Congratulations Pim

I must say that the information given here is quite interesting. Nothing new said here for me.

As a student of languages, I can see how my degree would take me farther abroad than in the US. Languages aren't stressed here in the US at all. My being able to speak English, French, Spanish and understanding Italian and Portuguese has really helped me in a bind when trying to communicate with others. Those who want to move to Madrid, should have at least intermediate Spanish, that being a level where they can ask questions and respond with some mistakes, but it doesn't stop the listener from understanding what they are trying to say.

There are plenty of language academies around Madrid that can help you learn Spanish because they use the total immersion method. Like I tell my students, once you are around Spanish, it becomes second nature to you. Never say that you are too old to learn a foreign language. Any one can learn when he or she is set on learning.

As far as salaries go, I am interviewing for one job in June where I will be paid more there than I am here. I know that I can live off of that salry because I have saved money to pay on my student loans while I live there. I am single, don't want a wife or kids, just want to live alone and enjoy life.

Go to Spain with the attitude that you will learn Spanish and that you will make your salary work for you. Madrid is so much cheaper than the US. Much cheaper than Richmond, VA.

Have a great day,

Shawn

CONGRATULATIONS! to LiM and Pim....

'Glad to hear the great news...I'll have to celebrate with you guys the next time I get to Madrid!

Wyndy

Hooray, pim!!! Congratulations!!

I do understand the issue of comparing apples and oranges when it comes to salary issues in Spain...my husband and I were looking at jobs in Ireland last fall, and the salaries were very different there too, of course. But when we started looking at homes and other costs, we realized that taking much of a cut in pay might mean a dramatic change in standard of living...maybe a more dramatic one than we could handle!

Here's our current situation--we live in a fairly large metropolitan area, own a small (by local standards--it's about 1200 square feet) home, drive two small older cars, have a child in public schools with after-school daycare, don't have cable TV or other expensive subscription costs (well, the computer's cable modem...but that's essential!), try to eat organic (which is more expensive than processed food), and don't buy many non-essential items. We have some student loan debt, and our mortgage, but don't owe on our cars or other things. In our city, with a very tight rental market, it's cheaper (about $800 a month) to own our house than it would be to rent a 2-bedroom apartment. If we moved to Spain, we would probably give up one or both cars, switch to renting, and change very little else (there aren't all that many additional corners to cut).

The problem is that, having worked here in the US and been "assigned" a "value," it's hard to do the mental math to be able to handle a sharp decrease in salary. For example, let's imagine that I make $50,000 here in the US (in my dreams; I'm a graduate student!). Translating that into Euros takes me to a "comparable" (on paper) salary of 53,290 Euros. From what people have said here, of course, I know that's unrealistic.

BUT, I also know that living in a city is expensive and that would make me really worried about taking a salary of less than half of what I currently make! And if I check the cost of living indices online, I see that Minneapolis (and Seattle and Denver) are about 72 on a scale where NYC is 100, and Madrid is 58. Madrid's cost of living isn't half of mine here in Minnesota, so now the salary differences are really worrisome...and then the question arises, what can I live without? What will I HAVE to live without?

And that's where it gets scary...I can live without cable TV and without owning my own home, but I can't live without food, insurance, occasional trips home to the US, etc. And who knows how much those add up to be?

I wouldn't make the move to another country (or city for that matter) without realizing that the costs will be different and that I will have to make choices about how to allocate resources...but reading up on costs of living in Madrid isn't encouraging!! I am sure the costs in other parts of Spain are lower (and I don't think I would want to live right in the city unless work required it), but still!! It's scary!

Congratulations Pim! Woohoo! I can't imagine that I'll have any time for celebrating soon... but I'll raise my virtual glass to you for our good fortune! Y pienso que tienes razon, Alex ha traido mucho suerte. Es un angel, entonces, tiene sentido. ;-)

Fernando! I'm definitely trying my best to live like the Spanish do. I don't generally [censored] at how low the salaries are here to my coworkers and in-laws, but a BBS for English speakers interested in Spain is a great place for me to vent. It keeps me from snapping and screaming at people here in English. I understand that it could be worse... at least I'm not in Germany, right?

MM, et al.: Thanks for the congrats! The money thing is definitely one of those things that takes some getting used to. But I don't think that everyone should get the idea that all the people in Spain are living on $25,000 a year. They do have a large middle class here, so the majority of people are not rich, however, there are many, many people who are driving Mercedes and BMWs and it's not all "old money."

The thing here is that if you are a manager (director) you can earn serious cash. My friend Diego at Terra is earning around $70,000 a year because of when he was hired, who he knew and the fact that he's a manager of a group of programmers. In the tech companies I've worked at in the U.S., project managers were considered important, but not MORE important than the programmers (except maybe if they were really senior or owned the company or something). One person organized, the other produced. Many times the programmers earned much more than the managers. Here it would never function like that. It's all about being The Man In Charge. I give you orders (you pion), so therefore I get paid more. Go figure. So if you're a manager/director, you get a bigger salary, the company car (a perk I forgot to mention at the first company - after 3 years they take over your car payments for you on a new car), and you dress in the 3 piece suit and go to lavish lunches with wine every day, etc. You know how many banks are in Madrid? Too many. You think they actually do any work in those places? Nope. It's just filled with middle managers earning good money.

That reminds me of the other thing that I forgot:

9) It's all about who you know. Both to get the job and to go up the corporate ladder.

This is true in the U.S. to some extent, but it's also a general rule that you can earn an average of a 15% pay increase by moving laterally into another company. Here, however, seniority is much more important than your skills or your job, so moving laterally only makes you less important, so no one ever leaves their jobs and coming to a job as a new recruit means you're treated like crap and paid the same.

The BIG question in my life right now is what to do in the next few years. 30-35 are the prime earning years and being here earning so much less than I could at home is ridiculous. Do I stick around here and hope that in a couple years I can work myself into a manager position to earn some decent money so I can save for our futre (education, braces, etc.)? If I could do that, the benefits would be great: Longer vacations, less bills, less health costs, less food costs, etc. This entails that I could deal with Spanish culture and learn the language well enough to advance in a company. Oof. No lo se.

But the other big maybe is going to the U.S. My wife's English is not good enough for her to land a job right away. For the first year or so she'll probably take classes and take care of the Little Prince. So that means that if we go back to the U.S., I'll have to earn enough to pay for all the additional expenses and save money. Moving expenses, mortgage, cars, health, bills, etc. etc. Going to the U.S. is a one way street until you're completely out of debt. You can't come back to Spain saddled with American-style debts. It just won't work. If we return now so I can earn some decent cash, we won't be coming back for a decade or more except for visits.

To keep extending my anxieties to pure philosophy: Will life at home with more money mean a better life? That's a real question. I can't imagine having a ton of expenses and bills, both my wife and I working like crazy, fighting traffic in two unpaidfor cars while our latchkey kids whom we never see, come home to an empty house from some random public school in California where they are getting a great education in Gangster Rap and Gap commercialism. That would suck worse than the four smokers in an elevator like I had this morning.

But then again, I can't imagine my kids growing up in Spain, learning how to swear like a sailor and smoke at age 11, thinking of women as inherently inferior and considering Jamon Iberica and fried calamaris the finest food on Earth.

Tara, I just saw your post (just about to post this monstrosity and wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything.) The advantage of living here in the city is that you don't need a car at all and everything is really convenient. There are no suburbs like the U.S. here, so if you don't live in the city, it's not like you're going to have your own house nearby. Outside the city are just more apartment buildings, just placed in open fields instead of conveniently place in a city neighborhood with close access to everything. If you DO live in a little town like Becky, you'll need a car and have a hellish commute. Sundays are as quiet as any day in the 'burbs (or maybe quieter) and the month of August Madrid is like a ghosttown. The mortgage on our one bedroom in the Tetuan district is about $400 a month which is pretty reasonable. We don't have satelite television (the European equivalent of cable - no such thing here) but we do have Canal+ which costs about $30 a month. You'll definitely need/want health insurance, but the cost of healthcare here is substantially lower than in the U.S. (as is the quality) so that won't be a big cost. But what about savings? That's what I'm worried about right now... not just surviving, but putting cash in the bank for later.

Is anyone still reading this? Here Madrid Man, here's several chapters for your books.

-Russ

Hey LiM thanks! Boy, I can only imagine how busy (and excited) you are these days!

I have two comments to make:

-Little Prince Alex is half Spanish so that may mean he won't wear braces after all, don't you think?
-I'm Spanish and I don't smoke OR swear!

On another note; I was ecstatic to learn yesterday that they're renting a 'buhardilla' in my building, only even smaller than mine and facing the interior side of the building instead of the exterior like mine, for 575euros! Wow! that's a lot of money! I was SO FORTUNATE to buy mine when I did! The prices the last four years have gone up tremendously!

I'm interviewing also and can back up what Russ said about the interviews. Unfortunately I've found that in New York it functions essentially the same way... it's just selling yourself, fortunately my Spanish is passable enough for that. Without command of the language it would be very very difficult - however I have interviewed at a couple places that offered to do it in English (I said no). I also think being an IT person from the States is a little bit of a plus, if only a bit.

I think I've found something however it still needs to be confirmed (they told me that I had the job but they had to meet about the 'presupuesto'), so this being Spain I am not being optimistic nor pessimistic about actually receiving the oferta - we'll see.

Salaries have gone down in the IT business a bit though!

Oh and pim where's that atico??

So, I pose a question. For a non IT professional with experience in Marketing/Public Relations, Bilingual Spanish/English, what is the job outlook?

Fernando,

You are right we should all struggle to put things in perspective and overcome being ethnocentric. Some things however are unjust regardless of where they take place. Discrimination against a "qualified" job applicant based on age is wrong.

(" Don't be surprised when they ask you your age. I turned 30 in January. They're looking for young programmers here for some reason (right out of college) and aren't particularly concerned that those guys usually don't get the job done. Feeling old")

It may be legal but it does not make it right and to justify it by using culture as an excuse to allow it is a fallacy.

My point is that it is possible to go beyond being ethnocentric, suspend judgment and find things that are wrong or unjust in any society.

David

You know, I spend a week working my butt off (not to earn $25k I´ll have you know...ohh noo...muuuch less!) without time to read the posts indepth and it seems like a ton of great things have happened here to two of my favorite posters (don´t get jealous! I have lots of favorites!! hee hee)..

LIM and PIM!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!! I am looking forward to going out and celebrating with both of you, despite my hellish commute (which isn´t so hellish yet...just waiting for summer to hit full swing and I have to deal with the commute without airconditioning!!).

I have some addendums to LIM´s post... particularly with regards to the interview process. Will post them this weekend.

Espe3, with regards to your question....DISMAL at best. Unless, of course, you are happy earning $10K (if you are lucky). Try searching infojobs.net to get an idea.

Oh, and by the way, José María Áznar (president of Spain), I was told, earns 12 million pesetas a year. That works out to be about $65k... a little more that what I was earning in the USA before I headed off to Spain. As LiM said, funny how life is. So I´m not earning as much. Who cares. I love my life here. I love the idea of having a job that I can control...not one that controls me (LiM might argue with me on that one )

And someday, I will trade in my 10 yr old 3rd hand car and we will own a home outside of the city!!

P.S. Russ, there are suburbs around Madrid. I work in them and boy are they frightening! Check out this post about the Suburbs of Madrid !