Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?
I'm a software developer considering moving to Spain for non-career-related reasons. That said, the job opportunities there are a huge factor in whether I'll actually go.
I've narrowed down to Madrid and Barcelona as the two best options, at least regarding jobs. So I'm asking for the opinions and advice of HNers who have lived & worked in both those cities:
What shape is the tech sector in? What types of work are available? What do salaries look like, vs London/Berlin/Paris levels? How limiting is it to not be fluent enough in Spanish for use at work, beyond chit-chat? Is contracting/freelancing possible, without Spanish fluency? Is there is an obvious leader between the two cities, tech-scene wise? Are there any unintuitive factors to consider?
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A bit of personal context, if it helps the advice to be a bit more concrete:
* I'd be going for senior developer roles. Most likely at small-mid size companies. Larger ones possibly, for the right job.
* My past jobs have been in the capital cities of Europe's strongest economies. I'm aware that moving to Madrid or Barcelona will likely involve a pay cut in absolute terms. But this is a trade off I'm more than happy to make.
* I'm currently functional in Spanish but I have a long way to go until fluency. That's one of my goals in moving to Spain. So I'm not put off by the language barrier for day to day life. It would be more of a near term concern if non fluency is severely career limiting, for example if it becomes a problem once you are anywhere above entry level positions, as is the case in some countries.
157 comments
[ 13.1 ms ] story [ 210 ms ] threadIn absolute terms, but take in mind that life in Spain can be much less expensive than living in Berlin or Paris. It depends on the area and the job.
> I'm currently functional in Spanish but I have a long way to go until fluency. That's one of my goals in moving to Spain
Madrid is the right option then. Has worst climate with more hot in summer and colder in winter, and is as stressful as any other big city, but is a much more easier place to learn spanish, and (probably) an easier place for a foreigner to mix with the locals. Barcelona uses heavily Catalonian language for all: trafic signs, street posters, commerce, casual conversation, television, politics... all.
On the other hand, if you can find work in any of the other "big/but not so big" province capitals (or can do remote work) maybe you should consider it. Smaller the city, worst pay, but much better life quality. The climate is better around the coast, as usual.
> How limiting is it to not be fluent enough in Spanish for use at work
As long as you speak english and know your stuff, should not be a big problem. English is worshipped (an old national inferiority complex) and in fact could be much more difficult to you to find a job in Spain if you were Spaniard.
This is not granted always. It depends on the people.
The problem is that you are trying to learn spanish being inmersed at the same time in another similar language but with different orthographic and grammatical rules. And you see examples of the non-spanish version everywhere in your journey. Should you use a 'B' or a 'V' for that word?. Sounds the same but is often the opposite in the two languages. Lots of people have problems with that without even noticing.
Just to clarify, if you tell someone you didn't understand their initial answer, they won't have any problem changing to Spanish.
Unless you want to pass for the equivalent of a redneck when doing bussiness in lots of American countries and also in most spanish provinces, you should remember that those words must be written in spanish as: alcoba, almíbar, gabardina, abortar, verruga, vivac, automóvil, probar, reventar, verbena, está, China and correr (with word stress in the e this time), for example.
And would be good to remind also that sometimes the same concept is treated as masculine in Spanish but is feminine in Catalán (or the opposite case). Unlike english we use different articles for masculine and femenine words so this is important. Would be like using "she" when talking about our manager John.
And this is only a small part of the complete bobby trap list.
I do get the feeling, at least in Barcelona, that the preference is Catalan > English > Spanish. I've only visited as a tourist though; so I don't know how much of that carries over to the business world.
I can tell you that you are highly misinformed if you think the preference is Catalan > English > Spanish :)
Hence, the usual result is that whenever you get spoken at in "broken" spanish you instinctively switch to english. Hell, I've went on to work on tech circles, and I still feel more comfortable speaking english with people who have a strong accent, even if they are germans/whatever and english is not their native language either!
With catalan it is a different situation. Anyone trying to speak catalan is not just trying to survive (they would do that in spanish!). They are actively trying to learn your native language, and it makes you and your culture feel respected by that person. In such a situation, you do your best to try to understand that person and help him improve further without being pedantic.
For a comparison, I've felt a similar "gratitude/respect reaction" when trying to say a few things in Gaelic while I was visiting northern Ireland.
I find that very hard to believe, but if it did happen, it's either a joke or a one-off case.
If you're thinking about investing in Barcelona, and having fears about the separatist movement: don't worry, it is not going to happen. In that regard Barcelona is pretty much like London: separatists are a minority, being the separatist power in the countryside. So before the Catalan region of Spain becoming independent, Barcelona would remain as part of Spain (in the improbable case of all Spanish citizens agreed about allowing a "Clarity Act" like in Canada, so if Spain could be divided, any separatist region could be divided as well -that would be going "nuclear" against separatists that consider the Catalan region of Spain as "indivisible"-). So independence chance is 0, in my opinion. I hope Catalan nationalism will reduce its influence once their leaders pass through the court (corruption cases), and everything gets back to normal, with bilingüism/trilingüism in the schools and public administration, instead of current de-facto Catalan monolingual stuff in the public sphere. If after that you still have doubts, invest in Madrid first, and think about Barcelona once the political scene gets more rational (I love Barcelona, don't get me wrong).
I wouldn't discourage the OP like that. Most of Barcelona's huge immigrant population -- Romanian, Bulgarian, Pakistani, etc. -- never learns Catalan even after two decades living there. They manage perfectly fine without Catalan, and become proficient in Castilian instead. (Of course, their children learn Catalan as they go through the local school system.)
Of course, I think it would be rude for a white collar person like the OP to move to Barcelona and never learn Catalan, but he could certainly move there and get by with Castilian for the first several months.
What type of jobs is expected for them?
moved to Barcelona about two years ago (from London). Here's a post I wrote last summer about some of my impressions. http://www.freyfogle.com/post/1466857133/moving-to-barcelona
In short: quality of life is great, and the tech scene, though still small, is growing rapidly.
For the Barcelona I highly recommend you subscribe to this weekly newsletter http://www.barcinno.com
I think that this summarizes clearly one of the biggest issues: Real integration.
On the other hand, everybody in Madrid is from another part of Spain, and nobody has a problem with spanish language therefore is much easier to integrate and to make friends from different places. As said, the city is a furnace in summer, but is not much different to most places in Spain (including Barcelona). Maybe Madrid is a little hotter, but Valencia's beaches are at 1:35 h of distance in train, and Barcelona and Malaga at 2:45 hours or so from Madrid.
If you want a super-nice summer climate go to the Cantabrian coast, when it rains all day long each four days and you can sleep all night long :-). Irish climate.
Cáceres, Lugo and Palencia are the cheapest (but the tech scene should be close to unexistent in those places).
Strongly turistic areas closer to the sea are more expensive to rent a place in general terms, specially in summer, but can be cheaper in winter and off-season
Not sure why these costs are sort of concealed to employees n Spain and disclosed as gross salary in other cointries.
Perhaps Spanish Government wants to give the sense they are doing a lot for people in terms of Healthcare and unemployement without them knowing where the money really comes from and overall how much money they are paying for these benefits.
As for healthcare, at least in Barcelona, if it is not really urgent, you have to wait a month to actually gat that free visit to a doctor. Because of this, people go to paid/private doctor anyway.
If you have cancer or a serious disease, you go to the public one, even if you pay private. Not because of costs, but because there are better doctors in public than there are in private (strange but true).
The main goal of private companies is earning money, so they will try to cut costs. If a patient gets worse or the operation finds a problem or do not went as expected the patient will be quickly derived to the nearest public hospital (the insurance will be billed later for this).
https://www.thoughtworks.com/locations/barcelona
Which are? Genuinely interested why someone would consider taking a huge cut in salary.
Instead of moving now. Why not slash your current expenses to the bone? Save like crazy for a year, then move with a nice bank balance and ease yourself into the country without the stresses of quickly learning the language, making good friends, networking, etc.
Even better, with a healthy bank balance. You could find out what is missing from the tech scene and create a start-up to fill it.
Maybe the down voters can explain why it's a bad idea to move to another country and create a startup?
Friendly people; easier life; excelent food; nobody shooting you at the shool; Wyoming winters; no coyotes, alligators or snapping turtles trying to dinner on you or your pet, swimming at the sea in april...
Oh, and there is the universal, excelent and almost free healthcare also. I forgot it.
The 21% VAT is just a huge error that does much more harm than good IMHO
Take in mind also that you need to advance the VAT to the government each three months. Including money that could be still unpaid to you (or worse, that will never be paid because some big clients can blackmail small companies easily in that sense). This is a problem for a small company that is thus forced to eat the loses and lend a money to the government, even if they do not really have this money. Is bassically sucking money from the people that create and maintain jobs.
Anyway, the VAT is more likely to go up than down, given that it is not high relative to other European countries.
[#] edit: assuming "you" have relatively high income, of course, which I think would be the case for the OP (median salary is below 20k).
Europe can raise the VAT as many as they want. They are only shooting themselves in the foot, damaging the growth expectatives of the european companies and carefully nurturing the anti-european parties.
Is the income tax not progressive in Spain then? Everyone pays the same marginal tax rate?
I'm not sure what kind of virtue signalling is that, but I highly doubt that the problem they try to solve with VAT is "how can we tax children and elder people?" and more like "how can we collect more tax to build a fairer society based on our social democratic point of view? So we can cover also services for people not paying income tax."
I would really urge you to refrain from being that cynical :) it will only make you sour.
We already have too few jobs, and too many American tourists ruining our home. You can be rich in the Silicon Valley, that's fine, but every time an aspy Californian techie moves here, all you people do is complain "this is better in amurika", "California is way better because of .."
Yes, we understand that AmuriKKKa is a wonderful land of opportunities.
Please stay there. Yankee, go home.
People might expect you to talk Catala in Barcelona but you should be able to get around with English and Spanish
Learning a language can be daunting at first but it gets there eventually
Barcelona native here, lived and worked for years in the NY tech scene and now I am in London, although I go back to Barcelona often, and I'm seriously considering moving back. (I don't know the situation in Madrid well enough). Here are my points:
On the one hand, the tech ecosystem is clearly not as strong as Berlin/London or even Paris, and the average engineer salary is _low_. That also might mean there is more room to experiment and make an impact, offset by a general not-so-mature or agile business environment. Barcelona has good universities, and that means many good developers eager to work on cool shit for lower pay than in other places, if you're into starting your own thing.
Barcelona has many peripheral, small offices of large companies, so I'd say you may be able to find some of the jobs you're looking for in that circuit.
Additionally, Barcelona has a wonderful creative scene. Many strong designers, any many studios doing interesting stuff. Not sure if that's a world that interests you, but many small and big agencies have offices in the city.
And I know you're not asking about that, but dude, quality of life is unbeatable: weather, food, culture and pace of life compensate for what you may be missing on the other end, particularly if you have cultivated relationships in the rest of Europe that you may be able to maintain and use to secure business.
It may depend on what you are looking for. If you truly prioritize really good tech jobs, I would say don't do it. Adjusting your expectations in terms of salary and general ecosystem is required. Salaries won't be at London or Berlin level by a pretty big margin, but at the same time you should adjust by a cost of living that is about like 40% of what it would be in London.
If you want something more balanced, and a rich well-rounded human experience (ha), I'd encourage you to consider the full picture and do it.
From Portsmouth harbour (30 minutes from Southampton docks) there are ferries to Santander or Bilbao in Spain, which also allow pets.
I thought that was a thing of the past!
http://www.queenmarycruises.net/queen-mary-transatlantic-sch...
I clearly failed at googling, and the thought of a cruise ship never crossed my mind.
Barcelona used to be much more polluted but from what I am told they made a major effort to clean up around 2012. https://air.plumelabs.com/en/year/barcelona
What's the tech meetup scene like there? Are there conferences? You mentioned the creative scene is great there and I'm totally into that. I'm very interested in getting into interactive installation pieces where art and tech converge. Like what Eyebeam does in NYC.
Generally good opportunities but expect pay to be a lot lower than London etc. Cost of living is pretty cheap though so it evens out :)
The tech scene in Spain has changed a lot in 10 years. 10 years ago all money was used in the housing marked, tech was low priority for investors. That has changed, nowadays the tech industry in Spain is getting healthier and starts to compete in global markets.
From what I see, wages are considerably lower than in the rest of Europe and the US.
On the other hand, some offices I have been in have spectacular views of the sea :)
If I was you I'll double check other cities like Valencia, Málaga and Mallorca.
Bear in mind that the cost of life in Spain can vary a lot from one city to the other.
Quality of life is great, though, and not so expensive. The Lancet recently [1] put Spain's healthcare as 8th in the world, food is great, the social scene is very open to foreigners, climate is better than in northern europe, etc.
The worse part of your expenses in either Madrid or Barcelona will be renting an apartment, as prices are rising quickly (after the financial crisis, housing plummeted, so construction stopped. But now everyone with some extra cash is buying apartments for renting them, and there's extra pressure to make them a worthwhile investment).
Spain's economy is divided in tiny companies (PYMES), and huge companies. We lack a lot of medium sized companies such as the german mittelstands, and it shows on job mobility and opportunities. Compounding this with a small tech scene, it might be hard to find a job opportunity. But tech is growing quickly, as others have mentioned.
If you are functional in spanish, it shouldn't be a problem, but mind that spaniards are not so used to working with other nationalities, so you will be somewhat "exotic" and you will get a mild joke from time to time. You might find some "inferiority complex", particularly if you are german/french/american, as Spain has traditionally looked abroad for innovation and modernity references (famously pictured by Unamuno and his "Que inventen ellos" quote [2]).
The contracting area is dismal. Most of autonomos are either micropymes or false autonomos, actually working for one huge company, with total dependence and a huge risk, without the normal employee rights and securities. Spain is not accustomed to paying fair prices for contract work. And outside the tech scene, there will be often requests for working for free (typical for design or copy work), or without paying taxes ("cobrar en B").
On the Madrid vs. Barcelona topic I'm of course biased, being from Madrid, but I find that foreigners are initially much more familiar with Barcelona, and they overlook Madrid. Madrid is great! And more objectively: it is bigger, with more opportunities, without language problems (catalan might be an issue from time to time, mostly if you are still learning spanish, but you will also find people from time to time that refuse to speak spanish for political reasons), and with less tourists yet more foreigners (you will not be treated so much as a cash-cow tourist, as some of my friends have suffered a couple of times in Barcelona).
Overall, I'd say you can live very well in Spain, but it is not the place if you seek big career opportunities. Of course all of this is a HUGE simplification, and you can find excellent opportunities in Spain, and shitty opportunities elsewhere. I personally have a lot of french friends working in Madrid with excellent jobs and adamant on staying for the rest of their lives. And all of what I said is improving quickly; Spain got a really big economic push when entering the euro, and although the crisis stuck VERY hard, we are recovering and accelerating a lot!
[1] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... [2] (spanish) https://blogs.iadb.org&...
Being both cities relatively near, why don't you take a week to visit them both? Register to some meetups, visit tech hubs, incubators, etc, and see for yourself which one feels like the place you want to be in. Now is a good time to visit, as the weather is calm. I would stay away from Madrid on august.
As for freelancing, I wouldn't recommend unless you are going to work for foreign clients.
Madrid native here.
The scene is growing and it's exciting. I work at carto.com, and there are plenty other like it (growing startups). If you want to visit our offices, hit me up at @gfioravantti and I'll give you a tour!
Salaries are low but quality of life is top notch
I don't think I can send you a DM on twitter without you following me first. If you'd be so kind, and would like to arrange something, would you mind shooting an email to throwawayhn0110@gmail.com with a way to get in touch? Using a throwaway for obvious reasons, sorry for the hoops!
Having said that, exciting career opportunities in south of France are kinda limited.
BTW: If you want a place that is indeed very cheap, look at Portugal (I don't know how's the job market there, but several of my colleagues moved to Lisbon recently and I think they're doing well).
Many people ask me why I haven't moved permanently elsewhere. The answer is simple: quality of live. It's really hard to get the quality of life that we have in Spain (free health care, awesome food, awesome weather, lots and lots of places to visit on the weekends, awesome hiking places, beaches, mountains to sky, etc). Specially if you have a high salary like us in tech do.
About Madrid and Barcelona. I think both are good choices, but let me summarize some thoughts: - Barcelona. It has a beach and the sea; if you are really into it, it's a great choice. It's near France, so it's great to rent a car and travel to Europe (France, Italy). The city is lovely although there are way too many tourists now (you will avoid many areas). It had an ecosystem much bigger than Madrid, but right now it's not anymore. The design community is bigger there. There are more international people living there for 1-2 years, but they usually leave. - Madrid. The bigger companies are here (Amazon has tons of good paying jobs, Google, Facebook). If you avoid Puerta del Sol, the rest of areas are very calm. It has high-speed trains with all over Spain, it's the best spot if you want to travel. The startup ecosystem has grown a lot, Google opened a Campus there (like in London). There are many accelerators in Madrid. And many of us who sold previous companies are already into our 2-3 companies. Wages are higher and the cost is kind of similar now (what they told me in Barcelona two weeks ago). Madrid has more events than in Barcelona.
About the work. If you work in Tech, Spanish won't be a problem neither in Madrid nor Barcelona. In both places you may want to learn some Spanish & Catalan words to communicate better, but the situation is improving a lot (there are thousands of American & British teachers in our schools).
Salaries? Lower than in UK and Germany. But the top companies are paying much more than traditional companies. Let's say that the idea is that you save the same money. A Senior dev can get paid between 40 and 60k in Madrid in one of the top startups + stock options.
Don't do freelancing with local clients. If you are into remote, that's the best way to save money. Remote for a US client and work from Spain.
If you are searching for a startup and Madrid is finally a good option for you, check ours https://ontruck.com/work-with-us/. We are around 40 employees, we have grown a lot (€) in one year and we have just been invested by Atomico and Idinvest https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/11/ontruck/. Our focus is Europe.
I pay 378 euros a month as an automono and I don't have paro.
4.5k a year for health insurance it better be a damn good one.
Barcelona is great and it's difficult to find tech people, demand is skyrocketing. Most of them already have a great job.
Salaries range between 20k€ for entry positions to 45k-50k for top senior positions. Cost of life is adjusted accordingly. Tech people are well paid in Spain and have non trouble living an affluent life.
Language is not an issue. I do all my interviews in English/Spanish. 99% of people in Catalonia do speak Spanish [1]. You'll definitely need to learn Spanish for life outside your workplace: shopping, taxes, etc.
Barcelona is very tourist friendly, hipper and has better weather than Madrid. Madrid has better top level positions (director of big telco, top public servants, etc) and better "quality culture": cinema, theater, etc. That being said both cities are great both in work & leisure. You'll feel comfortable in both. The only thing that makes a real difference is the sea: if you're used to being near the coast, Madrid can be a bit stifling.
Spanish tech is pretty hot but you won't find any unicorns. You can make a great career but we don't have any Googles, Apples or Facebooks. However some big companies have offices in Barcelona: King, Social Point...
The catalan area is undergoing a political process where they want independence from Spain. Nobody knows what's going to happen. In any case that hypothetical independence would affect both cities more or less equally -- if only by different reasons.
TL;DR: Both cities are great. Barcelona has the sea and Madrid is the capital. Tech jobs are paid well w.r.t. cost of life. Spanish people like to argue about politics but that shouldn't be a deal breaker either way. Reply or PM me if you want more details.
[1]: http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/sociedad/conocimiento...
I was in a very similar situation to yourself almost 5 years ago so I'll try and list some of my thoughts and experiences.
I was working as a backend developer in the UK, my girlfriend was off doing her masters and told me I should do something interesting with myself as I felt stagnant in the job I had at the time.
I'd always loved Spain and Catalunya so took the plunge to move out here, my girlfriend joined me and we've now spent almost 5 happy years about here in Barcelona.
Getting a job:
- I found interviews to be similar to interviews in the UK.
- Companies are much slower in getting back to you and moving you through their pipelines. One company came back to me 3 months after having offered me a job and wondering why I'd had to look for other options.
Working/Work environment:
- I joined a company of around 60 people, don't fool yourself that the work environment will be in English just because the interview was. I personally wanted to learn Spanish but it was still much tougher starting a job, a new life and a new language(s).
- While quality of life is better I'd say the work environment is tougher, people work hard and long hours here, at neither company I worked at did we do a standard 9-5. 9-7 was much more common with an hour for lunch.
- Management feels quite old school, they can be more rigid and traditional than say in the UK. Developers on the other hand feel ahead of the curve, there is more interest in side projects, new tech and trying out different skills.
- Salary is quite a lot lower, I took a 30% pay cut when I moved. I managed to get a couple of pay raises but the ceiling and cadence of raises is much lower. I'd attribute that to the more traditional management treating workers as equal resources and also that back then there were a lot of talented developers around (and less larger companies like King were in the area).
- Both companies I worked at worked in English official but in reality it was mainly Spanish, switching to English if there were non Spanish speakers present. I'd say having fluency is a huge huge boost to your career potential (and ability to make friends) :).
Quality of life:
Quality of life is great, a slower more family focused culture and a plethora of fun things to do within the city and surrounding areas. It really makes such a difference having nicer weather for both your mood but also ability to get out and do more sport or taking long Sunday walks (a great pastime here).
I think most people responding to you will rave about the quality of life (I'm one of them) but let me gave you some things that are tougher.
- If you want to learn and live in Spanish then you are best off in Madrid. Significantly less tourists and the use of just Spanish means immersion will be much quicker. Barcelona is great but due to having two official languages, a ton of tourists and foreigners means that a lot of people will fall into just speaking their native language anyway. You really need to make an effort to take classes, not switch to English and persevere. As my partner is also British we've had to make an extra effort as we speak English with each other.
- Making local friends is quite tough, all our friend are Spanish speakers from outside of Catalunya or South America. Locals are very friendly but they tend to have grown up with their friendship groups and it can be harder to integrate (doubly so as their are two languages and learning both to a good standard is tricky).
- Do not live anywhere near the center in Barcelona, tourists invade the city and really make it quite unpleasant. House prices are also rocketing for renting at the moment.
I now work remotely for a US company as it seems the best of both worlds, I love living here, the people,culture,food and weather all combine to make me happier. If you are serious about taking the plunge I'd look ASAP for a Spanish teacher, it'll be the best investment you'll make! Best of luck!