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Comment by fmsf | Hacker News Reader

I am a software engineer and I no longer have friends in the city where I grew up (Coimbra), I would say that 90% of my friends are off the country working somewhere else (mainly UK and DE). Unless you want to work at a sweatshop consulting company, or a service provider, Lisbon is not the place to go.

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Tech people are moving elsewhere in Europe not because there are no interesting jobs but because the euro crisis has made them into easy picking for international tech companies. Faced with uncertainty there are few who resist the lure of higher wages (even when that comes with higher cost of living).

There are, in fact, interesting things to do and interesting companies to work for in Lisbon. We even have startups working out of old derelict factories, so you don't even have to go abroad for that true hipster feel.

The country is in this situation partly because a lot of portuguese people are like this fellow user. Only complain about the negative stuff instead of focusing in the positive parts of Portugal.

The country is in this situation partly because a lot of portuguese people are like this fellow user. Prefer to merrily bury their head in the sand instead of acting on the dramatic reality developing around them.

I'm not saying that the country if perfect, far from it. But is a great country to leave while working remotely for a company outside of Portugal for example.

Portugal produces great talent in a lot of areas, but all the top talent leaves and it's impossible to revert the situation.

Talented people will come back voluntarily to a society that invests in that talent, I agree with you that it does seem like an impossible problem to solve in the near future.

That’s true. I think that one of the ways to invert the situation is to convince the top talent to stay and build their own companies. There are some good examples doing that, but the ecosystem isn’t strong enough yet and the legislation doesn’t help either.

I don't think working for a Portuguese company is a good idea but I have a few software engineer friends (Portuguese and British) living in Lisbon working remotely.

It's a wonderful place to live if you can do remote work.

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