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In Italy there's always been the dream of the "posto fisso," the fixed position. Families celebrate when their son or daughter find a job in a bank or some othe
by davidedicillo 16y ago
In Italy there's always been the dream of the "posto fisso," the fixed position. Families celebrate when their son or daughter find a job in a bank or some other big companies, because with the actual laws, firing people is almost impossible. I remember when the insurance company where my mother was working part-time had to reduce their workforce, they gave her 3 years of salary in advance for her to quit, because there was no way to fire her.
Of course not everyone is the same. I know personally great guys who decided to step out of the grid and launch their company, or leave the country for better shores, like myself. If you want to work in the web industry the only two ways to make moneys are services (web agencies, consulting, etc.) or ads. In Italy debit cards can't be use for online transactions, and most of the italian population doesn't have a credit card. Some to purchase online uses prepaid credit cards, but even those, aren't really common. And there is a trust issue. People in Italy don't like to buy stuff online. And because of all these reasons, it's really hard to just create a product charge people for it. My Christmasfy Me iPhone app was a freemium application I made last Christmas, and was ranked among the top downloaded apps in Italy, but still, while in the US my conversion rate was close to 5%, in Italy was around 0.2%.
I love Italy, it's where I come from and where all my family is, but what do you expect from a country where if you want to buy an internet domain, you still have to send a fax...
- davidw 16y ago> And there is a trust issue. There is a huge trust issue. People spend a lot of time and energy trying to ensure they won't get ripped off, and a minority that is still too large spends a lot of time and energy actually trying to rip other people off. As a consultant, I've sometimes found it easier to deal with customers who I have never met in the US, rather than Italian firms (although at the moment I'm working remotely with some pretty good people in Milan, which is a nice change). Ultimately, all this is energy lost to actual productivity. And if you try and go through the justice system, it can be expensive and slower than in other places (although not always - my wife recovered some unpaid wages pretty quickly and easily several years back). So yeah, that's a big issue with doing business in Italy, and not an easy one to fix. > if you want to buy an internet domain, you still have to send a fax. I think they finally changed that, or so I heard. Here's my account of trying to register welton.it: http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2007/08/18/confronting-the-bureaucratic-beast-registering-an-italian-domain http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2007/08/18/confronting-the...
- davidedicillo 16y agoI had to do that few months ago when I bought a .it domain, but good for them if they finally changed it. Now they should start accepting CC from abroad, so I can stop asking my dad to use his for my italian domains...
- drtse4 16y agoI didn't expect something so painful... and a few posts below i've noticed you had also an pleasant discussion with the national tv guys too. That could have been waaay worse :)
- paolomaffei 16y agoThe problem is that almost no-one today is offering the posto fisso. None of my employees has a contract like that, for example. Two sides of a medal: -people with a degree need to do 1 or 2 unpaid stages to get to a contract position. After that there's still a lot of uncertainity about if your job will last or what, and you might be paid not enough to go outside your parent's house until 30 or so. -i really have trouble finding someone with a clue to hire. either they want too much (like 2K/month right out of school) or they don't know shit about the job, don't want to work hard and generally have no clue ("oh you mean i'm supposed to solve problem and you won't just tell me what to do?"). It drives me mad, we're full of young without an idea of what it takes to survive in life - they take everything for granted and expect to land a good job without doing nothing. But they only find people that wants to exploit them as bad as they want to exploit employers - this isn't functional at all. that's why we have A LOT of small businesses in Italy and that's why I didn't even bother looking for a job after getting my undergraduate degree, I just opened my firm (consulting web agency), went out and sold a couple of websites.
- davidedicillo 16y agoWhat's wrong with 2k/month right out of school if they are good enough? Most of my employees are still in college, but they literally kick ass, so why not to give them what they are worth, independently of their age. We think salaries are based on age and experience and not skills. I moved to the US right after school in Italy, I was making way more than that, I was able to rent a place, buy a car (a used one) and live what is considered a sweet life in Italy. And I'm just a designer... developers would make way much more right after college...
- paolomaffei 16y agoI'm not saying it's not fair, I'm just saying that they aren't going to find a job with a salary like that in Italy. This was also why I started my company, mind you.
- lelele 16y agoI think "right out of school" means youngsters without hands-on experience. Of course I think the poster would pay more for experienced teenagers.