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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where are you? What does your company do?

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

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

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

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

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

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