Joined 15 years ago
Since 2017, the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer protocol is enabled in Europe. Which is basically what FedNow will be.
Multiple apps and banks have built on top of it solutions for consumers and businesses.
I interviewed Bizum, the success story of Spain related to instant payments. Here, "bizum" is a verb. 100% of banks supoort it. Everyone, kids and adults, use it to pay for beers, food or presents https://www.javierescribano.me/bizum/
> You can see them in the front line, looking for melee with the police. They are covered, some wear helmets and elbow pads, communicate by radio and do not get rid of almost anything. They are the 500 anti-systems, which the police divide between revolutionary independence activists and anarchists, mostly young people, who are at the forefront of the riots that have had their epicenter in Barcelona since Monday. This nucleus has a reinforcement of another 1,500 that add to the altercations.
As engineers, we should be more careful about the consequences of what we build. It can be used for the good, or for the bad. What will those engineers think when there is first dead person (either violent protester, pacific protester or policeman)? Will they feel responsible?
Pacific protests are allowed every day. Violent protests with people setting fire to cars, bins, etc; and people throwing rocks or acid to the police must be prosecuted.
Many people ask me why I haven't moved permanently elsewhere. The answer is simple: quality of live. It's really hard to get the quality of life that we have in Spain (free health care, awesome food, awesome weather, lots and lots of places to visit on the weekends, awesome hiking places, beaches, mountains to sky, etc). Specially if you have a high salary like us in tech do.
About Madrid and Barcelona. I think both are good choices, but let me summarize some thoughts: - Barcelona. It has a beach and the sea; if you are really into it, it's a great choice. It's near France, so it's great to rent a car and travel to Europe (France, Italy). The city is lovely although there are way too many tourists now (you will avoid many areas). It had an ecosystem much bigger than Madrid, but right now it's not anymore. The design community is bigger there. There are more international people living there for 1-2 years, but they usually leave. - Madrid. The bigger companies are here (Amazon has tons of good paying jobs, Google, Facebook). If you avoid Puerta del Sol, the rest of areas are very calm. It has high-speed trains with all over Spain, it's the best spot if you want to travel. The startup ecosystem has grown a lot, Google opened a Campus there (like in London). There are many accelerators in Madrid. And many of us who sold previous companies are already into our 2-3 companies. Wages are higher and the cost is kind of similar now (what they told me in Barcelona two weeks ago). Madrid has more events than in Barcelona.
About the work. If you work in Tech, Spanish won't be a problem neither in Madrid nor Barcelona. In both places you may want to learn some Spanish & Catalan words to communicate better, but the situation is improving a lot (there are thousands of American & British teachers in our schools).
Salaries? Lower than in UK and Germany. But the top companies are paying much more than traditional companies. Let's say that the idea is that you save the same money. A Senior dev can get paid between 40 and 60k in Madrid in one of the top startups + stock options.
Don't do freelancing with local clients. If you are into remote, that's the best way to save money. Remote for a US client and work from Spain.
If you are searching for a startup and Madrid is finally a good option for you, check ours https://ontruck.com/work-with-us/. We are around 40 employees, we have grown a lot (€) in one year and we have just been invested by Atomico and Idinvest https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/11/ontruck/. Our focus is Europe.
Hi, this is Javier, VP of Product. We are hiring for many positions. We are 35 people right now. 95% of us seniors.
We are disrupting the logistics sector in Europe, we are growing like crazy and we are backed by top investors from London and Berlin.
We follow really good agile and product processes. Look at our Product Process for example https://nerds.ontruck.com/the-product-process-at-ontruck-e25...
You can write me directly at javier@
I already had it in my mind. I did El Camino el Santiago last year, and I want to travel abroad this time (I'm Spaniard). Did you do the full way or just some weeks? Do you remember any good website/guides to prepare it? Any way of contacting you?
thanks!
This is going to be a long fight because traditionally those ships and its content belong to the owner. There are some international rules that some countries have agreed on (UNESCO): http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13520&URL_DO=DO_TO.... Colombia hasn't signed that, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't obbey.
I don't know about this topic, so I won't add much more. However I wouldn't be so ingenous to think that the full treasure belongs to Colombia or to Spain. I suppose they will end up in international legal figths and they will end up agreeing on sharing the treasure. In any case, they CAN'T sell it (I believe) so it'd be as worthy as the tickets of the museum. It's more of a patriotic fight than a practical fight.
