It's true that the prolonged crisis and unemployment are (finally) pushing young people to start businesses. But there is very little "to look for" here, the best developers are leaving the country as soon as they have a good MVP.
The weather is great but prohibitive taxation (and social security contributions), confusing and sloppily implemented regulation, absence of infrastructure and bad work ethics don't help. It's much easier to set up shop in Cyprus.
Cyprus is pretty good for creating a company. They have low taxes and a nice industry of accounting firms revolving around this which makes things pretty easy. You can create a company without setting foot in Cyprus. Doing the paperwork for a company in Greece is a nightmare. Plus tax is 28% and constantly changes always upwards.
You are also obliged to pay for state health insurance in order to own a company which also changes constantly and upwards all the time. I you fail to pay your own health insurance you can go to jail. You cannot stop the health insurance. You have to close the company. If you owe health insurance payments and cannot pay them you cannot close the company and the health insurance debt keeps mounting up.
In relation to how modern and competitive the dev community is. As far as the 'off shore taxing', bear in mind that media exaggerate a lot, it can be done, but you MUST have a good support team of accountants and lawyers.
I am considering outsourcing some dev work to Greece. The problem is the 70% social security. I can get good people in Greece for 1700 Euro/month, total cost 3k/month. However, in Hungary they cost only 2k/month. The Ukraine, Romania and Egypt are even cheaper. Greeks have great expertise in databases, but most outsourcing I need is front-end or monitoring stuff. Like most commentators have said, most of the good ones have left...
Since they're freelancers you're just going to be one of many clients. They will charge you only for the hours worked. This means that whatever their social security cost is, it's going to be spread out among their different clients. Also when you're a freelancer the social security cost is much lower anyway.
It's not a "so what". Taking care of an employee's social security is a huge overhead for an employer.
Also the OP is talking about "outsourcing" work to Greece. I really don't understand where social security comes in. By definition he's going to look for freelancers.
Unless he's planning to open shop in Greece, for some weird reason, in which case social insurance is going to be the least of his problems.
As a freelancer, the cost to cover my taxes/social security will be calculated into any offer i give. I am in effect employing myself and you are contracting out an employee of my company. The rate given will need to cover the costs of my employees taxes and social security. True i can contract out myself to multiple clients per month and lower my rate by splitting the SS taxes between them. but, in Greece, you run a high risk of work being canceled/delayed and exposing yourself to tax liabilities. Don't get me started on companies that want you to cut an invoice then pay you months later. Putting yourself into a situation where you have income on the books, but not in the hand is a bad idea.
> True i can contract out myself to multiple clients per month and lower my rate by splitting the SS taxes between them
Even that doesn't matter, social security and taxes will be calculated in your hourly rate the same way whether you have multiple clients or you work full time for only one client.
Doing contract work for Greek customers is out of the question for the reasons you mentioned.
The only way it makes sense to work from Greece as a contractor is having foreign customers. Otherwise, you're better off working as a regular employee.
As the other commenters said, it's simple. If you're a freelancer and need $1000 after everything, in Hungary the total cost is $1200 (figures pulled out of my ass) and in Greece the total cost is $2000. Who do you think is going to pay the extra cost? The Hungarian will quote you $12/hr and the Greek will quote you $20/hr.
That said, my insurance is 200 euros/mo (fixed), so I'm not sure where the 70% figure is coming from. Maybe my insurance carrier (TSMEDE) is just cheaper.
I never said a Hungarian or a Polish is not going to be more competitive.
I never said you're not going to factor in your social security costs. I don't know why the conversation is going that way.
My question is still unanswered: why would he pay explicitly their social security costs?
My social security costs are about 225/mo. I mean seriously, even if you wanted to push 225 per month to only a single client, it would be such an inconsequential number that I don't know why we're talking about it. We are still talking about software engineering jobs right?
But from 1700 to 3000 there's a huge gap. Plus, as I previously said, the overhead of having to deal with the Greek social security system is so prohibitively high that I don't understand why someone would go through such trouble.
I don't understand who you think pays for costs. The customer ultimately pays for all costs. You take your monthly costs, divide them by the number of working days, you have your cost per day. Someone who has higher insurance cost will cost more per day. I don't think I can break this down further :(
Dear friend, I don't think you're actually reading my replies. It's like you're on a conversation on your own :(
Please don't tell me again about how someone with higher insurance costs will cost more per day. No one is discussing this. At least not me. This is simple math. Actually I've even said the same thing myself higher up.
This is going to be my last effort of explaining where the OP, I replied to, is wrong. Because he is wrong, there's no way around it. If I fail, well I'll blame myself for not expressing myself correctly. But please, make an effort to read carefully my replies.
There are 3 key points in the OP's comment: 1) He talks about outsourcing, 2) he talks about social security costs and 3) he mentions a figure(1700 net which amounts to 3000 after the costs)
I've never heard anyone who's looking to outsource work talking about social security costs. In order to care about such things it means that you are a domestic employer. If we were talking about this particular case, the OP should have to have a Greek business, so by definition it wouldn't be outsourcing.
I work as a contractor. My employer(outside of Greece) knows nothing about my tax rate, social security costs, etc. Nothing! I sent him an invoice, they send me the money.
The strange thing about what the OP mentioned is the figure. The figure is correct BUT only if he's talking about the IKA social security system. Which of course is wrong, since he should be looking for freelancers who DON'T have IKA but either yours(ΤΣΜΕΔΕ, can you be a freelancer with ΤΣΜΕΔΕ? I don't know) or mine(ΟΑΕΕ/ΤΕΒΕ). In other words, he was misinformed and scared away.
Since if he's willing to give 1700 eu/mo to a Greek developer, even if said developer absorbs the social security costs, he's left with ~1500, which is decent compared to what is the current standard in today's Greek economy.
Greece is a bad place to start company. It is practically impossible to transfer money abroad. Complex and fast changing law system. And its expensive compared to neighbor countries.
It's not so terrible if you are in Greece. I would not call a 500euro base salary expensive, that might even get you someone with postgraduate studies in the current conditions. On the law system I totally agree. Good for law related startups?
Greek here. That 500 base salary doesn’t exist. While the nominal salary is quite low due to the huge unemployment issue, for computer programmers it is way beyond that. You’re looking at least at €1k monthly for an entry-level programmer. The real problem in Greece right now, as others have mentioned in this thread, is the insurance cost which accounts for 70% of the net salary someone receives. So if you want to pay €2k for a salary, the real cost for the corporation is about €3.5k. Which makes it really hard to employ experienced people unless you’re willing to have under-the-table agreements.
Doesn't that just result in 90% of decent and up programmers illegally making €1k - €2k on freelancer.com or alike ? Then when it's enough to finance trip + 6 months emigrate to US or, well, anywhere but Greece ?
I've never been at freelancer or any equivalent site so I can't speak from personal experience. Aren't you expected to provide some kind of receipt on those sites for the money you're paid? In such a case you can't hide it from the local tax service. Unless you're providing fake receipts which sounds like an awful idea.
The receipts are between the middleman and either party, not between the participants in the transaction directly.
So even if seller and buyer are in Greece, freelancer.com (warning: don't use them) is in Australia. Receipts won't make it to the authorities. Also: freelancer.com won't care if you use a fake identity, as they're extremely scummy and in this case it works to your advantage.
Junior dev salaries with absolutely zero experience start at 800 net x 14. That translates to a total cost x 1.7 for the employer which is 1360. I am talking about devs that have never heard of a linked list. Most good people go abroad.
OT... But while I've had to implement and used linked list tons of times (because C) I never use them anymore (because Python and Java Collections API.)
Why is it an acid test of competence to you? For the theoretical knowledge they imply?
Not implementing it lately is ok. Having never heard of it, and not knowing the fundamentals means you're not a programmer, but just someone who dabbles with code. I wouldn't hire such a person not only for a C job, but not even for JS or Python.
> Why is it an acid test of competence to you? For the theoretical knowledge they imply?
Because they are so basic. If you've never heard of a linked list, it means that you've got absolutely no education (formal or self-directed) in programming. (Even looking at the Java docs, you'd eventually notice the core LinkedList class.) If you've heard of a linked list but have no idea what it is, it means you've got a terrible education (if formal) or no curiosity (if self-directed). If you know what a linked list is but can't program one, it means you're incompetent.
I can't imagine the existence of a competent dev who can't write a linked list class/struct/whatever.
Not knowing what a linked list is, is like a math major not knowing what an integral is. It is a super basic data structure and an integral data structure to a whole family of functional languages. A computer scientist right out of university should at least have heard of the basic data structures used in computer programs.
Even if you don't know how to implement them you at least need to know how they work and their performance characteristics. I would not expect them to be able to implement one in C but at least they should what the fuck it is.
I'm a successful consulting software engineer with a masters and a charge-out rate of $1000/day, which I've been billing at for over a year, and not once have I had to implement a linked list. My clients love me.
This kind of 'orthodoxy' (you must know about X) confuses computer science (purely academic) with business outcomes (what engineers are paid to deliver).
Is this a joke? This must be some kind of submarine PR to encourage investment in Greece. Greece needs to attract investors and startups by liberalizing their economic positions, not by bs like this.
Seems like the website publishes similar lists for various countries. I don't think it's intentional, but it's weird that it made it to the frontpage of HN.
Unfortunately in Greece of 2016 and for 7 years of crisis now there has been nothing made to help business. Every government passed and left without improving bureaucracy and limiting corruption even a little bit on the government services.
And these stuff are FREE! What can you expect from such a bad business legislative framework?
Right now the taxation, even without the payments in advance the government asks from the enterprises, exceeds 80%! Who can make business with such numbers?
The weather is great but prohibitive taxation (and social security contributions), confusing and sloppily implemented regulation, absence of infrastructure and bad work ethics don't help. It's much easier to set up shop in Cyprus.