The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

I've been living in Portugal for ~6 months, working remotely for my previous employers in Brazil (I'm 1/2 portuguese). The quality of life I get here is 10x what I had in Rio, while my cost of living was almost halved.

Indeed I've never understood why the tech industry here isn't 100x stronger. It's a very attractive place to live, with low cost of living, lots of space for offices and buildings, fairly decent infra-structure, etc. Somewhere the portuguese politicians must be screwing up big time.

Well if you live in southern EU you have, as an example, Worten and Mediamarkt => they both do electronic 'stuff', games, tvs, washers, etc. They are quite comparable, except Worten is Portugese and Mediamarkt is German. And that difference is a huge gap. The staff is Worten, in all branches I have been, and, when I had enough, my friends have been, is downright shit. We are talking girls with braces talking to their boyfriends, not even looking at you, or looking at you annoyed, when you ask anything (which they have no answer to). Mediamarkt, again, all the branches I have been in, the staff is friendly and if they are not and you complain, you get something as compensation. Not so in Worten. They spit in your face and they don't care.

I spend a lot of time in Spain, Germany and Portugal, but I live in the Netherlands and the quality of service in Spain especially is of such a level that in the Netherlands you would be, as a company, on national television every night. It's appalling. Almost every company, especially big ones, don't care at all about customer service. The electrical company in the south, Endesa, just hangs up randomly. They don't have a CRM or anything, just non-caring students who don't know anything about the subject matter and they'll just tell you it's your problem and hang up (after you have waited for 1 hour with shit muzak). Whatever you are complaining about. In the Netherlands, there would be an outcry and it would be fixed (this has happened with UPC, but that was over 10 years ago... and they now lick your feet when you call).

In the average bar it's like a 'tourist attraction' to have the 'angry/shaggy/shitty bar guy'. They usually look like they hate you. And they never saw you. If your Spanish is good enough, you can just pelt them with derogative stuff as they seem to like the insult. But if you come with your family for a vacation, you might not want to verbally fight all the time. Besides some ancient bars in Amsterdam, you would not get away with that in the Netherlands. Your money is tourists; be nice. But no, besides some well trained staff in some hotels/restaurants/bars, the average way to treat someone you never saw is to be shortish or downright hostile to them.

The cases we had in the north (NL/DE) resulted in companies going bankrupt or public outcry; I have seen in Spain/Greece (less in PT so far) that it is very normal to treat people that way. And that doesn't work for people from the north, who are, accidentally, the people who have the cash. So maybe adapt? It'll make life better as well; I don't think being angry works well for your person either.

Having said that; ofcourse there are plenty of exceptions, the village I go to often has very friendly people. Unfortunately those are usually the older people. The younger generation is fat and spoiled and angry. Why? The news probably? Hearing every day your country is going under is not stimulating while the older generation lived with Franco / Salazar and know that this is the best they every had.

Edit: I know about southern Spain; Andalusia, so the comments I make are about that region of the country. I love that place and I'll die there, but it's something different if you are used to the north of EU.

That is correct, but it takes more energy for a European national to move country because of the barriers of language, customs, laws, tax systems, etc...

As an example, I have worked in Portugal, Spain and now the UK and I don't know if I will ever be entitled to a state pension when I retire even though I payed pension related taxes in all of these countries.

In the US, AFAIK, it's a bit more homogeneous, no?

I'm one of those about to graduate students from a technical university in Lisbon, and for me, there is no doubt anymore, I'll start to work outside of Portugal.

When you look at it from one side, South European countries have everything: they have the food, the weather, good universities, kind and welcoming people (not to say that other countries don't), talent. They have the potential to be the best countries to live at. What's missing then? For me what is missing in Portugal, and what makes me want to go away from it is mostly bad working conditions: the notion that the IT guy is the new slave. I have had older colleagues saying to me that they were working on a Sunday at 11pm and have seen people from consulting companies coming to my university and proudly saying that when we would be working at their company "we could say goodbye to that cinema evening with friends". These consulting companies, some of which are always eager to hire (which leaves us wondering what is happening to their workforce), exploit the fact that these graduates are used to semesters of constant crunch time and exploit them by putting them in the same state in their companies. People are expected to work past their time, and most of them do... and for what? 1200 euros before taxes and you are considered lucky. If you don't accept that paycheck someone else will.

I did in my last college year an Erasmus in Sweden that came now to an end, and I'm not coming back to Portugal. I've found things to be very different here. There is a huge respect for life outside work, and the jobs actually pay the graduates with the salaries that reward them for their effort and knowledge.

The problem is maybe precisely this one: graduates feeling that there is no reward waiting for them by the end of college.

And how are you going to help that? Or you don't care? The asinine tax system is more or less the same as I'm used to in NL/DE. Taxes are not for your pleasure. Sure it could be easier, but it's not easier in most civilized places. I'm not Portugese, but I would do my best for my country and not leave like you have no other choice.