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Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed

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

#251
post #66

So I live in Barcelona at the moment. I have 10 years of system administration experience and 3 years of devops / sysadmin experience as well. The average salary I am offered when I look around is between 25K and 45K Euros a year. However, I would say the ratio is about 60% For friends and family that are looking it really depends. If you are lucky and have / had a position in certain companies who are well known, yo…

Barcelona is a bit better in term of salaries than Madrid, where I live.

For developers and sysadmins salaries are down 25% or more for the last two years.

The reason is there is very little product development here and the main IT employers, Banks and telcos, have renegotiated the amounts they pay for subcontracting.

That the reason you can not get more tan 36k working for Telefónica or Santander subcontracting (who will pay your compary about 90k for you).

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

#252

I've seen software projects where this was a big issue. Many ambitious Spaniards wind up working in London or elsewhere. Then Spanish companies have to hire overpriced consultancies to fill local tech positions with underqualified resources. I wonder how much the Brexit will send folks home. My impression is that many companies are looking at Spain as alternatives to London HQs, but those are also the kind of jobs fo…

Did you know IBM HQ for Europe is in Madrid? They moved here from Paris a year ago.

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

#253
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are on Ruby, Sinatra, Rails, Nginx, Lua & not afraid of new technologies. Our open positions are on https://www.3scale.net/about/jobs/ We're based in Barcelona, but had remote workers in the past and still might be opened to that after some warmup time. On some hiring sites we were publically posting 50k EUR for Senior Backend Developer. Being here for 5 years I can say there is plenty of growth space for good dev…

But the problem I see is that the top people you might want would have no problem finding a similar position in a US company for 2x-3x that salary. So what how do you compete in the global economy with a 50+% salary cut? Do most of your developers only speak Spanish? Or do they have their roots firmly set in Spain (family/friends/relationships)?

> finding a similar position in a US company for 2x-3x that salary

Remote or ? Because I don't think it's that easy to find them remote with (often) hampered English language skills and very different interviews than we have here in Europe. And moving to the US is also not that easy even if you have a job, partially because it's a life altering decision which moves you far away from family. For a lot of people that's not worth the increase.

Edit: also, it is really cheap, depending on where you (want to) live to buy houses. So your 'compared low' salary actually brings you quite far. I am a weirdo in that regard though (at least compared to most on HN); I don't like living in cities. But even there it's not expensive if you look in the right places. Exceptions are there ofcourse yadayada.

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

#254

Spanish dev here. I created with some friends the most active Maker group in Spain [1]. We won contests like Hyperloop's, NASA's SpaceApps (once winners, twice finalists), making robot competitions [2], teaching to everyone, etc. A couple of days ago we were talking about who would continue it, since ALL of us are leaving the country for different reasons. So I can say that I know what it means that skilled workers a…

Moved to Germany 3 years ago, going to to Spain this year. Tech scene here in Germany is way better than in Spain, but social life... I gave up a long time ago. My plan is to go back and make my own thing. If I'm not successful I'll try to work in remote. I know things are moving forward in Madrid and Barcelona. What about Valencia?

I'm from the UK and living in Madrid (working remotely for a company in London) - in my experience there is a LOT more quality work in tech in Barcelona that in Madrid. I think outside of Madrid and Barcelona you'll struggle to find much interesting work.

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

#255
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it works in Spain, but in Italy the cost of an employee is probably much more than his/her salary. The employer gives you a salary, then they have to pay on top of it ~30% of INAIL, INPS etc. (pension, health "insurance" including sick days and so on) and ~10% of TFR (fund you get back at the end of your career.) In the U.S. those are costs you have to remove from your salary. So, 3000 euros a month…

When hiring contractors the company doesn't have to pay any of these things (it's on the contractor). I'm currently contracting for a company in Italy and getting much more than 3k/mo.

So I guess you do like most freelancers: you don't have insurances nor build any pension? So if you get hit by a car, you have nothing.

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

#256
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…

36,000 euro in, say, Valencia, that's close to 100,000 dollars in San Francisco when adjusting for purchasing power. Not great but certainly not that bad either. For someone with three years experience. I know a team of developers south of Valencia who make way more than that. They work out of a mansion with an infinity pool. Doing simple websites.

Whereas 36,000 euro in Southern Spain (where the unemployment is high) is not fantastic, it doesn't seem all that bad. In few industries employees would complain about that. And how many years of university education do you need to get to there: often none.

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

#257
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…

200,000 euros is possible for what's essentially a contract digital transformation consultant, and there are agile qualifications on offer - and when you're dealing with the enterprise, they're often more valued than experience.

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

#258
post #135

>>“It’s a paradox,” said Valentin Bote, head of research in Spain at Randstad, a recruitment agency. “The unemployment rate is too high. Yet we’re seeing some tension in the labor market because unemployed people don’t have the skills employers demand. There's no real paradox there. Employment of young people, and therefore normal career progression for that cohort, essentially shut down for 6-8 years. Now the pipeli…

This is also a big point. One of the problems with teachers and scientists for example.

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

#259

Earlier 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…

I am Spanish. If I say racism in Spain is disgusting and systemic it is because I have seen it.

You are probably familiar with things like "Cómo en España en ningún sitio" and how we dismiss other people’s food preferences, cultural habits and religions as those from someone inferior.

The problem is that some of you are incapable of acknowledging that because you think you are right and Spain is some sort of chosen by God country.

Just as an example, you use the word gypsy as something bad.

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

#260
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No. There are countless unemployed nurses in Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Ask the NHS how many they bring in every year.

...and yet there are still nursing shortages, with many unfilled posts. These are jobs that have been advertised but unfilled.

Any proof?
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