The following weekend I went riding my bike and when I came back home decided to have another look at it. It was quite remarkable how the requisites closely matched my profile; in fact, had I to produce a job offer for myself it might hadn't been so perfect. In all likelihood an opportunity in a lifetime, which I'd certainly regret missing later on. Besides, Luxembourg is not that far way, I should be able to proceed with the PhD without much trouble. Finally, 20% of the population there is Portuguese, I have friends and family there. The curriculum followed.

Days later I received an e-mail asking for an interview, eventually set to the 11th of March. That day I woke up to the news of an earthquake followed by tsunami hitting eastern Japan. Hour later news broke of a serious situation at the Fukushima nuclear complex; my e-mail box was overflowing, it was a busy morning. The interview took place right after lunch through video conference, a sign of the times. To my total desperation, the video call software went down every time I turned on the web-cam; but with a lot of good will at the other side of the wire the interview went forward in audio mode. It took more than one hour where my curriculum was thoroughly dissected. I had the opportunity to clear doubts of my own and said goodbye thinking it went quite well, better than I had expected.

The folks at Luxembourg said they'd take about a month to interview the remaining candidates and go through the decision process. April came by and no news; I pinged them and the answer was that I was one of the best candidates but that the decision process wasn't finished. Time went by and no more news, I devoted myself to the PhD, thinking this option wouldn't go forward.

June arrived with me preparing the Thesis Proposal, a checkpoint where the candidate lays the theoretical foundations, and presents a programme for the practical work. Within days of this event I received a new e-mail from Luxembourg, this time with an objective proposal to join their team. It was the moment of the truth and regarding my professional situation, a month away from unemployment, it wasn't hard to decide.

I'd already tried to move abroad, starting a PhD in another state, but the illusion of new opportunities in Portugal and the lack of immediate alternatives elsewhere lead me to start that endeavour here. Things are different now, and I have further reasons for this decision: the precarious working conditions in Portugal, the difficulty in introducing new technologies and the fragility of the Social fabric. Bellow I'll take these in succession.

Precarious work conditions

The first and foremost reason to leave. During 9 years of carer as a software engineer, only during 15 months did I enjoy the benefits of a full working contract. Research scholarships and independent work where the main schemes used to guarantee a regular income. The main problem of these schemes is the lack of proper social protection: no illness subsidy, no unemployment subsidy, meagre retirement plans and no right to vacations; beyond that, no right to the 13^th and 14^th monthly salaries. Part of this, like vacations, can be circumvented, but require the good will of the "employer".

All of this is largely illegal, but the produce of a broken labour market. After the 1974 Revolution legislators developed a working legislation directed at a Socialist state where a small number of large state owned corporations would employ the vast majority of workers. But the economic policy veered in a different direction, to a Free Market system, with increasing numbers of small companies and entrepreneurs and the progressive privatization of state corporations. The working legislation and the economic system simply do not match. Existing rules make it so hard to fire an employee that employers recur to illegal schemes whenever they can. It is the classical example of a restriction imposed on the regular equilibrium between Supply and Demand generating a black market.

Interestingly, the largest benefiter of this black market is the State itself. During these past nine years I worked mostly for the Ministry of Environment, through several of its institutes. Hiring by the State is subject to even stricter rules, de facto being impossible to fire a public servant. To make matters worse, a surge of hiring during the 1990s coincided with the first major bout of privatizations, creating an excess of public servants in many areas. A huge effort has been made during the last decade to reduce this excess, making it ever more difficult to hire new public workers. With different rules I'd be a public servant by now, but that simply never happened; those few that made it into the state work force did so largely not because of their competences.

This ill labour market has generated a class division between the lucky ones that managed to get a working contract and those that haven't; this is especially felt in State institutions. Those with a proper contract are usually beyond their 40s, lacking superior education, heads of middle class families, that crystallized in their jobs by the lack of competition. The others are mostly highly skilled young folk, facing huge competition between them for jobs sometimes paid below minimum wage, sometimes not paid at all, willing to subject themselves to the hardest sacrifices, abiding to humiliating exploitation. And the lack of incentives for professional actualization in the State makes the need for young skilled workers even more acute.

The false independent worker status is especially used by the State institutions. It works like this: if the state institution needs an additional worker a contract is made with a third party company as a service provider. This company then pays the worker more or less regularly as if he was providing ad hoc services. There's no formal tie between the worker and the institution, though the former works permanently for the institution, is subject to its working schedule and its organizational hierarchy. The third party company is a mere detour that allows effective hiring of additional workers by the State. The problem is that this detour is highly prone to disturbances, either when the State institution is unable to honour its contract timely, either when the company looses interest on something that can be a bureaucratic burden, it is easy for the illegally hired worker to not get paid timely or simply not get paid at all.

I worked under such conditions during the last two and half years. It was a huge hassle, not knowing when I would get paid, if I'd get paid. I had to take a frugal life, always expecting a sudden end to this difficult relationship. I was able to get to the end of the contract without missing wages, but for that to happen I was forced to take strong measures, along the way even loosing a friend.

This is a tragic situation, that has a great deal of responsibility on the State's budget deficit, with several hundreds of thousands of public workers crystallized in their jobs, without much challenge to their positions or incentives to production.

Reverting this situation cannot be easy. First of all due to the resistance by the favoured ones that today enjoy a working contract. About five years ago the Ministry of Employment launched a discussion on the transition to a scheme close to the Nordic Flexicurity. The reaction from Society, amplified by the media, was so repulsive that no proposal made it to Parliament. And secondly for a blind flexibilization of the labour could send straight to unemployment hundreds of thousands of heads of families lacking superior education, that in all likelihood also missed any sort of knowledge augmentation through the years.

Portugal is today living it's largest bout of emigration since the 1960s, when the Colonial War set many folk on the run. Whereas at that time they were young men and families with poor or no formal education, today they are highly skilled workers formed at good universities. Abroad they find better wages and yes, a proper working contract.

Technologies

But this working experience during the last years also gave me the first hand experience of what is like to introduce open source software into the Public Administration in Portugal. Two basic problems: lack of planning and lack of informatics knowledge by users in general and especially by those that make decisions. In other states the introduction of new software is planned in a way that it doesn't interfere with the regular functioning of the institution. The first step is to assess if the software presents all functionalities needed by the institution; as a second step comes the development of those features specific to the institution and when maturity is reached a final step of user training takes place. In Portugal the software is simply installed on computers and each user has to sort out how it works by itself.

This ad hoc procedure created many problems and gave a hard life to many users, but also allowed the identification of deeper problems. It turns out that regular public administration users use little more than 2 or 3 software packages, one to read e-mail and a text editor. They expect the text editor to do a million things that it shouldn't exactly do: image edition, collaborative edition, data collection, etc. This is a severe symptom of de-alignment [note: Architect's talk] between the information system of an institution and its business processes. This is foremost a produce of the poor knowledge on information systems in the public administration, from the top decision makers to low end users. But it is also a consequence of a huge dependence that American software companies managed to created on their products by non skilled users.

With time it was possible to fully mature several software packages, especially those that support business process without direct intervention of the end user, like data base systems or map servers; we also managed to create an healthy relationship between several dozens of users and a GIS interface. Eventually the institution's core business would became fully reliant on open source software, that users access through a web interface. On the other hand, electronic office applications, indispensable to administrative personnel, remained a problem, not fulfilling several important requisites. At some point I started to note inside the institution a certain resistance to open source software; certainly the way it was introduced justified some repulse, but it started hitting exactly those areas where it was being more successful. Proposals for the introduction of corporate software started flying, that if realized, would cost heavily to the institution, not only in financial terms but also in the time to reach product maturity. I started suspecting American companies have moles inside the public administration, "public servants" whose sole existence is to harness contracts to their expensive products. I have no way to prove this and can't go much further on this topic, but several events, by their illogic nature, can only lead me to think this way.

My college education was almost entirely based on open source software, it has been with joy that during the last few years I have been able to found my professional activities on such paradigm. At a very small scale I helped closing Portugal's trade deficit and that way limiting the risks of sovereign over-indebtedness. Unfortunately decision makers in our public administration largely lack the education to understand this situation; I doubt I could proceed a professional carer fully committed to open source software in Portugal.

My move to Luxembourg owes much to my familiarity with these technologies, that at least in Europe will be the future in information systems.

Society

Beyond these professional issues I face another challenge living in Portugal: I like to ride my bike. It is a very dangerous activity, especially for me, who prefer the constant exertion on the asphalt. The legislation is so penalizing on bike riders that in any encounter with a car the guilt will always rest on the rider. In Portugal you can't ride side by side, a bike has to give way in every situation, even when signalling may tell otherwise, few roads have side lanes and many are littered with holes that prevent safe riding to the right, and on and on. This lack of protection also means that ill intended drivers are free to due their deeds, at worst, if a driver kills someone, he may get convicted to three years in jail, a sentence that for its short time is usually suspended.

This is but a manifestation of a Society where respect towards fellow citizens and the common good is very thin. It was the first reason that lead me to desire leaving, though today is not the primary.

Especially at a time like this, when the economic setting puts the strain on the Welfare State, it becomes apparent why this social arrangement never worked very well in Portugal, it seems that most citizens act in ways that boycott its very existence. A little story: analysing the data for 2008 the Ministry of Wealth found out that expenses on pharmaceuticals by retirees had been somewhere around 60 million €. Though a huge burden on retirees' budget it is actually a small figure for the Ministry budget. A programme started in January of 2009 whereby pharmaceuticals prescribed by the national health services to retirees would get paid in full by the State. In the beginning of August of 2009 the programme was suspended when expenditures passed above 100 million €. Retirees would go to their doctors and ask receipts for the whole family; given the scale of the fraud it can be concluded that almost everyone was participating. The most disconcerting thing about this story is the doctors' participation, for it wouldn't have been possible for every single retiree to trick them. Enjoying above average wages, doctors are net contributors to the national health system, why would they want to boycott it? Especially when employed by that same system?

I wont go long on the reasons behind this lack of social cohesion, one thing that I'd note though is that Portugal withstood the longest Fascist regime in Europe, spanning for almost five decades; prior to that it had withstood 3 centuries of inquisition. Today an intrinsic distrust towards most forms of authority and administration plagues the largest part of the population. A population that is still poorly educated and remains largely passive in face of Social challenges that it doesn't understand.

Knowing that what we are living is just the first phase of a Transition to a different Socio-Economic arrangement, that will have to be based on entirely different biophysical foundations, I fear that a state like Portugal may find it way more challenging. In fact, its geographical location and vast maritime resource places Portugal in considerable advantage over states less climatically favoured. But the Society within is weak in many aspects and could crumble easily.

It seems wiser to face this Transition at a state with stronger Social cohesion. Thus the feeling that I'm escaping, abandoning my homeland, like a rat fleeing a sinking ship.

Uncertainties

The last few weeks in Portugal have been quite stressful, many bureaucratic woes and loose ends to tie; along the way saying good bye to friends and family. Packing all the gear in my flat has been quite a deal, the amount of useless stuff one can gather is quite striking; the recycling will be working overtime. I'm also facing a 40% reduction in home prices, which right now prevents me from selling the flat for a comfortable price. This is an issue that I'll have to leave unsolved, and I'll remain indebted to the bank.

One of the things I'm not very comfortable with is the language. I studied French at high school, can read the news and understand most of what's in the radio, but speaking it is another matter, there's always that term that I miss and the speech runs into a stand still. There's a lot of folk from here that is or has been in France or Luxembourg and they tell me not worry with it, but if my fluency was as good as with English I would feel more comfortable.

Finally one issue that very much concerns me is latitude. Not only the number of overcast/rainy days are much higher than in Portugal, moving from 38º to 49º North means a terrible loss of natural sunlight in the Winter, both in time as in strength. Allied to the natural longing of being way from friends and family, there's a huge potential for depression. The coming months will be harsh but luckily I'm not moving to a totally foreign land and my folk there should provide the needed support.

Portugal

So these are my last days here. I hope that Portugal finds its own way through the Transition and that I won't be missed much in that [grin]. Thirty years ago Portugal was also forced to request foreign aid, in similar terms to those in force today. By then the popular composer Jorge Palma wrote a song that became a sort of shadow national anthem; apparently about the fall of the empire, it's actually a wake call to a dormant society. Here's a recent live interpretation at a subway station:

And here's the lyrics with a free translation:

What are you waiting for Portugal? Is emigration the only way forward?