In my previous article I delved into the state of IT employment in Spain, a study which offered very interesting data which gave me answers to some of the questions I still held in spite of my extensive experience in the sector.
The point about data that supports our opinions is an important one, which we often overlook for various reasons which aren’t relevant here, but make us more fragile as professionals and as an industry if we look at it overall.
We all know that the two big cities for IT jobs are Madrid and Barcelona and I would like to remind you briefly of some data that both surprised me and brought me back to this topic today (Annual Report of the ICT and Content Sector in Spain 2018 - Spanish Observatory of Telecommunications and the Information Society (ONTSI):
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- Most jobs in the ICT and content sector are found in large companies, specifically 52.9% of the total, whilst the rest are split between SMEs and micro-enterprises.
- Furthermore, more than three quarters of those who work in a large company work in Madrid, 77.1% specifically.
- Madrid holds more than half of the IT jobs in the whole of Spain, 69% to be precise.
- Madrid also accounts for more than half of turnover in the sector nationally, 65.4%.
- And, lastly, Madrid manages to do all this with just 34% of the companies in the sector, a figure that clearly backs up the statistics on the concentration of jobs in large companies.
My expert today: Manuel Salvador Nanclares
These figures seem so overwhelming that I think it’d be good to reflect on the past and future reasons for them, as a sector.
Questions such as why is it like this?, how did this model develop?, is this distribution good for the overall make-up of our industry?, what does this translate into for workers? come to mind.... I could keep on going all day but I’d better to get back to the point and, as always, sit down to talk to someone who’s an expert on the subject.
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This would be Manuel Salvador Nanclares.
Manuel has been in the industry since 2000 and my reason for calling him for this interview is his experience with employment from his time at Infojobs, first as Development Manager and then as Technical Director for 8 years. He worked there in a period when the portal handled most of the job offers in the IT sector.
If we add in the fact that Manuel has had experience with all types of companies, big, SME, and even his own entrepreneurship with Clinic Store and that he’s free to speak his mind on the employment sector as he’s currently working on other projects, he’s the perfect person to interview.
How did this distribution of employment in IT come about?
For Manuel, this structure stems from the political and administrative organisation of Spain, in which Madrid is the capital and most administrative services are found there.
According to Manuel, these types of companies are mostly from abroad and when they come to Spain they base themselves in the capital. Additionally, banks, insurance companies, and other companies linked to the running of the country are a staple of the capital.
Madrid has the volume and Barcelona has the production and innovation
We are focusing on Madrid so much because we’re talking from the point of view of large companies and the volume of jobs in IT services and activities, Spain is also a country of IT services (95.8% of turnover in the ICT Sector is in the services area).
But we don’t want to overlook that Barcelona has the strength of industrial production and Manuel’s experience and knowledge of the field corroborates that.
It’s also worth noting that jobs in Barcelona are more centred on innovation and start-ups, based purely on my perception, and salaries would seem to confirm this as it has been shown that they are generally higher than in Madrid (you can see this last point in the article I quoted at the beginning).
Repercussions: Making changes for money
Today we are interpreting data, and we all know that interpretations can be wrong, but if they’re based on data there’s always a higher probability of getting it right.
One of the first pieces of analysis Manuel discusses is the type of jobs available in big and small companies.
Positions such as “Data Steward” or “Data Scientist” are unlikely to be found in small companies so these jobs are more heavily concentrated in Madrid, which, in turn, leads to higher salaries for these roles in Barcelona given the shortage of specialist staff/positions.
An imbalance of certain trades and jobs in each city which he has first-hand experience of in a company which is headquartered in San Sebastian, Manuel tells us about his experience of it now in the following clip:
Repercussions: Beginning of change towards people
Many of the expert predictions on the sector I normally come across speak of a salary ceiling which will be hit, as happened previously, which will set in motion the reform of jobs in the sector but Manuel offered a different and very interesting take on the matter.
If you’ve got this far into the article you can see that Manuel offers us more specific data (it was always going to be clear that Manuel and I are on the same wavelength as he knows me well and we’ve been close friends, although not geographically, ever since I was a colleague of his at Infojobs):
Do we demonise big companies too much?
We’re now going to move on from economic realms to the approach and culture of people towards big companies versus small companies.
The naming of big companies in terms of how they treat people is a point I raise directly with Manuel. I ask him about this as I think it’s an interesting topic to discuss.
My vision on big companies and their “humanity”
Tying in with Manuel’s vision and wanting to put forward my own opinion to finish off the subject of big companies and their volume for the IT jobs market.
I often find speeches which seem to point to company volume as one of the causes of more “dehumanising” treatment of people. Personally, I see more of a link with “time” and moving from one business model to another.
Very much linked to Manuel’s comments, and adding to them, the change away from the more traditional “resource” model to the more contemporary “person” model in business attitudes in the sector.
Obviously, a lot of companies will continue to operate a model of workers as resources as a matter of conviction-policy, but in my opinion:
This change comes from society, and companies are social systems in and of themselves, so I’m not convinced by “volume” as an impediment to change but rather the “time” it takes to happen.
In terms of “lean organisations” (I mean the distribution of teams, etc) which make staff numbers more affordable, there is a whole range of valid structures for every company, this doesn’t really worry me but it does worry me that volume is seen as an impediment because I think of it more as a condition to be treated with a different focus.
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Some will say I’m “excessively puerile or naive” but you have to understand that I’m saying it because I’ve read the data, listened to expert opinions (thank you, Manuel and many others too), and trust in society and “cross-contamination” between models; it still doesn’t make any sense to me that start-ups will be the cure for all ills whilst other models won’t be because they both draw on people from the same society.
Have your say now!
