Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
381–390 of 449 posts
Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
#382You 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…
Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#384> 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…
> And that's the reason why the executives don't find workforce. Being less-skilled means they don't value the engineering profession up to the required level to compromise and give good salaries. Came to post this > (Spanish dev here --working abroad obviously--.) Same here ;)
It is not competitive at all compared to the US of other european countries. That along with the "special" office politics and extreme inefficiency that plague Spanish companies, makes it extremely uninviting to come back to Spain.
Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I have read a number of other articles which say essentially this as well, that essentially you aren't paid a market wage in Spain so the only people who work in Spain in technology have some alternate reason why they can't (or don't want to) leave. I find these sorts of problems intriguing from a microeconomics perspective. There was a store in a small midwest town which closed because it couldn't afford to pay its…
Of course now with the bubble over, the 3000€ wages in construction are over, but the 1000€ wage for people with a title remains.
It's true that Spanish company owners don't expect that someone with a title will be able to add value behind the 1000€. I've been thinking why for quite sometime, one of the reasons is that most Spanish entrepreneurs used to be self-made, rising their business from the bottom with little formal education. So they didn't find that that education was truly valuable. Also the oversupply of graduates already before the bubble, made finding someone for the job easy. Another reason is that most Spanish people can rely on the family network so it was very rare to see someone moving to another city to find a Job, they rather stick to a low pay and stay close to family and friends. This has changed with the crisis, with people people with studies or experience emigrating to the EU and south America mainly.
I do think that Spanish people that goes abroad to work is mostly as good as the other European or American counterparts, hard-working and well prepared. But it's also true in Spain that a lot of people that is not interested in moving, are also not interested in making an effort in their jobs. I can say this of myself, I work as an airline pilot, and certainly wages are much higher in the middle east or asia. But I'm not interested in earning more just to be stranded in the middle of the dessert or in a megalopolis. I'd rather stay here where quality of life is very high even with a lower wage (family, friends, nature, culture, etc... are just 10 min away with awesome food and nightlife). For example one of my best friends is what you'll call a 10x programmer, is the star programmer and architect in a tour operator, he has built mostly alone and from scratch the core of a hotel reservation company with sales figures close to one billion €. He is the one who is called to put down fires or to handle difficult projects. He is very happy making around 100k€, when I'm quite sure he could be making 5x that in SV, and he is the best paid programmer in his company.
I know a number of business owners that complain of being unable to find people willing to do the work, it's true that the initial wage will not be very high, but usually are very specific jobs that need learning. And this business are interested in paying better once they have the skills. This includes electricians, beauty parlour worker, car mechanic, boat mechanic (I´m talking just positions I´ve learned are needed this last year). They find that workers are not interested in learning or working hard, just ask for what is the payment the first day, and they don't even know how to do the job!. Even people desperate are not willing to make the effort to learn a new skill or hard work, because most of them have the family that supports them. Even my friend complains that a high percent of his programmers are not interested in improving or learning new things.
In Spain most people want to be civil servants, entrepreneurship is something that just recently has started receiving some recognition. Before entrepreneurs were seen as just bosses that want to take profit of people, some kind of villain. That's why I'm not very bullish of the universal wage as an "universal" thing. You see that a high percentage of people is not interested in working any more once they are able to have enough money to live. We have this institutional envy in Spain were successful people (business or professionals) are seen as cheaters no matter what. You can not make money working hard, just cheating or stealing, so people don't even try. Don't take me wrong, there is very hard working people here, but they do it as their responsibility, because they like their job well done, even when they are poorly paid. Usually no as a way to improve their conditions or earn more.
In Spain living from the public money is for some like an art. Working in "b" jobs that are not registered so they can maintain the government help, or working just enough to have the next 6 months of unemployment, or trying to obtain a health disability (when they are fine). With the crisis all this went down, but still...
You also have to think that that as we had the Euro and we couldn't devalue the currency to keep up with the crisis, they had to devalue the whole country, taking most wages and prices a 15 to 20% down over 6 years. This has been very very painful to the economy, but I don't see they had other way to save the Spanish economy.
I must say that my experience is in Mallorca island and Madrid where the crisis has been melower than in the rest of Spain due to the tourism for example. There are towns in the middle of the peninsula, where unemployment is dramatic an nothing has come to replace construction even after all this time.
It's a complex problem both at the supply and the demand side. Companies don't value properly good workers, and also workers don't see their job as something to nurture, but as an inconvenience and the management as oppressors.
Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is easy to be dismissive of executives and the fact that dealing with them takes a certain skill set. If it is one thing I've learned as someone in a data-heavy field it is that executives don't care about the details and nuances, and that distilling the details of things like log files, etc. and conveying it in a way that aligns with their pain points, strategy, etc. does in fact take great interpersonal skills t…
> "conveying it in a way that aligns with their pain points, strategy". In my experience, some executives don't even care too much for facts if it interferes with their agenda. This is usually expressed in subtle ways, but in one instance I've heard an executive directly ask for a report that was easy to manipulate the figures on in order to push our employees into generating more sales. This is part of the problem w…
There isn't any. Why do you think small groups of computer programmers and a handful of venture capitalists are like a wrecking ball to so many different industries.
In the 20th century we got used to the idea of managerial capitalism. Now in the 21st we're seeing that unless you're an Elon Musk level manager, capable of both understanding fine detail plus having comprehension of the big picture, you're surplus to requirements. You'll be competing against managers who are also geeks as well aka the real Silicon Valley advantage.
If your manager thinks 'the market should decide' they ought to step down unless they mass produce widgets in a B2B context. Their entire job is central coordination. In the 18th/19th centuries the manager of a factory would have understood the functions of every bit of machinery they acquired.
Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
#387> 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…
That's because even my Software Engineering textbook first published in the early 80's warned about it, and presented iterative, agile-like, models and referenced the article by Royce that first described waterfall (without naming it) as an example of a broken model in the early 70's... Iterative processes have been widely taught since the late 70's at least.
Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
#388It's a catch 22 1 - Spanish Universities not in tune with the market reality, pouring out thousands of unemployed people into the market... 2 - Graduates living in a bubble... 99% not wanting to move their asses and thinking that the academic degree is all they need. Get a crappy job or move to another country. Let others create the jobs... 3 - Zero entrepreneurial spirit and risk aversion, making starting up a remot…
There are almost zero people at the best colleges and universities in Europe who want to start a new company. I remember trying to convince about a dozen people to start a bitcoin exchange several years ago when it was in the single digits. No go. We could have fucked up almost everything and still been millionaires. I did okay but we would have done much better working together instead of looking for 'a good job'.
> Graduates living in a bubble... 99% not wanting to move their asses and thinking that the academic degree is all they need. Get a crappy job or move to another country.
Whole lot of that going around. They don't realize they will be living in their city living hand to mouth for the rest of their lives. There is no big break coming for them. The smarter ones move, but the core problem is entrepreneurial spirit.
Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet Romanians are the second biggest minority in Spain. There are no more problems than the disgusting and systemic racism that Spain has towards any other country and hurt feelings on the other side.
Before the crisis we got the worst of Romania and Bulgaria, millions of them, literally. A big chunk of them were very problematic people; not even actual slavs, but gypsies, etc. As if Spanish gypsies weren't enough of a problem already. I remember a friend once went to Bucharest for a trip and was puzzled Romanians are whiter than us! https://blackinmadrid.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/the-romanian-... Luckily after the…
Most of our highly skilled emigrants moved to Germany or Ireland.
Re: Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed
#390> 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…
Typically retrofitted on top of a defunct process, with separate requirement analysts, "software architects" whatever that means, and a lot of control functions and processes inherited from the manufacturing industry.
What makes that work is probably the few people that actually understands software development - typically a low percentage of the massive overhead in a typical business software development center.
But you've got to start somewhere.
The Agile ceremonies are not bad, but relatively useless if there is no "real Agile" beneath. Unfortunately, they are easy to implement whereas "real" agile is not.
And what is "real" agile: The core agile ideas (the manifesto), the focus on flow-control, the incremental analysis-build-analysis cycle, continuous improvement, multi-disciplined teams, knowledge sharing, analysis methods that involves multiple people (like story mapping), empowerment (self governing teams, but also product owners).
Perhaps above all, the idea that software development processes should not be defined by business administrators, but instead by people that are actually qualified.
I guess it could be labeled as "common sense", but a few things are typically hard to reason about for a lot of people, for instance the flow-control part (such as kanban), as dynamic efficiency is harder to "see" than static efficiency.
But getting good at that is actually hard. Adding 1000 fields and workflows to Jira is easy.