8 ms·

The Exodus of Tech from Portugal

68 points by iProject 14y ago

davidw 14y ago
Sounds quite similar to Italy. About politics: you can loathe it all you want, but unfortunately, you'll need to get your hands dirty if you want to fix things - and even then, even if the laws and economics are better, it'll still take time. Just leave the actual discussion of politics to some other site:-) They finally passed a very weak-sauce, complicated version of a law that some of us are pushing for here in Italy: reducing the costs of creating a limited liability company ( http://www.srlfacile.org http://www.srlfacile.org ), but it does show that if you work at it, you can accomplish things.
- danmaz74 14y ago
  The situation is really preoccupying, because if the best tech talent emigrates the economic potential of a country is immediately reduced, and this is not going to help economies that are already stagnating. I'm wondering myself if it would be possible to start consulting part-time from Italy to finance my startup attempt. I wouldn't like to be forced to leave, but that is becoming more and more likely at the moment.
  - davidw 14y ago
    The best thing is to make sure there is a reason, and support for returning: people going abroad and bringing back knowledge and money can actually be quite beneficial. In India and China, tons of businesses are started by people returning home after some amount of time in the US, for instance. In terms of being pleasant places to live, Italy and Portugal are lucky, but they need to fix some other things... This is a good book detailing some of what needs fixing, although it's mostly "old hat" for anyone who lives in Italy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F86HBK/?tag=dedasys-20 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F86HBK/?tag=dedasys-20 so it may not be worth reading if you're Italian.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - davidw 14y ago
    [ Someone, from a southern European country, talks about incorporating in Delaware ] There may be some tax issues with that, though, if you live and work at home, but have your company in the US. It's something to be careful about.
- pdelgallego 14y ago
  Same problem in Spain. There is so much paperwork, red tape and bureaucracy that I incorporated in Delaware.
arethuza 14y ago
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?
- bjornsing 14y ago
  Yea, it's just that we Europeans fight it. National sovereignty and all that. EDIT: And let me add - the usual weapon is taxpayer money. ;)
- yeureka 14y ago
  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?
  - justincormack 14y ago
    There will not be any state pensions in any of those countries by the time you retire, make your own provision. This debt crisis is about unpayable liabilities, among other things.
  - malbertife 14y ago
    The pension rights you earn will follow you (at least in EU): http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/retire/state-pension-claims-and-calculation/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/retire/state-pensi...
alexdias 14y ago
I'm a soon to be MSc graduate from a top university in Portugal (Technical University of Lisbon). I've been thinking about my options, and right now I'm pretty sure that I'll try to find my first job outside of Portugal. I've got very few colleagues that I know of that will do the same. Most will go to consultancy companies - that's the market in Portugal. The remaining will go for PhDs. However, one thing that they all have in common is that they have spoken of leaving Portugal sometime in the future. Be it after their first year or so in consultancy or after their PhD, the thought of leaving has crossed their minds. Given that other industries are a lot worse than tech right now (civil engineers, lawyers, etc) I'm not really sure how this will turn out for the country.
tluyben2 14y ago
We just opened up in PT http://appsalad.com/appdesign/nieuw-appsalad-portugal-is-een-feit/ http://appsalad.com/appdesign/nieuw-appsalad-portugal-is-een... (Dutch) and we'll be opening a second office in Faro soon. Most devs want to stay in their country and we don't mind giving them that opportunity. I never understood why people would leave what they love though; be that India or Portugal or whatever; there is plenty to do and live for if you are resourceful and the Portugese I met so far definitely are. It's like when we tried to open an office in Spain; everyone (from the uni there) was complaining there are no jobs and they have to move to Germany. So we opened a company and started recruiting. The people who applied didn't want to work actually. So I asked the university dean and he said; they want jobs for eternity they won't 'risk' anything else. The logic eludes me, but suffice it to say; there are plenty of jobs, there is simply a mismatch between expectations and the jobs provided. Naive expectations. When people go to Germany, expectations lower because it's the promised land. Wages are higher, but the conditions are not better and definitely not what you would have gone for in the 'home land', but they take it anyway because the grass is greener. Having talked to so many people in the south, it's a thing only few people 'get'; you have to embrace the crisis and see the things you can change. It's a turnaround point for all those things which are not well; small things like the difference between the staff in Worten and Mediamarkt. The way to fix the economy must come from many places and this crazy way people treat clients in the south must come to a complete halt. Changing the system from within will work; leaving the country won't, that's just selfish and lazy in a lot of ways. And you have no excuses; there is work, there is opportunity, you just need to try a bit harder as well, it's a crisis.
- danmaz74 14y ago
  "this crazy way people treat clients in the south must come to a complete halt": Care to specify you mean here?
  - tluyben2 14y ago
    Well if you live in southern EU you have, as an example, Worten and Mediamarkt => they both do electronic 'stuff', games, tvs, washers, etc. They are quite comparable, except Worten is Portugese and Mediamarkt is German. And that difference is a huge gap. The staff is Worten, in all branches I have been, and, when I had enough, my friends have been, is downright shit. We are talking girls with braces talking to their boyfriends, not even looking at you, or looking at you annoyed, when you ask anything (which they have no answer to). Mediamarkt, again, all the branches I have been in, the staff is friendly and if they are not and you complain, you get something as compensation. Not so in Worten. They spit in your face and they don't care. I spend a lot of time in Spain, Germany and Portugal, but I live in the Netherlands and the quality of service in Spain especially is of such a level that in the Netherlands you would be, as a company, on national television every night. It's appalling. Almost every company, especially big ones, don't care at all about customer service. The electrical company in the south, Endesa, just hangs up randomly. They don't have a CRM or anything, just non-caring students who don't know anything about the subject matter and they'll just tell you it's your problem and hang up (after you have waited for 1 hour with shit muzak). Whatever you are complaining about. In the Netherlands, there would be an outcry and it would be fixed (this has happened with UPC, but that was over 10 years ago... and they now lick your feet when you call). In the average bar it's like a 'tourist attraction' to have the 'angry/shaggy/shitty bar guy'. They usually look like they hate you. And they never saw you. If your Spanish is good enough, you can just pelt them with derogative stuff as they seem to like the insult. But if you come with your family for a vacation, you might not want to verbally fight all the time. Besides some ancient bars in Amsterdam, you would not get away with that in the Netherlands. Your money is tourists; be nice. But no, besides some well trained staff in some hotels/restaurants/bars, the average way to treat someone you never saw is to be shortish or downright hostile to them. The cases we had in the north (NL/DE) resulted in companies going bankrupt or public outcry; I have seen in Spain/Greece (less in PT so far) that it is very normal to treat people that way. And that doesn't work for people from the north, who are, accidentally, the people who have the cash. So maybe adapt? It'll make life better as well; I don't think being angry works well for your person either. Having said that; ofcourse there are plenty of exceptions, the village I go to often has very friendly people. Unfortunately those are usually the older people. The younger generation is fat and spoiled and angry. Why? The news probably? Hearing every day your country is going under is not stimulating while the older generation lived with Franco / Salazar and know that this is the best they every had. Edit: I know about southern Spain; Andalusia, so the comments I make are about that region of the country. I love that place and I'll die there, but it's something different if you are used to the north of EU.
petercooper 14y ago
And while this author notes Portuguese contacts headed to the UK and Germany, I've noticed the same but with several leaving the UK for the Bay Area (with zero going to the rest of the EU).
- megablast 14y ago
  This may have a lot to do with getting funding. London has just started to become interested in funding startups, and EIS and the new SEIS are helping, but it is nothing compared to the US. Even the smallest city in the US has more funding opportunities than London. It takes a while for people to change their habits.
- josemariaruiz 14y ago
  Yeap, UK people are heading for the Valley and for NY. Curious migratory movements, isn't it? My question is, where is the ultimate cause? what about USA people? Are they heading to China? :)
  - macuenca 14y ago
    That is a (mis)perception most people have (myself included) regarding career development. Professionals follow the path of the higher salary. For me, the path can be something like this: South America < PIGS < France/Germany/UK < Rest of The USA < SV/NYC That being said, there's also people who give more value to quality of life. The place that work for in Spain have several people from The US, Sweden and UK, even though they could be making more money back in their countries.
sbierwagen 14y ago
Fun fact: Portugal is about as big (area and population, though it has half the GDP) as Ohio, the seventh largest US state.
yeureka 14y ago
Not surprising. I left Portugal in 2003 to work in the games industry. There were still plenty of jobs in Lisbon then and salaries were not so bad. At the time I thought I would be away for a couple of years "just to get some experience". I would love to go back to be closer to my family and old friends, to enjoy the weather the beaches and nice food, but as another expat told me, our jobs just do not exist in Lisbon. Setting up a business is hard with the asinine tax system currently in place ( taxes are complicated, very high and if your business has zero profits it pays a special tax ), a culture of late payment by clients ( it is so common to have unpaid invoices that you can give these to your bank in exchange for a loan ), the absolute aversion to risk taking by most businesses, the ingrained idea that what is foreign is better and the implied notion that to win a contract you need connections to a politician or a civil servant. I know a lot of professionals in knowledge based industries that have left, some with their entire families. In a recent poll, more than half of university students plan to leave the country. At this rate Portugal will become mainly a touristic destination.
- tluyben2 14y ago
  And how are you going to help that? Or you don't care? The asinine tax system is more or less the same as I'm used to in NL/DE. Taxes are not for your pleasure. Sure it could be easier, but it's not easier in most civilized places. I'm not Portugese, but I would do my best for my country and not leave like you have no other choice.
  - justincormack 14y ago
    I think you will find that the tax system (and permits etc) are worse. Tax rates are higher in de/nl but the system is somewhat simpler. Spain, just to pick a random example, just removed a six month process to get a permit to open a retail location. And it is not like you can apply online or anything. I am in the UK where most stuff is even easier (was looking at setting up a company in different European countries, which you can do in the UK for £4.99, but is much more complex elsewhere, and requires a lot of capital).
    - 14y ago
josemariaruiz 14y ago
Same situation in Spain, incredible brain drain of IT people. In the last months ~ 40% of my IT colleagues in Spain have decided to move to other countries (UK and Germany mainly). In Spain people a few years ago said stupid things to justify not moving to other countries where salaries were like 3 times Spanish ones: weather, food and «quality of life». There is another factor for this delayed and flood-like emigration... FAMILY!. In all Mediterranean countries family is very a strong influence. I even can say that individuals doesn't exists as they are in other countries. A 18 years old in Spain is like a 13 years old in UK. You can be in your 30's and the family will still be pushing you to be in the «right path». For many, many years family decided that the best prospect for their young college graduates was, without any doubt, working for the government. In Spain it means a decent salary and a job for life (you cannot be fired under ANY circumstance, ANY AT ALL, you kill someone, go to jail and when you get out your job will be there waiting for you!). Once this absurd situation ended (the government in Spain duplicated its work force in 3 years) the «family» didn't know how to react. But the government knows better, in the last 3 years the tv programs «Spaniard around the world» showing happy people living in other countries. So now, the «family» is pushing their children to go outside. My company is hiring people in London and we only receive CV from Spaniard and Greeks. My boss told me that 1 year and a half ago it was really rare to find people from these countries in selection processed but that now the recruiters are flooded with their CVs. I suspect that the mediterranean IT guy/pal will be the new Polish plumber in UK
- yeureka 14y ago
  "I suspect that the mediterranean IT guy/pal will be the new Polish plumber in UK" That actually made me laugh. I will be a stereotype!
- davidw 14y ago
  > In Spain people a few years ago said stupid things to justify not moving to other countries where salaries were like 3 times Spanish ones: weather, food and «quality of life». I don't think that's stupid. I get seriously depressed when it's gray, gray, gray all the time, which is one of the reasons I moved from Oregon to Italy many years ago. I also like how some interpersonal dynamics are here: all my 'nerd' friends here have always fit in pretty well, and don't seem to have the stories that people do in the US about cliques and being excluded and intellectual achievement being looked down on. Maybe some teasing, maybe not being the most popular people, but they all seem to fit in pretty well. It depends on who you are and what you like, and how much you're willing to sacrifice. Currently, the sacrifice is much larger because of how poorly things are going in many Mediterranean countries, so it makes more sense to leave.
tbastos 14y ago
I've been living in Portugal for ~6 months, working remotely for my previous employers in Brazil (I'm 1/2 portuguese). The quality of life I get here is 10x what I had in Rio, while my cost of living was almost halved. Indeed I've never understood why the tech industry here isn't 100x stronger. It's a very attractive place to live, with low cost of living, lots of space for offices and buildings, fairly decent infra-structure, etc. Somewhere the portuguese politicians must be screwing up big time.
josemariaruiz 14y ago
«Oh, there are plenty of entrepreneurs, mind you. But many of them are “serial” entrepreneurs, whereby “serial” I actually mean lazy, ineffectual bums living off subsidies for years on end while they latch on to one incubator after another and leech them for all their worth.» That was a good one, a perfect description of the standard Spanish entrepreneur :) You have to innovate and innovation is something decided by a committee of bureaucrats who have never worked in the private sector in their life! No real VCs, there are a few in Spain but they invested in risky things like construction, subsided agriculture and in companies with government contracts. It's so easy to flight to London and meet real investors instead of doing all the ass-kissing of government agents and banks to get subsides... yet no one did it. Hubris was the cause.
miguelpais 14y ago
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 live at. What's missing then? For me what is missing in Portugal, and what makes me want to go away from it is mostly bad working conditions: the notion that the IT guy is the new slave. I have had older colleagues saying to me that they were working on a Sunday at 11pm and have seen people from consulting companies coming to my university and proudly saying that when we would be working at their company "we could say goodbye to that cinema evening with friends". These consulting companies, some of which are always eager to hire (which leaves us wondering what is happening to their workforce), exploit the fact that these graduates are used to semesters of constant crunch time and exploit them by putting them in the same state in their companies. People are expected to work past their time, and most of them do... and for what? 1200 euros before taxes and you are considered lucky. If you don't accept that paycheck someone else will. I did in my last college year an Erasmus in Sweden that came now to an end, and I'm not coming back to Portugal. I've found things to be very different here. There is a huge respect for life outside work, and the jobs actually pay the graduates with the salaries that reward them for their effort and knowledge. The problem is maybe precisely this one: graduates feeling that there is no reward waiting for them by the end of college.
- tluyben2 14y ago
  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 occupied with career and such and want to go to 'the big companies'. They are not fun; Logica, Cap gemini or even Outsystems (who are 'small' but SHOULD be PT pride!); these are stable companies but they have a lot of experience how to manipulate and exploit people. The cultural thing (apparently?) that all students want to have for-life jobs (never occurred to me during or after university) and careers is a problem, as this won't happen in the north either. You'll get a contract 'for life' here because it doesn't really matter for the employer to give you that or temporary; you are protected mostly, so it's easier to just give you an eternal contract and use the court to force you out if need be.
g123g 14y ago
I think one of the solutions that these countries can work is to promote high skill immigration to their countries. Something similar to what Australia and Canada are doing. Give the potential immigrants a chance to become full EU nationals in 4-5 years. I am pretty sure lot of skilled ppl from developing nations will be ready to move for that to these countries which offer a great quality of life. It might also help them overcome the problems of aging population in these countries as well. But the only caveat is that immigration process is tightly controlled to allow the most suitable applicants only.
megablast 14y ago
I have seen this in the UK. When I first moved to the UK, about 8 years ago, their were loads of Aussies around, lots of people coming into work anywhere in the UK. The Aussie dollar was about $3=£1. Last year I came back to the UK, the dollar is $1.5=£1, there are hardly any aussies around, and lots of people are trying to get work in Australia. This is party because of the Aussie dollar being so strong, and Australia withstanding the GFC thanks to China and the Banks.
fun2have 14y ago
If you are in Portugal and want to work for a fun innovative start up. Come and work for us. So far we have grown from 2 person to over 12 person in a year been here. http://webnographer.theresumator.com/ http://webnographer.theresumator.com/ for a bit more background here on why we did it http://blog.webnographer.com/2010/10/an-rd-office-in-lisbon/ http://blog.webnographer.com/2010/10/an-rd-office-in-lisbon/
- bpedro 14y ago
  You did it basically because it's cheaper than other countries, right? “I needed a European base with low operational costs, talented people and a high quality of life."
anil_mamede 14y ago
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 are some efforts in entrepreneurship but most of "startup" ideas falls into the same bin like social networks for cakes or events, project tracking systems or business cards mobile apps. There is much buzz around the startup concept and the idea of having your own business but not on ideas for products that offer real value to people. In an environment like this it is difficult for a programmer to evolve
- pimentel 14y ago
  That's so right. One classic "success" story of the Portuguese web is http://www.adegga.com/ 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 people, once a week. And there's always the team wanting to open a spa and bringing their "idea" to all incubators. My solution was to work in close relationship to the university and a university spun-off company. Some interesting computer-vision stuff is made here, from time to time.
  - anil_mamede 14y ago
    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.
    - pimentel 14y ago
      I never used it, so I cannot comment on the technological nature of Adegga, but I imagine it's as technological as any other social network. Outsystems seems to be pretty successful, yeah. But it's a software development platform, in which you drag an "if" block from a palette and drop it in a canvas. Most people prefer typing "if".
andrewl-hn 14y ago
A personal anecdote. I know a pretty good PHP developer from Portugal who moved to Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine recently. He started dating a girl from there some time before and visited the country several times. So, when they decided to move in together he preferred to move to Ukraine himself since he could find a much better pay here. For a record, Dnipropetrovsk is not a capital but still a fairy large IT center (one of the top 5 cities) with about 2000 software developers employed in total (growing by 500 each year). Ukraine might seem a surprising choice to somebody but the tax burden is generally much lower and as a result one can get a pretty good deal salary-wise. For example, right now I'm making significantly more in Kiev than I used to do in Oslo, Norway, which is considered to be a pretty lucrative place to work and live in Europe. The development community is pretty large and thriving. Large part of positions is in outsourcing but there are a plenty of product companies or research centers, too. The company where I work now started hiring people form US and Western Europe. We are working on NLP systems and there's a lack of local talent with ML and AI skills. For example, we recently hired a machine learning specialist from Spain and we are very happy to have him on board. We also work with linguists from the US. The world is sure a very different place now!
- tbastos 14y ago
  Now you sir have blown my mind! I've been to Kiev and the Crimea in the summer... very lovely country, with even more lovely girls, not to mention great food/beer. If it wasn't for the dreadful winter I'd call it paradise lol And apparently ML/AI skills are in high demand everywhere.
olifante 14y ago
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.
- Turing_Machine 14y ago
  "It's kind of a class thing: high class people do not dirty their hands with manual labor and boring technical stuff." There may be some regional variants. A friend of mine who worked with some devs from the UK said that there the split is between guys who only write code (the 'higher class') and guys who might actually know how to plug in an Ethernet cable (the 'lower class'). I don't know if this is true in general, or just of the organization where he worked.
  - olifante 14y ago
    As in most societies, there's bound to be a pecking order of some sorts, and I'm not saying that developers are at the rock-bottom of that order. And of course developers can be self-entitled, arrogant, obnoxious people — I might even be one of those :-) Whether one appreciates or resents developers, the fact of the matter is that most moderately talented developers have some notion that they possess a valuable and hard-to-acquire skill which paradoxically doesn't empower them, due to the relentless effort by companies to commoditize developers and treat them as fungible resources. Lacking power to effect any kind of meaningful change, developers with in-demand skills often end up voting with their feet, and organizations fail to accumulate and develop human capital.
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ssn 14y ago
The so called 'exodus' that Portugal is suffering from isn't limited to the tech industry. It affects all areas and is directly related to the current 'impoverishment' politics being followed in the country. While interesting, this essay is very shortsighted.
tomboa 14y ago
Leaving Portugal to UK was the best thing I have done for my career as Software Developer. In Portugal I could't go any further because I didn't hold computer engineering degree. In UK, I've reached Lead Developer position, and now Technical Project Manager. By contrast in Portugal nobody would even invite me in for an interview because the degree was a requirement. Moving abroad hasn't always been easy. But I've found that beside the language everything else is purely down to your performance and personal ambitions. Regards

68 points by iProject 14y ago

Sounds quite similar to Italy. About politics: you can loathe it all you want, but unfortunately, you'll need to get your hands dirty if you want to fix things - and even then, even if the laws and economics are better, it'll still take time. Just leave the actual discussion of politics to some other site:-) They finally passed a very weak-sauce, complicated version of a law that some of us are pushing for here in Italy: reducing the costs of creating a limited liability company ( http://www.srlfacile.org http://www.srlfacile.org ), but it does show that if you work at it, you can accomplish things.

danmaz74 14y ago
The situation is really preoccupying, because if the best tech talent emigrates the economic potential of a country is immediately reduced, and this is not going to help economies that are already stagnating. I'm wondering myself if it would be possible to start consulting part-time from Italy to finance my startup attempt. I wouldn't like to be forced to leave, but that is becoming more and more likely at the moment.
- davidw 14y ago
  The best thing is to make sure there is a reason, and support for returning: people going abroad and bringing back knowledge and money can actually be quite beneficial. In India and China, tons of businesses are started by people returning home after some amount of time in the US, for instance. In terms of being pleasant places to live, Italy and Portugal are lucky, but they need to fix some other things... This is a good book detailing some of what needs fixing, although it's mostly "old hat" for anyone who lives in Italy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F86HBK/?tag=dedasys-20 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F86HBK/?tag=dedasys-20 so it may not be worth reading if you're Italian.
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- davidw 14y ago
  [ Someone, from a southern European country, talks about incorporating in Delaware ] There may be some tax issues with that, though, if you live and work at home, but have your company in the US. It's something to be careful about.
pdelgallego 14y ago
Same problem in Spain. There is so much paperwork, red tape and bureaucracy that I incorporated in Delaware.

arethuza 14y ago

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?

bjornsing 14y ago
Yea, it's just that we Europeans fight it. National sovereignty and all that. EDIT: And let me add - the usual weapon is taxpayer money. ;)
yeureka 14y ago
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?
- justincormack 14y ago
  There will not be any state pensions in any of those countries by the time you retire, make your own provision. This debt crisis is about unpayable liabilities, among other things.
- malbertife 14y ago
  The pension rights you earn will follow you (at least in EU): http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/retire/state-pension-claims-and-calculation/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/retire/state-pensi...

alexdias 14y ago

I'm a soon to be MSc graduate from a top university in Portugal (Technical University of Lisbon). I've been thinking about my options, and right now I'm pretty sure that I'll try to find my first job outside of Portugal. I've got very few colleagues that I know of that will do the same. Most will go to consultancy companies - that's the market in Portugal. The remaining will go for PhDs. However, one thing that they all have in common is that they have spoken of leaving Portugal sometime in the future. Be it after their first year or so in consultancy or after their PhD, the thought of leaving has crossed their minds. Given that other industries are a lot worse than tech right now (civil engineers, lawyers, etc) I'm not really sure how this will turn out for the country.

tluyben2 14y ago

We just opened up in PT http://appsalad.com/appdesign/nieuw-appsalad-portugal-is-een-feit/ http://appsalad.com/appdesign/nieuw-appsalad-portugal-is-een... (Dutch) and we'll be opening a second office in Faro soon. Most devs want to stay in their country and we don't mind giving them that opportunity. I never understood why people would leave what they love though; be that India or Portugal or whatever; there is plenty to do and live for if you are resourceful and the Portugese I met so far definitely are. It's like when we tried to open an office in Spain; everyone (from the uni there) was complaining there are no jobs and they have to move to Germany. So we opened a company and started recruiting. The people who applied didn't want to work actually. So I asked the university dean and he said; they want jobs for eternity they won't 'risk' anything else. The logic eludes me, but suffice it to say; there are plenty of jobs, there is simply a mismatch between expectations and the jobs provided. Naive expectations. When people go to Germany, expectations lower because it's the promised land. Wages are higher, but the conditions are not better and definitely not what you would have gone for in the 'home land', but they take it anyway because the grass is greener. Having talked to so many people in the south, it's a thing only few people 'get'; you have to embrace the crisis and see the things you can change. It's a turnaround point for all those things which are not well; small things like the difference between the staff in Worten and Mediamarkt. The way to fix the economy must come from many places and this crazy way people treat clients in the south must come to a complete halt. Changing the system from within will work; leaving the country won't, that's just selfish and lazy in a lot of ways. And you have no excuses; there is work, there is opportunity, you just need to try a bit harder as well, it's a crisis.

danmaz74 14y ago
"this crazy way people treat clients in the south must come to a complete halt": Care to specify you mean here?
- tluyben2 14y ago
  Well if you live in southern EU you have, as an example, Worten and Mediamarkt => they both do electronic 'stuff', games, tvs, washers, etc. They are quite comparable, except Worten is Portugese and Mediamarkt is German. And that difference is a huge gap. The staff is Worten, in all branches I have been, and, when I had enough, my friends have been, is downright shit. We are talking girls with braces talking to their boyfriends, not even looking at you, or looking at you annoyed, when you ask anything (which they have no answer to). Mediamarkt, again, all the branches I have been in, the staff is friendly and if they are not and you complain, you get something as compensation. Not so in Worten. They spit in your face and they don't care. I spend a lot of time in Spain, Germany and Portugal, but I live in the Netherlands and the quality of service in Spain especially is of such a level that in the Netherlands you would be, as a company, on national television every night. It's appalling. Almost every company, especially big ones, don't care at all about customer service. The electrical company in the south, Endesa, just hangs up randomly. They don't have a CRM or anything, just non-caring students who don't know anything about the subject matter and they'll just tell you it's your problem and hang up (after you have waited for 1 hour with shit muzak). Whatever you are complaining about. In the Netherlands, there would be an outcry and it would be fixed (this has happened with UPC, but that was over 10 years ago... and they now lick your feet when you call). In the average bar it's like a 'tourist attraction' to have the 'angry/shaggy/shitty bar guy'. They usually look like they hate you. And they never saw you. If your Spanish is good enough, you can just pelt them with derogative stuff as they seem to like the insult. But if you come with your family for a vacation, you might not want to verbally fight all the time. Besides some ancient bars in Amsterdam, you would not get away with that in the Netherlands. Your money is tourists; be nice. But no, besides some well trained staff in some hotels/restaurants/bars, the average way to treat someone you never saw is to be shortish or downright hostile to them. The cases we had in the north (NL/DE) resulted in companies going bankrupt or public outcry; I have seen in Spain/Greece (less in PT so far) that it is very normal to treat people that way. And that doesn't work for people from the north, who are, accidentally, the people who have the cash. So maybe adapt? It'll make life better as well; I don't think being angry works well for your person either. Having said that; ofcourse there are plenty of exceptions, the village I go to often has very friendly people. Unfortunately those are usually the older people. The younger generation is fat and spoiled and angry. Why? The news probably? Hearing every day your country is going under is not stimulating while the older generation lived with Franco / Salazar and know that this is the best they every had. Edit: I know about southern Spain; Andalusia, so the comments I make are about that region of the country. I love that place and I'll die there, but it's something different if you are used to the north of EU.

petercooper 14y ago

And while this author notes Portuguese contacts headed to the UK and Germany, I've noticed the same but with several leaving the UK for the Bay Area (with zero going to the rest of the EU).

megablast 14y ago
This may have a lot to do with getting funding. London has just started to become interested in funding startups, and EIS and the new SEIS are helping, but it is nothing compared to the US. Even the smallest city in the US has more funding opportunities than London. It takes a while for people to change their habits.
josemariaruiz 14y ago
Yeap, UK people are heading for the Valley and for NY. Curious migratory movements, isn't it? My question is, where is the ultimate cause? what about USA people? Are they heading to China? :)
- macuenca 14y ago
  That is a (mis)perception most people have (myself included) regarding career development. Professionals follow the path of the higher salary. For me, the path can be something like this: South America < PIGS < France/Germany/UK < Rest of The USA < SV/NYC That being said, there's also people who give more value to quality of life. The place that work for in Spain have several people from The US, Sweden and UK, even though they could be making more money back in their countries.

sbierwagen 14y ago

Fun fact: Portugal is about as big (area and population, though it has half the GDP) as Ohio, the seventh largest US state.

yeureka 14y ago

Not surprising. I left Portugal in 2003 to work in the games industry. There were still plenty of jobs in Lisbon then and salaries were not so bad. At the time I thought I would be away for a couple of years "just to get some experience". I would love to go back to be closer to my family and old friends, to enjoy the weather the beaches and nice food, but as another expat told me, our jobs just do not exist in Lisbon. Setting up a business is hard with the asinine tax system currently in place ( taxes are complicated, very high and if your business has zero profits it pays a special tax ), a culture of late payment by clients ( it is so common to have unpaid invoices that you can give these to your bank in exchange for a loan ), the absolute aversion to risk taking by most businesses, the ingrained idea that what is foreign is better and the implied notion that to win a contract you need connections to a politician or a civil servant. I know a lot of professionals in knowledge based industries that have left, some with their entire families. In a recent poll, more than half of university students plan to leave the country. At this rate Portugal will become mainly a touristic destination.

tluyben2 14y ago
And how are you going to help that? Or you don't care? The asinine tax system is more or less the same as I'm used to in NL/DE. Taxes are not for your pleasure. Sure it could be easier, but it's not easier in most civilized places. I'm not Portugese, but I would do my best for my country and not leave like you have no other choice.
- justincormack 14y ago
  I think you will find that the tax system (and permits etc) are worse. Tax rates are higher in de/nl but the system is somewhat simpler. Spain, just to pick a random example, just removed a six month process to get a permit to open a retail location. And it is not like you can apply online or anything. I am in the UK where most stuff is even easier (was looking at setting up a company in different European countries, which you can do in the UK for £4.99, but is much more complex elsewhere, and requires a lot of capital).
  - 14y ago

josemariaruiz 14y ago

Same situation in Spain, incredible brain drain of IT people. In the last months ~ 40% of my IT colleagues in Spain have decided to move to other countries (UK and Germany mainly). In Spain people a few years ago said stupid things to justify not moving to other countries where salaries were like 3 times Spanish ones: weather, food and «quality of life». There is another factor for this delayed and flood-like emigration... FAMILY!. In all Mediterranean countries family is very a strong influence. I even can say that individuals doesn't exists as they are in other countries. A 18 years old in Spain is like a 13 years old in UK. You can be in your 30's and the family will still be pushing you to be in the «right path». For many, many years family decided that the best prospect for their young college graduates was, without any doubt, working for the government. In Spain it means a decent salary and a job for life (you cannot be fired under ANY circumstance, ANY AT ALL, you kill someone, go to jail and when you get out your job will be there waiting for you!). Once this absurd situation ended (the government in Spain duplicated its work force in 3 years) the «family» didn't know how to react. But the government knows better, in the last 3 years the tv programs «Spaniard around the world» showing happy people living in other countries. So now, the «family» is pushing their children to go outside. My company is hiring people in London and we only receive CV from Spaniard and Greeks. My boss told me that 1 year and a half ago it was really rare to find people from these countries in selection processed but that now the recruiters are flooded with their CVs. I suspect that the mediterranean IT guy/pal will be the new Polish plumber in UK

yeureka 14y ago
"I suspect that the mediterranean IT guy/pal will be the new Polish plumber in UK" That actually made me laugh. I will be a stereotype!
davidw 14y ago
> In Spain people a few years ago said stupid things to justify not moving to other countries where salaries were like 3 times Spanish ones: weather, food and «quality of life». I don't think that's stupid. I get seriously depressed when it's gray, gray, gray all the time, which is one of the reasons I moved from Oregon to Italy many years ago. I also like how some interpersonal dynamics are here: all my 'nerd' friends here have always fit in pretty well, and don't seem to have the stories that people do in the US about cliques and being excluded and intellectual achievement being looked down on. Maybe some teasing, maybe not being the most popular people, but they all seem to fit in pretty well. It depends on who you are and what you like, and how much you're willing to sacrifice. Currently, the sacrifice is much larger because of how poorly things are going in many Mediterranean countries, so it makes more sense to leave.

tbastos 14y ago

I've been living in Portugal for ~6 months, working remotely for my previous employers in Brazil (I'm 1/2 portuguese). The quality of life I get here is 10x what I had in Rio, while my cost of living was almost halved. Indeed I've never understood why the tech industry here isn't 100x stronger. It's a very attractive place to live, with low cost of living, lots of space for offices and buildings, fairly decent infra-structure, etc. Somewhere the portuguese politicians must be screwing up big time.

josemariaruiz 14y ago

«Oh, there are plenty of entrepreneurs, mind you. But many of them are “serial” entrepreneurs, whereby “serial” I actually mean lazy, ineffectual bums living off subsidies for years on end while they latch on to one incubator after another and leech them for all their worth.» That was a good one, a perfect description of the standard Spanish entrepreneur :) You have to innovate and innovation is something decided by a committee of bureaucrats who have never worked in the private sector in their life! No real VCs, there are a few in Spain but they invested in risky things like construction, subsided agriculture and in companies with government contracts. It's so easy to flight to London and meet real investors instead of doing all the ass-kissing of government agents and banks to get subsides... yet no one did it. Hubris was the cause.

miguelpais 14y ago

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 live at. What's missing then? For me what is missing in Portugal, and what makes me want to go away from it is mostly bad working conditions: the notion that the IT guy is the new slave. I have had older colleagues saying to me that they were working on a Sunday at 11pm and have seen people from consulting companies coming to my university and proudly saying that when we would be working at their company "we could say goodbye to that cinema evening with friends". These consulting companies, some of which are always eager to hire (which leaves us wondering what is happening to their workforce), exploit the fact that these graduates are used to semesters of constant crunch time and exploit them by putting them in the same state in their companies. People are expected to work past their time, and most of them do... and for what? 1200 euros before taxes and you are considered lucky. If you don't accept that paycheck someone else will. I did in my last college year an Erasmus in Sweden that came now to an end, and I'm not coming back to Portugal. I've found things to be very different here. There is a huge respect for life outside work, and the jobs actually pay the graduates with the salaries that reward them for their effort and knowledge. The problem is maybe precisely this one: graduates feeling that there is no reward waiting for them by the end of college.

tluyben2 14y ago
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 occupied with career and such and want to go to 'the big companies'. They are not fun; Logica, Cap gemini or even Outsystems (who are 'small' but SHOULD be PT pride!); these are stable companies but they have a lot of experience how to manipulate and exploit people. The cultural thing (apparently?) that all students want to have for-life jobs (never occurred to me during or after university) and careers is a problem, as this won't happen in the north either. You'll get a contract 'for life' here because it doesn't really matter for the employer to give you that or temporary; you are protected mostly, so it's easier to just give you an eternal contract and use the court to force you out if need be.

g123g 14y ago

I think one of the solutions that these countries can work is to promote high skill immigration to their countries. Something similar to what Australia and Canada are doing. Give the potential immigrants a chance to become full EU nationals in 4-5 years. I am pretty sure lot of skilled ppl from developing nations will be ready to move for that to these countries which offer a great quality of life. It might also help them overcome the problems of aging population in these countries as well. But the only caveat is that immigration process is tightly controlled to allow the most suitable applicants only.

megablast 14y ago

I have seen this in the UK. When I first moved to the UK, about 8 years ago, their were loads of Aussies around, lots of people coming into work anywhere in the UK. The Aussie dollar was about $3=£1. Last year I came back to the UK, the dollar is $1.5=£1, there are hardly any aussies around, and lots of people are trying to get work in Australia. This is party because of the Aussie dollar being so strong, and Australia withstanding the GFC thanks to China and the Banks.

fun2have 14y ago

If you are in Portugal and want to work for a fun innovative start up. Come and work for us. So far we have grown from 2 person to over 12 person in a year been here. http://webnographer.theresumator.com/ http://webnographer.theresumator.com/ for a bit more background here on why we did it http://blog.webnographer.com/2010/10/an-rd-office-in-lisbon/ http://blog.webnographer.com/2010/10/an-rd-office-in-lisbon/

bpedro 14y ago
You did it basically because it's cheaper than other countries, right? “I needed a European base with low operational costs, talented people and a high quality of life."

anil_mamede 14y ago

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 are some efforts in entrepreneurship but most of "startup" ideas falls into the same bin like social networks for cakes or events, project tracking systems or business cards mobile apps. There is much buzz around the startup concept and the idea of having your own business but not on ideas for products that offer real value to people. In an environment like this it is difficult for a programmer to evolve

pimentel 14y ago
That's so right. One classic "success" story of the Portuguese web is http://www.adegga.com/ 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 people, once a week. And there's always the team wanting to open a spa and bringing their "idea" to all incubators. My solution was to work in close relationship to the university and a university spun-off company. Some interesting computer-vision stuff is made here, from time to time.
- anil_mamede 14y ago
  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.
  - pimentel 14y ago
    I never used it, so I cannot comment on the technological nature of Adegga, but I imagine it's as technological as any other social network. Outsystems seems to be pretty successful, yeah. But it's a software development platform, in which you drag an "if" block from a palette and drop it in a canvas. Most people prefer typing "if".

andrewl-hn 14y ago

A personal anecdote. I know a pretty good PHP developer from Portugal who moved to Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine recently. He started dating a girl from there some time before and visited the country several times. So, when they decided to move in together he preferred to move to Ukraine himself since he could find a much better pay here. For a record, Dnipropetrovsk is not a capital but still a fairy large IT center (one of the top 5 cities) with about 2000 software developers employed in total (growing by 500 each year). Ukraine might seem a surprising choice to somebody but the tax burden is generally much lower and as a result one can get a pretty good deal salary-wise. For example, right now I'm making significantly more in Kiev than I used to do in Oslo, Norway, which is considered to be a pretty lucrative place to work and live in Europe. The development community is pretty large and thriving. Large part of positions is in outsourcing but there are a plenty of product companies or research centers, too. The company where I work now started hiring people form US and Western Europe. We are working on NLP systems and there's a lack of local talent with ML and AI skills. For example, we recently hired a machine learning specialist from Spain and we are very happy to have him on board. We also work with linguists from the US. The world is sure a very different place now!

tbastos 14y ago
Now you sir have blown my mind! I've been to Kiev and the Crimea in the summer... very lovely country, with even more lovely girls, not to mention great food/beer. If it wasn't for the dreadful winter I'd call it paradise lol And apparently ML/AI skills are in high demand everywhere.

olifante 14y ago

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.

Turing_Machine 14y ago
"It's kind of a class thing: high class people do not dirty their hands with manual labor and boring technical stuff." There may be some regional variants. A friend of mine who worked with some devs from the UK said that there the split is between guys who only write code (the 'higher class') and guys who might actually know how to plug in an Ethernet cable (the 'lower class'). I don't know if this is true in general, or just of the organization where he worked.
- olifante 14y ago
  As in most societies, there's bound to be a pecking order of some sorts, and I'm not saying that developers are at the rock-bottom of that order. And of course developers can be self-entitled, arrogant, obnoxious people — I might even be one of those :-) Whether one appreciates or resents developers, the fact of the matter is that most moderately talented developers have some notion that they possess a valuable and hard-to-acquire skill which paradoxically doesn't empower them, due to the relentless effort by companies to commoditize developers and treat them as fungible resources. Lacking power to effect any kind of meaningful change, developers with in-demand skills often end up voting with their feet, and organizations fail to accumulate and develop human capital.

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ssn 14y ago

The so called 'exodus' that Portugal is suffering from isn't limited to the tech industry. It affects all areas and is directly related to the current 'impoverishment' politics being followed in the country. While interesting, this essay is very shortsighted.

tomboa 14y ago

Leaving Portugal to UK was the best thing I have done for my career as Software Developer. In Portugal I could't go any further because I didn't hold computer engineering degree. In UK, I've reached Lead Developer position, and now Technical Project Manager. By contrast in Portugal nobody would even invite me in for an interview because the degree was a requirement. Moving abroad hasn't always been easy. But I've found that beside the language everything else is purely down to your performance and personal ambitions. Regards