A different view on the ‘Brain drain’ phenomenon: Introducing the “Work-in-Greece” program

In several European countries (and not only in European ones) there’s a heated debate on the so-called ‘brain-drain’ phenomenon. It has been observed that during the years of the financial crisis hundreds of thousands of highly-skilled young professionals (medical doctors, engineers, computer scientists and others) left their county in the quest of finding better prospects in more developed economies.

These prospects include better compensation but they are not limited to that; they also include a better working environment, a more modern working culture, more developed work ethics and more. Traditionally this has been considered quite a significant problem. To put it simple, brain-drain is thought to be bad.

My view on this is contrarian; we are talking about a phenomenon which is actually good! And it definitely should not be called as ‘brain-drain’ but simply as ‘mobility’!

Those individuals who decide to take the leap and travel from Athens to London, or Munich or even to New York actually do something very good for themselves, for their loved-ones and for the society at large. In this way they become more experience, more wealthy and more cosmopolitan. They contribute to the prosperity of the societies that host them, but also to the prosperity of their home countries.

Experience from countries which recently experience continuously high economic growth, such as China and India, demonstrates that mobility of high-skilled workforce can play a decisive role in effectively improving the home-country’s economy — and, on top of that, in modernizing its society!

You see, many of them will finally return home. Others will stay there and will be acting as ambassadors and ‘bridges’ between the home and the host nation. It is just a different point of view: Mobility of people is only good for the world!

At Starttech Ventures we have recognized that long time ago. In our portfolio companies in Athens we already employ individuals of more than 12 nationalities, who for various reasons decided to move and work here. This is nothing new; it’s just Athens as usual. We also always had a strategy for the East Mediterranean: A geography which is Greece’s neighborhood and historically our country used to have very closed ties with.

We are then very glad to announce the Work-in-Greece initiative, with which we aim to support the relocation of talented individuals, starting with Software Engineers, from any place of the World to Athens (and soon also to Heraklion), in order to join one of the fabulous companies of our portfolio!

You can find attached our pertinent press release and the results of a survey which we did for identifying the specific job opportunities. Moreover, please do not hesitate to join the “Work-in-Greece” group on meetup.com and definitely to join our webinar on Wednesday September 21st at 19:00 EEST, where the details of the program will be presented and there will be an open Q&A with the representatives of the hiring companies.

We really hope and wish that we shall manage to attract several talented individuals to work in Greece and that these individuals will help in building bridges with their home countries, to the direct benefit of both societies!

Pertinent files:

​Second press release, Greek start-ups find it extremely difficult to recruit tech talents.pdf​

The Starttech Ventures survey on the need for Greek start-ups to recruit tech talent (1).pdf​

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