Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#141

Post by pvaldes » Mon, May 22, 2017, 10:56 AM UTC

antaviana wrote: post #136

zerr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But from those 20K-45K you also pay income tax 30% (or 40%?), right? As for healthcare, at least in Barcelona, if it is not really urgent, you have to wait a month to actually gat that free visit to a doctor. Because of this, people go to paid/private doctor anyway.

For seeing your dermatologist, private is a lot more convenient and quick to get rid of that itch. If you have cancer or a serious disease, you go to the public one, even if you pay private. Not because of costs, but because there are better doctors in public than there are in private (strange but true).

In fact can be even the same doctors, but the public healthcare system has more money and better resources: better machines, more complete operating theaters, more blood bags available, more physicians... (you need two surgeons at least present by law in case one gets suddenly ill for example, so insurance companies hire senior physicians from the public system all the time for filling the quota)

The main goal of private companies is earning money, so they will try to cut costs. If a patient gets worse or the operation finds a problem or do not went as expected the patient will be quickly derived to the nearest public hospital (the insurance will be billed later for this).

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#142

Post by pvaldes » Mon, May 22, 2017, 10:59 AM UTC

TurboHaskal wrote: post #138

pvaldes wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is for health insurance, your taxes and also for your retirement pension. Being autonomo is a handicap, this is true, but you are your own boss, choose your working hours, clothes etc as you want, stop working "when you want" and are supposedly paid for extra hours, so not all is bad after all.

He's paying for a retirement pension, but not __his__ retirement pension.

Your final pension depends on what you have paid in your worker's life. So he's paying "for a promise of having a better retirement pension".

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#143

Post by ifraixedes » Mon, May 22, 2017, 1:02 PM UTC

If you want to see the tech Barcelona community, I would join to the slack group of the bcneng community http://bcneng.net/

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#144

Post by aelena » Mon, May 22, 2017, 2:08 PM UTC

hidden-markov wrote: post #16

freyfogle wrote: post #3

Hi, moved to Barcelona about two years ago (from London). Here's a post I wrote last summer about some of my impressions. http://www.freyfogle.com/post/1466857133/moving-to-barcelona In short: quality of life is great, and the tech scene, though still small, is growing rapidly. For the Barcelona I highly recommend you subscribe to this weekly newsletter http://www.barcinno.com

Hi, do you know if there's anything like barcinno for Madrid?

Personally, I receive a Startup Digest newsletter tailored for Madrid and BCN, curated by Alex Barrera, who I think is famous in the startup scene, and Maria Encinar. They cover jobs, rounds, events and talks...the usual. That might be interesting for you.

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#145

Post by arximboldi » Mon, May 22, 2017, 2:41 PM UTC

Anonnononon wrote: post #104

fesja wrote: post #42

Disclaimer: I'm from Madrid and I live in Madrid right now. I've created 3 startups. I've spent monts or weeks working from San Francisco, New York, London and Barcelona. My companies have been invested by Atomico, Idinvest, PointNine, 500 Startups Many people ask me why I haven't moved permanently elsewhere. The answer is simple: quality of live. It's really hard to get the quality of life that we have in Spain (fre…

Just a small side note: saying health care is free is unrealistic. I pay 378 euros a month as an automono and I don't have paro. 4.5k a year for health insurance it better be a damn good one.

I am a Spanish "autonomo" living in Germany: healthcare is way more expensive here in Germany (and in many ways lower quality). I see Spanish freelancers complain a lot about how expensive healthcare is for them, but when you compare it with the rest of Europe/USA, it is quite cheap I'd say.

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#146

Post by aelena » Mon, May 22, 2017, 2:42 PM UTC

johnkoper wrote: post #139

Average tech salary for Barcelona is $45k/yearly and for Madrid is around $60k/yearly: https://jobsquery.it/map;bounds=%7B%22south%22%3A35.70766603... Barcelona is really nice place to live and many developers live there and works remotely for UK or US startups where salaries are higher.

that map looks good for USA but certainly looks wrong and lopsided for some places in Europe. 100K in Romania? I don't think so. In Madrid the average is definitely not 61K, more like 32 or so. Looks like they really don't have enough data for many locations, and maybe they just once had a job posted for that amount.

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#147

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, May 22, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #102

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know they speak in English in Scotland, right?

But is a different english, tainted with local mannerisms and variants that are not useful out of Scotland.

Indeed, I needed subtitles on my first few viewings of Trainspotting.

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#148

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Mon, May 22, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #137

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Barcelona uses heavily Catalonian language for all: trafic signs, street posters, commerce, casual conversation, television, politics... all. I wouldn't discourage the OP like that. Most of Barcelona's huge immigrant population -- Romanian, Bulgarian, Pakistani, etc. -- never learns Catalan even after two decades living there. They manage perfectly fine without Catalan, and become proficient in Castilian instead. (…

> Romanian, Bulgarian, Pakistani, etc. -- never learns Catalan even after two decades living there. They manage perfectly fine without Catalan. What type of jobs is expected for them?

Romanians and Bulgarians work in an enormously broad range of fields from the most unlettered agricultural work to senior IT developers. Pakistanis run a lot of corner shops where you'd think they could easily learn Catalan, but so few ever do.

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#149

Post by Arete3141 » Tue, May 23, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

I am also very interested in finding out more about the tech scene in Spain. Questions:

- Are there many opportunities for technical QA -- folks who know SQL, Jmeter, and other technical tools? What would salary ranges be for those types of positions?

- Are there tech scenes in smaller cities like Bilbao, Valencia, Seville?

- What is the culture like at Spanish tech companies?

Muchísimas gracias.

Re: Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?

#150

Post by Anonnononon » Tue, May 23, 2017, 8:07 AM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #112

Anonnononon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a small side note: saying health care is free is unrealistic. I pay 378 euros a month as an automono and I don't have paro. 4.5k a year for health insurance it better be a damn good one.

This is for health insurance, your taxes and also for your retirement pension. Being autonomo is a handicap, this is true, but you are your own boss, choose your working hours, clothes etc as you want, stop working "when you want" and are supposedly paid for extra hours, so not all is bad after all.

Which taxes?