
The Exodus of Tech from Portugal - iProject
http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2012/08/24/2240
======
olifante
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.

~~~
galfarragem
Once Portuguese employees are always wanted everywhere in the world, I only
can think that the root of our problems is the lack of good "bosses".

In Portugal, "bosses" are less educated than employees. 71,3% have a maximum
of 9 years of school! [http://economia.publico.pt/Noticia/qualificacao-media-
dos-pa...](http://economia.publico.pt/Noticia/qualificacao-media-dos-patroes-
e-bastante-inferior-a-dos-trabalhadores_1430503) (portuguese language, sorry)
How can these people invest in something they don't understand? They
understand about carrying bricks and painting walls, that's why we have
thousands of empty houses in Portugal and Spain. There is no place for VC and
marketable innovation.

We come from a time where we needed to be rich to study. Salazar regime didn't
want people to study and emancipate. Now the old regime is over but mentality
is still there, people are too used to obbey and are full of preconcepts.

2 wrong things my parents generation did bad because of their ignorance:

a) made children to only focus on studies (cause they never had that chance).
People get completely out of the market till they are 23-24. Then of course
there are no available positions for high skilled employees. We have no
companies with that demand. They were never created! New companies were
created by the uneducated bullies. If their families have no capital and they
are having first contact with money and market at middle 20's they have no
money to risk. 2 solutions appear: unemployment or emmigration.

b) strong left wing (as bare reaction to Salazar right wing regime, without
any thinking and ponderation): For example somebody lower than 16 years old
caught working is considered crime in Portugal. If these kids are not making
it to provide for their families or skipping school I see no problem with
this.

~~~
olifante
Education is not the problem, it's the solution. Even though there's a lot of
brouhaha about educated unemployment, education really pays off in Portugal,
compared to countries like Germany and Austria. Studies repeatedly show that
the more educated you are (at least below Phd level), the better your life
outcomes are, both in terms of years employed and of lifelong earnings.

I agree however that we made the educational mistake of putting all eggs in
one basket by declaring university education as the universal goal. Perhaps a
dual education model such as the German one would help in that respect.

~~~
galfarragem
I agree with you, before I just wanted to say that people were/are still
educated in a anti-capitalistic education system while we still live in a
capitalist country/world. This is very typical from south european contries
and the root of their problems probably as escape to past right wing regimes
mentality.

------
yeureka
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
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.

~~~
yeureka
I care. If I didn't I wouldn't post here.

But there is so much a single person can do.

And I am very involved with portuguese tech companies at the moment.

I just can't afford to live in Portugal any more.

~~~
tluyben2
But what does that mean? Portugal is very cheap (compared to mostly
everything) unless you live in Lisbon. So don't live in Lisbon. What do you
mean?

~~~
marcocampos
Most (all?) tech jobs in Portugal are in Lisbon. I know companies in Oporto
(Portugal 2nd biggest city) that have problems hiring people because everyone
flees to Lisbon when they finish their degree. I tried to move to a smaller
city (I'm not a fan of large cities) but there were very few oportunities,
mostly PHP positions where you spend all day coding crappy CMS/CRM/ERPs. Sad
but true.

~~~
swah
I thought Lisbon was cheap as well, greatest cups of coffee I had for .50
euro.

~~~
marcocampos
Cheap? Yes, if you come from a country like the US, UK, Germany, etc. The
problems is that salaries for tech jobs aren't very good compared with said
countries.

~~~
tluyben2
But it's much cheaper, so why is it a problem? Why do you need to earn a
salary to pay for a E4.50 coffee if you buy it for E0.50? It's only a problem
if you earn much less than other countries but your expenses are the same,
right? I mean Lisbon _is_ expensive compared to other cities in PT, but wages
are also higher to compensate. They are not 'high enough' (with the '' to say
ofcourse they are never 'high enough', but you know what I mean?)?

We decided not to go to Lisbon because of the sheer amount of 'jumpers' (I
don't know the proper term): people who will go to another company for
E100/month more (probably because there is so much choice there). It's too
hard to filter them out and we don't want them. We tried it for a bit but
people coming to interviews with proposal letters from other companies in hand
to get you to outbid is just not what we want. It's like cheating; you'll know
they'll do it again.

------
andrewl-hn
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
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.

------
miguelpais
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
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.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Look beyond your personal gains and to the remaking of a whole country. If
all brains leave, your country will be dead soon._

So what? Why should you care about the health of "your country"? That's just
an attempt at emotional manipulation.

You can help Portugal with your IT skills, or you can help a similar number of
people in the US/UK. If you get treated better doing the latter, there is no
reason to stick to Portugal. The people of the US/UK are no less deserving of
your skillset than the people of Portugal.

~~~
tluyben2
Most people have a bond with where they are born. Indeed it doesn't matter who
you 'help', but if you feel drawn to your motherland and your family lives
there you would be better off helping there than in the US/UK. If you have no
bond with where you grew up, then of course. One country is no better than
another. If you do care, you moving out is neither needed nor beneficial.

And 'treated better' is just how you manipulate your own existence; if you
don't want to be treated badly (or being treated better), anywhere, you can
accomplish that. Except of course in state of war or oppression, but none of
these countries have that (at the moment).

~~~
borispavlovic
Portugal has a long history of oppression that was removed less than forty
years ago. Some things change, but the mentality of people doesn't change that
fast. There may be no open oppression but a silent one for sure. It's easy to
be brave in an organized country ruled on laws. In a highly corrupted
Portuguese society it's not that easy.
([https://www.google.com/search?q=corruption+in+portugal&s...](https://www.google.com/search?q=corruption+in+portugal&sugexp=chrome,mod=16&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8))

~~~
tluyben2
I can see that, and that is easier talking from my side of the table. However,
someone needs to set changes in motion. Spain is extremely corrupt as well and
when we opened up in Ukraine 15 years ago we had to pay the fire men (?) and
the taxes guys a few 100 hryvnia every time they came by so they wouldn't
actually close the company down. Bribing _everyone_ was required to run
anything in Lviv. It's not _that_ bad in PT/ES.

If enough people persist though, changes happen. If no one does it, it stays
the same. At least longer. And I know not all think like that; I made great
entrepreneur friends in PT who run great companies with great people. They are
changing things. And people are listening; we have coffee and beers with the
major and university director and so forth because they need their town to
change and they want to stimulate this change all they can. A lot of people
_want_ this, the fact that some are stuck in their ways has to change. If I
can contribute 1 millionth of a % to that, I am happy.

------
josemariaruiz
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

~~~
davidw
> 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.

~~~
josemariaruiz
Yes Davidw, but I can tell you something about quality of life... it doesn't
exists if you don't have money :) Salaries in Spain for IT are so absurd:
600~1500 EUR/month in the south. If you are in the 1500EUR/month salary you
are a lucky bastard!

Spain is going to change in a really bad way in the next one or two decades
and no one wants to be there when they can stay at 5 hours of flight in UK
(including bus/train to the airport and arriving home in Spain).

~~~
justincormack
The real question is why companies are still not able to compete even with
these lower costs. Other inefficiencies and being in the wrong markets?

~~~
davidw
That's the takehome pay - there are pretty high taxes, so the total that the
company is paying might be much higher, and the labor market is very rigid: at
least in Italy, it's very difficult to fire someone once they have obtained a
'permanent position'. Still though, I think there are opportunities to be had;
things like what Fabrizio Capobianco did with Funambol. I can only find
stories in Italian that focus more on the Italian aspect of their operations:

[http://www.workingcapital.telecomitalia.it/2010/09/i-piedi-i...](http://www.workingcapital.telecomitalia.it/2010/09/i-piedi-
in-silicon-valley-e-la-testa-in-italia-intervista-a-fabrizio-capobianco-di-
funambol/)

~~~
jeltz
Well, both taxes and salaries are higher in Northern Europe and our companies
are still competitive so that is not the reason why the Spanish IT companies
are not competitive.

~~~
davidw
Taxes as a % of GDP are not that much higher, if at all, in northern Europe
than in Italy.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP)

And you get a _lot_ more of them back in various ways in northern Europe.

I think it's a fairly complex question, and that's part of it. Maybe there's
actually an opportunity, because I know a bunch of smart developers in Italy
who work for less than they would get elsewhere. I know Italy very well, and
still wonder what I'm missing, because like you say, there are taxes elsewhere
too.

~~~
davidw
Actually, tax incidence in Italy is even worse than that:

[https://twitter.com/MicheleCaivano/status/240087376465125377...](https://twitter.com/MicheleCaivano/status/240087376465125377/photo/1)

------
anil_mamede
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
That's so right. One classic "success" story of the Portuguese web is
<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
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
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".

------
tluyben2
We just opened up in PT [http://appsalad.com/appdesign/nieuw-appsalad-
portugal-is-een...](http://appsalad.com/appdesign/nieuw-appsalad-portugal-is-
een-feit/) (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.

~~~
yogar
Coming from Greece and currently working in Australia, I see what you mean.
Nevertheless, even if there is opportunity for creation there is no such
opportunity for survival. When you are in a market with shallow liquidity, the
best intentions will not get you far. The near-shoring of course (absorbing
liquidity from outside your country) is a potential solution, an attractive
one too, but there are significant obstacles still. E.g. the fact that
Northerners have attributed all woes to the mentality of Southerners is such
an obstacle.

Therefore, you may find opportunities as a Dutch with Portuguese or Spanish
employees but I would not expect the same access to market for a purely Greek,
Spanish or Portuguese entrepreneur. I assure you that as a Greek I hear
derogatory comments even by people who can see and witness the quality of my
work. The best case scenario is when they consider me an exception amongst the
Greeks. I am not one.

Accusing those who leave that they do it selfishly is not very nice. I can
assume you selfishly want the best developers (those who can find work abroad)
work for the 500 euros or whatever you offer. It is a crisis and the best
anyone can make of it is to survive and in the process work to get the
necessary experiences to go back when the conditions are better.

It is a crisis, and the 200-300 euro slavery northerners envision for us is
not the solution. It is the problem. If as the "Dean" told you, people avoided
risk, they would not risk moving either. The grass is not greener. The money
is more. After all, EU is supposedly encouraging mobility. It is a free
market, or is it not? Are only companies supposed to move?

~~~
tluyben2
You assume wrong; I want to pay fairly for what you are capable of. I always
offer wage + % IF you want. I have been in this business for 20 years and I
don't really care about money very much. I need it to feed my chickens, brew
my beer and play with my ancient electronics. I actually take pleasure in
seeing people become something they never thought they could be. I wake up in
the morning thinking about some great project we are doing. And I definitely
want my employees to share the wealth if there is any to share.

500 euros (200-300...) is crazy, people going for that we would not hire
because they have no idea what they are doing and that reflects in their work.
And you can hardly live of 500 euro/month here in the mountains (and it's
_really_ cheap here), let alone in a city. So don't assume too quickly :)

I stand by my comment that I think if you have a warm heart for your country
you should stay there and help (re)build it. I told this to my former
Ukrainien partner who had the choice; go to the US or run the company in
Ukraine. He choose the latter after many talks and he is a very rich guy now,
having helped around 1000 people to a job in his poor city. That was not me ;
that was him, but I do tell always to stay IF your motivation is
career/money/happiness. Those are fixable, and even more so, in your own
country especially in a crisis.

I am not a patriot by any means; I love the south of Spain, the east of
Germany (saksische sweiss) and Portugal (esp Madeira) much more than my
country the Netherlands. I am making companies in all these regions to be able
to move freely and with pride between them. I am assured i'm helping in my own
(little) way and all the regions I like are poor and yet I haven't found any
lack of money resources, even in the regions themselves. I can make enough
money to live happily WITHIN the regions I like even though people say there
is no work/money. It's not me being special or gifted; it's other people are
so non-creative, it scares me often.

And no; moving to Germany is not considered a 'risk'. Working for a small
company with a year contract is. It's pros/cons; my assumption (which seems to
be right with most people) is that people want to live close to family and
friends and not move 2000+ km away.

~~~
yogar
500 euros is not crazy. It is the normal first job wage in Greece and the way
things are going will be the normal in many European countries. I do not think
the reason people do not join is the year contract. The days of severance
payments are long gone. The commuting is more plausible given the high cost of
fuel. So you should consider work from home arrangements. As for creativity, I
think it is something that is special in all countries. Your average person,
including me, does not have the courage to be creative (in the sense of
creative you are employing.) Entrepreneurship is an exclusive club everywhere,
and if you look I am sure you can find its members in every country, including
the poor countries you mention.

------
tbastos
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.

------
davidw
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> ), but it does show that if you
work at it, you can accomplish things.

~~~
danmaz74
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
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> so it may not be worth
reading if you're Italian.

------
alexdias
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.

------
arethuza
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?

~~~
yeureka
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?

~~~
malbertife
The pension rights you earn will follow you (at least in EU):

[http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/retire/state-
pensi...](http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/retire/state-pension-
claims-and-calculation/index_en.htm)

------
josemariaruiz
«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.

------
petercooper
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).

~~~
josemariaruiz
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
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.

------
fun2have
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/> for a bit more
background here on why we did it <http://blog.webnographer.com/2010/10/an-rd-
office-in-lisbon/>

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

------
ssn
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.

------
g123g
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.

------
tomboa
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

------
megablast
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.

