We've tried hiring in these locations (Italy and Spain) with some success, but it's pretty tough because the talent pool is so small. At some point, you weigh whether the lower cost of the salary is worth the extra time/effort spent adding headcount. Which is funny because we have no shortage of Italian and Spanish devs applying for our expensive European city offices. I don't know European urban dynamics that well, but it certainly seems to me, off the cuff at least, that Europeans want to live in high COL European cities as much as Americans want to live in high COL American cities.

> We've tried hiring in these locations (Italy and Spain) with some success, but it's pretty tough because the talent pool is so small.

Are you at Facebook? Because local talent doesn't matter as much. It's not like the Dublin or London office relies on local talent. I've had tons of colleagues from Romania move there. And when they get there, there are a ton of folks from India, Ukraine, China, Estonia, whatever, a huge chunk of them freshly arrived from their home countries.

If Facebook would go to Spain and Italy, even in the more expensive cities, salaries would be so huge that they would completely dwarf the higher cost of living compared to the rest of the country. But places like Madrid or Lisbon would still be cheaper than for example, London. And with definitely better weather :-)

The point is high value DBA from those places do not want to get jobs in those places. They want to get jobs in high COL places like London because they are nicer places for young well off engineers to live.

I'd be super shocked if this were the case for, say, Barcelona vs London.

My guess is that the language barrier is the killer. Everybody in IT outside of maybe China and Japan learns English so London is kind of easy mode.

> Europeans want to live in high COL European cities as much as Americans want to live in high COL American cities.

Makes sense. There is a reason that its high COL

>We've tried hiring in these locations (Italy and Spain) with some success, but it's pretty tough because the talent pool is so small.

Is it a question of language skills, technical skills, or both?

maybe because people on those countries are not idiots and they know they will be paid better if they move to northen countries?

Are there a big enough talent pool of highly skilled and experienced developers in Italy or Spain? It’s a chicken and egg problem, you need to go where there’s already a market for these skills.

They could tap into infinite supply of developers from Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Russia...

Who would move just for the privilege of living in literally sea side resort.

I also think that some developers from Nordic countries will consider, and the rest of Europeans who would like the opportunity working at FAANG.

I’ve worked for several companies with dev centers in more out of the way places in Europe: Vilnius, Sofia, and Braga (Portugal). There were a number of obstacles in each.

First, these are just not big cities with a lot of people. They don’t have large labor pools or many companies to choose from like London or Paris or Dublin to start with. It immediately limits the number of locals you can hire without relocation.

Second, many of these locations are not as friendly to immigrants. Either they don’t have existing communities or the visa programs they offer are not friendly to non-EU citizens. It is hard to get Indians to move to Bulgaria when they don’t speak the language, there are few other Indians there, and the govt does not provide visa programs that make it easy. Similarly, even though other EU nationals can work in places like Sofia without a visa, few are interested in this. They either want to go to big markets with all the amenities like Berlin, Paris, Dublin, or they want to stay in their home country. Romanians are not very interested in moving to Lithuania. The best candidates we’d find were Lithuanians who had been working in the US or London who wanted to move back to Lithuania for family reasons but work for a Silicon Valley type company.

This problem was amplified for older workers who had kids or wanted to start a family. They want to know it’s a place they can stay for a while.

Third, often times the govt were just not friendly to tech companies. In Portugal, there were many issues around employees working overtime (at all not just for extra pay), having to give one year notice of layoffs. The business viewed the labor laws as a hassle to do business there. They might put up with it in a market where they can hire a lot, but with the above problems, it made the locations even less attractive.

I know a lot of devs that would move to Barcelona in an instant but also know plenty of devs that hate London and don't want to move there despite a FB offer. Never understood why FB from all possibilities picked London - maybe British want to move there, but the rest of EU not.

Because Google picked London, and they were in a phase of poaching from Google. They're still there because of path dependence.

Also because London is the only European city which everyone in the US has definitely heard of ;)