alourenco

Check out these reviews of what it's like to work at tech companies in Barcelona: https://www.reddit.com/r/Barcelona/comments/6bopoj/software_...

Do you have a work permit?

I love WCFStorm! We have an enterprise license and I got most devs on the project I'm on to use it to test the webservices we're building. Now I'm working on using it to automate functional testing for our code.

The article doesn't at all compare the process of immigration between the US and Spain like its title implies. The US has many advantages over Spain in attracting talent, but immigration is not one of them.

My background: I immigrated to Barcelona from the US to work for the Spanish office of the same company for which I worked in the US after graduating from college in the east coast. I am from South America. I cannot comment on the challenges of hiring in either location, but I am familiar with the immigration process as an employee. I had a poor experience with US immigration, and a positive one with the Spanish process.

The process for applying for a work visa is similar in each country (this is oversimplified): submit your documents and await the decision. For my Spanish work visa, this took about three months. In the US the time between H1B visa application and when you actually begin working depends on the demand for the visa and when you apply; workers who apply before October will start working in October. If demand is high, you may have to apply as early as April. Painting applying for a work visa in Spain as a protracted game of trial and error is disingenuous: hire competent legal help who is familiar with the immigration process for the country or you're going to be running around in circles.

Once you have a resident permit in Spain, you are allowed to live here for the validity of that permit, even if you lose your job. Resident permits are valid for 1 year, 2 years (1st renewal), or 5 years (2nd renewal). If you are in the US under a H1B visa you must leave the country within 10 days unless you find another job. This US requirement makes life as an immigrant more stressful and leads you to stick with an employer for longer than you might wish.

Eligibility to stay in Spain permanently via acquiring Spanish citizenship is dependent upon the time you've resided here: 2 years for citizens of certain South American countries and 10 years for others (there are two other more specific categories). In the US you need 5 years as a permanent resident, plus the time necessary to get to that point (e.g. +6 months applying for work visa, +1 year working as an H1B until your company is willing to sponsor you, +1 year applying for the greencard). In my personal case, costs for the Spanish citizenship process have been under 500 EUR, while in the US it can easily cost more than $1000.

On the topic of Spain not caring if you go to live there: be careful about violating the immigration rules of a Schengen area country, and weigh the benefits of doing so vs the potential punishment (banned for some time? I'm not sure).

The header image of this article is much closer to the treatment of highly skilled immigrants in the US than it is in Spain. While bureaucratic, the government in Spain treated me with humanity. In the US, it's par for the course to be faced with gruff agents who seem to not want you there.

YMMV depending on the part of Spain or the US to which you're immigrating, the competence of your immigration attorney, and your background.

Overall, despite its misleading premise, the article is right in that Spain needs to improve the environment for highly skilled immigrants and startups. However, Spain is hardly alone in that position.