4 ms·

Having spent more than a year in Barcelona in/around development & start up circles my biggest take away is that even the best developers I met were more intere

Having spent more than a year in Barcelona in/around development & start up circles my biggest take away is that even the best developers I met were more interested in the status of becoming a manager instead of building something great. Additionally and more concerning is that there is also a very real sense in Barcelona that “innovation happens elsewhere” when you talk to these same smart people. It is strange and it is like they’re looking for permission to do something different. It is almost as if the social contructs support doing things the way they’ve always been done. Example: Even side projects would never get shipped and when I probed as to why my friend told me he “couldn't justify spending effort on this project to his family because he wasn’t getting paid for the work.” ... he had already built it the entire website and codebase and never shipped. (Surreal) I like another commenter think about starting my next venture in Spain but my gut and experience says it would be a bad idea if you needed to hire tech talent locally.

kartan 8y ago
> were more interested in the status of becoming a manager instead of building something great. It is not the status. For long being a manager was the only way of getting a reasonable salary and to get to older age with a job. Developers were young and badly paid. It existed a generation for whom being a developer or just knowing about computer was a high pay job, but that disappeared fast. Nowadays is changing fast. The main factor is companies that create product instead of consultancy companies that sell labour. For a consultancy, their profit is the difference between what a company pays and what the employee gets a salary. For a company with a product, the product quality, features and development time is important, so they pay and respect developers a lot more. I have been part of the indie game development scene in Barcelona. I have met several people in their twenties, half my age, with published successful games in mobile stores and Steam. Barcelona, the city I know, is changing fast for the better. Even that it is going to take time to get rid of the old habits. But I can see myself going back in a decade if they want to hire a developer in his fifties.

kartan 8y ago

> were more interested in the status of becoming a manager instead of building something great. It is not the status. For long being a manager was the only way of getting a reasonable salary and to get to older age with a job. Developers were young and badly paid. It existed a generation for whom being a developer or just knowing about computer was a high pay job, but that disappeared fast. Nowadays is changing fast. The main factor is companies that create product instead of consultancy companies that sell labour. For a consultancy, their profit is the difference between what a company pays and what the employee gets a salary. For a company with a product, the product quality, features and development time is important, so they pay and respect developers a lot more. I have been part of the indie game development scene in Barcelona. I have met several people in their twenties, half my age, with published successful games in mobile stores and Steam. Barcelona, the city I know, is changing fast for the better. Even that it is going to take time to get rid of the old habits. But I can see myself going back in a decade if they want to hire a developer in his fifties.