[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.

[lifeisstillgood]

Whatever others say, I suggest you take your talent overseas for a while. Portugal will exist and in 10 or 20 years you and the rest of your generation will return - and demand change.

Look at India's vast middle class / consultancy fodder. They are returning home and not simply demanding, but expecting things to be different.

[marcocampos]

I've grown so dispassionate about the tech industry in Portugal that I've been thinking about quitting and doing something else (I'm 28 and I always wanted to be a software developer). I can't change countries (my girlfriend's profession doesn't make it easy to change) so I don't have that many options, so it's either put up it with or quit.

My advice is go and don't come back. The industry around here won't value your skills, you will be considered a tech janitor and after a few years you'll lose your passion and become jaded or just conform to the status quo.

[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...)

[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.

[batista]

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

No, it's an attempt at appeal to a pre-existing emotion. Not the same at all. Not everyone of us is a rootless opportunist that will go to any place he might get an advantage from going at a moment's notice.

Some of us have bonds with the place where we grow up, and the place were our friends and relatives live. We also have bonds with our culture (from the language, to the music to cuisine). It would be a sad world if everybody was only thinking of his own marginal benefit and could not care less about such things.

Plus, beside the emotional and cultural bond, a lot of us want to give back to our community and improve it for the future generations, and not flee at the chance of a better salary elsewhere.

For an American it might be "freedom", but for a lot of world cultures, the ease with which an e.g American changes states is a sign of lack of roots and fear of emotional attachment, not to mention selfishness and lack of care for one's parents. Plus the mighty appeal of the dollar and the "american dream" of making it big, ie the opposite of actual freedom.

Not that there aren't tons of American's deeply connected with their state and city (mostly people in the South, in my experience, but I also know New Yorkers and Chicagoans that wouldn't change their city for anything).

[josemariaruiz]

Change comes when a paradigm no longer can support the evidence of its failure and a new paradigm can replace it. All these countries (Portugal, Italy, Greece Spain... PIGS!) are now discovering that the "quality of life" was sustained in a false growing paradigm based on subsides and abuse. The new paradigm will be brought by all the people living outside that will bring back a different work culture and have probably broken links with the establishment in their countries.

Or at least that's my hope. Maybe all this is really a healing mechanism.

[miguelpais]

To be quite frank I wonder what is better for the country: staying there, working your ass off and getting just enough to survive, or being outside, opening your horizons, maybe being exposed to new ways of thinking, technologies or ideas, and one day come back and strive to offer to the country what you learned outside.

These people that are leaving, they still love they country, and I'm sure most of them still think about returning to it sooner or later.

[tluyben2]

But I don't think that's true. Portugal (and the other southern countries) have a lot of talent; why let that talent be bought up by outside countries (like mine)? The world is very ripe for near shoring and actually good programmers are incredibly hard to find. For anyone. People are getting tired with Asian 'factories' with people who, usually, derive no pleasure from their work. Simply; if you open a company NOW in PT and you train 10 Outsystems guys, you and those guys will be able to live a GREAT life. You can sell them in NL/DE/FR for E100/hour and they don't expect you do 'work nights'. It's just the business sense which seems to be lacking. You need to USE the fact that it's a crisis, PT is going under; it means you don't cost E200, you 'only' cost E100 or E75 an hour. How much do you think the US army is paying per hour to Outsystems for the engineers sitting in Lisbon?

[Postmodum]

One of the big problems in Portugal, aside from all the economic issue, is the "employee syndrome" ... at least it's what i call it. In Portugal, it's hard to find people with a entrepreneur'ish spirit.

Everyone want's to be employee and expect the salary at the end of the month without ( and the salary must be really interesting too ).

Oh, and another thing ... people just can't understand that you need to be offer something for the company success other than just sitting on you desk doing what you're told to. It's all about being a worthily asset for the company, other than just being an simple asset.

Yes... i own my own company. Yes, i did employ several people with and without superior degrees. What i found out is that people without superior degree in Portugal are more productive ( of course, there are exceptions ) and in general, have better technical skills than those who just finished university ( this is another problem in Portugal, universities are all about theory ... although, slowly, we can see some changing... ).

Juniors just can't expect to earn the same salary as someone that has more experience. It's all about return of investment. .. and in the IT world, you need to have to be a good ROI.

Of course, salaries in Portugal can't compare to bigger countries as France, Germany, US ... or emerging IT capitals that are living a wave of venture capitals. We are a small country, that is growing in the IT world. And if you think about it, we are really newborns in this world...

Yes, there are great professionals in Portugal ( and prospects too that are in the university ) ... but there's something about the mentality that we must change.

It's all about what you do for a company what they can do for you.

As for the emigration, i think abroad experiences enrich people and sometimes change their way of seing things. Usually, in the principal external markets targeted by emigrants, there's a higher money flow, and the experience of working in a bigger/wealthier company, makes us grow. But the same problem persists ... you need to be a added value for the company... and in most cases, people only understand that when they are faced with the cold reality that they really need to work had to make a difference. :)

Of course, since they earn more money, they will take that with a different spirit.

( and yes, there are really bad companies in Portugal that are full with "professionals" and "directors" that, often, know less than a junior or someone with 5 years of experience in the market. It's the difference between working for money without much enjoyment and working for something you really enjoy while earning money doing it)

[jc79]

While I think I understand what your point is, I'm not sure I agree.

In the company I work for (about 80 people here), it's not the university rookies that I have problems with: some are weak, some are excelent. But most of them come with a desire to learn, and will in most cases be exploited by PHB project managers that make them work very long hours. Have seen it happen again and again, with no productivity gain whatsoever.

But then, when that really excelent rookie hire appears, with an outstanding ROI, we just can't hire him/her or give him a decent salary, because of all the 'historic' figures that are on the company forever. That's why I cannot agree with a simplistic "juniors can't expect to earn the same salary as someone that has more experience". Some fully deserve it, don't get it, and then become just another layed back demotivated worker.

Thus, "It's all about being a worthily asset for the company, other than just being an simple asset.", can I assume that you offer stock options? Clearly defined rewards if success is reached?

Of course that its not all about the money, but so many portuguese bussiness owners like to forget about their employees once they reach success, and maintain the 'just an employee status'. Thus, it goes both ways. I'm not saying it is your case, but I could not infer otherwise from your text.

And finally: "that they really need to work had to make a difference" What's working hard? To so many people working hard is working long hours almost every single day. My personal experience tells me most of the people that work long hours are either slackers (lots of coffee, lots of talk) or workaholics that do not always play well with others.

[tluyben2]

> have better technical skills than those who just finished university ( this is another problem in Portugal, universities are all about theory ... although, slowly, we can see some changing... ).

That is normal; in the Netherlands we have a distinction between practical and theoretical higher education. Universities were not meant to be very practical; they are meant to 'shape your mind' with solid foundations for learning new things and for an academic career. Now this is much different and the actual function of a university, because it's so common to go there, moved from that old view to the realism of the day; students need to actually find a job in corporations. It'll change, albeit slowly.

One of the biggest problems I found in PT is the difference between Lisbon and 'the rest'. I don't know what the fascination is with this city (I have been there many times, but disclaimer: I generally don't like cities at all) besides job opportunity, but outside Lisbon, it's really nice and cheap while in there it's not. So you have the 2 camps; 1 who want to live in Lisbon, 1 who want to live anywhere else. And those two have very different wishes.

Where are you? What does your company do?

[aristidesfl]

Maybe the fact European Southern Countries have food, the weather, good universities, and welcoming people makes people not to have to elaborate as much in order to enjoy themselves and live another day. That's one of the factors which contribute for them to be more laid back and invest less in work and organization, leading to competitive disadvantage over the years in other fields.

[ufo]

He is not complaining about a technical disadvantage. The problem they are complaining about is about the current management culture and sunshine and good food doesn't make it any easier to deal with it.

[theorique]

1200 euros for which time period? That's critically important!

[tluyben2]

1200 gross per month is not weird in PT. It's on the very low side though.

[theorique]

Thanks - I wasn't sure if it was per week or month. Per year sounds weird unless it's a 3rd world country.