Work in Spain, a Flower in a Desert

Recently, I've been involved in the selection of a candidate to cover a position in the company where I work. It is been the first time for me I chose a person for a job, I must confess; but I also must admit it has been an interesting and tiring experience.

I started working in my present company almost one year ago. I underwent two interviews by Skype, since I was not in Barcelona at that time. Somehow, I managed to convience them about my adequacy without even being personally there. Maybe that was the trick! I remember they asked me to write down a whole report about how I would focus the project they were hiring me to work for.

It took me three days to complete it and a lot of coffees at チョコクロ. I even had to turn down a promising afternoon of crazy fun with the boring and gorgeous "so+adj." girl in order to finish the bloody report on time. At the end, I got the job, though exceptionally I had to be on trial for 6 months, which is the double of what it is normally required in the company.

Now, I was on the other side of the table, and in front of me, the three guys that were selected to have an interview with out of 25 possible candidates who were turned down straightforward for not even fulfilling the most basic requirements we were asking them to get the job. And it was I who had to carry the burden of interviewing them, since I am the only expert in Computer Vision in the company. So, there I was, peppering them with all sort of questions about their knowledge, background, and future prospectives.

First, a Colombian guy with an interesting CV, perfect for what we were looking for. PhD in Computer Vision, international experience in research, command in English, good aptitude and attitude. He is the one who got the position, by the way. It seems kind of an interesting and optimistic guy, runs Marathons and speaks a perfect Catalan with a sweet accent inherited from his particular Colombian Spanish.

The two other guys clearly show how bad the situation in the working market is nowadays in Spain. Both came from the UAB (Autonomous University of Barcelona). I had references of the first guy because he worked by the first Computer Vision spin-off company created within this University. They dealt with the automatic quality control for corks in the bottles of cava. I even use some of his code for analysing blobs in binarized images. That's why I was astonished when I saw his resume applying for the position. It turned out that the recession had bring the company to bankruptcy and he had not being paid for the last couple of months. Shameful.

The other guy was a part-time assistant professor of Computer Science at the same University. He was the least fit for the position. He lacked the basic background, poor reseach experience, almost no real-world struggle, no international exposure, poor English, and what was the worst, a completely misguided attitude towards solving problems. He would probably be a good elementary school teacher, but by no means a cutting-edge professional. The worst for me was the wrong scale he used at grasping the world's measure, the money. He asked a ridiculously low salary. The salary is the measure of your work and it is something that it has to be negotiated. If it is too high, you won't probably get the job, but if you put it so low, it means you don't value your own work. So, I won't buy it.

In conclusion, what is the working market situation in Spain? The traditional sectors, i.e., construction and turism, are nearly dead and, in the case of construction, on its way to the cementery. They must be obliterated from any further serious analysis of a future economic growth in Spain for some decades, if ever. What about technology and science? They would be a possible solutions for the current situation if there were, on the one side, a clear and fair interest on them from the Spanish political and financial world, which has never existed nor will, and a pool of good professionals, on the other side, which pathetically doesn't exist.

As a result, only small private companies, national or foreigner, are able to appear in those areas offering work to highly skilled professionals, national or foreigner. Science will keep being monopolized by the burocratic and intranscendent declining public research institutes and universities, and technology, by huge conglomerates which only provide with monopolized facilities and services at high costs, but with no real innovation. So, I guess I will keep being a traveling engineer for long time, playing my music to those who can pay me, here and there.