Most (all?) tech jobs in Portugal are in Lisbon. I know companies in Oporto (Portugal 2nd biggest city) that have problems hiring people because everyone flees to Lisbon when they finish their degree. I tried to move to a smaller city (I'm not a fan of large cities) but there were very few oportunities, mostly PHP positions where you spend all day coding crappy CMS/CRM/ERPs. Sad but true.
Yes, the big companies are. What is that fascination with big (consultancy) companies? The work there usually is like seeing grass grow. And you'll be 'dispatched' to a client. If you want to live in Castelo Branco please mail me, you can start tomorrow :) (and you won't be making boring stuff either)
Cheap? Yes, if you come from a country like the US, UK, Germany, etc. The problems is that salaries for tech jobs aren't very good compared with said countries.
But it's much cheaper, so why is it a problem? Why do you need to earn a salary to pay for a E4.50 coffee if you buy it for E0.50? It's only a problem if you earn much less than other countries but your expenses are the same, right? I mean Lisbon is expensive compared to other cities in PT, but wages are also higher to compensate. They are not 'high enough' (with the '' to say ofcourse they are never 'high enough', but you know what I mean?)?
We decided not to go to Lisbon because of the sheer amount of 'jumpers' (I don't know the proper term): people who will go to another company for E100/month more (probably because there is so much choice there). It's too hard to filter them out and we don't want them. We tried it for a bit but people coming to interviews with proposal letters from other companies in hand to get you to outbid is just not what we want. It's like cheating; you'll know they'll do it again.
