
Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed - dismal2
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-01/spain-is-running-out-of-workers-with-almost-5-million-unemployed
======
knocte
> 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 an Agile qualification
> and they also need the ability to deal with senior executives, limiting the
> pool of people who could potentially fill the roles.

That part of the article is hilarious, not only because 200K euros is
completely made up and untrue (by far surpasses best salaries in other more
decent countries), but because of the Agile qualification mention. Do we have
Agile certifications now? What a load of bullshit.

The only truth in the article is this:

> Spanish executives are less-skilled than their competitors in Germany,
> France or Italy, according to a study of 11 European countries. Only Greece
> came out worse.

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.

(Spanish dev here --working abroad obviously--.)

~~~
logingone
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. I have an agile coach at my
current job. As far as I can tell his job is to be the expert at drag and drop
in Jira, and peeling post it notes. The only good thing I can say about agile
is that it fills a space that will otherwise be filled with the next holy
grail gimmick which management won't be able to resist as they sell themselves
and their new magic power up the corporate ladder. I'm neck deep in this farce
at the moment.

~~~
kpil
Sure. A lot of "Agile" is actually cargo-cult agile, used as a vehicle for
self-promotion: The daily scrum, the sticky-notes or the Jira.board, and all
that other ceremony.

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.

~~~
Retric
Process is not going to fix a toxic work environment. But, it can make a
positive difference over time.

Many teams start out productive, but they also tend to degrade over time. How
many 10 year old projects have you been happy to start working on? How about
20?

Those are the places most in need of someone to cut the bullshit.

------
vemv
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 all are perceived as 'equal' or even replaceable.

\- Also, companies are scared of the mere possibility of their programmers
leaving. The sole hint of that you may leave will turn their red alarms on,
and they'll start searching a replacement.

There rarely exists here the mentality that a work relationship is a
commercial exchange, not an intimate family-like relationship. Being open to
the market is not 'treason'.

\- Tech stacks tend to be years behind San Francisco, whether is languages,
frameworks, ops practices...

\- Functional programming opportunities extremely scarce. Elixir is gaining
traction here though.

~~~
charlesdm
Have you considered working remotely for a US company? I know a guy making €7
or 8,000 per month, after tax, living in Paris. Best of both worlds: amazing
quality of living, cheap cost of living + healthcare, lots of spending (or
investing) money! Seems to be working well for him.

~~~
jules
Is the cost of living in Paris less than a normal US city?

~~~
fchollet
Paris is much less expensive than the bay area, but more expensive than the
average US city. In fact, it's barely less expensive than NYC, one of the most
expensive US cities.

Also, if you are working remotely you cannot command a bay area salary.

~~~
gorkemyurt
So you are saying NYC is much less expensive than Bay Area?

~~~
fchollet
Yes. Specifically, rents are much higher in SF/SV than in NYC. SF has even
higher rent than Manhattan. Most of NYC (not Manhattan or Williamsburg) can be
quite reasonable.

~~~
feklar
Does SF gave rent brokers you have to go through? Manhattan you have to pay
first/last rent to a broker plus deposit you need around 8-$12k to sign any
lease up front

~~~
JBReefer
Brokers fee is one month, not two, and the outer boroughs are much cheaper.

~~~
dlandis
Broker's fees of 15% or even 20% seemed to be fairly common last time I was
looking in Manhattan several years ago. It's definitely not pegged at one
month anymore nowadays even in Brooklyn.

------
altoz
You 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 people from group 1 to group 2 is
an interesting question, but generally if it were easy to be in group 2, a lot
more people would be in it.

~~~
charlesdm
Very true. Just compare salaries of software engineers in most EU countries
with salaries in the US.

If you're a good developer, 99% of the time it's better to work remotely from
Europe for a US company. It really is a simple problem to solve -- pay
talented people in Europe more. And yet, for some reason, this is often
dismissed by CEOs as a ridiculous statement. They're probably the same people
who think you need 100 software engineers to complete a complex technology
project.

~~~
duckingtest
I don't think it's that developers are underpaid in Europe. They are just
objectively less productive there. After all it's a very specialized job that
requires modern, developed economy open to disruptions to be really
productive. On the extreme opposite end of a spectrum - a pre-industrial
economy - a developer's productivity would be zero.

American nominal GDP per capita is 2.13 times that of Spain's and 1.38x that
of Germany's, and the distance keeps increasing. There are many possible
causes, but I think lower salaries are a symptom.

~~~
pcrh
GDP per capita seems to be a curious way to estimate if a local dev is likely
to be productive. Would a Luxembourgish, Swiss or Norwegian dev be expected to
be more productive than one from the US or UK?

It seems to me that the prime determinant of pay is how close the worker's
"category" is to the money. So in a start-up intensive environment like the
Bay Area, the devs are also sometimes the executives, and executives are often
former devs, so devs get paid correspondingly.

~~~
duckingtest
Switzerland does have higher average pay CHF 91,374 = $93,703.5 [0] compared
to USA $68,082 [1]. Their nominal GDP per capita is 36.62% higher and the pay
is 37.6% higher.

Norway interestingly has almost the same pay as USA - $68,737 [2], probably
because of high share of oil extraction in GDP (22% [3]) which skews the
result. If you subtract oil share from the GDP, you get $56,195.88 nominal GDP
per capita, which is almost the same as the American one ($57,220)!

Now Luxembourg is a tax haven/financial center with a population of half a
million so I don't think it's a relevant comparison. Just due to population to
get something close to true pay average you would have to ask a relatively (to
other countries) very big percentage of their developers.

Same site for comparable data

[0]
[http://www.payscale.com/research/CH/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...](http://www.payscale.com/research/CH/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary)

[1]
[http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/S...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/Salary)

[2]
[http://www.payscale.com/research/NO/Job=Software_Developer/S...](http://www.payscale.com/research/NO/Job=Software_Developer/Salary)

[3] [https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og-
publikasjoner/_...](https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og-
publikasjoner/_attachment/237252?_ts=1516c73e3a8) page 40, graph

~~~
igravious
Dude. You're not getting the objection. We're not objecting to the numeric
ratios, we're objecting to using those numbers in the first place.

> GDP per capita seems to be a curious way to estimate if a local dev is
> likely to be productive.

Curious is putting it mildly. :) What is being objected to is your _measure_.
Stop using the GDP per capita _of an entire country_ as a proxy for software
developer productivity. It's frankly stupid. Anyway GDP per capita using PPP
(purchasing power parity) is seen as a fairer comparison. But even GDP per
capita by PPP is a stupid metric to compare software developer productivity.
I'm sorry for using the word stupid. But it's stupid.

~~~
duckingtest
>Stop using the GDP per capita of an entire country as a proxy for software
developer productivity. It's frankly stupid.

Outside of entertainment where software is a direct consumer product, the
developer's productivity comes from increased efficiency of use of other
productive resources. You can't eat code, but you can eat food that comes from
higher production due to better software. So software has a multiplicative
effect on existing production. That is, GDP.

Now even added value of entertainment software (games etc) depends on total
GDP, because people have to pay with something for that entertainment.

So average developer's productivity IS a function of GDP, with different
coefficient depending on the structure of a economy.

A primitive non-mechanized agricultural economy would have a coefficient of
near zero because there's almost nothing to automate.

>Anyway GDP per capita using PPP (purchasing power parity) is seen as a fairer
comparison.

A fundamentally wrong metric because pay is nominal.

~~~
pcrh
This way of estimating a dev's likely productivity would operate independent
of their individual ability, as well as be applicable across all worker
categories. For example a dairy farmer in Switzerland earns more than one in
Poland because people pay more for milk products in Switzerland compared to
Poland.

So why would the GDP per capita of their country be a useful tool in deciding
who to hire?

~~~
duckingtest
>For example a dairy farmer in Switzerland earns more than one in Poland
because people pay more for milk products in Switzerland compared to Poland.

A Swiss farmer is much more productive when measured in currency units, but
probably not that much in milk volume.

However as we are talking about salary differences it's money that matters.

>So why would the GDP per capita of their country be a useful tool in deciding
who to hire?

Why would it be? In this conceptual model the ability of a developer is how
much he multiplies the output of whatever he's working on, but his
productivity is the absolute value of added output. How could it be counted
otherwise, in what? Lines of code?

If productivity didn't depend on location immigration wouldn't exist.

~~~
pcrh
I guess it depends on the sense in which "productivity" is being used.

A remote dev working for a Bay Area company from Spain can be just as
productive for his employer as one located in Los Gatos, CA. However the above
method would categorize this dev as "objectively less productive", which seems
counter-intuitive...

~~~
duckingtest
>However the above method would categorize this dev as "objectively less
productive", which seems counter-intuitive...

It wouldn't, it purports to explain the differences in local salaries, or more
precisely salaries paid by local entities to on-site developers.

It's true I didn't specify that explicitly in the first comment, along with
definition of productivity, so your reading of it was a reasonable
understanding. It's a good thing you helped me clarify the intended meaning.

One assumption is that foreign demand (for non-local use) for local on-site
developers is small enough to not change the workforce demand significantly.
So it won't work for India or other common offshore destination, but it seems
to explain pay differences between USA and Spain, Norway and Switzerland
reasonably.

~~~
pcrh
In other words, pay differentials are more closely related to locale than to
the amount or quality of work produced.

------
whamlastxmas
The article says the average salary in Spain is around $22k. Even at twice
that, it's not hard to see why developers are not working for (or maybe even
in) Spain. I suspect the problem has more to do with Spanish businesses not
being willing or able to compete for developers with market salary rates.

It's frustrating that they don't provide data like that in articles like this.
Instead of they a single data point anecdote about how a company can't find an
Agile project manager for "up to" $220k.

How about comparing the percentage of software developers in Spain to the US?
Or discussing how the education for technology is different? Or what
percentage of the unemployed are developers? Or software developer salaries
compared to rest of EU. Or the number of Spanish developers working abroad or
for companies abroad. Instead have a graph of Spain's GDP and a graph showing
the size of their workforce.

This is why I rarely ever click on articles and only read the comments. Most
of the time it's the only place with any substance.

~~~
ldng
A lot of skilled Spanish dev have fled to Paris and London despite the high
cost of living of those cities and being paid less because they're foreigners
because it is still more rewarding.

In Spain, politician and corruption are pushing skilled people away. I have
seen (and heard of) too many people moving out to be just mere coincidence.

The subtlety is that most of the time the greedy consulting firm will keep
198K out of the 220K and the be surprised not to find anyone.

"Spain is different" as some friends say.

~~~
adwf
After Brexit, I'm very tempted to move in the opposite direction. If the
Spanish consulting firms can be undercut to that extent, there's a potentially
lucrative market.

Unfortunately I only know French and German, but I could learn Spanish
relatively quickly I guess. The corruption and politics is troubling however.

~~~
calgoo
Its not to bad. I live in Barcelona, the corruption is a problem, and will not
be solved soon. But thats such a deep problem thats going to take a long time
to solve. There is currently a a lot of talented local people and
international people who want to work here. A lot of the agencies pay between
15K and 25K on average for junior developers / administrators. However, you
can be stuck in the bracket for a long time unless you are able to find a way
to switch to a different position. The issue is once you get a job in the 30K+
group where its a lot harder finding anything. Let me know if you have any
other questions :)

------
franciscop
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 are leaving first
hand. Now I reverse the question, why would we stay? Spain has some great
things, such as weather, food and party, but it's horrible in any tech-related
industry.

For instance, I did a couple of internships to help with my University credits
and earn some money. I got paid per month almost the same that I'm getting
paid now every couple of days working as an US contractor. Not only that, now
I'm doing things that I really love, challenging but rewarding, collaborating
with the best people I know and living wherever I want. We made
[https://www.angularattack.com/](https://www.angularattack.com/) , now we're
launching a new one way better (not yet public though) and I'm helping doing
two websites for two of the biggest Venture Capital firms in USA.

Now tell me, why should I go back to working 9-5 for some company that doesn't
care at all about developers and treat us as code monkeys, for peanuts and in
horrible conditions? I had a horrible chair for example but there was "no
budget" for a better one.

It's a pity because the country gets worse, but it's also good since the hard
working Spaniards get the best -- even if it has to be outside. I am lucky I
can visit my sister in UK and my friends in Japan, Sweden, Germany and USA :)

[1] [http://makersupv.com/](http://makersupv.com/)

[2] [https://orchallenge.es/](https://orchallenge.es/)

~~~
imaginenore
Same shit in Italy and the Netherlands. I get with very low offers, recruiters
are shocked that I bill $100-150 per hour.

~~~
raarts
I work in the netherlands and I bill $125/hr.

~~~
jc80
I too, but with mainly US and Nordic customers -- my hourly starts at €250,
last contract was above €500

~~~
kofejnik
Wow, congrats, really envious here. May I ask - what industry and tech? And
how do you find those clients?

------
Daishiman
I'm wondering what is the cognitive dissonance with employers who are
unwilling to train workers. I mean, I understand the reasons if you're a an
SMB, but large corporations used to train their employees or hold something
close to apprenticeship programs.

I'm guessing this is more along the lines of "we want qualified work but we're
not really willing to pay for it"?

~~~
zeveb
> I'm wondering what is the cognitive dissonance with employers who are
> unwilling to train workers. I mean, I understand the reasons if you're a an
> SMB, but large corporations used to train their employees or hold something
> close to apprenticeship programs.

It was far less common for people to change jobs back then, too. Neither
employers _nor_ employees feel any real loyalty towards one another, so
investing in one another feels foolish. There's nothing to incentivise someone
to stay once he's learnt the skills he needs to get a position elsewhere.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "It was far less common for people to change jobs back then, too. Neither
> employers nor employees feel any real loyalty towards one another, so
> investing in one another feels foolish. There's nothing to incentivise
> someone to stay once he's learnt the skills he needs to get a position
> elsewhere."

Sorry, I still don't understand this attitude. I live in the UK, it's common
here to have at least some level of on-the-job training, especially for jobs
where there's a skills shortage. In my experience, training opportunities are
a great way of building up company loyalty, you want to stay with the company
because you know you can progress in the company.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
Job culture in the UK is soooo much better than in Spain. I've worked on both
places, so this is first hand experience.

In Spain I would get sent to a training, because we needed to have someone
certified on that product to get discounts, then the company would ask me to
sign a contract to either stay with them at least two more years or pay a 2k
fine. The idiots only tried to do this after the training, thinking otherwise
I might just refuse to get trained. Of course I refused to sign, but I was
only one of the few who would refuse.

In the UK I even get to choose my training. Not just technical, but also on
soft skills. Even training that I might not apply in my current role, but I
might need to move to a new role.

The biggest shocker for me was the manager-employee relationship. In Spain the
manager owns you. In the UK the manager is a team member with a very specific
goal: make you and your team successful.

And don't get me started on leaving the office before your manager does... Of
course he would be the biggest sucker (otherwise you don't get to be a
manager) and won't leave until 8pm. Leaving shortly after your shift ended was
frowned upon by colleagues and verbally challenged by managers:

\- Where are you going?

\- Home.

\- Don't you have work to do?

\- Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow again.

That company was terribly toxic and I have seen it destroy several families
and people's health.

~~~
cwilkes
> \- Don't you have work to do? > \- Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow
> again.

Hah, good one.

I'm curious in this toxic situation doesn't it just take a few good companies
that treat their employees well to change things around? The good engineers
will flock there leaving the bad ones at the old companies.

Granted that probably means the managers will now try and get 2x the work out
of the remainders. Maybe some will get a clue though and change their ways.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
I thought about it a few times. What would it take to turn this around? Surely
I can take some capital and start a development company where the people are
treated better hence more productive, so I can deliver better products?

The problem is the customer. The customer ends up always being the government
(national, regional or local) and they have a higher degree of employees that
don't care about quality, so the big software factories (called butchers over
there because they sell you almost by weight) can put under payed, under
qualified and burned out developers on the project.

I have hopes on all the new tech companies flourishing around the country that
are looking outside Spain for their customers. I am hoping they will end up
shaping the market for good.

------
jandrewrogers
The gap isn't the pay or the training per se.

A growing issue I see frequently is that companies need more highly
experienced (read: senior) people, and are willing to pay for it, but there is
no fast pipeline from "no experience" to "highly skilled" even if companies
did invest in training. Meanwhile, the existing pool is much too small to meet
demand; redistributing the talent won't address the underlying issue.
Companies are hiring to fill a need _now_ , not 2-3 years in the future. The
company or product generating the demand might not even be around in that
time.

An unfortunate reality that people tend to ignore is that the length of time
required to train for the average high skill/high pay job has been
_increasing_. There are many high demand specialties in software that require
a _minimum_ of 2 years of hardcore experience to really be "experienced", but
you can't manufacture that overnight and the hiring companies have little use
for someone without that experience. Many companies with existing teams do
recognize this and hire a mix of junior and senior talent to generate an
internal pipeline but you still need the senior talent when building teams in
the first place.

Reallocation of people sounds simple but it doesn't account for the increasing
latency of acquiring a different skill set at the level of quality required to
perform the jobs that actually exist. It is a sticky problem because it is a
bit of a vicious cycle.

NOTE: this is a more general observation, Spain has its own peculiarities.

~~~
kartan
King hired in Barcelona a lot of highly senior developers, people that were
leading protects, being architects, etc in other companies. How? Better pay,
better conditions and it gives more autonomy to the developers.

A fraction of them are talent brough from abroad because they wanted to live
in Barcelona. So it is less hard to find talent when you are willing to be
competitive.

~~~
vacri
> _willing to be competitive._

On the other hand, it's not like businesses have a big bag of gold that they
can simply choose to dip into to increase salaries, especially for the smaller
shops.

------
muse900
Greek here, living and working abroad.

Spain is doing a bit better than Greece but its on the same boat.

When I speak with friends back home, I do get a feeling that they don't want
to work. Is it because they are lazy? part of me wants to say yes. I can't
ignore the fact that the working conditions are awful. Salaries are quite low
compared to the rest of Europe, an employer has full control over you, and can
fire you any time. An employer won't ever promote you. They will just hold you
as long as they can and then they will just hire someone else for less money.
Also when you have internet and so much information avaialble to you, and you
can see what are the working conditions in other Countries it kinda makes you
sad.

I live in London, and tbh there have been many times that I've been thinking
what am I doing here. London is quite expensive and the salaries are not as
high compared to rent, food etc (at least for developers).

Now I just made this comment in order to give an overview of whats going on to
a country that is on the same boat as Spain.

~~~
inoop
> I can't ignore the fact that the working conditions are awful

one of the great things about the EU is that people can freely move inside it
and work wherever they want. Nothing is stopping your friends from doing what
you did - seek employment elsewhere.

At the same time, if Greek and Spanish companies want to survive they'll have
to learn to adapt to the new order and treat their people better, or perish.

~~~
noinsight
> one of the great things about the EU is that people can freely move inside
> it and work wherever they want.

That's true in principle but languages are an issue. In Nordic countries
everyone will speak English but central Europe is different. You might get by
with English but not everyone (or even most, depending on the country) will
speak it.

Do you want to go through the trouble of learning another language from
scratch? The culture will be completely different too.

Coming from Finland I've thought about moving somewhere else just for the
experience as it would probably be interesting, but I don't really feel like
learning another language when I already speak English.

I've also always wondered how difficult it would be to actually get a job,
especially if you don't speak the local language. Maybe with a rockstar
education and resumé it would be easy but what if you're "average" (at least
on paper)? Having worked for well-known international companies would probably
be beneficial.

------
kartan
Spanish here. I moved to Sweden, I prefer the business culture here. Less non
paid extra hours. More respect from managers. Better pay. Etc.

They rant about not being able to use more people as part time slaves. It's a
problem of using industrial business mentality in the high tech industry. They
care only for reducing salaries and getting long hours with no respect for the
developers that are expected to be code monkeys.

So yes, they don't find as a big supply as they want.

------
calgoo
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% < 30K & 30% < 35K.

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, you might
get into the higher bracket. If you dont, and for example only have a
University degree, then expect to start between 15K and 25K (unless from one
of the known private schools, in which case you can normally jump to the next
bracket).

From what I know, the two places to look are Madrid and Barcelona, but Madrid
normally list almost double the amount of jobs that Barcelona does (mainly
because a lot of headquarters are located there).

Another important thing that I have notices is that its a lot harder to climb
internally in companies here. It depends if the company has American business
culture or Spanish (but sometimes it tries to be American but its run in a
Spanish way). This is in general over all businesses. My wife is currently
working at a call-center and have co-workers who have been in that position
for over 10 years. There are basically no way to get promoted, unless you get
lucky and someone retires or leaves. I have seen this everywhere, basically no
way to really grow, no incentives to grow, an over educated workforce, where
the cashier in the supermarket has a masters degree in childcare or similar.

There is a saying here, where they call people "mil eurista" meaning thousand
euroist more less. The amount of the working population that earn around 1000e
a month is quite high but its something thats accepted here basically. People
are not happy about it, but "At least I got a job" attitudes are everywhere.

A last thing, take care regarding any unemployment numbers that appear during
the month of May, as thats basically when the tourist season starts. That
alone probably employs over 1,000,000 workers during the summer months.

~~~
njloof
This promotion stagnation happens in the US as well, but if the market is
fluid enough you can get the promotion by changing employers now that you have
your 5+ years experience in skills and methodology.

~~~
collyw
Its crazy as it takes 3 - 6 months to get up to speed on any non complex
software system. They will save on wages but loose on productivity.

------
tluyben2
I live in Spain (am Dutch); even more; I live in Andalusia. For me that's
better, besides getting people to work. We cannot find people at all for
programming or our brewery. Everyone around us is unemployed, however they
either a) do not speak English; we speak Spanish, but a lot of our clients do
not b) do not want to work c) are foreign and have no papers to work. It's
quite horrible. And it's not for lack of trying; we have been trying for at
least 5 years. In my experience it has nothing to do with payment. This is
just limited to Andalusia ofcourse; my colleague says it's better up north,
however some people I met from other parts and who have companies complain
about the same thing.

Then another issue with the country is the extremely hard time you have in
hiring someone ; paperwork, you cannot fire them even if they are crap etc.
And the paperwork to get grants for hiring people (which are there) is
incredible. We have a company in PT as well and it's quite different there.
The gov needs to take their finger out. Luckily we have a very helpful
(Spanish) mayor who loves entrepreneurs and helps us with whatever, but he
also shakes his head when talking about hiring people locally.

~~~
Oletros
> you cannot fire them even if they are crap etc.

I highly doubt that, it has not been easier to fire someone in Spain since the
latests reforms.

Not taking into account that there is always a period were the employer and
the employee can cancel the contracts without any duty. Normally 6 months

~~~
tluyben2
When were those because I was discussing this 'recently' with my lawyer on the
coast? Yes the 6 months is true and I compare it with NL where firing is also
hard but it's very straighforward how it works. Here I haven't been able to
get it explained in that fashion. So far people look at us with pity when we
talk about hiring people legally. Note; we are a tiny company.

~~~
Oletros
Basically you can fire anyone when you want. If the cause is justified you pay
10 day for year worked, if it is not justified you pay 20

------
jlg23
What I am missing in the article and in all discussions here is: Why not pro-
actively train people? Looking 2 months for someone with some kind of
certification for "agile" is already a fourth of the time required to train
someone who is already working for the client (numbers taken from the
article).

If one is willing to pay 220k and cannot find anyone while most job offers
(according to comments here) max out at 36k, make a deal with a current
employee: "We pay for training, after 2 years you get a bonus of 72k and we
double your salary." Company does not make a loss even if the dev leaves after
2 years, it has built the experience in-house and it had 16 months to
disseminate the newly acquired knowledge to other employees.

The mindset that people must already have knowledge about some specific
technology and universities accommodating employers there is exactly why we
have so many code monkeys who don't know anything about CS finishing with a
degree in CS who, after a few years, realize that their knowledge is basically
worthless because the IT world has moved on and other languages or stacks are
now en vogue.

------
pvaldes
The "you need more skills" issue is a false problem. Is just that the bad guys
have kidnapped, blocked for years, or freeze, most of the good jobs.

This is a mediocrazy and they need to raise a lot of walls for keeping off the
brigther people who give them a bad image by comparison. And all is carefully
planned to keep this people unemployed also for the next four years.

Requisites to be a minister in Spain?. Speaking english? not necessary.
Holding any sort of degree of PhD? Not necessary. Years of experience working
for private companies?. Not necessary, but it helps. If you helped a big
company to contaminate a bay for example, you could be even be promoted as the
next environment minister.

Requisites for the rest of guys for a normal job?. A hamster wheel. Well,
first of all you need to be fluent in three or four languages, just because
maybe one time a year, or once in ten years, you could need to speak with a
foreigner; and for some reason you can't just raise a phone and hire a
professional translator for this special day. You will burn in hell if you
dare to suggest your boss this logic and simple solution. Then you need to
have a degree, a PhD, and also a few masters, and being able to hypnotize a
goat in less than five minutes, and work for free for some years, and ...

Job market in Spain is a question of kinship and means being promoted directly
in lots of cases... or never.

~~~
wallflower
> Well, first of all you need to be fluent in three or four languages

My understanding is that English to CEFRL level B1 was mandatory to work at a
multi-national company. Are there other languages required?

~~~
pvaldes
Yes, it happens. In any case 500 millions of people have spanish as native
language in the world so "mandatory" is a relative term. You will need chinese
to work in China, and spanish or portuguese to work in South-America.

If you don't speak Catalan and live in Cataluña you just will never finish the
middle school. Or if you want to work for the administration you will be
ostracised or directly banned for working for the public, just because you are
"an subhuman stubborn charnego". If you born in Euskadi and then go to
Barcelona for work, you need to be able to speak fluently four languages
(spanish, english, vasque and catalan) just to start talking about having a
job. If this guy move to Galicia later, will need to learn the Galizian
language also.

Oh, If your foreign language in the middle school was french, and a lot of
spanish people still studied french in this generation, you will not graduate
unless you speak French. If you want as adult to work for a german company you
will need a little deutsch of course to be competitive in the job interview.

But the worst stupid thing is that most of the time to be fluent or not is not
necessary at all for the job because some kind of problems can be solved in
any language and because human brain can fill the communication gaps easily.
Is just that is trendy to ask for this.

For some jobs you will need to be "fluent" also in more languages: C, Ruby,
Java, Python... Don't worry. They still will say that you are "unskilled" and
will want to pay you in peanuts.

~~~
throwaway_9191
Oh please, spare the HN crowd of your anti-Catalan obsessions. Or, on second
thought, please continue to educate the community on the anti-Catalan
sentiment that is unfortunately so common throughout Spain.

> If you don't speak Catalan and live in Cataluña you just will never finish
> the middle school.

Or you will learn Catalan which is kinda the fucking point of education? Boo-
hoo, Catalonians want kids to learn Catalan if they are going to live in
Catalonia! By the way Spanish is mandatory too, why won't you find a problem
with that?

> Or if you want to work for the administration you will be ostracised > Is
> just that is trendy to ask for this.

Try getting a job in the public administration in Spain without speaking
Spanish, in France without speaking French, in Italy without speaking Italian,
in the UK without speaking English... see the pattern? Should we give up our
right to address our public administration in our own language just to please
non-Catalan Spaniards?

> because you are "an subhuman stubborn charnego"

Your comment depicts the Catalonian society as overtly xenophobic. This is an
extremely offensive and unfair characterization of Catalonian society as
millions of native Spanish speakers living here can certify. You are either
completely misinformed about Catalonia, or spreading lies deliberately (both
being extremely common within Spain).

Fortunately support for independence is growing fast. Hopefully once we are
independent we won't have to endure this sort of bs anymore.

~~~
pvaldes
> Try getting a job in the public administration in Spain without speaking
> Spanish, in France without speaking French, in Italy without speaking
> Italian, in the UK without speaking English... see the pattern?

Yes, I see it, and is not the same as you think.

Would be, "Try getting a job in the public administration in Spain without
speaking Spanish AND catalan, in France without speaking French AND Patóis, in
Italy without speaking Italian AND Lombard, in the UK without speaking English
AND Gaelic"... see the pattern? Duplicated effort, same result.

But in Argentina the same guy could use the extra time to learn other things,
that maybe could be even useful for their employers.

~~~
throwaway_9191
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.

~~~
pvaldes
I'll hire the Argentinian. Looks like a less problematic fit.

Maybe this could be one of the problems here?.

~~~
throwaway_9191
So people who know more languages are now a problem. Please, stop it.

------
dthal
>>“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 pipeline is a little empty.

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

------
anjc
Same thing is happening in every country, it seems. Spanish companies have the
entire EU from which they can draw workers without any paperwork or issues,
and yet they can't find any? From central/eastern Europe even, whose workers
may have lower wage expectations?

No. They're flagging this "shortage" and will simultaneously petition their
government to allow faster issuing of/more visas to non-EU countries, i.e.
India etc, with lower wage requirements for incoming workers.

~~~
UVB-76
How many people from Eastern Europe speak Spanish?

Obviously not as important for low-skilled, manual labour, but we're talking
about highly skilled jobs in the tech sector here.

~~~
calgoo
Romania is one example, but there is a bit of a racial issue going on between
the countries.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
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.

------
winestock
Check out this little gem from the article:

“Education and work exist in two alternative worlds that don’t really
connect,” Gomez said. “While in other nations, like the U.S., college
education is designed to get you a job, that’s not the case in Spain.”

This may be a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side of the
hill."

~~~
nostrebored
Greener but not false. There is a reason why a US education is highly valued
by exceptional international students and by multinational companies.

~~~
lacion
corporate you mean, most startups and valued tech companies don't give any
credit to formal education, and the real balance is moved by experience,
seconded only by cultural fit.

------
joeyspn
It'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 remote
to non-existing option. Blame it on the executives of your crappy company, and
obviously, the government...

4 - Gov not having a clue about scientific research, innovation and
entrepreneurship, with policies that fail to build a proper ecosystem for
startups, and also fail to connect academic and industry worlds (I.e: Silicon
Valley <-> Stanford).

5 - Back to 1

~~~
internaut
You're getting the downvote brigade but you're right. It's a many faceted
problem with plenty of blame to be shared around.

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.

------
konschubert
> It takes at least eight months for an experienced software developer to earn
> an Agile qualification and they also need the ability to deal with senior
> executives,

I am a bit confused by this sentence. How does one "ear an Agile
qualification"? Why does it take eight months? What is "the ability to deal
with senior executives"?

~~~
tremon
_What is "the ability to deal with senior executives"?_

Patience and prudence.

~~~
whyaduck
Actually, I think it's the ability to translate the state of a project into
risks, rewards and trade-offs. It's not necessarily an innately understood
skill for technical individual contributors.

------
HillaryBriss
Starting about 2009, there have been a lot of discussions about whether the
unemployment in the US was "structural" or not.

Some argued that a huge number of laborers and potential employees did not
have necessary skills and therefore would be unable to find work. Period. This
was a big component of unemployment.

Others including Paul Krugman and Dean Baker argued that, because employment
was down _across most every field_ , the cause of the unemployment was
insufficient demand. They basically likened it to the Great Depression, where
highly employable people were thrown out of work despite their skill levels.

This news story makes me think that we have some combination of the two
stories going on in Spain. And maybe also the US?

Of course, how the country responds to that situation is a separate
discussion.

Maybe the government can just borrow some cash (at historically low rates)
and, instead of building another airport somewhere, educate twenty thousand IT
engineers, even paying them to go to school. Maybe government could demand
that employers train people.

Also, what's going on in the EU with the free movement of labor? Don't some IT
people want to move from Estonia and Poland down to sunny Spain?

~~~
Findeton
In Spain, we just had elections on the 26th of June, and the conservatives
won. There is money, as taxes in Spain are high on wages but low on big
companies and the government's budget is 10 points lower % than the EU
average... but we have a conservative government.

~~~
switch007
PP won the most votes but not enough to secure a majority. Rajoy is currently
in talks with other parties to form a majority, hopefully "within a month."
Technically you still have a conservative government but who knows what will
happen.

------
mtrn
A company once flew me to Madrid for an interview. Unfortunately, I cannot
understand Spanish, but the receptionist at the hotel seemed to mumble to a
friend: look they are flying people here, but our people are unemployed. It
seemed a bit crazy for me as well, since I was unsure, if my person and skills
justified _that_ kind of effort.

The interview went fine and I think I was offered something around 30k, which
was below my current wage in another (non-capital) European city, so I had to
decline, although I loved Madrid and the team seemed really nice.

------
mooreds
Wonder if it has anything to do with low salaries?

Just as an example,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12017439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12017439)
has a pretty low salary for the skills they want.

~~~
merqurio
I don't think so.. Most of my friends left Spain looking for better long term
opportunities rather than money. Even if our economy (and politicians) sucks,
quality of life is pretty high with those salaries.

I think the problem is the polarisation in the population. Very well trained
people is leaving the country while non-skilled people remain.

Skilled people do not trust the system therefore they leave as soon as they
can.

~~~
nostrebored
Quality of life is high, but what if you have a long term goal of moving?
Making a lower wage even if proportionally you're taking home more money has a
break even point, and 35k in Spain doesn't hit it.

~~~
merqurio
Totally agree, i wasn't defending low salaries at all, just sharing my insider
experience of the reasons why people is leaving Spain.

------
mathattack
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 for elites, rather than the 5M
unemployed. Very hard to convert housing builders into programmers.

~~~
patrickaljord
Brexit will happen in 2 years at best. Even so, the UK would still offer work
visa to skilled EU workers, there's nothing stopping them from doing that, in
fact this is what they said they were going to do. Does everyone really think
Brexit is some kind of apocalypse or something for the UK? They love money as
much as anyone else and want to remain the finance capital of Europe because
money.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
Yes, but big part of the people that voted Leave are not the people that do
business or that like money above other things.

Many Leavers I've talked to justify their decision on "border control" and
"sovereignty". They have been given the power to decide and apparently they
were "better off with a grand or two less" (sic) "than being slaved to the
Eurocrats" (sic).

The problem with visas is that if I have to go through the burden and
uncertainty of visas for me and my family, I might as well just move to Paris,
Hamburg or Munich for no visas or Australia or California for good economy and
fucking decent weather. You'll still get talent, but the shortage will still
be much worse and you'll end up lowering your requirements.

~~~
patrickaljord
EU citizens probably won't event need a visa, just a passport. Especially from
rich western EU countries, like it was already the case before Schengen.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
The UK is not in Schengen, that's a common misconception :)

One of the points of the Leave campaign, reinforced after the vote by some of
its leaders like Michael Gove, is to setup a points system for immigration. If
there was no "limit EU migration" argument, Leave would have easily lost the
vote.

~~~
patrickaljord
I know it's not, it's why my wife can't get there :) That's why I said that's
how it was even _before_ Schengen, ie French and German didn't need a visa to
go to the UK even before the EU.

------
macspoofing
This was a frustrating article to read. I got the sense the author missed
something. Spain is part of the EU common market which numbers 500 million
people - how is it that this is only a problem for Spain, and why can't they
recruit fellow EU citizens to make-up the shortfall?

~~~
cloakandswagger
This assumption is the same mistake made by almost all supranational
federalists.

Europe is composed of different countries with vastly different languages,
cultures and economic conditions. Just because they're technically "joined"
together via treaties doesn't mean labor is going to naturally distribute
throughout the union.

~~~
themartorana
And yet they thought a shared currency would be no big deal.

~~~
cloakandswagger
Don't get me started.

Economists from around the world were adamant that the Euro was a terrible
idea when it was founded. Binding dozens of wildly differing economies to one
currency controlled by one central bank has always been a pipe dream, but it
takes decades for it to start to unravel.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The politicians knew a shared currency without sharing other aspects was a bad
idea, but they gambled that as the problems became manifest, they would be
solved by greater unity.

Maybe that was stupid, but it's a different kind of stupid than not listening
to the economists.

------
davidgerard
Pay. More. This. Is. The. Market. Speaking.

~~~
sbmassey
€200,000 in Spain seems a pretty good wage

~~~
ldng
Yeah, that's what the client is willing to pay to the consulting firm who
don't want to hire the guy at more than 24K ...

Sad truth.

------
p0nce
When you are willing to hire women, older people and provide adequate salaries
(dare I say work conditions), suddenly there isn't so much tech shortage.

~~~
ci5er
Couldn't 100% of your claim be solved with just the salary variable? What
evidence do you have that old+female+cheap people are not being considered as
part of the option matrix?

~~~
p0nce
No only anecdotal data that I hear again and again. Likewise, where is the
avidence about the tech shortage?

------
winestock
From the article:

"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."

So they're willing to pay ten times the going rate, but they're not willing to
take the time to train anyone?

But wait; there's more!

"But such people are thin on the ground in Spain. It takes at least eight
months for an experienced software developer to earn an Agile qualification
and _they also need the ability to deal with senior executives_ , limiting the
pool of people who could potentially fill the roles."

Again, note that they're willing to pay ten times the going rate, so training
them for eight months and then paying them the regular wage would pay for
itself after a few months on the job; but they still won't train. More
importantly, look at the part which I italicized. Dealing with senior
executives takes special skill? I am but a lowly suburban nerd, and the ways
of my betters intimidate me, so could someone enlighten me as to what that
journalist is talking about? I have a sneaking suspicion that Clay Shirky
knows.

[http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2013/11/healthcare-gov-and-
the-...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2013/11/healthcare-gov-and-the-gulf-
between-planning-and-reality/)

"Back in the mid-1990s, I did a lot of web work for traditional media. That
often meant figuring out what the client was already doing on the web, and how
it was going, so I’d find the techies in the company, and ask them what they
were doing, and how it was going. Then I’d tell management what I’d learned.
This always struck me as a waste of my time and their money; I was like an
overpaid bike messenger, moving information from one part of the firm to
another. I didn’t understand the job I was doing until one meeting at a
magazine company.

"The thing that made this meeting unusual was that one of their programmers
had been invited to attend, so management could outline their web strategy to
him. After the executives thanked me for explaining what I’d learned from log
files given me by their own employees just days before, the programmer leaned
forward and said “You know, we have all that information downstairs, but
nobody’s ever asked us for it.”

"I remember thinking “Oh, finally!” I figured the executives would be relieved
this information was in-house, delighted that their own people were on it,
maybe even mad at me for charging an exorbitant markup on local knowledge.
Then I saw the look on their faces as they considered the programmer’s offer.
The look wasn’t delight, or even relief, but contempt. The situation suddenly
came clear: I was getting paid to save management from the distasteful act of
listening to their own employees."

EDIT: formatting

~~~
shostack
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 that many more technically-inclined folks unfortunately lack.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "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 when you have directors who see themselves as
insulated from day to day challenges. I accept that there's a need for a long
term vision, but if someone isn't prepared to understand the details of what's
blocking it, they'll not be in a place to advise on how to fix it, and if
they're relying on other people to fix those organisational issues, what's the
point of having directors at all?

~~~
internaut
> This is part of the problem when you have directors who see themselves as
> insulated from day to day challenges. I accept that there's a need for a
> long term vision, but if someone isn't prepared to understand the details of
> what's blocking it, they'll not be in a place to advise on how to fix it,
> and if they're relying on other people to fix those organisational issues,
> what's the point of having directors at all?

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.

------
alienjr
There was a Polish composer, writer and politician Stefan Kisielewski who used
to say: "Socialism is a system which bravely fights problems that are not
known in any other system". That describes situation of Spain perfectly.

~~~
pvaldes
Nice cliche. That describes the situation perfectly, except by the small fact
that Socialism parties do not rule in Spain since a lot of years. We have the
equivalent to the Conservative Party, that... ehem, aren't exactly
"socialists".

------
BjoernKW
Language is a large part of this problem, not willing to pay market prices is
another.

Why else would recruiters have to look for candidates in Argentina when
there's a huge amount of suitable candidates in the EU with an automatic work
permit?

~~~
vacri
Argentines speak fluent Spanish, and will be able to understand complex and
subtle business requirements presented in Spanish.

~~~
BjoernKW
Therein lies the rub. In most other countries business people who have to deal
with subtle business requirements speak English decently well where in Spanish
business it's absolutely normal for a CEO of an international company to only
speak broken English at best.

------
Oletros
I've seen offer for senior .NET developers for 20.000€/year before taxes and
going through outsourcing companies.

20.000/year is 15.000/year after taxes.

------
heisenbit
Mr. Pimentel is a Managing Partner and regional director over several
countries and as such the main job is to talk the playbook and drum up
business. Finding good people is hard and we are the right guys to talk to.
Finder fees are proportional to salary so aiming high is important. He claims
on his web page to hire country sales directors and country managers so
talking salaries of 200k+ is probably quite natural for him. Maybe he is more
thinking of a person who can turn a dead end organization into an agile one -
such a feat is hard and requires a multitude of skills. In any case it is
likely that some things were mixed up in the interview.

One thing is clear - after the property bust in Spain and Portugal a lot of
the higher skilled and mobile people were heading elsewhere. There has been a
brain drain in the region. Disproportionally high (vs. average Spanish)
salaries may be required if mobile top talent is needed. Agile project
management or product ownership for run of the mill projects aren't those. But
when talking about roles that shape organizations then things may be
different.

------
njloof
One of my first jobs (in the US) had a great strategy for getting low cost
talent:

1\. Hire cheap 2\. Train on the job 3\. Lock in your investment with a multi-
year employment contract, broken down into options to "not renew" the contract
at 6-month, then 12-month, intervals.

Worked great, they got cheap talent and a means to weed people out, and I got
valuable training I used for the next 15 years.

------
fiatjaf
> From software developers and mathematical modelers to geriatric nurses and
> care workers, a mismatch in qualifications means companies are struggling to
> fill posts, even though the unemployment rate at 20.4 percent is the second-
> highest in Europe.

This is the result of years of malinvestiment in human capital. The Austrian
Theory of Business Cycles explain.

------
smsm42
So, if they don't have enough qualified workers, why don't they start creating
on-the-job training programs? I understand there's risk in such investment
(i.e., you train a person and then they leave for a higher salary) but there
are many ways to counter it. Is there something like that happening in Spain?
If not, why?

------
rcarmo
I've been pinged by recruiters for positions in Spain pretty much every week,
either multinationals who need to grow their presence or local corps looking
for experts. Cost of living is about the same as here in Portugal, but my
previous experience with local execs makes me leery of those opportunities.

------
SixSigma
The agriculture sector employs many North African illegal immigrants.

Visit the greenhouses of Almeria and see what happens when you take your
camera from its bag.

~~~
patrickaljord
The do so because local people don't want to do these jobs.

~~~
SixSigma
If people don't want to do a job, it is because it is not suitably
remunerated.

Using illegal labour instead should not be defended. It undercuts the position
of the legal workers.

~~~
patrickaljord
Paying people more for these jobs would make the end product way more
expensive and make it hard to compete on the global market and make your
country not competitive (what's happening here in France). Another side effect
is that because the price of the end product gets more expensive, people will
have to work more in order to buy said products or just avoid buying them.

~~~
SixSigma
The EU restricts agricultural imports, fixes prices and pays out massive
subsidy for non-production via the CAP.

Perhaps market manipulation by the EU should be reassessed if the consequence
is widespread and necessary use of illegal labour by some of the richest
farmers in Europe.

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.ht...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_5.2.1.html)

Objectives

Article 39 TFEU sets out the specific objectives of the CAP:

1 to increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and
ensuring the optimum use of the factors of production, in particular labour;

2 to ensure a fair standard of living for farmers;

3 to stabilise markets;

4 to ensure the availability of supplies;

5 to ensure reasonable prices for consumers.

~~~
patrickaljord
I totally agree that we should get rid of the CAP. Not going to argue on this
one.

------
vonnik
The skills gap is very real in America, too. It can be hard to find the people
you need. And many of the folks who are out of work don't fit the bill. There
are specific training programs, sponsored by large companies, that are trying
to give post-high-school trainees the right vocational skills... (Can't
remember the names atm!)

------
reledi
There's a lot of talented Spaniards out there. I know because I can proudly
say many of them are my teammates.

Did I mention we are hiring? Clojure, Ruby, Data.

[https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/careers/](https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/careers/)

------
Animats
That's what the US has done. There are lots of available workers in the US
with non-salable skills.

------
forthefuture
It looks like Spain has almost reached the US' rate of economic non-
participation.

[http://www.ine.es/en/prensa/epa_prensa_en.htm](http://www.ine.es/en/prensa/epa_prensa_en.htm)

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery)

------
fiatjaf
At the same time, I bet there are a lot of Spaniards getting majors on
philosophy and other weed-smoking specialties.

------
ssjohal
So EU was merely a clever plan by stronger economies to suck brains out of
struggling economies?

~~~
fwn
I guess a good rule of thumb is: If you can pack what you think is the
motivation for such a big and time intensive project as the EU into one tweet,
it's probably far from the truth.

------
SFJulie
It means the expectation of the demand (companies) are not matching what the
market provides.

Having to look for a job in Europa, I dare say most job offers are laughable.

C#, PHP and java are MODERN technologies that no one should be scared of.

Windev is a very good tool.

Mysql and mssql are the only two worthy databases.

Free software is a free as a bier.

AGILE is SOOO complex...it has to be officiated religiously like ITIL or ISO
norms.

They want software devs on the market already proefficient in
proprietary/tricky technologies, and no one understand why jobless persons
with so much time cannot buy these 10K€ tools and use their worthless time in
self formation.

And salary expectation are low : a coder MUST not be paid more than any
manager. Even the manager responsible for the cleaning team of 500m² office
with a headcount of 2.

They just have irrealistic expectations. That's all folks.

------
mikerichards
So Spain isn't Germany, but I'm curious why even in the midwest (St. Louis no
less), senior developers easily command $120k+.

But I guess this also goes to the point why SV is only playing "normal" senior
developers $150k/yr?

Unless you're really digging the Bay Area lifestyle (or "I'll get my chance in
the next cool startup), why even bother.

------
internaut
Europe in general, with some rare exceptions, does not value the kinds of
skills that are selected for in SV.

The culture is bad. The incentives are all wrong. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

The typical business person in Europe considers him or herself top of the
pecking order. This only looks to be true relatively because they hire less
capable workers. These are the exact kind of people who imagine hiring twice
as many developers gets the job accomplished faster i.e. simpletons.

The typical software engineer is at least one standard deviation above them.
Just not in one specific area. In everything. I have friends who did part-time
degrees in literature or language studies while they were also studying for
computer science at some of the most elite european universities. Most geeks
are systems thinkers and have no trouble in grokking areas outside of their
main thing. Many of us refuse to be put into a box.

Having interests in exclusively one thing is a pretty fair indicator of not
being very adaptive, I'd say it's almost defintional. That is the kind of
person they want to hire. You can hire them, but they won't be very good.

Then you get these idiots who think they can run circles around us because
they have the phone number of a venture capitalist or bank manager. Get a grip
boys, your money doesn't count for much when a software engineer can be ramen
profitable so easily. I have all manner of skills I don't bother to put on the
market because the rates of pay are so pitiful and I can obtain better results
by doing my own thing. Lots of other people just physically move. This is then
misread by the business community as 'not enough skills'.

The other thing is that most projects they offer are really boring grunt work
where you learn nothing by doing them. If there was an actual project we found
cool or innovative we'd probably work for lower base salary plus some equity,
but that's not the kind of work we get here in Europe, those kinds of benefits
are reserved for Clod-Class. A good many programmers would prefer to work 20
hrs a week as janitors and then work on interesting projects rather than put
up with this bullshit plus work 60-70 hour weeks. How many European
programmers are told they'll be paid 20-30 euro per hour but actually are
required to work three or four hours a day for free? Apparently they like to
think we can't do arithmetic but can order a machine to do floating point
operations just fine.

Diagnosis: Failure to Coordinate. Failure of Imagination.

