Left after the dot-com crash, when getting IT jobs without being fired from the newly joined company was a matter of luck.
Now like many emigrants, way beyond the typical age that HR sees as acceptable to still be an IC, instead of a manager for fresh graduate developers, which closes many doors.
Then there is the work culture, that rather promotes connections than performance, managers that misunderstand the flex time concept to mean their employees get to work as many hours as they require them to do so (many times not officially counted for), small shops using pirated software or renewed trial versions, and many other issues.
So eventually after tasting how good work experience feels like, in countries where everyone on the building gets the union deals, stuff gets sorted out when asked for, overtime is respected and paid accordingly, and many other improvements, it is hard to get back, after a certain point.
Portugal is not alone in this, I get similar feedback from many southern Europe friends.
> when getting IT jobs without being fired from the newly joined company was a matter of luck.
Seems like rich countries are undergoing a similar phase as we speak. While it’s not that bad in the uk, the job market is dead compared to a few years back. However, despite being a rich country, overtime and work issues are not respected here either. Many permanent worker contracts had clauses for people to opt out from EU work hours directives.
The UK actually had a derogation on this even when it was in Europe; I think it was the _only_ European country to allow opt-outs for normal employees (most countries had an opt-out, but it was usually only for doctors and maybe some other emergency workers).
It is among some south europeans, such as greek or portuguese. The few english people I met there were happy. Unironically, they were happy they earned a higher wage and could afford property. But that was in bucharest. The most portuguese I met were in Cluj Napoca. French students have also been known around expat circles. Reading stats, it looks like minimum wages are nearly six times higher than Russia's for instance, and average pay twice as much. Also seems to be a high income economy, with increasing numbers of non EU immigrants, from India and Vietnam.
Not that they are in the millions though. But nonetheless the state of affairs in the UK is extremely bad.
> If you take out London. Britain now has the same GDP per capita as Romania. Right wing economic policies have consequences
The UK's economic self-immolation under the Tories has been awful to watch, but it is still a far richer country than Romania.
Romania nominal GDP per capita 2021: 14,858 USD (2021, Google)
The poorest region in the UK is the North East with a nominal GDP per capita 2021 of 24,575 GBP = 31,210 USD.
Things are much closer at purchasing power parity, but then that really should be accounted for at the UK regional level too given housing is so much cheaper outside of London.
Nominal GDP is irrelevant, unless we want to impress the economically illiterate. Let’s face it - the UK is rich but the people are poor. A lot wanted east europeans out because it reminded them if what they are: poor.
Taking the IMF PPP GDP per capita figures for Romania are $41,029 and the UK are $56,836. So even using the PPP multiplier for the UK as a whole (which will underestimate for poorer regions with lower housing costs) that would put even the UK's poorest region on a par with Romania at $41,391.
(Nominal figures aren't completely useless. They reflect purchasing power for globally traded consumer goods.)
> [..] in countries where everyone on the building gets the union deals, stuff gets sorted out when asked for, overtime is respected and paid accordingly, and many other improvements [..]
Where do we find this Walhalla? Would you mind sharing, from your experience, which countries are worth moving to? Thank you!
For example in Germany, if you are doing IT on an industry where the company has an agreement with IG Metal (Verdi, whatever), the deal is for all employees of the company, not just some of them.
That's more to do with the type and quality of the company you work for rather than the labor laws of the country itslef. Plenty of body shops and overwork horror stories with terible managers coming from those countries as well if you happen to work for the "wrong" companies.
It's just that economically performant economies like Switzerland, US, UK, Germany and Nordics tend to have more "good" companies than "wrong" companies, compared to southern/central/eastern Europe where it's moxtly bodyshops, consultancies and outsourcing.
What matters is what those managers are allowed to do on their countries, and the existing laws to punish them if they try.
If anyone is being exploited, it is on them to report the issue to the authorities, and there are ways to do so without exposing oneself.
If the managers are lucky they might even end in some TV "exposed" kind of program.
Up to the affected to fight for their rights, the difference is that back home networking and owning favours tends to be more valuable than being right.
When our politicians show the way, see current goverment downfall, most people don't care about doing the right stuff, when they can get better via other means.
>What matters is what those managers are allowed to do on their countries, and the existing laws to punish them if they try.
Meh, I live in 'socialist' Austria now, that in theory has some strong workers regulations, but some corporations, HR and mangers have become experts at skirting areound those regulations leading to plenty of terrible contracts with anti-employee clauses, long hours, burn-outs and firings without any retribution from the authorities becasue you never have enough exact proof that any specific law was broken by anyone, and employment law is basically at will anyway if you don't have a strong union/workers' council. It's not roses and sunshine everywhere.
I assume Portugal aslo has good worker's rights and labor regualtions on paper, that rutinely get ignored because the jobs market is not in the workers' favor so they have to put up with a market that's not in their favor even though the law is in theory on their side.
Which is why I followed that quote with "Up to the affected to fight for their rights, the difference is that back home networking and owning favours tends to be more valuable than being right.", and "When our politicians show the way, see current goverment downfall, most people don't care about doing the right stuff, when they can get better via other means."
I have had the pleasure to have been part of worker actions explaining some companies foreign managers that whatever they though about employees in their home countries did not apply in Germany.
Just like Tesla is finding out in some European countries.
Naturally doing the right thing does come with side effects to own career, if that is what one cares about.
Just returned from Porto in December and talking to many many local Portuguese, the low wages and high cost of housing is usually one of the first things mentioned. One thing I had to discover after a bit of digging however was that inheritance law plays a largely undiscussed factor in the housing bubble currently happening.
All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants which usually goes exactly the way you'd expect when money and family mix, no one can agree on what to do so it sits unused / unmaintained until some rich dumb foreigner offers 2-Nx the market value and everyone can at least agree to profit.
That and the previous junta and dictatorship before that means tons of property is sitting basically rotting in place.
> > All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants
> Isn't that's how it works pretty much everywhere these days unless there is an explicit will?
No, in highly advanced countries we use the Highlander rule, "There shall be only one left", descendants fight eachother, cutting heads of loosers until only one remains and inherits the property. This is also the reason UK tries to ban knives, they are way to small to cut someones head with a single strike. We are humane after all.
or they realise they can make a killing on short term lets / AirBnb. A Portuguese acquaintance of mine proudly related how her family was converting her deceased grandmother's place into 2 (two!) AirBnBs - they'd even found a little old lady down the road to do the cleaning.
The Portuguese are lovely but they can be completely oblivious to the world around them sometimes.
Id be curious to see how this pans out globally. Every news article I see points to younger workers getting punched in one manner or the other. It’s unsurprising that workers forced to work 50+ hours a week +commute time don’t have time to build social tethers to a location.
It has already panned out: birth rates have cratered. And instead of looking at the obvious causes: economy and cliamter change are in the shitter, crap stressful jobs with long commutes that work you too hard and don't pay you enough to afford even a crappy overpriced property, people blame the youngsters for endulging in avocado toast, tinder, videogames and porn.
> Social fabric collapses. At least in the western world.
> Many systems like pensions simple don’t work in the context of not enough stable families having babies.
> You can patch it with immigration but that gets you other social cohesion issues
See: Canada.
But the other effect of trying to keep government pension running with immigration is that we ran out of housing for new people to move into here a couple of years ago. It's pretty much Battle Royale for housing while wages have stagnated at best.
I'm currently spending the winter on a Portuguese island (working from "home", that is) and none of the neighbors I've seen are Portuguese. Even the waiters in the restaurants have British accents.
My AirBnb host, who also currently lives in a second house on the property, is from Belgium.
So, yes. There do seem to be some pretty strong demographic movements in Portugal.
Here's something for context (in portuguese, from the most well-respected newspaper): https://www.publico.pt/2024/01/20/sociedade/opiniao/mitos-me...
This newspaper piece breaksdown the numbers and shows that it's not that abnormal and that 30% is the top range of an estimate.
Journalist and context at its best.
Sadly, most media don't care about that and most people don't read the articles and some that do still don't understand what is written and what is not.
Also, most media in Portugal is right-wing, from center-right to far-right. The owners profit with the misinformation.
This is the effect "digital nomads" and other affluent gentrifiers have on a run down economy coupled with lack of political oversight and prioritisation of short term goals over long term ones. This is the same effect "golden visa" programs have, which flood the real estate markets with affluent people seeking a Schengen visa.
Typical PT populist reaction. It's not very hard to debunk, but this sentiment is very strong in some crowds in Lisboa & Porto. The foreigners, the nomads, usually well off people and golden visa people are what keeps the doors open on a lot of places that would simply disappear. I lived in some area where the people complained about the noise and misery, so the city council/mayor had places close earlier, gave out less permits etc; 3 years later the locals complained that so many nice smalls bars & restaurants & coffee shops disappeared and that there are only a few chains left. THEY weren't spending their days in these places; THEY weren't spending $100-200/day on food & drink; the nomads / tourists / expats were, so these places all closed.
There is a lot wrong with this place (and every place I have lived by the way; nothing is perfect obviously), but getting rich folks in is not it. In my bar the American immigrants, who are currently the affluent gentrifiers here, spend vast amounts every day on food & drink, 365 days of the year, vs locals who have 1 coffee, if that, per week. I guess you know what's wrong when you lose it.
My wife and I have been thinking about trying to leave America for the last few years but it’s objectively difficult to find a place that’s conducive to moving. How do most people you interact with do it? Also, why are you on HackerNews of all places?
Different poster here. My wife and I retired to Portugal (near Lisbon) about two years ago. I guess we're two of the "affluent gentrifiers". :-) In contrast, we met a 20-something U.S. couple in our language class, who moved here and are working. We all came here on the D7 visa program, not the Golden Visa.
I'd be happy to give you some insights, but I'm not sure what you mean by "conducive to moving"; what sort of issues or difficulties are you having?
Well, I’m starting to finals h a medical treatment tomorrow and I’m worried that that may disqualify me… some countries do, others do not. But yah, I think Portugal would be cool, I spent a bit of time in Galicia this summer and in 2018 and loved it, slightly south of there would be nice.
I have a few friends who moved to Lisbon. I visited and quite liked it. There was some pushback from the locals about gentrification, but as previously said, it’s hard to argue that wealthy, educated people coming to town and spending money is an entirely bad thing.
Change is constant, and there are always groups of people that dislike it. Especially when it directly affects them. It is hard sometimes to see that x is happening but also the good of y in other areas.
I live in Portugal and love it; been here 3 years in a small town up North. Everyone has been lovely and we made friends from day 1. The Portuguese people are incredibly kind and warm.
Everywhere does have issues, but this is a very typically american point of view I don't miss. It's best characterized by "the grass is always greener on the other side" to explain somehow it is just your envy and imagination.
I don't regret leaving the USA and never have, it is a better fit for me in Europe, my stress level is way down, and I'm happier than I have been in years. Problems are not the same everywhere and they are not at the same intensity. Hell, I have lived enough places in the USA to know that not everywhere in the USA has the same degree of issues.
Just try it, you're not obligated to stay somewhere forever and honestly the adventure for some people is in of itself worthwhile.
This is a very typically ignorant point of view. It's best characterized by "Everyone who thinks america is the best place to live is some fat white loud dude living in Texas, who's never left".
I'm not american. I spent just over half my life outside the US. There are 10's of millions of us.
1. Parent comment didn’t said that.
2. Most people who believe that the US is the best place to live in the world, have never lived anywhere else.
3. There is bast evidence that the US is not the best place to live if you care about living a happy life. (I.e. clinically reported depression rate)
The implication is clear: "if you think the US is the best place to live, you are ignorant".
Even your point 2 restates it.
It's not based on any factual information. The united states has the most people on planet earth who have lived somewhere else but chose here, despite the enormous cost and effort involved to get here.
It's fine for someone to have the opinion that it's not a great place. But the idea that anyone who thinks the us is the best place to live thinks that based on ignorance is stupid.
>> Everyone who thinks america is >>the best place to live is some >>fat white loud dude living in >>Texas, who's never left".
>>
>>I'm not american. I spent just >>over half my life outside the >>US. There are 10's of millions >>of us.
Chill out
Listen, not everyone likes the same thing, this is ok! People should do like you did and try another place if they don't like where they grew up! This is not a crazy idea! There would be no immigration to the USA or anywhere if everyone listened to people saying "don't do it, everywhere has problems".
I wasn't saying anyone that likes the US is stupid, and fwiw I'm actually a fat, stupid white Texan (I still vote in the elections there).
Final nitpick, people REALLY do say all the time "the grass is always greener on the other side" when you try to move jobs or move states or cities, and it is something I just don't experience at all where I live today, and I really don't miss this particular very american perspective.
As an ex-pat that moved to Amsterdam from the Bay Area, lol. I just bought my 6th rental property, and I'm working part time as a consultant making a TC that's midrange for an L6 engineer. My friends back in the bay are still saving up for that down payment
What did you try? And how much money do you have? I find, as a well off person (millions, not 10s of them), America is not that great. My money goes a lot further here for living. I don’t want to work 247 anymore; when I did the US was great.
What are you talking about? I’ve been a bunch of places, there are places that are better and places that are worth, but largely it’s about the culture I want to be a part of. I’m ready for a cultural break from America for a bit.
Living and being to are quite different. At least for me, many places are great to visit, but living full time for any reasonable amount of time is easiest/best in the US, and it's really not close.
I think it probably depends what you’re after; I visit the US occasionally, but certainly wouldn’t want to live there. However I know people in a broadly similar situation to me who’ve moved there and like it.
If I was living in the US, given my job, I’d likely be living in SF, Seattle or NYC (the suburbs are not for me at the best of times, and _American_ suburbs in particular are just very unattractive). These are very expensive cities (Seattle somewhat less so), and cost of living would soak up a lot of the salary difference. And while they’re interesting to visit, I’m not sure how pleasant they’d be to actually live in long-term.
Actually, I upvoted this. So I lived in another country as an exchange student before so I thought you were just being an ass, but “you only live once” was not the response I expected. I apologize for coming off strong.
Are you taking about the Philippines being good to move to specifically for a couple?
I'm not sure I would recommend it to single guys unless sex tourism is your thing. Although I suspect it is somewhat dependent on location.
I went on a working holiday there (tourist visa - programming for my NZ company) as an ignorant guy for a month. It was hard to evade the sex workers approaching you. And I made an innocent mistake and booked a Best Western hotel when I arrived and the hotel happened to be in a dodgy sexwork area. Fascinating given I'm a bit naive, but I wouldn't recommend it except for the midget boxers. Later I met an Australian guy at a bar and he couldn't stop raving about how good a time he had at one of the towns near the American base.
I really enjoyed the Philippines and the people, but the sex tourism wasn't appealing to me.
If you want peace & quiet, then don't live in a city. A country needs money, it is what it is. It is not unique to Portugal in any way; people move to cities in droves; Amsterdam, Berlin, Melbourne (I lived in all 3) and then start complaining that they don't want noise but peace & quiet. Why, in the good lords name would you live in a city in that case? And in Germany and Portugal (ah and Sweden by the way) you can live nice and cheap in nature and have all the rest you want, why do you need to make it worse for people who don't enjoy that and live in a city for the excitement?
I think the mass exodus happened before the digital nomad trend. Specifically after the 2008 crisis. At least that's what I hear from Portuguese people
Sorry but we all left during the 2008-2015 era. If anything the recent economic boom that Lx and Porto are seeing are making it appealing to come back.
Having said that, I agree that tourism and the golden visa have completely screwed up the housing market and that needs some fixing. But the fix should come with salaries catching up with the housing bubble and Portugal finally being able to compete H2H with the rest of Europe in terms of attracting talent
I thought of a sort of interesting idea. In Mountain View the home of Google the city for some reason blocked housing construction for a decade. Meanwhile Google added 16k jobs to the city. The housing market in the whole area went batshit.
What if the city had tried to permit 1 new housing start per new job?
In Portugal what if every tech immigrant builds a house? Every unit of increased demand comes with a unit of increased supply. Theoretically that should flood the housing market with exactly as many new units as there are new immigrants.
When we frame it as “driving up housing prices” we miss the simple idea of supply and demand. If supply always equals demand housing should stabilize.
Unfortunately the housing market is rather more complicated than simple supply and demand. Houses aren't lemons or bicycles.
Where you sit on the 'available income for housing' curve determines the location and quality of the house/apartment/tent you live in. If lots of people with higher incomes appear, then you get moved down accordingly. If lots of tourists with higher propensity to spend on temporary accommodation appear, you get moved down accordingly. If lots of 'funny money' turns up looking for a place to be parked, you get moved down accordingly.
Where people get distressed if is the location and quality that they can afford is not reasonable to them (either actually or by their perception).
Building high quality well-located homes may help (if that is even possible), as everyone can 'move up' to the next rung on the quality/location ladder. However you may get induced demand, as the slight drop in prices brings more high earners/tourists/funny-money, in which case normal earners will not see the benefit.
Alternatively, restricting high-earners/tourists/funny-money will move normal earners up the ladder, without having to lay a single brick. However there may be some economic downsides to that, depending on what exactly is proposed.
For example banning AirBnB would likely be a large net positive to most European cities.
It's not only that, many Europeans have houses in Portugal. Some have summer houses, others retire to a better climate.
Many well-off South Americans move or retire in Portugal too, because of climate and safety.
I guess it adds up. I can see a similar pattern in Brazil: nicer seaside towns are getting more expensive as the population ages and retirees search for nicer places to live.
Gotcha, do you have any numbers to demonstrate that?
For example, I did a quick google search, and between 2012 to 2023 12,497 golden visas were granted in Portugal.
It is highly unlikely that 12,000 families coming to Portugal is causing this? Right? Or what am I missing here?
It seems like a "blame the immigrant" type thing when in fact it is a failure to build enough housing like almost every country except Austria and Singapore.
Do you know what the D7 visa numbers are? Brazilian immigrants are also coming on other types of visas. One of my wife's doctors moved from Brazil and is one of the best rehab doctors we've ever had.
Vienna != Austria same how London != UK, Berlin != Germany, Tokyo != Japan, Washington != US. If you only apply a succesful policy to one big city while ignoring the others, you can't claim you fixed national housing in the whole country, if the rest of the cities are still left behind.
Not much use if a policy only applies to a subset of the population of the capital city, and can't scale to the whole country so the whole populaiton can benefit from it, leaving >75% of the population out for themselves.
Mostly when we talk about housing, we are talking about cities, since that is where economic opportunity is. So studying Singapore and Vienna makes sense and are models to look at replicating in other cities.
No reason to ignore a possible solution because a city level solution doesn't work in rural Austria... or even "less dense urban austria".
I am not an expert, but it is clear Vienna and Singapore have some models that are working when the rest of the cities in the developed world are struggling.
Austria has many more cities than just Vienna and rural countryside, it's not just one city-country like Singapore.
You're intentionally omitting several other large economically strong cities within Austria that do not have the Vienna housing model adopted and are instead like the rest of the world, with a housing model based around private renting and private ownership instead of the large public housing model. Why is that?
And why aren't other cities in the world that are struggling trying to replciate Vienna's model if it's so good and so easy? /rethorical question
Think about how and when the Vienese housing model started, and let it sink in on why it most likely it's adoption wouldn't work in the world of today in a democratic country with a capitlistic economy based on private property ownership.
They build plenty of housing. It's rented, but plentiful. (That is not in conflict with a properties-for-sale market that is very hard to afford for regular people.)
Will Austrians also be able to afford to pay the market rent adjusted for inflation on their measley pensions in the future?
>properties-for-sale market that is very hard to afford for regular people
Isn't that a huge problem? I feel like being able to afford your oiwn proerty reduces the chances of old age poverty verus always being a rentoid for life.
It's a huge problem if the rental market is underbuilt. It's not nearly as much a problem (perhaps not a problem at all) if the rental market is overbuilt. From what I hear from friends in Austria, it's not a problem.
So you're talking about what you heard from others, not from personal experience.
It's not a problem FOR THEM, right NOW, probaly because they have good paying jobs and/or also qualify for Vienna social housing, aka survivorhsip bias, but the rest of Austria doesn't have Vienna's social housing, and the private rental market is not that great as you imagine suffering from siliar issues as the rest of Europe.
Also, you won't be able to afford to rent your hole life in retirement, as private market rents are indexed yearly to inflation, meaning you're vulnerable to old age poverty, something less likely to happen if you own your own property outrighht by then, which is almost impossible in Austria.
Why are you choosing to ignore the for-sale property market, which IMHO is important for wealth and financial stability than being at the mercy of the rental market? The rental market is not on your side, it won't protect you.
> if you own your own property outrighht by then, which is almost impossible in Austria.
On a dev salary it's more than possible to buy your own home, especially if you take advantage of the govt. loans capped to sub 1% rates (Wohnbauförderung) or one-time support checks (Carinthian Häuslbauerbonus or Tyrolean equivalent). The options here differ a lot state by state.
Alternative would be a ~100k€ small apartment which can be sensibly rented out for the time being. Austria has a required equity ratio on real estate loans of 20% - this can easily be achieved.
Point being: The scenario you're describing is trivially avoidable these days.
>Why are you choosing to ignore the observation that many residents in Vienna report being very satisfied with social housing?
Becase the discussion was about Austria, not Vienna. Vienna != Austria just how Washington != the US. Austria is much bigger than Vienna. If Vienna's housing policy was such a stellar idea, why wasn't it applied nation wide so everyone can benefit from it?
>many residents in Vienna report being very satisfied with social housing
If you get social housing I'm sure you'll be satisfied, same how getting free stuff paid for by others, makes everyone satisfied. What about those that don't get social housing being stuck in the private rental market with no hopes of ownign anything, basically condemmed to old age poverty but still pay taxes just as those getting social housing? Tough shit for them?
If you're below 30 you'll get social housing immediately after being "stuck" in private rental for 2 years - which, considering the heavy rent price restrictions of the MRG - is more than cheap in Vienna. You'd have to pay the mark-up of "Direktvergabeablöse" (one-time payment of ~3-4k€) if you want anything decent, of course.
If you are older than 30 and earn enough to be disqualified from social housing, you should have enough equity to satisfy any property loan already.
I really don't have enough numbers to single out a cause, but I have the feeling there isn't a single cause.
Even if more housing were built, the job market was never really that good in Portugal, compared to central Europe.
I wouldn't blame immigrants, but I would blame the government for not doing enough for young Portuguese.
The average age in Portugal is quite high; just as with Italy maybe it is difficult to find dinamicity within an aging population. It could even be that this is the best option possible.
Now like many emigrants, way beyond the typical age that HR sees as acceptable to still be an IC, instead of a manager for fresh graduate developers, which closes many doors.
Then there is the work culture, that rather promotes connections than performance, managers that misunderstand the flex time concept to mean their employees get to work as many hours as they require them to do so (many times not officially counted for), small shops using pirated software or renewed trial versions, and many other issues.
So eventually after tasting how good work experience feels like, in countries where everyone on the building gets the union deals, stuff gets sorted out when asked for, overtime is respected and paid accordingly, and many other improvements, it is hard to get back, after a certain point.
Portugal is not alone in this, I get similar feedback from many southern Europe friends.