you think. Would be, "Try getting a job in the public administration in Spain without speaking Spanish AND catalan, in France without speaking French AND Patóis, in Italy wi…

Again, you mirror the Spanish public opinion very well. The pattern is clear: you only respect state backed cultures, my culture and language are mere nuisances that waste people's time. That's one of the main reasons we need to break away from Spain ASAP. Before it can complete the cultural genocide it has repeatedly attempted during the last 3 centuries.

I'll hire the Argentinian. Looks like a less problematic fit.

Maybe this could be one of the problems here?.

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

#372

Post by hexagonc » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

MawNicker wrote: post #173

hexagonc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Especially in a world awash in bad developers. Your comment is totally reasonable. You're being down-voted because the sentiment of that statement is so negative but in some ways it's true. There is widespread encouragement from society for individuals to learn how to program. In the last 5 decades the group that operates primarily from this motivation has exploded. The much older fanatical nerd group (originating…

I have no problem speaking of bad developers because I myself was one. Now, I am probably above average and in some organizations maybe even a "10x" developer. But I shudder thinking of some of the code samples that I've sent to prospective employers in my earlier days (~12 years ago) -- code that I thought was good and clever. Probably most junior developers are bad and I suspect a lot more code gets written by junior developers than we'd like to think. The senior developers get to work on the interesting problems and they leave the necessary but boring coding work to the junior developers.

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

#373

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:31 PM UTC

gordaco wrote: post #191

gutnor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be better - I was looking for work in Spain just before the crisis. A senior dev could easily do 50K, banking positions were 70K and up. Nowadays however, you can't find anything over 35K that is related to development -and- in Spain ( i.e. not a position in Germany) Anyway - Spain does not have a problem of running out of worker, it has a problem of not paying those workers. I have been looking for years…

Another spaniard here, and I can confirm that it absolutely is a problem of not wanting to pay appropriate wages. First, most software companies only offer crappy jobs that don't require specific skills. Most of the job postings are for standard developing positions in very common languages such as Java or Python. Considering how many people finish their degree or their FP ( Formación Profesional , courses of about t…

1. cárnicas is an awesome term for what native English markets would call a "body shop".

2. You're probably looking more for the term "meat market" than for "butcher". Unless, is part of the implication that a cárnicas somehow chops up the time of a bunch of FTE's?

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

#374

Post by logingone » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

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…

Agile is barely different to how teams I worked on in the 90s operated, naturally, without trying to implement and enforce a new holy grail, chase the rainbow routine of machinic efficiency. I find it really is much ado about nothing, the emperors new clothes. An anal retentive formalising and trumpeting of common sense. I recall only one project which was waterfall, and the rest were used as soon as they were useful. I have an agile coach at my current job. As far as I can tell his job is to be the expert at drag and drop in Jira, and peeling post it notes. The only good thing I can say about agile is that it fills a space that will otherwise be filled with the next holy grail gimmick which management won't be able to resist as they sell themselves and their new magic power up the corporate ladder. I'm neck deep in this farce at the moment.

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

#375

Post by hibikir » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

charlesdm wrote: post #32

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…

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.

Amazing remote jobs exist: I have one. The problem is to find a company that has those remote jobs AND will hire people they don't have a huge background on.

I know a recruiter at a company like that that worked on a point system: Barring a recommendation, to pass his bar you had to have 5 years of experience in the industry for what he considered a major tech company, a degree from a top university, and a history of promotions during those years.

So he is fine with hiring all over the world, as long as you had already worked at trendy Silicon Valley companies for a while (In practice, using them as a recruiting filter). So, for all intents and purposes, the only people passing that bar would be people that already had a great job. Someone with talent but without pedigree would not even get an interview.

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

#376

Post by MawNicker » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:59 PM UTC

hexagonc wrote: post #372

MawNicker wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially in a world awash in bad developers. Your comment is totally reasonable. You're being down-voted because the sentiment of that statement is so negative but in some ways it's true. There is widespread encouragement from society for individuals to learn how to program. In the last 5 decades the group that operates primarily from this motivation has exploded. The much older fanatical nerd group (originating…

I have no problem speaking of bad developers because I myself was one. Now, I am probably above average and in some organizations maybe even a "10x" developer. But I shudder thinking of some of the code samples that I've sent to prospective employers in my earlier days (~12 years ago) -- code that I thought was good and clever. Probably most junior developers are bad and I suspect a lot more code gets written by juni…

I was also a bad developer. Then I was a "clever" developer. Then I was rewriting everything from nothing because I needed to know how it worked. Doing so is a great way to get a sense of how much "secret sauce" there is in a domain. The C++ standard library has a lot for instance. My naive implementations never came close.

> I suspect a lot more code gets written by junior developers than we'd like to think.

This may be true if you just measure lines of code. But if you couple that measure with the number of times each line was actually executed I suspect you'd see a different story. My library, for example, was comparable in size to parts of the standard library it replaced. So by direct measure a junior developer wrote half the code. But when you measure it by usage you can see the magnificent results of the 10x programmers at Boost and otherwise working on the C++ standard library. Notably their 10x-ness is in the performance of their code and not their performance on the job. Like you described.

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

#377

Post by flamedoge » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:08 PM UTC

davidgerard wrote: post #2

Pay. More. This. Is. The. Market. Speaking.

Are businesses making their ends meet? This is more important than devs getting not enough. You can only hire so many for so much when your business is getting taxed at 50%.

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

#378

Post by mcv » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

logingone wrote: post #374

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…

Agile is barely different to how teams I worked on in the 90s operated, naturally, without trying to implement and enforce a new holy grail, chase the rainbow routine of machinic efficiency. I find it really is much ado about nothing, the emperors new clothes. An anal retentive formalising and trumpeting of common sense. I recall only one project which was waterfall, and the rest were used as soon as they were useful…

If your agile coach is dragging and dropping in Jira, they're doing it wrong. That's more likely the PO's job.

And agile coach, at least as I know them, guides several teams in their use of agile, without being part of the team. They have to be experts at recognizing whether a team functions well, which aspects need improving, and handing the team the tools to improve. It's a bit more distant from a team than a scrum master is.

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

#379

Post by hibikir » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:24 PM UTC

yulaow wrote: post #78

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.

You have to consider that here in a lot of sud-west EU states 3000e/month allow you to live VERY GOOD even in the main cities. Cost of life here is extremly low compared to that of SV.

Forget Silicon Valley: It's gotten stupid expensive. The rest of the US, however, has not.

I lived in Spain, and moved to the middle of the US, to a city that is about the same size as Valencia: Here, A 4 bedroom house can be had for $200K. Groceries are often cheaper here. Cars are WAY cheaper here, barring a few EU luxury brands. My mother's electricity bill, in an apartment less than half the size of my house, is double mine, so the cost of living is in no way higher than in Spain.

The difference is that someone right out of school will make 60K. A completely average senior dev makes 100K. The last time I had local work I had a long term hourly contract, 40/week average, that paid $125 an hour, so 20K a month. Today I make more.

So in Spain you have a cost of living that is not really any better, far higher taxes, and pay that would be seen as pretty low for a recent college graduate. Every time I visit, and people ask me why I don't come back, I just go through the economics, and Spaniards quickly agree that I'd have to be insane to come back.

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

#380

Post by x0x0 » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:36 PM UTC

gordaco wrote: post #191

gutnor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be better - I was looking for work in Spain just before the crisis. A senior dev could easily do 50K, banking positions were 70K and up. Nowadays however, you can't find anything over 35K that is related to development -and- in Spain ( i.e. not a position in Germany) Anyway - Spain does not have a problem of running out of worker, it has a problem of not paying those workers. I have been looking for years…

Another spaniard here, and I can confirm that it absolutely is a problem of not wanting to pay appropriate wages. First, most software companies only offer crappy jobs that don't require specific skills. Most of the job postings are for standard developing positions in very common languages such as Java or Python. Considering how many people finish their degree or their FP ( Formación Profesional , courses of about t…

If there's lots of local workers that can't or won't leave, is there opportunities to run outsourcing firms? It sounds like a $50k euro salary would allow you to cherry pick devs, or am I wrong?