I still don't get why Germany is underpaying engineers. After taxes, a cleaning lady in Switzerland can earn more than an engineer in Germany. Net salaries in Zürich are the only ones in Europe that match Bay Area level. (Living costs are lower than you think, see my blogpost titled "Nine reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech", which I wrote after I emigrated from Germany:
https://bit.ly/2GNlJcA) So why should top notch talent move to Germany, if they can move to Norway, the Netherlands or Switzerland where they earn double or triple?
What I hear from recruitment firms is that "mediocre engineers move to Berlin and great ones to Zurich". Also, GetYourGuide has their core backend engineering staff still in Zurich, but marketing and sales in Berlin. One of the founders writes that in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and complex data analysis, there are more talents in Switzerland than in Berlin: https://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/getyourguide-chef-...
Switzerland is even more founder/investor-friendly than the US. Example: Capital gain tax is 0%, that means, if you start a company, and sell it (=shares usually surgue in value), you don't pay taxes on this gain. Also, no capital gain taxes need to be paid, if you buy a publicly listed stock/ETF and hold it for more than 6 months. (More in another thing I wrote: "Switzerland: How buying real-estate can kill you financially and reasons to go for stocks instead" - https://bit.ly/2xIe8ri). Despite the legal infrastructure, we still lack the "American" mentality to become a startup place, but for small businesses it's much better here than in Germany:
A friend of me once said: "Germany is a rich country of poor people". The system in Germany hates small businesses / freelancers and is optimized for conglomerates like Siemens or BMW. If you open a company, you immediately drown in red-tape and upfront taxes. As a comparison, in Switzerland you can just start issuing invoices without a tax-code or anything. Only after you reach a certain threshold, you need to have to inform the authorities during the same tax-year. Also after that, things are very reasonable and easy.
My tech recruitment firm generates "normal revenue" and I still haven't gotten a tax-consultant because I can do taxes myself. If I have a question, I call the tax authorities and they help me / give "free advice", which shocks my German entrepreneur friends. There, the tax-authorities treat them as criminals, no support is given and one is triple-checked thoroughly that no taxes are evaded, which, of course, happens anyway especially because taxes are damn high. If you make median wage, it's 45%. In Switzerland median wage is taxed at ~17%. Also, tax-authorities treat taxpayers like clients, whom one is grateful to. That reflects in the simplicity of the tax code: In Germany, if you go for dinner with clients, you need to subtract and can't deduct the part from the bill which you consumed; in Switzerland, you just deduct the whole bill.
(Content marketing from here: If you are European and you want to move here, shoot me an email to iwan@coderfit.com. I am well-connected in the local tech scene because I match programmers with jobs for a living.)