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The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

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Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#71

Post by anil_mamede »

pimentel wrote: post #66
anil_mamede wrote: post #59

98% of Portuguese IT industry are consultancy and solution development. We have very few product and services development. The game industry is almost zero, applications made here are very rare and services are just copycats. We have a lot of public institutions IT back office projects executed by the same big companies. For a programmer who loves programming: what is the motivation in doing back-offices? Well there…

That's so right. One classic "success" story of the Portuguese web is http://www.adegga.com/ , a social network for wine... :( Other classic success stories are the ubiquitous service-consultancy firms, always recruiting developers for Sharepoint, COBOL, SAP... Every year I hear about some 3 new of these successful firms. You can also see so called "startups" whose "business" consists of organizing dinners of 20 peop…

But Addega is not of technological nature. We cannot call it a technological service just because it's on WWW.

On the other hand Outsystems is one rare example of successfull, portuguese technological product.

Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#72

Post by tluyben2 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #67
tluyben2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change comes from the people of the country, not the people who run away. You should fight for change, not take the way of least resistance. Look beyond your personal gains and to the remaking of a whole country. If all brains leave, your country will be dead soon. And yes, of course you don't work for big consultancy companies :) That I have notices a lot; people in Portugal, especially students, seem to be overly o…

Look beyond your personal gains and to the remaking of a whole country. If all brains leave, your country will be dead soon. So what? Why should you care about the health of "your country"? That's just an attempt at emotional manipulation. You can help Portugal with your IT skills, or you can help a similar number of people in the US/UK. If you get treated better doing the latter, there is no reason to stick to Portu…

Most people have a bond with where they are born. Indeed it doesn't matter who you 'help', but if you feel drawn to your motherland and your family lives there you would be better off helping there than in the US/UK. If you have no bond with where you grew up, then of course. One country is no better than another. If you do care, you moving out is neither needed nor beneficial.

And 'treated better' is just how you manipulate your own existence; if you don't want to be treated badly (or being treated better), anywhere, you can accomplish that. Except of course in state of war or oppression, but none of these countries have that (at the moment).

Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#73

Post by marcocampos »

tluyben2 wrote: post #47
yeureka wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care. If I didn't I wouldn't post here. But there is so much a single person can do. And I am very involved with portuguese tech companies at the moment. I just can't afford to live in Portugal any more.

But what does that mean? Portugal is very cheap (compared to mostly everything) unless you live in Lisbon. So don't live in Lisbon. What do you mean?

Most (all?) tech jobs in Portugal are in Lisbon. I know companies in Oporto (Portugal 2nd biggest city) that have problems hiring people because everyone flees to Lisbon when they finish their degree. I tried to move to a smaller city (I'm not a fan of large cities) but there were very few oportunities, mostly PHP positions where you spend all day coding crappy CMS/CRM/ERPs. Sad but true.

Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#74

Post by tluyben2 »

theorique wrote: post #70
miguelpais wrote: post #27

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 li…

1200 euros for which time period? That's critically important!

1200 gross per month is not weird in PT. It's on the very low side though.

Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#75

Post by muyuu »

tluyben2 wrote: post #55
josemariaruiz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody hates Endesa. In Spain is highly probable that when someone takes your call to a company he/she will be in South America ;) And about Spanish companies and how they treat their customers, I'm with you. This is ingrained in many mediterranean countries: no ones got rich doing hard work or through a strong work ethic. You can only get rich stealing, abusing and lying. The rate of people who evades taxes is so…

But the fact that everyone 'hates Endesa'. That wouldn't fly in NL, why does it fly in ES?

For many reasons. Firstly, it's a monopoly. Secondly, it has to survive under ridiculous regulations.

The government is dysfunctional and it shows in many ways.

If you're interested in the subject you can read this (PDF): http://newsletter.epfl.ch/mir/index.php?module=epflfiles&#38...

Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#76

Post by olifante »

The root of the problem is that developers in Portuguese organizations have little "political" power and low social prestige. They are generically put under the "técnicos" (technicians) category, not a very prestigious term.

It's kind of a class thing: high class people do not dirty their hands with manual labor and boring technical stuff. High class people should manage other people and do not really have any responsibility towards their lower-class subordinates. Responsibility only flows upwards, never downwards. This is of course not a uniquely Portuguese problem, but is probably a more widespread issue in unequal societies with ingrained class distinctions.

The cult of the MBA (as defined by Spolsky) reigns supreme in Portugal. Managers think it's perfectly natural to be deeply ignorant of the problem domain of their organizations. This might work when you're managing nail factories (or maybe not), but when applied to managing developers it is insulting, disempowering and demotivating.

Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#77

Post by jc79 »

anil_mamede wrote: post #59

98% of Portuguese IT industry are consultancy and solution development. We have very few product and services development. The game industry is almost zero, applications made here are very rare and services are just copycats. We have a lot of public institutions IT back office projects executed by the same big companies. For a programmer who loves programming: what is the motivation in doing back-offices? Well there…

I could not agree more! This, among other things, is one of the things that puzzles me the most: almost no products. To that I'll add lack of capability to scale.

I've worked at a startup here once, and have seen this lack of capability to scale happen in first hand: unfortunatelly, at the time I was to focused on just being the 'technical guy', and did not have any real input to give (mind you I was just an employee - there is no concept of equity shares to employees in Portugal, thus no economical incentive in this regard).

Now that I have the will to actually be a part of a startup, I'm 'too old', have a family, and honestly, don't know where to look.

Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#79

Post by swah »

marcocampos wrote: post #73
tluyben2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what does that mean? Portugal is very cheap (compared to mostly everything) unless you live in Lisbon. So don't live in Lisbon. What do you mean?

Most (all?) tech jobs in Portugal are in Lisbon. I know companies in Oporto (Portugal 2nd biggest city) that have problems hiring people because everyone flees to Lisbon when they finish their degree. I tried to move to a smaller city (I'm not a fan of large cities) but there were very few oportunities, mostly PHP positions where you spend all day coding crappy CMS/CRM/ERPs. Sad but true.

I thought Lisbon was cheap as well, greatest cups of coffee I had for .50 euro.

Re: The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

#80

Post by malbertife »

yeureka wrote: post #25
arethuza wrote: post #4

Isn't this inevitable given the freedoms given to people to work and live where they like within the EU? Doesn't something very similar happen within the US where, in general, the brightest and best are drawn to locations where they can get the best opportunities?

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?

The pension rights you earn will follow you (at least in EU):

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/retire/state-pensi...

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