Ciabatta

Warren,  try adding just the water and the flour,  put it in a covered bowl for about 20 minutes, then come back and add the yeast and salt and start mixing.  You can do a search here on autolyse, but that step will greatly help in forming gluten  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/lessons/tentips_8_autolyse   

making ciabata bread

For one thing, people knead differently, at different rates and more or less vigorously. For another, the flour(s) you use can impact how much kneading is required as well as how much the dough can develop since more gluten in the flour = more potential for gluten development in the dough.

So, part of the art is learning what you can produce with the flour(s) and hydration you're using, including but not limited to how much kneading (in the way you do it) is necessary to develop the dough to get a satisfactory finished product. 

An 80% hydration dough is going to be "sticky" forever -- you use high hydrations for the resulting baked loaf, not for the ease of working. :) The flour is never going to fully absorb all that water and make a dough that is as smooth and silky as lower hydration doughs. It's just the nature of the beast. There are techniques for working with wet doughs -- using a scraper along with/instead of hands and fingers, using bench flour (as little as possible), etc.