Thirty, 30,000 euros and the rat race: why leaving isn't enough

Having degrees and vibe coding skills isn't enough to escape the rat race

Thirty years old, a salary of around 30,000 euros gross, two degrees and the ability to code with AI assistance. On paper, a profile that should have some room to maneuver. In practice, the author of the post that started this discussion sums it up bluntly: he has launched apps, tried to sell websites, pitched a startup, and nothing has taken off. He lives in a shared room and watches, he says, his life slip by. The question he poses —how to make a big move when there's barely any energy left— is the same one an entire generation of educated Spanish tech workers with no assets is asking.

The answer he gets is no consolation. It's a map of possible exits, almost all of them uncomfortable.

Selling websites is no longer a business: AI is eating the margin

The first diagnosis to appear is harsh but economically sound. Selling websites is a saturated market with low margins, and the arrival of AI has allowed many potential clients to build their own landing page without paying a designer or a developer. Vibe coding —programming by describing what you want to a model— offers a temporary boost, but it comes with a saturation problem: if almost everyone can do it, almost everyone will compete for the same niche. The window of profitability, on this reading, lasts no more than a few years.

Hence the first geographic recommendation, which clashes with the instinct to hold out in the big city: if the work is remote and done with AI, there's no reason to pay rent on an urban shoebox. A small inland town with affordable housing offers the same keyboard and the same connection. In this scheme, the city is no longer a career advantage; it's a fixed cost.

Civil service exams or emigrate? The two routes dominating the conversation

Against the failed entrepreneurship, two exits come up again and again, and they are opposites. The first is the oposiciones —Spain's competitive public-sector exams—: stable employment, predictable salary and, its defenders argue, better than the private sector. The objection comes quickly: it depends on the posting and the atmosphere, and stability isn't absolute. The second is leaving Spain. Switzerland is mentioned, abroad without further specifics, and a more ambitious idea: going off to raise capital "from whatever it takes," even on an oil platform, because capital will be the only thing that makes money when selling skills no longer pays.

There's a third path, more retreat than advance: buying a plot of land with a house in Spain's depopulated countryside, working freelance from there and topping up income with YouTube earnings or the minimum income benefit. It's the rural version of the same problem: cutting costs instead of raising income.

The profile described as 'society's pariah'

One comment raises the temperature and frames the problem in terms of the marriage market and demographics: being a white, heterosenshetero, Western European man is presented as a position of social disadvantage. The thesis rests on personal experience: moving to Eastern Europe in 2002 and, from there, building wealth and a family. The conclusion is that Spain is left for holidays and for the children to learn the language.

It's an opinion, not a fact, and should be read as such. What does point to a real pattern is the suspicion that a 30,000-euro salary with two degrees doesn't buy the life project that education promised.

The missing question: which degrees, what English, what experience?

The most useful reply in the exchange isn't a recommendation, it's a challenge. Without knowing what education, what level of English and what concrete experience lie behind it, any advice is smoke. And that opens a gap nobody fills: the story of the Spanish tech entrepreneur usually omits that most projects don't scale, that repeated failure drains energy, and that the family safety net —or its absence— matters more than talent.

There's also a generational rebuke: calling thirty "years" reveals, according to this critique, longevity without real experience. At thirty you haven't lived anything, and yet people talk as if life were already closed off.

The analysis stalls right here. With a 30,000-euro salary, two degrees and technical skills, the escape has three doors —civil service exams, emigration, cutting costs— and none guarantees getting out of the rat race. What's missing is the data nobody puts on the table: how much of that failure is the market, and how much is exhaustion.