Consequently, Germany's most brilliant tech minds leave for The Valley, Zurich or London.
You reap what you sow.
Salary for developers really isn't that much of an issue. In Berlin for example a developer gets two or three times the median salary easily. That's enough for attracting people who are talented enough to choose, e.g. git and JIRA over whatever crusty system of shared folders and zip files or IBM crap you'd see for projects in many companies.
Also the salaries are acceptable (imo) compared to fairly high paying US jobs if you compare real working hours (vacation time, real 40h workweeks etc.). With a family there's even more benefits. Cost of living also tends to be fairly low (with a high quality of life) compared to higher paying places.
Getting double the vacation time (6 weeks instead of 3) when I moved from the US to Germany was very nice, but going back I'll have 5 weeks, which isn't too bad.
I keep hearing this. Yes, you will get 5 weeks. But what about your wife, your uncle, your friends? In Germany they're all guaranteed to have the same number of days off, access to healthcare, etc. When you have kids you have a bunch of weeks/months off before the child is born and more after.
In the US, as long as you're young, healthy, rich and selfish, life is grand :D
Agreed, I'd love it if all Americans were entitled to 5 or 6 weeks of vacation, plus the various other benefits that are standard in most of western Europe. Unfortunately, the GOP exists, so that's not happening anytime soon.
And once someone acquires citizenship, their descendants can't lose it, provided it's their only citizenship.
Yes, it absolutely is. And Berlin is the best example; we're even underpaid by German standards.
I don't even get 80k€/year and have a very luxurious and high quality life in Berlin.
Resource: https://wid.world/simulator/
If you're in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas or several dozen other major cities, cost of living is very reasonable in the US. Your healthcare costs are typically either entirely, or mostly covered by your employer if you're an engineer making $100k+. In Atlanta your all-in effective tax rate is under 30% at $110,000; in Dallas it's under 24%. What's the problem?
Average lawyer: 50k€/year [1] Average doctor: 75k€/year [2] Average engineer: 60k€/year [3]
[1]https://www.gehaltsvergleich.com/gehalt/Rechtsanwalt-Rechtsa... [2]https://www.gehaltsvergleich.com/gehalt/Arzt-Aerztin-Uni [3]https://www.gehaltsvergleich.com/gehalt/search?jobname=Ingen...
In the US in an average taxed state, compare a $150K salary: After federal and state taxes, our old person medical and retirement (i.e. FICA), maximum retirement investment of about $19K, health insurance, disability insurance, dental, etc, one will end up with about $7200 a month or $86K / year in their pocket, which is roughly 42% taxes and retirement. This includes 3 weeks of vacation and 10 Federal holidays.
In addition your employer pays an amount equal to about 10-15% of your gross salary into your health and retirement insurance. And this pay is on top of your salary. (Arbeitgeberanteil)
Holiday is always included with a minimum of 21 days a year for a full time job. And Germany has paid parental leave included if you start a family.
That said, US lifestyle/culture has its own set of advantages compared to Germany. German culture is surprisingly backwards for consumer software/internet stuff, for example.
(Weather is probably comparable to Berlin though)
If you are looking at more "modern" tech companies in Berlin or well-funded startups it's definitely possible. The last 3 job offers I had were in the 90-100k range, for a "senior" position (~6 years of experience) in Berlin.
Maybe Zalando offers more but few would want to work there.
On top of that, a lot of the bigger SV startups have satellite offices in Berlin.
Yep, personally know them. But they're in Köln last I remember.
Many of the companies you mentioned (not gonna named not to get sued) have reportedly terrible working culture and/or awful recruitment process (applied to most of them). So maybe the money is compensating.
Might be true for some of them, but for the ones on the list where I know people that work there, it sounded pretty good. In the end good working culture is one of many axis to optimize on.
That leaves at least 80% that earn considerably less and 50% that earn below the mean.
I actually edited out exactly the same argument that you wrote, because I (and you) have nothing to actually back it up.
Counterexample: if 60% of people earn very close above the average and 35% earn 30% below average and 5% earn (on average) double the total average, then the majority earns above average even tho the right hand-tail gets high. This is just one possible scenario that is not even completely unrealistic.
Also remember that most crazy incomes are not salaries.
[1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Missing-Link-Der-Kam...
For working from home, VDSL is pretty much good enough for most working needs (from what I have seen).
Fibre really shines for the consumer - especially video.
We have fibre to the home in New Zealand, and it doesn't make us an IT nation, or meet any of the gushing political waffle about our IT future.
It suspect the costs have a reasonable timeframe for payback as a tax payer: the government "invested" about 500€ per household to cover 80% of the population (1000€ if only 40% of households use it). I would be interested to see numbers to justify it, but is smells ok on the surface.
I witnessed this and moved out of the large rich corporate to a small startup to keep my sanity.
As if outsourcing wasn't a common trend across Western companies "thanks" to globalization and the utter dominance of US-american neoliberalism.
> and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence
Again, quite common - the "old" Soziale Marktwirtschaft moguls with decades-long visions would not let today's next-quarter-only shit fly for long.
> Consequently, Germany's most brilliant tech minds leave for The Valley, Zurich or London.
Care to have a source for SV and London? People avoid SV/USA due to the current President and London due to the Brexit uncertainity - in fact, whoever can flees from the UK before Johnson drives everything into the ground. Only correct point is Switzerland but that's not surprising since their wages run way, way higher than Germanys across the board...
_some_ people do. Others allow themselves different opinions to this president and even to their prospects in SV
> and London due to the Brexit uncertainity
True
> before Johnson drives everything into the ground
... but also here there are different opinions concerning the nature of this uncertainty
IMO, politics and stuff is necessary, but I really wish we could argue /debate respectfully without the damn flame wars everywhere of late. It seriously puts me off.
Politics at this scale are life changing matters, and unfortunately with both the US and the UK governments it is clear that they are not run by competent people with a plan but by people who literally don't have any fixed opinion except nationalism - and that means that, as an immigrant, you're rock bottom of the ladder.
The German job market is precisely as described by GP: you are competing all the time with remote people in countries with much smaller cost of living and the wages are super low compared to aforementioned places. Germany has great schools, and medical system and I think when/if I want to raise a family I'll come back. But until then I want to make money and you do this while it's easy to move around.
You can say this is a cultural problem but I think the problem is different: there is just no big software industry in Germany. It's mostly SAP salespeople, development of various custom ISV software and a small startup scene in Berlin. Most German companies don't need good software for the stuff they are doing.
As for the software quality, it is everywhere the same when the main business is not selling software packages.
Companies just care that their use cases are covered, no matter how it looks under the hood.
I was under the impression that the likes of Lisbon are great if you earn above average wage, and the surf is awesome.
Tech in Lisbon not comparable to Germany?
Lisbon is a great city, but expect to live in the suburbs due to the high cost of renting and enjoy about one hour commute time and salaries are still below what we used to enjoy during the first .com wave (1995 - 2002).
Yes, tech is comparable, but not everyone can live in Lisbon.
There are smaller tech hubs across Porto, Aveiro, Braga and Coimbra due to their universities, but pay is even less than in Lisbon, although you get to enjoy better quality life and might afford to live on the city center.
But expect to do lots of overtime without any kind of reward beyond a "thank you", while in Germany those kind of situations are regulated, and in when it happens you have the support to complain about them. If you want to actually take that route that is another matter.
Naturally there are a few unicorns that are great places to work and do reward the extra mile, but they are the exception, not the rule.
I could write software on paper and deploy by magic, it would be ok for them. And why not, they make money selling other stuff. Then a customer I haven't been working for a very long time calls me asking if I got a copy of their production VM, even many years ago would be ok (obviously I didn't) because they got hit by ransomware years after having stopped to do backups, maybe because it was too inconvenient.
If your lifestyle is to spend most of your paycheck (which is a fine lifestyle btw, I don't want to be judgemental), then I think Berlin is much greater than SV. The fewer money you get is at the same time more powerful in Berlin. If you have children, even more so.
But you know you maybe want to buy a flat or house, but for that you need money. It's hard and takes years to use your SV/London wage to buy SV/London flats. It's hard to use your Berlin wage to buy Berlin flats. It is comparatively easy though to use your SV/London wage to buy a Berlin flat.
Germany is not unattractive for me on a permanent basis, but I think in the current situation I'm in, other places are more attractive.
Also I might be wrong, I'll conduct a final assessment once I graduated and have concrete job and wage offers and can do cost of living calculations and how much I'll be able to save after deducing all costs I expend.
This is not something I ever encountered. Are you sure you are familiar with real job markets? If you're looking for an interesting job (in Munich), feel free to contact me.
As someone who was in that position ca. 20 years ago and then moved to SV for almost a decade: I don't think I would have dare to make such a sweeping claim as you:
> The German job market is precisely as described by GP
As a completely new entry into the job market, despite plenty of real work experience (during the last two years of my study the study was "secondary", I managed to make all major university projects about things I needed to do at work anyway), how could I possibly have know enough? I know I never had that feeling.
I actually did move to SV immediately so I can understand what draws you, no argument there. Still, I returned after almost a decade.
I think you are waayyyyyy overvaluing your own experience level. Where does such confidence come from? You cannot know even 1% of the German IT job market given how many medium sized of importance there are. Even in the US there is a large number of software businesses nobody has ever heard of because they are in a niche. For example, I once consulted for a company in Fort Worth (TX) where software for giants like Walmart was written. I think even here in this forum very few people would have heard of that company.
Occasionally someone, often magazines, ask about-to-be-finished students where they want to work. Inevitably the top ten are a handful of major names. That says a lot about students knowledge about potential employers, which seems to consist of only a few names of the already well-known few big companies. It says nothing at all about the reality of the far more diverse job market and the myriad of interesting options at thousands of other interesting companies.
Example: Top companies to work for,
- Students of business: https://www.arbeitgeber-ranking.de/rankings/studenten/bereic...
- Students of engineering: https://www.arbeitgeber-ranking.de/rankings/studenten/bereic...
If you just drive through Germany blindly, without a map, you'll find company after company that would never be listed here because they are not a mass-market brand.
So by all means, do go to SV, it's certainly a great experience. Just don't overvalue your own experience, and question why you are so confident in your claims and generalizing your own very limited experience.
Now, for my part, I came to the conclusion software is just a tool and, as that tool, I want to be used for things that matter to me. Since I think that the only thing that matters now are fighting poverty, climate change, I really wonder what I'm gonna do...
And I can assure you, when I was at your age, all my life was oriented to make one and only one thing : 3D engines for video games, which I did.
So you see, life is full of surprise :-)
As for well-known vs not well known: usually bigger companies have more employee protections, more career possibilities, pay better, etc. In small companies you have more power and control, and to some this makes them more interesting. I think larger companies are better but maybe I'll be annoyed by the bureocracy and switch to a smaller company, idk :).
And again you make sweeping generalizations...
I worked at what was a startup whose name you likely know, during the dot com boom, you could go from not-long-out-of-university to "very important head honcho of XYZ department" going (or flying) to very important meetings with really important executives of major companies in no time. Try that at some major company. It's actually rather unhealthy - for everybody, although the drug feels good to you at that time.