Spain Runs Out of Workers with Almost 5M Unemployed - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-01/spain-is-running-out-of-workers-with-almost-5-million-unemployed <comment><USER2> > Pimentel's client asked him for list of candidates trained in "Agile" > project management techniques for helping companies boost their productivity > by using more I.T. systems. The client was offering as much as 200,000 euros > ($220,000) a year -- almost 10 times the average salary in Spain.

> But such people are thin on the ground in Spain. It takes at least eight > months for an experienced software developer to earn an Agile qualification > and they also need the ability to deal with senior executives, limiting the > pool of people who could potentially fill the roles.

That part of the article is hilarious, not only because 200K euros is completely made up and untrue (by far surpasses best salaries in other more decent countries), but because of the Agile qualification mention. Do we have Agile certifications now? What a load of bullshit.

The only truth in the article is this:

> Spanish executives are less-skilled than their competitors in Germany, > France or Italy, according to a study of 11 European countries. Only Greece > came out worse.

And that's the reason why the executives don't find workforce. Being less- skilled means they don't value the engineering profession up to the required level to compromise and give good salaries.

(Spanish dev here --working abroad obviously--.)

<comment><USER3> Agile is barely different to how teams I worked on in the 90s operated, naturally, without trying to implement and enforce a new holy grail, chase the rainbow routine of machinic efficiency. I find it really is much ado about nothing, the emperors new clothes. An anal retentive formalising and trumpeting of common sense. I recall only one project which was waterfall, and the rest were used as soon as they were useful. I have an agile coach at my current job. As far as I can tell his job is to be the expert at drag and drop in Jira, and peeling post it notes. The only good thing I can say about agile is that it fills a space that will otherwise be filled with the next holy grail gimmick which management won't be able to resist as they sell themselves and their new magic power up the corporate ladder. I'm neck deep in this farce at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Sure. A lot of "Agile" is actually cargo-cult agile, used as a vehicle for self-promotion: The daily scrum, the sticky-notes or the Jira.board, and all that other ceremony.

Typically retrofitted on top of a defunct process, with separate requirement analysts, "software architects" whatever that means, and a lot of control functions and processes inherited from the manufacturing industry.

What makes that work is probably the few people that actually understands software development - typically a low percentage of the massive overhead in a typical business software development center.

But you've got to start somewhere.

The Agile ceremonies are not bad, but relatively useless if there is no "real Agile" beneath. Unfortunately, they are easy to implement whereas "real" agile is not.

And what is "real" agile: The core agile ideas (the manifesto), the focus on flow-control, the incremental analysis-build-analysis cycle, continuous improvement, multi-disciplined teams, knowledge sharing, analysis methods that involves multiple people (like story mapping), empowerment (self governing teams, but also product owners).

Perhaps above all, the idea that software development processes should not be defined by business administrators, but instead by people that are actually qualified.

I guess it could be labeled as "common sense", but a few things are typically hard to reason about for a lot of people, for instance the flow-control part (such as kanban), as dynamic efficiency is harder to "see" than static efficiency.

But getting good at that is actually hard. Adding 1000 fields and workflows to Jira is easy.

<comment><USER5> Process is not going to fix a toxic work environment. But, it can make a positive difference over time.

Many teams start out productive, but they also tend to degrade over time. How many 10 year old projects have you been happy to start working on? How about 20?

Those are the places most in need of someone to cut the bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spanish dev here, 3 years in the business, been twice a freelancer and twice an employee. My main complaints:

\- The maximum salary a developer can earn at any given company is almost written in stone - around 36000 euros. Every public job posting will have that figure as the max. When it's higher, they'll water it down in the interview.

Why? Probably because they don't have the notion of a 10x programmer at all. We all are perceived as 'equal' or even replaceable.

\- Also, companies are scared of the mere possibility of their programmers leaving. The sole hint of that you may leave will turn their red alarms on, and they'll start searching a replacement.

There rarely exists here the mentality that a work relationship is a commercial exchange, not an intimate family-like relationship. Being open to the market is not 'treason'.

\- Tech stacks tend to be years behind San Francisco, whether is languages, frameworks, ops practices...

\- Functional programming opportunities extremely scarce. Elixir is gaining traction here though.

<comment><USER7> Have you considered working remotely for a US company? I know a guy making €7 or 8,000 per month, after tax, living in Paris. Best of both worlds: amazing quality of living, cheap cost of living + healthcare, lots of spending (or investing) money! Seems to be working well for him.

<comment><USER8> Is the cost of living in Paris less than a normal US city?

<comment><USER9> Paris is much less expensive than the bay area, but more expensive than the average US city. In fact, it's barely less expensive than NYC, one of the most expensive US cities.

Also, if you are working remotely you cannot command a bay area salary.

<comment><USER10> So you are saying NYC is much less expensive than Bay Area?

<comment><USER9> Yes. Specifically, rents are much higher in SF/SV than in NYC. SF has even higher rent than Manhattan. Most of NYC (not Manhattan or Williamsburg) can be quite reasonable.

<comment><USER11> Does SF gave rent brokers you have to go through? Manhattan you have to pay first/last rent to a broker plus deposit you need around 8-$12k to sign any lease up front

<comment><USER12> Brokers fee is one month, not two, and the outer boroughs are much cheaper.

<comment><USER13> Broker's fees of 15% or even 20% seemed to be fairly common last time I was looking in Manhattan several years ago. It's definitely not pegged at one month anymore nowadays even in Brooklyn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You have two groups:

1\. 5 million unemployed people 2\. very highly sought after workers

The employers complaining about people in group 2 being scarce are merely not paying enough. The workers complaining in group 1 need more skills that the market wants. They're at different ends of the spectrum.

Other than that they live in the same country, they really don't have much to do with each other. Whether you can convert people from group 1 to group 2 is an interesting question, but generally if it were easy to be in group 2, a lot more people would be in it.

<comment><USER7> Very true. Just compare salaries of software engineers in most EU countries with salaries in the US.

If you're a good developer, 99% of the time it's better to work remotely from Europe for a US company. It really is a simple problem to solve -- pay talented people in Europe more. And yet, for some reason, this is often dismissed by CEOs as a ridiculous statement. They're probably the same people who think you need 100 software engineers to complete a complex technology project.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it's that developers are underpaid in Europe. They are just objectively less productive there. After all it's a very specialized job that requires modern, developed economy open to disruptions to be really productive. On the extreme opposite end of a spectrum - a pre-industrial economy - a developer's productivity would be zero.

American nominal GDP per capita is 2.13 times that of Spain's and 1.38x that of Germany's, and the distance keeps increasing. There are many possible causes, but I think lower salaries are a symptom.

<comment><USER16> GDP per capita seems to be a curious way to estimate if a local dev is likely to be productive. Would a Luxembourgish, Swiss or Norwegian dev be expected to be more productive than one from the US or UK?

It seems to me that the prime determinant of pay is how close the worker's "category" is to the money. So in a start-up intensive environment like the Bay Area, the devs are also sometimes the executives, and executives are often former devs, so devs get paid correspondingly.

<comment><USER15> Switzerland does have higher average pay CHF 91,374 = $93,703.5 [0] compared to USA $68,082 [1]. Their nominal GDP per capita is 36.62% higher and the pay is 37.6% higher.

Norway interestingly has almost the same pay as USA - $68,737 [2], probably because of high share of oil extraction in GDP (22% [3]) which skews the result. If you subtract oil share from the GDP, you get $56,195.88 nominal GDP per capita, which is almost the same as the American one ($57,220)!

Now Luxembourg is a tax haven/financial center with a population of half a million so I don't think it's a relevant comparison. Just due to population to get something close to true pay average you would have to ask a relatively (to other countries) very big percentage of their developers.

Same site for comparable data

[0] [http://www.payscale.com/research/CH/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...](http://www.payscale.com/research/CH/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary)

[1] [http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/S...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Developer/Salary)

[2] [http://www.payscale.com/research/NO/Job=Software_Developer/S...](http://www.payscale.com/research/NO/Job=Software_Developer/Salary)

[3] [https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og- publikasjoner/_...](https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og- publikasjoner/_attachment/237252?_ts=1516c73e3a8) page 40, graph

<comment><USER17> Dude. You're not getting the objection. We're not objecting to the numeric ratios, we're objecting to using those numbers in the first place.

> GDP per capita seems to be a curious way to estimate if a local dev is > likely to be productive.

Curious is putting it mildly. :) What is being objected to is your _measure_. Stop using the GDP per capita _of an entire country_ as a proxy for software developer productivity. It's frankly stupid. Anyway GDP per capita using PPP (purchasing power parity) is seen as a fairer comparison. But even GDP per capita by PPP is a stupid metric to compare software developer productivity. I'm sorry for using the word stupid. But it's stupid.

<comment><USER15> >Stop using the GDP per capita of an entire country as a proxy for software developer productivity. It's frankly stupid.

Outside of entertainment where software is a direct consumer product, the developer's productivity comes from increased efficiency of use of other productive resources. You can't eat code, but you can eat food that comes from higher production due to better software. So software has a multiplicative effect on existing production. That is, GDP.

Now even added value of entertainment software (games etc) depends on total GDP, because people have to pay with something for that entertainment.

So average developer's productivity IS a function of GDP, with different coefficient depending on the structure of a economy.

A primitive non-mechanized agricultural economy would have a coefficient of near zero because there's almost nothing to automate.

>Anyway GDP per capita using PPP (purchasing power parity) is seen as a fairer comparison.

A fundamentally wrong metric because pay is nominal.

<comment><USER16> This way of estimating a dev's likely productivity would operate independent of their individual ability, as well as be applicable across all worker categories. For example a dairy farmer in Switzerland earns more than one in Poland because people pay more for milk products in Switzerland compared to Poland.

So why would the GDP per capita of their country be a useful tool in deciding who to hire?

<comment><USER15> >For example a dairy farmer in Switzerland earns more than one in Poland because people pay more for milk products in Switzerland compared to Poland.

A Swiss farmer is much more productive when measured in currency units, but probably not that much in milk volume.

However as we are talking about salary differences it's money that matters.

>So why would the GDP per capita of their country be a useful tool in deciding who to hire?

Why would it be? In this conceptual model the ability of a developer is how much he multiplies the output of whatever he's working on, but his productivity is the absolute value of added output. How could it be counted otherwise, in what? Lines of code?

If productivity didn't depend on location immigration wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER16> I guess it depends on the sense in which "productivity" is being used.

A remote dev working for a Bay Area company from Spain can be just as productive for his employer as one located in Los Gatos, CA. However the above method would categorize this dev as "objectively less productive", which seems counter-intuitive...

<comment><USER15> >However the above method would categorize this dev as "objectively less productive", which seems counter-intuitive...

It wouldn't, it purports to explain the differences in local salaries, or more precisely salaries paid by local entities to on-site developers.

It's true I didn't specify that explicitly in the first comment, along with definition of productivity, so your reading of it was a reasonable understanding. It's a good thing you helped me clarify the intended meaning.

One assumption is that foreign demand (for non-local use) for local on-site developers is small enough to not change the workforce demand significantly. So it won't work for India or other common offshore destination, but it seems to explain pay differences between USA and Spain, Norway and Switzerland reasonably.

<comment><USER16> In other words, pay differentials are more closely related to locale than to the amount or quality of work produced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article says the average salary in Spain is around $22k. Even at twice that, it's not hard to see why developers are not working for (or maybe even in) Spain. I suspect the problem has more to do with Spanish businesses not being willing or able to compete for developers with market salary rates.

It's frustrating that they don't provide data like that in articles like this. Instead of they a single data point anecdote about how a company can't find an Agile project manager for "up to" $220k.

How about comparing the percentage of software developers in Spain to the US? Or discussing how the education for technology is different? Or what percentage of the unemployed are developers? Or software developer salaries compared to rest of EU. Or the number of Spanish developers working abroad or for companies abroad. Instead have a graph of Spain's GDP and a graph showing the size of their workforce.

This is why I rarely ever click on articles and only read the comments. Most of the time it's the only place with any substance.

<comment><USER19> A lot of skilled Spanish dev have fled to Paris and London despite the high cost of living of those cities and being paid less because they're foreigners because it is still more rewarding.

In Spain, politician and corruption are pushing skilled people away. I have seen (and heard of) too many people moving out to be just mere coincidence.

The subtlety is that most of the time the greedy consulting firm will keep 198K out of the 220K and the be surprised not to find anyone.

"Spain is different" as some friends say.

<comment><USER20> After Brexit, I'm very tempted to move in the opposite direction. If the Spanish consulting firms can be undercut to that extent, there's a potentially lucrative market.

Unfortunately I only know French and German, but I could learn Spanish relatively quickly I guess. The corruption and politics is troubling however.

<comment><USER21> Its not to bad. I live in Barcelona, the corruption is a problem, and will not be solved soon. But thats such a deep problem thats going to take a long time to solve. There is currently a a lot of talented local people and international people who want to work here. A lot of the agencies pay between 15K and 25K on average for junior developers / administrators. However, you can be stuck in the bracket for a long time unless you are able to find a way to switch to a different position. The issue is once you get a job in the 30K+ group where its a lot harder finding anything. Let me know if you have any other questions :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Spanish dev here. I created with some friends the most active Maker group in Spain [1]. We won contests like Hyperloop's, NASA's SpaceApps (once winners, twice finalists), making robot competitions [2], teaching to everyone, etc. A couple of days ago we were talking about who would continue it, since ALL of us are leaving the country for different reasons.

So I can say that I know what it means that skilled workers are leaving first hand. Now I reverse the question, why would we stay? Spain has some great things, such as weather, food and party, but it's horrible in any tech-related industry.

For instance, I did a couple of internships to help with my University credits and earn some money. I got paid per month almost the same that I'm getting paid now every couple of days working as an US contractor. Not only that, now I'm doing things that I really love, challenging but rewarding, collaborating with the best people I know and living wherever I want. We made [https://www.angularattack.com/](https://www.angularattack.com/) , now we're launching a new one way better (not yet public though) and I'm helping doing two websites for two of the biggest Venture Capital firms in USA.

Now tell me, why should I go back to working 9-5 for some company that doesn't care at all about developers and treat us as code monkeys, for peanuts and in horrible conditions? I had a horrible chair for example but there was "no budget" for a better one.

It's a pity because the country gets worse, but it's also good since the hard working Spaniards get the best -- even if it has to be outside. I am lucky I can visit my sister in UK and my friends in Japan, Sweden, Germany and USA :)

[1] [http://makersupv.com/](http://makersupv.com/)

[2] [https://orchallenge.es/](https://orchallenge.es/)

<comment><USER23> Same shit in Italy and the Netherlands. I get with very low offers, recruiters are shocked that I bill $100-150 per hour.

<comment><USER24> I work in the netherlands and I bill $125/hr.

<comment><USER25> I too, but with mainly US and Nordic customers -- my hourly starts at €250, last contract was above €500

<comment><USER26> Wow, congrats, really envious here. May I ask - what industry and tech? And how do you find those clients?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm wondering what is the cognitive dissonance with employers who are unwilling to train workers. I mean, I understand the reasons if you're a an SMB, but large corporations used to train their employees or hold something close to apprenticeship programs.

I'm guessing this is more along the lines of "we want qualified work but we're not really willing to pay for it"?

<comment><USER28> > I'm wondering what is the cognitive dissonance with employers who are > unwilling to train workers. I mean, I understand the reasons if you're a an > SMB, but large corporations used to train their employees or hold something > close to apprenticeship programs.

It was far less common for people to change jobs back then, too. Neither employers _nor_ employees feel any real loyalty towards one another, so investing in one another feels foolish. There's nothing to incentivise someone to stay once he's learnt the skills he needs to get a position elsewhere.

<comment><USER29> > "It was far less common for people to change jobs back then, too. Neither > employers nor employees feel any real loyalty towards one another, so > investing in one another feels foolish. There's nothing to incentivise > someone to stay once he's learnt the skills he needs to get a position > elsewhere."

Sorry, I still don't understand this attitude. I live in the UK, it's common here to have at least some level of on-the-job training, especially for jobs where there's a skills shortage. In my experience, training opportunities are a great way of building up company loyalty, you want to stay with the company because you know you can progress in the company.

<comment><USER30> Job culture in the UK is soooo much better than in Spain. I've worked on both places, so this is first hand experience.

In Spain I would get sent to a training, because we needed to have someone certified on that product to get discounts, then the company would ask me to sign a contract to either stay with them at least two more years or pay a 2k fine. The idiots only tried to do this after the training, thinking otherwise I might just refuse to get trained. Of course I refused to sign, but I was only one of the few who would refuse.

In the UK I even get to choose my training. Not just technical, but also on soft skills. Even training that I might not apply in my current role, but I might need to move to a new role.

The biggest shocker for me was the manager-employee relationship. In Spain the manager owns you. In the UK the manager is a team member with a very specific goal: make you and your team successful.

And don't get me started on leaving the office before your manager does... Of course he would be the biggest sucker (otherwise you don't get to be a manager) and won't leave until 8pm. Leaving shortly after your shift ended was frowned upon by colleagues and verbally challenged by managers:

\- Where are you going?

\- Home.

\- Don't you have work to do?

\- Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow again.

That company was terribly toxic and I have seen it destroy several families and people's health.

<comment><USER31> > \- Don't you have work to do? > \- Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow > again.

Hah, good one.

I'm curious in this toxic situation doesn't it just take a few good companies that treat their employees well to change things around? The good engineers will flock there leaving the bad ones at the old companies.

Granted that probably means the managers will now try and get 2x the work out of the remainders. Maybe some will get a clue though and change their ways.

<comment><USER30> I thought about it a few times. What would it take to turn this around? Surely I can take some capital and start a development company where the people are treated better hence more productive, so I can deliver better products?

The problem is the customer. The customer ends up always being the government (national, regional or local) and they have a higher degree of employees that don't care about quality, so the big software factories (called butchers over there because they sell you almost by weight) can put under payed, under qualified and burned out developers on the project.

I have hopes on all the new tech companies flourishing around the country that are looking outside Spain for their customers. I am hoping they will end up shaping the market for good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The gap isn't the pay or the training per se.

A growing issue I see frequently is that companies need more highly experienced (read: senior) people, and are willing to pay for it, but there is no fast pipeline from "no experience" to "highly skilled" even if companies did invest in training. Meanwhile, the existing pool is much too small to meet demand; redistributing the talent won't address the underlying issue. Companies are hiring to fill a need _now_ , not 2-3 years in the future. The company or product generating the demand might not even be around in that time.

An unfortunate reality that people tend to ignore is that the length of time required to train for the average high skill/high pay job has been _increasing_. There are many high demand specialties in software that require a _minimum_ of 2 years of hardcore experience to really be "experienced", but you can't manufacture that overnight and the hiring companies have little use for someone without that experience. Many companies with existing teams do recognize this and hire a mix of junior and senior talent to generate an internal pipeline but you still need the senior talent when building teams in the first place.

Reallocation of people sounds simple but it doesn't account for the increasing latency of acquiring a different skill set at the level of quality required to perform the jobs that actually exist. It is a sticky problem because it is a bit of a vicious cycle.

NOTE: this is a more general observation, Spain has its own peculiarities.

<comment><USER33> King hired in Barcelona a lot of highly senior developers, people that were leading protects, being architects, etc in other companies. How? Better pay, better conditions and it gives more autonomy to the developers.

A fraction of them are talent brough from abroad because they wanted to live in Barcelona. So it is less hard to find talent when you are willing to be competitive.

<comment><USER34> > _willing to be competitive._

On the other hand, it's not like businesses have a big bag of gold that they can simply choose to dip into to increase salaries, especially for the smaller shops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Greek here, living and working abroad.

Spain is doing a bit better than Greece but its on the same boat.

When I speak with friends back home, I do get a feeling that they don't want to work. Is it because they are lazy? part of me wants to say yes. I can't ignore the fact that the working conditions are awful. Salaries are quite low compared to the rest of Europe, an employer has full control over you, and can fire you any time. An employer won't ever promote you. They will just hold you as long as they can and then they will just hire someone else for less money. Also when you have internet and so much information avaialble to you, and you can see what are the working conditions in other Countries it kinda makes you sad.

I live in London, and tbh there have been many times that I've been thinking what am I doing here. London is quite expensive and the salaries are not as high compared to rent, food etc (at least for developers).

Now I just made this comment in order to give an overview of whats going on to a country that is on the same boat as Spain.

<comment><USER36> > I can't ignore the fact that the working conditions are awful

one of the great things about the EU is that people can freely move inside it and work wherever they want. Nothing is stopping your friends from doing what you did - seek employment elsewhere.

At the same time, if Greek and Spanish companies want to survive they'll have to learn to adapt to the new order and treat their people better, or perish.

<comment><USER37> > one of the great things about the EU is that people can freely move inside > it and work wherever they want.

That's true in principle but languages are an issue. In Nordic countries everyone will speak English but central Europe is different. You might get by with English but not everyone (or even most, depending on the country) will speak it.

Do you want to go through the trouble of learning another language from scratch? The culture will be completely different too.

Coming from Finland I've thought about moving somewhere else just for the experience as it would probably be interesting, but I don't really feel like learning another language when I already speak English.

I've also always wondered how difficult it would be to actually get a job, especially if you don't speak the local language. Maybe with a rockstar education and resumé it would be easy but what if you're "average" (at least on paper)? Having worked for well-known international companies would probably be beneficial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Spanish here. I moved to Sweden, I prefer the business culture here. Less non paid extra hours. More respect from managers. Better pay. Etc.

They rant about not being able to use more people as part time slaves. It's a problem of using industrial business mentality in the high tech industry. They care only for reducing salaries and getting long hours with no respect for the developers that are expected to be code monkeys.

So yes, they don't find as a big supply as they want.

</comment><comment><USER21> So I live in Barcelona at the moment. I have 10 years of system administration experience and 3 years of devops / sysadmin experience as well. The average salary I am offered when I look around is between 25K and 45K Euros a year. However, I would say the ratio is about 60% < 30K & 30% < 35K.

For friends and family that are looking it really depends. If you are lucky and have / had a position in certain companies who are well known, you might get into the higher bracket. If you dont, and for example only have a University degree, then expect to start between 15K and 25K (unless from one of the known private schools, in which case you can normally jump to the next bracket).

From what I know, the two places to look are Madrid and Barcelona, but Madrid normally list almost double the amount of jobs that Barcelona does (mainly because a lot of headquarters are located there).

Another important thing that I have notices is that its a lot harder to climb internally in companies here. It depends if the company has American business culture or Spanish (but sometimes it tries to be American but its run in a Spanish way). This is in general over all businesses. My wife is currently working at a call-center and have co-workers who have been in that position for over 10 years. There are basically no way to get promoted, unless you get lucky and someone retires or leaves. I have seen this everywhere, basically no way to really grow, no incentives to grow, an over educated workforce, where the cashier in the supermarket has a masters degree in childcare or similar.

There is a saying here, where they call people "mil eurista" meaning thousand euroist more less. The amount of the working population that earn around 1000e a month is quite high but its something thats accepted here basically. People are not happy about it, but "At least I got a job" attitudes are everywhere.

A last thing, take care regarding any unemployment numbers that appear during the month of May, as thats basically when the tourist season starts. That alone probably employs over 1,000,000 workers during the summer months.

<comment><USER38> This promotion stagnation happens in the US as well, but if the market is fluid enough you can get the promotion by changing employers now that you have your 5+ years experience in skills and methodology.

<comment><USER39> Its crazy as it takes 3 - 6 months to get up to speed on any non complex software system. They will save on wages but loose on productivity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I live in Spain (am Dutch); even more; I live in Andalusia. For me that's better, besides getting people to work. We cannot find people at all for programming or our brewery. Everyone around us is unemployed, however they either a) do not speak English; we speak Spanish, but a lot of our clients do not b) do not want to work c) are foreign and have no papers to work. It's quite horrible. And it's not for lack of trying; we have been trying for at least 5 years. In my experience it has nothing to do with payment. This is just limited to Andalusia ofcourse; my colleague says it's better up north, however some people I met from other parts and who have companies complain about the same thing.

Then another issue with the country is the extremely hard time you have in hiring someone ; paperwork, you cannot fire them even if they are crap etc. And the paperwork to get grants for hiring people (which are there) is incredible. We have a company in PT as well and it's quite different there. The gov needs to take their finger out. Luckily we have a very helpful (Spanish) mayor who loves entrepreneurs and helps us with whatever, but he also shakes his head when talking about hiring people locally.

<comment><USER41> > you cannot fire them even if they are crap etc.

I highly doubt that, it has not been easier to fire someone in Spain since the latests reforms.

Not taking into account that there is always a period were the employer and the employee can cancel the contracts without any duty. Normally 6 months

<comment><USER40> When were those because I was discussing this 'recently' with my lawyer on the coast? Yes the 6 months is true and I compare it with NL where firing is also hard but it's very straighforward how it works. Here I haven't been able to get it explained in that fashion. So far people look at us with pity when we talk about hiring people legally. Note; we are a tiny company.

<comment><USER41> Basically you can fire anyone when you want. If the cause is justified you pay 10 day for year worked, if it is not justified you pay 20

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What I am missing in the article and in all discussions here is: Why not pro- actively train people? Looking 2 months for someone with some kind of certification for "agile" is already a fourth of the time required to train someone who is already working for the client (numbers taken from the article).

If one is willing to pay 220k and cannot find anyone while most job offers (according to comments here) max out at 36k, make a deal with a current employee: "We pay for training, after 2 years you get a bonus of 72k and we double your salary." Company does not make a loss even if the dev leaves after 2 years, it has built the experience in-house and it had 16 months to disseminate the newly acquired knowledge to other employees.

The mindset that people must already have knowledge about some specific technology and universities accommodating employers there is exactly why we have so many code monkeys who don't know anything about CS finishing with a degree in CS who, after a few years, realize that their knowledge is basically worthless because the IT world has moved on and other languages or stacks are now en vogue.

</comment><comment><USER43> The "you need more skills" issue is a false problem. Is just that the bad guys have kidnapped, blocked for years, or freeze, most of the good jobs.

This is a mediocrazy and they need to raise a lot of walls for keeping off the brigther people who give them a bad image by comparison. And all is carefully planned to keep this people unemployed also for the next four years.

Requisites to be a minister in Spain?. Speaking english? not necessary. Holding any sort of degree of PhD? Not necessary. Years of experience working for private companies?. Not necessary, but it helps. If you helped a big company to contaminate a bay for example, you could be even be promoted as the next environment minister.

Requisites for the rest of guys for a normal job?. A hamster wheel. Well, first of all you need to be fluent in three or four languages, just because maybe one time a year, or once in ten years, you could need to speak with a foreigner; and for some reason you can't just raise a phone and hire a professional translator for this special day. You will burn in hell if you dare to suggest your boss this logic and simple solution. Then you need to have a degree, a PhD, and also a few masters, and being able to hypnotize a goat in less than five minutes, and work for free for some years, and ...

Job market in Spain is a question of kinship and means being promoted directly in lots of cases... or never.

<comment><USER44> > Well, first of all you need to be fluent in three or four languages

My understanding is that English to CEFRL level B1 was mandatory to work at a multi-national company. Are there other languages required?

<comment><USER43> Yes, it happens. In any case 500 millions of people have spanish as native language in the world so "mandatory" is a relative term. You will need chinese to work in China, and spanish or portuguese to work in South-America.

If you don't speak Catalan and live in Cataluña you just will never finish the middle school. Or if you want to work for the administration you will be ostracised or directly banned for working for the public, just because you are "an subhuman stubborn charnego". If you born in Euskadi and then go to Barcelona for work, you need to be able to speak fluently four languages (spanish, english, vasque and catalan) just to start talking about having a job. If this guy move to Galicia later, will need to learn the Galizian language also.

Oh, If your foreign language in the middle school was french, and a lot of spanish people still studied french in this generation, you will not graduate unless you speak French. If you want as adult to work for a german company you will need a little deutsch of course to be competitive in the job interview.

But the worst stupid thing is that most of the time to be fluent or not is not necessary at all for the job because some kind of problems can be solved in any language and because human brain can fill the communication gaps easily. Is just that is trendy to ask for this.

For some jobs you will need to be "fluent" also in more languages: C, Ruby, Java, Python... Don't worry. They still will say that you are "unskilled" and will want to pay you in peanuts.

<comment><USER45> Oh please, spare the HN crowd of your anti-Catalan obsessions. Or, on second thought, please continue to educate the community on the anti-Catalan sentiment that is unfortunately so common throughout Spain.

> If you don't speak Catalan and live in Cataluña you just will never finish > the middle school.

Or you will learn Catalan which is kinda the fucking point of education? Boo- hoo, Catalonians want kids to learn Catalan if they are going to live in Catalonia! By the way Spanish is mandatory too, why won't you find a problem with that?

> Or if you want to work for the administration you will be ostracised > Is > just that is trendy to ask for this.

Try getting a job in the public administration in Spain without speaking Spanish, in France without speaking French, in Italy without speaking Italian, in the UK without speaking English... see the pattern? Should we give up our right to address our public administration in our own language just to please non-Catalan Spaniards?

> because you are "an subhuman stubborn charnego"

Your comment depicts the Catalonian society as overtly xenophobic. This is an extremely offensive and unfair characterization of Catalonian society as millions of native Spanish speakers living here can certify. You are either completely misinformed about Catalonia, or spreading lies deliberately (both being extremely common within Spain).

Fortunately support for independence is growing fast. Hopefully once we are independent we won't have to endure this sort of bs anymore.

<comment><USER43> > Try getting a job in the public administration in Spain without speaking > Spanish, in France without speaking French, in Italy without speaking > Italian, in the UK without speaking English... see the pattern?

Yes, I see it, and is not the same as you think.

Would be, "Try getting a job in the public administration in Spain without speaking Spanish AND catalan, in France without speaking French AND Patóis, in Italy without speaking Italian AND Lombard, in the UK without speaking English AND Gaelic"... see the pattern? Duplicated effort, same result.

But in Argentina the same guy could use the extra time to learn other things, that maybe could be even useful for their employers.

<comment><USER45> Again, you mirror the Spanish public opinion very well.

The pattern is clear: you only respect state backed cultures, my culture and language are mere nuisances that waste people's time.

That's one of the main reasons we need to break away from Spain ASAP. Before it can complete the cultural genocide it has repeatedly attempted during the last 3 centuries.

<comment><USER43> I'll hire the Argentinian. Looks like a less problematic fit.

Maybe this could be one of the problems here?.

<comment><USER45> So people who know more languages are now a problem. Please, stop it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> >>"It's a paradox," said Valentin Bote, head of research in Spain at Randstad, a recruitment agency. "The unemployment rate is too high. Yet we're seeing some tension in the labor market because unemployed people don't have the skills employers demand.

There's no real paradox there. Employment of young people, and therefore normal career progression for that cohort, essentially shut down for 6-8 years. Now the pipeline is a little empty.

<comment><USER43> This is also a big point. One of the problems with teachers and scientists for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Same thing is happening in every country, it seems. Spanish companies have the entire EU from which they can draw workers without any paperwork or issues, and yet they can't find any? From central/eastern Europe even, whose workers may have lower wage expectations?

No. They're flagging this "shortage" and will simultaneously petition their government to allow faster issuing of/more visas to non-EU countries, i.e. India etc, with lower wage requirements for incoming workers.

<comment> UVB-76 How many people from Eastern Europe speak Spanish?

Obviously not as important for low-skilled, manual labour, but we're talking about highly skilled jobs in the tech sector here.

<comment><USER21> Romania is one example, but there is a bit of a racial issue going on between the countries.

<comment><USER30> Yet Romanians are the second biggest minority in Spain. There are no more problems than the disgusting and systemic racism that Spain has towards any other country and hurt feelings on the other side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Check out this little gem from the article:

"Education and work exist in two alternative worlds that don't really connect," Gomez said. "While in other nations, like the U.S., college education is designed to get you a job, that's not the case in Spain."

This may be a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill."

<comment><USER49> Greener but not false. There is a reason why a US education is highly valued by exceptional international students and by multinational companies.

<comment><USER50> corporate you mean, most startups and valued tech companies don't give any credit to formal education, and the real balance is moved by experience, seconded only by cultural fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's a catch 22

1 - Spanish Universities not in tune with the market reality, pouring out thousands of unemployed people into the market...

2 - Graduates living in a bubble... 99% not wanting to move their asses and thinking that the academic degree is all they need. Get a crappy job or move to another country. Let others create the jobs...

3 - Zero entrepreneurial spirit and risk aversion, making starting up a remote to non-existing option. Blame it on the executives of your crappy company, and obviously, the government...

4 - Gov not having a clue about scientific research, innovation and entrepreneurship, with policies that fail to build a proper ecosystem for startups, and also fail to connect academic and industry worlds (I.e: Silicon Valley <-> Stanford).

5 - Back to 1

<comment><USER52> You're getting the downvote brigade but you're right. It's a many faceted problem with plenty of blame to be shared around.

There are almost zero people at the best colleges and universities in Europe who want to start a new company. I remember trying to convince about a dozen people to start a bitcoin exchange several years ago when it was in the single digits. No go. We could have fucked up almost everything and still been millionaires. I did okay but we would have done much better working together instead of looking for 'a good job'.

> Graduates living in a bubble... 99% not wanting to move their asses and > thinking that the academic degree is all they need. Get a crappy job or move > to another country.

Whole lot of that going around. They don't realize they will be living in their city living hand to mouth for the rest of their lives. There is no big break coming for them. The smarter ones move, but the core problem is entrepreneurial spirit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> > It takes at least eight months for an experienced software developer to earn > an Agile qualification and they also need the ability to deal with senior > executives,

I am a bit confused by this sentence. How does one "ear an Agile qualification"? Why does it take eight months? What is "the ability to deal with senior executives"?

<comment><USER54> _What is "the ability to deal with senior executives"?_

Patience and prudence.

<comment><USER55> Actually, I think it's the ability to translate the state of a project into risks, rewards and trade-offs. It's not necessarily an innately understood skill for technical individual contributors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Starting about 2009, there have been a lot of discussions about whether the unemployment in the US was "structural" or not.

Some argued that a huge number of laborers and potential employees did not have necessary skills and therefore would be unable to find work. Period. This was a big component of unemployment.

Others including Paul Krugman and Dean Baker argued that, because employment was down _across most every field_ , the cause of the unemployment was insufficient demand. They basically likened it to the Great Depression, where highly employable people were thrown out of work despite their skill levels.

This news story makes me think that we have some combination of the two stories going on in Spain. And maybe also the US?

Of course, how the country responds to that situation is a separate discussion.

Maybe the government can just borrow some cash (at historically low rates) and, instead of building another airport somewhere, educate twenty thousand IT engineers, even paying them to go to school. Maybe government could demand that employers train people.

Also, what's going on in the EU with the free movement of labor? Don't some IT people want to move from Estonia and Poland down to sunny Spain?

<comment><USER57> In Spain, we just had elections on the 26th of June, and the conservatives won. There is money, as taxes in Spain are high on wages but low on big companies and the government's budget is 10 points lower % than the EU average... but we have a conservative government.

<comment><USER58> PP won the most votes but not enough to secure a majority. Rajoy is currently in talks with other parties to form a majority, hopefully "within a month." Technically you still have a conservative government but who knows what will happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> A company once flew me to Madrid for an interview. Unfortunately, I cannot understand Spanish, but the receptionist at the hotel seemed to mumble to a friend: look they are flying people here, but our people are unemployed. It seemed a bit crazy for me as well, since I was unsure, if my person and skills justified _that_ kind of effort.

The interview went fine and I think I was offered something around 30k, which was below my current wage in another (non-capital) European city, so I had to decline, although I loved Madrid and the team seemed really nice.

</comment><comment><USER60> Wonder if it has anything to do with low salaries?

Just as an example, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12017439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12017439) has a pretty low salary for the skills they want.

<comment><USER61> I don't think so.. Most of my friends left Spain looking for better long term opportunities rather than money. Even if our economy (and politicians) sucks, quality of life is pretty high with those salaries.

I think the problem is the polarisation in the population. Very well trained people is leaving the country while non-skilled people remain.

Skilled people do not trust the system therefore they leave as soon as they can.

<comment><USER49> Quality of life is high, but what if you have a long term goal of moving? Making a lower wage even if proportionally you're taking home more money has a break even point, and 35k in Spain doesn't hit it.

<comment><USER61> Totally agree, i wasn't defending low salaries at all, just sharing my insider experience of the reasons why people is leaving Spain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I've seen software projects where this was a big issue. Many ambitious Spaniards wind up working in London or elsewhere. Then Spanish companies have to hire overpriced consultancies to fill local tech positions with underqualified resources.

I wonder how much the Brexit will send folks home.

My impression is that many companies are looking at Spain as alternatives to London HQs, but those are also the kind of jobs for elites, rather than the 5M unemployed. Very hard to convert housing builders into programmers.

<comment><USER63> Brexit will happen in 2 years at best. Even so, the UK would still offer work visa to skilled EU workers, there's nothing stopping them from doing that, in fact this is what they said they were going to do. Does everyone really think Brexit is some kind of apocalypse or something for the UK? They love money as much as anyone else and want to remain the finance capital of Europe because money.

<comment><USER30> Yes, but big part of the people that voted Leave are not the people that do business or that like money above other things.

Many Leavers I've talked to justify their decision on "border control" and "sovereignty". They have been given the power to decide and apparently they were "better off with a grand or two less" (sic) "than being slaved to the Eurocrats" (sic).

The problem with visas is that if I have to go through the burden and uncertainty of visas for me and my family, I might as well just move to Paris, Hamburg or Munich for no visas or Australia or California for good economy and fucking decent weather. You'll still get talent, but the shortage will still be much worse and you'll end up lowering your requirements.

<comment><USER63> EU citizens probably won't event need a visa, just a passport. Especially from rich western EU countries, like it was already the case before Schengen.

<comment><USER30> The UK is not in Schengen, that's a common misconception :)

One of the points of the Leave campaign, reinforced after the vote by some of its leaders like Michael Gove, is to setup a points system for immigration. If there was no "limit EU migration" argument, Leave would have easily lost the vote.

<comment><USER63> I know it's not, it's why my wife can't get there :) That's why I said that's how it was even _before_ Schengen, ie French and German didn't need a visa to go to the UK even before the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This was a frustrating article to read. I got the sense the author missed something. Spain is part of the EU common market which numbers 500 million people - how is it that this is only a problem for Spain, and why can't they recruit fellow EU citizens to make-up the shortfall?

<comment><USER65> This assumption is the same mistake made by almost all supranational federalists.

Europe is composed of different countries with vastly different languages, cultures and economic conditions. Just because they're technically "joined" together via treaties doesn't mean labor is going to naturally distribute throughout the union.

<comment><USER66> And yet they thought a shared currency would be no big deal.

<comment><USER65> Don't get me started.

Economists from around the world were adamant that the Euro was a terrible idea when it was founded. Binding dozens of wildly differing economies to one currency controlled by one central bank has always been a pipe dream, but it takes decades for it to start to unravel.

<comment><USER67> The politicians knew a shared currency without sharing other aspects was a bad idea, but they gambled that as the problems became manifest, they would be solved by greater unity.

Maybe that was stupid, but it's a different kind of stupid than not listening to the economists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Pay. More. This. Is. The. Market. Speaking.

<comment><USER69> €200,000 in Spain seems a pretty good wage

<comment><USER19> Yeah, that's what the client is willing to pay to the consulting firm who don't want to hire the guy at more than 24K ...

Sad truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> When you are willing to hire women, older people and provide adequate salaries (dare I say work conditions), suddenly there isn't so much tech shortage.

<comment><USER71> Couldn't 100% of your claim be solved with just the salary variable? What evidence do you have that old+female+cheap people are not being considered as part of the option matrix?

<comment><USER70> No only anecdotal data that I hear again and again. Likewise, where is the avidence about the tech shortage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> From the article:

"Pimentel's client asked him for list of candidates trained in "Agile" project management techniques for helping companies boost their productivity by using more I.T. systems. The client was offering as much as 200,000 euros ($220,000) a year -- almost 10 times the average salary in Spain."

So they're willing to pay ten times the going rate, but they're not willing to take the time to train anyone?

But wait; there's more!

"But such people are thin on the ground in Spain. It takes at least eight months for an experienced software developer to earn an Agile qualification and _they also need the ability to deal with senior executives_ , limiting the pool of people who could potentially fill the roles."

Again, note that they're willing to pay ten times the going rate, so training them for eight months and then paying them the regular wage would pay for itself after a few months on the job; but they still won't train. More importantly, look at the part which I italicized. Dealing with senior executives takes special skill? I am but a lowly suburban nerd, and the ways of my betters intimidate me, so could someone enlighten me as to what that journalist is talking about? I have a sneaking suspicion that Clay Shirky knows.

[http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2013/11/healthcare-gov-and- the-...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2013/11/healthcare-gov-and-the-gulf- between-planning-and-reality/)

"Back in the mid-1990s, I did a lot of web work for traditional media. That often meant figuring out what the client was already doing on the web, and how it was going, so I'd find the techies in the company, and ask them what they were doing, and how it was going. Then I'd tell management what I'd learned. This always struck me as a waste of my time and their money; I was like an overpaid bike messenger, moving information from one part of the firm to another. I didn't understand the job I was doing until one meeting at a magazine company.

"The thing that made this meeting unusual was that one of their programmers had been invited to attend, so management could outline their web strategy to him. After the executives thanked me for explaining what I'd learned from log files given me by their own employees just days before, the programmer leaned forward and said "You know, we have all that information downstairs, but nobody's ever asked us for it."

"I remember thinking "Oh, finally!" I figured the executives would be relieved this information was in-house, delighted that their own people were on it, maybe even mad at me for charging an exorbitant markup on local knowledge. Then I saw the look on their faces as they considered the programmer's offer. The look wasn't delight, or even relief, but contempt. The situation suddenly came clear: I was getting paid to save management from the distasteful act of listening to their own employees."

EDIT: formatting

<comment><USER72> It is easy to be dismissive of executives and the fact that dealing with them takes a certain skill set.

If it is one thing I've learned as someone in a data-heavy field it is that executives don't care about the details and nuances, and that distilling the details of things like log files, etc. and conveying it in a way that aligns with their pain points, strategy, etc. does in fact take great interpersonal skills that many more technically-inclined folks unfortunately lack.

<comment><USER29> > "conveying it in a way that aligns with their pain points, strategy".

In my experience, some executives don't even care too much for facts if it interferes with their agenda. This is usually expressed in subtle ways, but in one instance I've heard an executive directly ask for a report that was easy to manipulate the figures on in order to push our employees into generating more sales.

This is part of the problem when you have directors who see themselves as insulated from day to day challenges. I accept that there's a need for a long term vision, but if someone isn't prepared to understand the details of what's blocking it, they'll not be in a place to advise on how to fix it, and if they're relying on other people to fix those organisational issues, what's the point of having directors at all?

<comment><USER52> > This is part of the problem when you have directors who see themselves as > insulated from day to day challenges. I accept that there's a need for a > long term vision, but if someone isn't prepared to understand the details of > what's blocking it, they'll not be in a place to advise on how to fix it, > and if they're relying on other people to fix those organisational issues, > what's the point of having directors at all?

There isn't any. Why do you think small groups of computer programmers and a handful of venture capitalists are like a wrecking ball to so many different industries.

In the 20th century we got used to the idea of managerial capitalism. Now in the 21st we're seeing that unless you're an Elon Musk level manager, capable of both understanding fine detail plus having comprehension of the big picture, you're surplus to requirements. You'll be competing against managers who are also geeks as well aka the real Silicon Valley advantage.

If your manager thinks 'the market should decide' they ought to step down unless they mass produce widgets in a B2B context. Their entire job is central coordination. In the 18th/19th centuries the manager of a factory would have understood the functions of every bit of machinery they acquired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> There was a Polish composer, writer and politician Stefan Kisielewski who used to say: "Socialism is a system which bravely fights problems that are not known in any other system". That describes situation of Spain perfectly.

<comment><USER43> Nice cliche. That describes the situation perfectly, except by the small fact that Socialism parties do not rule in Spain since a lot of years. We have the equivalent to the Conservative Party, that... ehem, aren't exactly "socialists".

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Language is a large part of this problem, not willing to pay market prices is another.

Why else would recruiters have to look for candidates in Argentina when there's a huge amount of suitable candidates in the EU with an automatic work permit?

<comment><USER34> Argentines speak fluent Spanish, and will be able to understand complex and subtle business requirements presented in Spanish.

<comment><USER74> Therein lies the rub. In most other countries business people who have to deal with subtle business requirements speak English decently well where in Spanish business it's absolutely normal for a CEO of an international company to only speak broken English at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've seen offer for senior .NET developers for 20.000€/year before taxes and going through outsourcing companies.

20.000/year is 15.000/year after taxes.

</comment><comment><USER75> Mr. Pimentel is a Managing Partner and regional director over several countries and as such the main job is to talk the playbook and drum up business. Finding good people is hard and we are the right guys to talk to. Finder fees are proportional to salary so aiming high is important. He claims on his web page to hire country sales directors and country managers so talking salaries of 200k+ is probably quite natural for him. Maybe he is more thinking of a person who can turn a dead end organization into an agile one - such a feat is hard and requires a multitude of skills. In any case it is likely that some things were mixed up in the interview.

One thing is clear - after the property bust in Spain and Portugal a lot of the higher skilled and mobile people were heading elsewhere. There has been a brain drain in the region. Disproportionally high (vs. average Spanish) salaries may be required if mobile top talent is needed. Agile project management or product ownership for run of the mill projects aren't those. But when talking about roles that shape organizations then things may be different.

</comment><comment><USER38> One of my first jobs (in the US) had a great strategy for getting low cost talent:

1\. Hire cheap 2\. Train on the job 3\. Lock in your investment with a multi- year employment contract, broken down into options to "not renew" the contract at 6-month, then 12-month, intervals.

Worked great, they got cheap talent and a means to weed people out, and I got valuable training I used for the next 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER76> > From software developers and mathematical modelers to geriatric nurses and > care workers, a mismatch in qualifications means companies are struggling to > fill posts, even though the unemployment rate at 20.4 percent is the second- > highest in Europe.

This is the result of years of malinvestiment in human capital. The Austrian Theory of Business Cycles explain.

</comment><comment><USER77> So, if they don't have enough qualified workers, why don't they start creating on-the-job training programs? I understand there's risk in such investment (i.e., you train a person and then they leave for a higher salary) but there are many ways to counter it. Is there something like that happening in Spain? If not, why?

</comment><comment><USER78> I've been pinged by recruiters for positions in Spain pretty much every week, either multinationals who need to grow their presence or local corps looking for experts. Cost of living is about the same as here in Portugal, but my previous experience with local execs makes me leery of those opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER79> The agriculture sector employs many North African illegal immigrants.

Visit the greenhouses of Almeria and see what happens when you take your camera from its bag.

<comment><USER63> The do so because local people don't want to do these jobs.

<comment><USER79> If people don't want to do a job, it is because it is not suitably remunerated.

Using illegal labour instead should not be defended. It undercuts the position of the legal workers.

<comment><USER63> Paying people more for these jobs would make the end product way more expensive and make it hard to compete on the global market and make your country not competitive (what's happening here in France). Another side effect is that because the price of the end product gets more expensive, people will have to work more in order to buy said products or just avoid buying them.

<comment><USER79> The EU restricts agricultural imports, fixes prices and pays out massive subsidy for non-production via the CAP.

Perhaps market manipulation by the EU should be reassessed if the consequence is widespread and necessary use of illegal labour by some of the richest farmers in Europe.

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.ht...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_5.2.1.html)

Objectives

Article 39 TFEU sets out the specific objectives of the CAP:

1 to increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and ensuring the optimum use of the factors of production, in particular labour;

2 to ensure a fair standard of living for farmers;

3 to stabilise markets;

4 to ensure the availability of supplies;

5 to ensure reasonable prices for consumers.

<comment><USER63> I totally agree that we should get rid of the CAP. Not going to argue on this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> The skills gap is very real in America, too. It can be hard to find the people you need. And many of the folks who are out of work don't fit the bill. There are specific training programs, sponsored by large companies, that are trying to give post-high-school trainees the right vocational skills... (Can't remember the names atm!)

</comment><comment><USER81> There's a lot of talented Spaniards out there. I know because I can proudly say many of them are my teammates.

Did I mention we are hiring? Clojure, Ruby, Data.

[https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/careers/](https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/careers/)

</comment><comment><USER82> That's what the US has done. There are lots of available workers in the US with non-salable skills.

</comment><comment><USER83> It looks like Spain has almost reached the US' rate of economic non- participation.

[http://www.ine.es/en/prensa/epa_prensa_en.htm](http://www.ine.es/en/prensa/epa_prensa_en.htm)

</comment><comment><USER76> At the same time, I bet there are a lot of Spaniards getting majors on philosophy and other weed-smoking specialties.

</comment><comment><USER84> So EU was merely a clever plan by stronger economies to suck brains out of struggling economies?

<comment><USER85> I guess a good rule of thumb is: If you can pack what you think is the motivation for such a big and time intensive project as the EU into one tweet, it's probably far from the truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> It means the expectation of the demand (companies) are not matching what the market provides.

Having to look for a job in Europa, I dare say most job offers are laughable.

C#, PHP and java are MODERN technologies that no one should be scared of.

Windev is a very good tool.

Mysql and mssql are the only two worthy databases.

Free software is a free as a bier.

AGILE is SOOO complex...it has to be officiated religiously like ITIL or ISO norms.

They want software devs on the market already proefficient in proprietary/tricky technologies, and no one understand why jobless persons with so much time cannot buy these 10K€ tools and use their worthless time in self formation.

And salary expectation are low : a coder MUST not be paid more than any manager. Even the manager responsible for the cleaning team of 500m² office with a headcount of 2.

They just have irrealistic expectations. That's all folks.

</comment><comment><USER87> So Spain isn't Germany, but I'm curious why even in the midwest (St. Louis no less), senior developers easily command $120k+.

But I guess this also goes to the point why SV is only playing "normal" senior developers $150k/yr?

Unless you're really digging the Bay Area lifestyle (or "I'll get my chance in the next cool startup), why even bother.

</comment><comment><USER52> Europe in general, with some rare exceptions, does not value the kinds of skills that are selected for in SV.

The culture is bad. The incentives are all wrong. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

The typical business person in Europe considers him or herself top of the pecking order. This only looks to be true relatively because they hire less capable workers. These are the exact kind of people who imagine hiring twice as many developers gets the job accomplished faster i.e. simpletons.

The typical software engineer is at least one standard deviation above them. Just not in one specific area. In everything. I have friends who did part-time degrees in literature or language studies while they were also studying for computer science at some of the most elite european universities. Most geeks are systems thinkers and have no trouble in grokking areas outside of their main thing. Many of us refuse to be put into a box.

Having interests in exclusively one thing is a pretty fair indicator of not being very adaptive, I'd say it's almost defintional. That is the kind of person they want to hire. You can hire them, but they won't be very good.

Then you get these idiots who think they can run circles around us because they have the phone number of a venture capitalist or bank manager. Get a grip boys, your money doesn't count for much when a software engineer can be ramen profitable so easily. I have all manner of skills I don't bother to put on the market because the rates of pay are so pitiful and I can obtain better results by doing my own thing. Lots of other people just physically move. This is then misread by the business community as 'not enough skills'.

The other thing is that most projects they offer are really boring grunt work where you learn nothing by doing them. If there was an actual project we found cool or innovative we'd probably work for lower base salary plus some equity, but that's not the kind of work we get here in Europe, those kinds of benefits are reserved for Clod-Class. A good many programmers would prefer to work 20 hrs a week as janitors and then work on interesting projects rather than put up with this bullshit plus work 60-70 hour weeks. How many European programmers are told they'll be paid 20-30 euro per hour but actually are required to work three or four hours a day for free? Apparently they like to think we can't do arithmetic but can order a machine to do floating point operations just fine.

Diagnosis: Failure to Coordinate. Failure of Imagination.

</comment><comment><USER88> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery)</comment>


Ask HN: Can I save you 15 minutes a week? - <AUTHOR>

Rather than build another side project for myself - thought I'd offer to help build something that you might not have the time to do. <comment><USER2> You may want to add far more details.

There are a few threads by another HN user (I can't recall off the top of my head, and I can't think of a way to find him), where its "How can I help you?" Or something syntactically similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could list my skills / knowledge base... but I didn't want to limit this discussion.

I'll shamefully admit that my knowledge of dishwasher appliances is on par with the rest of us in this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can save me far more. I hate doing dishes and spend hours on them every week. Yes I have a dishwasher. Build me a rotating power sponge with interchangeable heads. Seriously, I would so buy this thing.

<comment><USER4> Hmm. Mechanical engineer without a dishwasher here. I might take a crack at this.

What about your dishwasher doesn't work for you?

<comment><USER3> Three things. First, it's too small so it doesn't fit all the dishes from one day. It also doesn't fit big pots and pans.

Second, it doesn't scrub. Dishwashers spray and swish soapy water, but don't physically touch the dishes (since they'd break them). The consequence of this is that you have to pre-rinse everything by hand with a sponge or risk dried on food residue which is nearly impossible to remove after it's been through the high temp trying cycle. Oatmeal stuck to a bowl will not come off in the dishwasher. Neither will steak or ground beef off a frying pan (even a teflon coated one).

Third, it takes too long. My dishwasher task 90-120 minutes depending on settings I choose. Now, there are commercial dishwashers that do a load in 30-90 seconds (15 minutes to load/unload). But they cost about $4k used, and I don't know if they have the problem with having to pre-rinse.

The solution I picture is basically a power drill with a circular sponge on the end, but smaller and waterproof. Additionally, something like the car wash mat cleaning machine could be used for flat plates: [http://www.youtoo- carcare.com/media/images/category/reinigun...](http://www.youtoo- carcare.com/media/images/category/reinigung.jpeg). An equivalent of a hair dryer could be used to dry them right away. Or this could be an enclosed rack with hot air blowers built in. Throw the dishes in there, press a button, 30 seconds later, it's dry.

With tools like these, I could do the hand-wash which is more labor intensive but much quicker than 90 minutes. I figure I could spend about 15-20 minutes on dishes and have them put away right away.

<comment><USER5> I think you could fix many of these problems with a better dish washer. A big enough dishwasher should fit whatever you like, and while I grew up rinsing dishes before washing them, my current dishwasher has no problem washing away caked-on residues and such. I only wash things by hand if I need them quickly or they're not dishwasher-safe materials.

<comment><USER3> Probably. A commercial dishwasher able to do a load in 90 seconds would probably do wonders for me. Then I don't even mind it being too small: I can just reload it and run it again. Problem is, these are expensive and are energy hogs. A direct dirt removal power sponge type thing would be much more efficient.

<comment><USER5> I guess I just don't have the same experience with food removal. I'm the sort of lazy guy who loads in dishes with days-old food residue caked on, and my dishwasher has no trouble getting it all of and such, even in the pretty egregiously residued cases. I agree that a power sponge would still be cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi Kevin, just to clarify... are you offering 15 minutes of your time a week, or to build something that would save someone 15 minutes of their time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Either - doesn't have to be an App. Could be a service. Or just my time.

Anything that doesn't require my physical presence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey kevin_employder, send me an email. I have some ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sent you an email.

<comment><USER8> Send me an email as well :)</comment></comment></comment>


Indicted Russian describes "troll farm" work - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/internet-research-agency-russia-mueller-indictment-89c0d2fc-7149-4a30-bad1-e47b4ddb715d.html <comment><USER2> > "blaming me is the same as blaming Zuckerberg for creating Facebook."

Does he realize that he's confirming that blaming him is appropriate here?

</comment><comment> blaser-waffle > Indicted Russian describes "troll farm" work

> Claims he had no idea what the servers were used for or what was going on, > just did configs

Par for the course for Solution Design and Provisioning Managers, lol.

</comment><comment><USER3> Title is misleading. There was no description of "troll farm" work in the article.

</comment><comment><USER4> I believe foreign powers try to influence American elections. (I also believe foreign powers try to influence elections in other countries as well.)

I also believe American media tries to influence American elections. I think this is a more effective (but no less evil) mechanism.</comment>


Birds Flying Through Laser Light Reveal Faults in Flight Research - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/2016/12/05/birds-flying-laser-light-reveal-faults-flight-research/ <comment><USER2> Tiny litte goggles!!!!!</comment>


The Five Levels of Logging - <AUTHOR> https://www.aib42.net/article/five-levels-of-logging <comment><USER2> I increasingly feel that there should be two separate logs, one for the user with the Error/Warning/Info information (what the user wanted to be done and how well it went) and the other for the developer with the Debug/Trace information (capture key information about what the program was doing, especially on the interface - what files it was looking for, what database calls it did etc.).

I always get complaints from users that there is too much useless stuff in the logs through which they need to go. I also think that the developer log should be structured differently, possibly to be easily read by some automation.

<comment><USER3> An "audit log" or "branch log", what business decisions were made, and a "debug log", what params drove said decision

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Info: What is the program up to. Occasional messages that indicate it is alive and doing what is expected.

Warn: Problems that you know about and wish would not happen, but do anyways. A service call has failed, unexpected input that violates the contract of the method, etc. You may be handling these conditions gracefully and/or returning an error to the caller, but still want to know when they happen. Usually you should have a ticket open in your bug tracker for these.

Error: Problems that you do not know about. When an error is logged, a developer should look at it. Some kind of action should be taken immediately. Put the fire out if it is an emergency. If not an emergency, create a ticket in your bug tracker, then change the level to warn.

I keep warn and info separate so that I can easily grep/filter on one. I often want to just see info messages to know what the status of things are.

<comment><USER5> IMHO the difference between Warn and Error is that Warn is recoverable while Error is not.

<comment><USER6> In an enterprise setting, treating one level of logs as _actionable_ , as GP mentions, is a very important for clarifying responsibilities.

If it takes the right pair of eyes on the logs to see a problem for what it is, the whole process slows down and doesn't scale as high. All errors and very chatty warnings should induce me to ask someone what's going on, to make sure it hasn't slipped through the cracks. And they should _thank me_ for pointing it out. Otherwise you reinforce some bad patterns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Talking about logging got me a rejection at Google. The very kind 22 year old interviewing me asked what my thoughts on commenting code was and I said most every time it's used as an excuse to show off a piece of overly clever code, so normally I discourage it in favor of logging, as they are code comments you can use in production. I realize now that was my first graybeard moment.

<comment><USER7> Without diving too far down the comment rabbit hole (complex but efficient algorithms, external references, legal retirements, backwards compatibilty), that's not true though.

A comment is attached to code. A log is attached to an event.

Conflating those will either give you very bad logs or very bad comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I support these 5 levels of logging, but given the discussion below I also would like to highlight a lesson from an SRE talk I once attended[citation needed] that really there are only three levels of alert:

1\. DEBUG - Look at this when debugging, otherwise no one will ever see it. 2\. TICKET - Open a ticket and have someone on your team look at this when it gets to the top of your queue. 3\. PAGER - Drop what you're doing and handle this, now.

Of course, you want to track INFO and ERROR type messages because a sufficient number of them might cause someone to raise a ticket... but at scale, you probably should've built that monitoring already, and just drop INFO/ERROR down to DEBUG.

<comment><USER9> It's nice to have articles like this to give structure to the conversation, but there's no single solution. Python has default levels of; debug, info, warning, error, and critical, but doesn't really give any guidance to what each means. At one company we tried to create some structure, but 3rd party libraries would flood messages at the "wrong" logging level.

I like these 5-levels and the 3-levels you talk about seem like a paired down version that reenforces what each level means.

To illustrate the "no single solution," we tried to use logging for command line output, neither of those systems really has a level for that. We probably should have created a new level between INFO and WARNING because of chatty libraries.

In practice I've found the DEBUG and TRACE are usually best added to code when troubleshooting. When you're writing the code you don't have a good idea what info you'd need when troubleshooting, so it's overly verbose but still missing what you'd want. When trying to stash all logging either locally or centrally (because adding logging and re-running isn't always an option) it can affect performance.

<comment><USER10> I think a good log system should give you the ability to store everything but filter quickly. So for example I'll set up my systems to store everything down to LOG_DEBUG because I might want that information. But when I'm actually looking at the logs I like being able to exclude the DEBUG messages and look at the general behavior, then drill down when I think I understand what the sequence of events is. Good log systems should support this without making me filter as I'm storing the data.

Also in UNIX systems I wish there was a way to generically pipe the output of a command to the system log while preserving the return code in case the command exits. In BASH you can configure the pipe behavior to propagate errors to the calling shell, but in normal shells the last return code is the one that gets stored, which is not usually what you want. It would be really cool if the logger utility captured return codes from upstream and returned them so that I can use it in the antiquated SystemV init scripts I have to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Debug: If you can read this, you are standing too close to the program.

</comment><comment><USER12> The article is a bit confusing, because the title says 5, the article gives 6 (Error, Warning, Info, Debug, Trace, and Fatal), but the article casts doubt on whether either of those is right when it says this:

> I would like to talk about the five (or six, or four) that I find are the > most crucial, the fundamental set to base your own levels (and your > thinking) on.

Which are the 2 from the 6 given whose status as levels of logging is in doubt?

<comment><USER13> He orders it in terms of relevance too. Note that the last two levels he states are Trace and Fatal. He talks about how Trace may not always be enabled, or how Fatal doesn't necessarily make sense if such an error needs to be handled manually anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article reminded me of a writing that an ex-colleague of mine did at a previous company: [https://nerds.kueski.com/better- logging/](https://nerds.kueski.com/better-logging/)

Everybody developer knows that they should include logging in their systems, however _how_ and _what_ to log is not something so well documented.

When you start working in a system (i.e. at a startup) you put the odd log here and there, without too much attention. However, as your system(s) starts growing, you have to start paying attention at your logs' structure and semantics, so that they are more useful in ELK, Sumologic and similar log searching engines.

<comment><USER9> What's nice about something like Elasticsearch is if you categorize your logging levels you can more easily drop logs of a certain level at varying times. Debug/verbose/trace is a lot less useful after, say, 24hrs and takes up a lot of space while Fatal errors should be rare and probably want to be tracked year-over-year or between releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really believe only two levels are necessary most of the time: error, and info. Error is for anything that a dev should be notified about (AKA if you send an error log message, assume someone will be notified about it immediately), and info is for any other useful debugging information, like "we got a request for /foo/bar at 10 pm". I also think structured logging is absolutely essential. Log levels are really just a way to get some of the benefits of structured logging.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was _really_ hoping this might continue with 'six, if you work with IoT devices' or something like that, as in the Larry Miller[0] routine.[1] Never mind, I'll leave the links here anyway...

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Miller_(comedian)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Miller_\(comedian\))

1\. [https://youtu.be/eceSHKqwUPY?t=18](https://youtu.be/eceSHKqwUPY?t=18)

</comment><comment><USER17> > Connecting to server:4242 as "user":"hunter2"

as an example of DEBUG logging is very wrong. Passwords should not end up in your logs, ever.

<comment><USER10> What password? All I see is * * * * * * *.

<comment><USER18> Hah. Context for others: [http://bash.org/?244321](http://bash.org/?244321)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have always used them as follows. Deciding between DEBUG and INFO is the most difficult. INFO, WARN, and ERROR are simple decisions.

DEBUG: Information which is relevant for tracing activity and data through the program.

INFO: Important workflow decisions made within the normal operation of the program. Allows you to tell what path a particular operation flowed down, but not with tracing every activity.

WARN: Non-fatal errors which do not prevent the operation from completing. Example: Failing to close a file after having read from it.

ERROR: Fatal errors which prevent the operation from completing. Example: Failing to open the file or reading from it.

<comment><USER20> What about _FATAL_ errors which prevent the entire program from continuing?

<comment><USER19> Error and fatal are the same thing. If an operation fails and cannot be recovered, that's an error. There is no meaningful difference between an operation failing and the entire program failing. Or, from another perspective, keeping the program running is just another operation that can have fatal or non-fatal errors.

<comment><USER21> That depends on the nature of the program. We use error and critical for server software. If there is a protocol violation on a particular connection, log an error and drop the connection, but otherwise continues. If the `accept` system call fails that's critical and the program shuts down. Depending on what we're doing there may be other critical operations, but some software doesn't have any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> trace: used for visualizing flow of program, extremely noisy and never on prod

debug: low level flow of program, inputs/outputs

info: what I want to see at runtime in prod, high level flow of program, details about operation so I know what's going on if I want to look

warn: things that may indicate errors or other unexpected situations to be aware of that may be relevant to problems elsewhere

error: something serious or unexpected that probably indicates a defect.. issue that needs to be looked into... unhandled/unexpected state

<comment><USER23> trace: printf debugging

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Counterpoint: [https://dave.cheney.net/2015/11/05/lets-talk-about- logging](https://dave.cheney.net/2015/11/05/lets-talk-about-logging)

tl;dr: Only Info and Debug levels carry their weight.

<comment><USER25> This works at a very, very small scale where you are reading your logs by hand. At this point, you don't even need log levels.

In the real world, you're not going to read your logs unless you're trying to investigate an issue. Instead, you're going to monitor your logs. And this kind of monitoring is where WARN and ERROR become helpful.

WARNs are useful because if you run into a WARN-level issue every now and again, it's no big deal, but if you run into a ton of them, that might indicate a problem that's worth fixing. A single WARN log isn't that useful, but a statistically significant number of WARN logs is a monitorable metric. Being able to detect and address issues after they're serious enough to cause elevated WARNs but before they're serious enough to cause customer impact is worthwhile.

ERRORs are useful because then you have a one-size-fits-all way of monitoring for error conditions, if for example, it's an offline job that doesn't result in a 5xx response. You should still monitor for 5xx responses, pipeline job failures, non-zero exit codes from processes, or whatever your application- level "this didn't end well" signal is. But ERROR logging is also a good metric to have if you want to have multiple log-based metrics all in one place.

<comment><USER24> If you're parsing your logs with a machine for triage like you describe, you should be doing structured logging, not string logging.

<comment><USER25> And the structure will include a log level to enable this kind of classification.

<comment><USER24> Sure, but then we're not talking logger.Info: it's a difference in kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've always preferred levels of logging rather than these arbitrary names (what's the difference between trace and debug, and which one is lower level?).

Give me three levels of logging, 1, 2, and 3, and then warning, and error. Maybe allow to mix and match them, if this makes sense (the typical nomenclature makes them all mutually exclusive, which is dumb).

There are your five levels.

<comment><USER20> Depending on your Coding Culture, you order them based on "priority" (FATAL would have priority over all others, and therefore numbered as 1), or "importance" (FATAL would be most important, and therefore numbered 5.)

Alternatively, each is a flag in a number so that they can be combined, with FATAL being 1 or 16 depending on priority vs. importance.

I would argue that the names do indeed suffice to tell you their "level" \- TRACE is the noisiest, least important, least priority level. DEBUG is next, followed by INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL.

<comment><USER27> Curiously, in the days of OpenVMS this was called 'severity' level and was a global system concept [0] related to status code of execution.

Info, Warning, and Error are degrees of Success or Fatal/Severe.

The status would then be logged in a structured manner that shows a facility code, serverity, message.

0\. [https://h41379.www4.hpe.com/wizard/wiz_3582.html](https://h41379.www4.hpe.com/wizard/wiz_3582.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thanks for this! Was just about to start implementing a logging subsystem myself so the timing is perfect :)

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm going to weigh in on my opinionated library for logging: [woveon- logger]([https://www.npmjs.com/package/woveon- logger](https://www.npmjs.com/package/woveon-logger)) (js). Sorry if that's a no-no, but nobody seems to use my much loved library anyway.

The multiple levels are nice, especially for logging errors in production and tracking general information of your software. But in development, logging is often about tracking a particular aspect in your code. You need something that logs to a particular _aspect_ that you are working on, and then can turn off that _aspect_ once you move on. In the future, you often find yourself back to debug and need to flip that _aspect_ back on again.

Summary: Log levels of info, warn and error all have a place. Logging to aspects is valuable during development, easy to turn off for production and useful when returning to debug.

<comment><USER6> Logging is one of the weirder cross cutting concerns, for many reasons but especially including the one you mention.

We had to roll back an upgrade last month because one nonfatal (but still pretty bad) problem was generating a ridiculous amount of log entries. We had no way to turn it off or throttle it, so we rolled back.

I have fantasized for years about a programming language with a small runtime that supports instrumentation of the code, not just for debugging and profiling, but for logging as well. Logging becomes a set of conditional breakpoints stored with or at least near the code and you can tweak them individually.

Something akin to applying the 80/20 rule to Aspect Oriented Programming.

We fake this by implementing logging frameworks that try to short circuit out cheaply. But it really only pays off if you can marshal the arguments to the logger very cheaply, and you still have problems with third party code, which can't know that you've got workarounds for problems they consider to be fatal, and are therefore so noisy at the WARN or INFO log levels that you can't see your own log entries (Apache Foundation, I'm looking at you).

<comment><USER30> Check out log points: [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/debugging#_logpoin...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/debugging#_logpoints)

<comment><USER6> It's buried but my IDE has a similar feature.

I meant support for running systems, not local development.

<comment><USER30> "Logpoints are especially useful for injecting logging while debugging production servers that cannot be paused or stopped."

There is a lot more going on with them than you might realize. Not sure how coupled it is to the nodejs/kubernetes/Azure stuff they have built into VSCode, but it seems like a working example of the future. Sorta like time travel debugging in node-chakracore.

Windows has this facility called EWT that lets you setup all sorts of eventing/tracing that is actually not present(the calls) in the code unless the EWT facility injects the code necessary to enable it into the running process. This allows you to dynamically enable and disable event sources based on stuff like.. whether or not something is currently subscribing to it. Worth looking into just for the sheer amazement of it if you are not a Windows developer and familiar with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Netscaler logging deserves its own level of hell. You're given 15 undocumented logging levels, with the suggestion not to leave it running longer than necessary, and that level 11 should be enough for anybody.

</comment><comment><USER32> The issue with logging levels is they only convey basic information through the levels and the rest through the actual message which results in the mess that is log processing.

</comment><comment><USER33> Logging is very important because it also allows you to debug/resolve issues easily on production systems. But caring about the appropriate log levels and the ability to configure them at runtime is also super important. It's just insane and ridiculous to log everything on a trace/debug level and stream it to the Expensive Innovative Big Data Machine Learning Smart Log Analytics Product. Yes, I'm looking at you Application Insights.</comment>