How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany
germantechjobs.de
germantechjobs.de
Company is great and colleagues are lovely. German bureaucracy sucks but apart from that it has been an experience of ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’ when it comes to the job and culture.
Honestly linkedin has had the best results for jobs, that and using a template for CVS and cover letters.
There’s plenty of work and plenty of good companies, just keep applying and keep the effort in each application low.
I interviewed the same here as I did anywhere else, job is at an English speaking company and my German level is still only at basics but that’s something to build when you arrive.
Just apply from stability overseas and have them fly you out and sort the visa, don’t take a big risk at a time like this otherwise.
Taxes and, as Allendoerfer rightly corrected me, the various social securities (unemployment insurance, healthcare, pension ect.) which you benefit from are almost half of your income, living expenses are high in some cities (Munich rent is mental). 58,000 euros is the normal minimum for a blue card, lower for tech jobs, but I would advise not taking less otherwise you’ll have serious stress by not having a decent income on top of the cultural change and no support network.
Your employer also pays into these insurances for you, which does not show up on your job-offer. So effectively you get 20% more than advertised.
Woah, what? How does that work and why?
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187309-d12010...
> On the other hand, if you choose to go the student-like route (living in Wohngemeinschaft and not eating out too much), you can easily manage with just 1.200-1.500 EUR per month, and save the majority of your salary.
I know it may be an unpopular opinion, but saving 18K Euro/year leads you nowhere (first world problems, I know) if you would like to buy a decent house (not flat) in the suburbs of a medium-size German (or western European) city. Decent houses cost around 450K Euro (or more).
Edit: Let's start a revolution :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26903194
The price of a house on the market has a pretty simple formula: it's what two incomes can pay per month times the interest rate they expect over some horizon, and the expected monthly pyament of the principal (if any).
Where I live, I can stop paying back the loan when the loan is under 70% the valuation of the house, so it's then interest-only after that. And of course there are better uses of money than paying a mortgage: in recent history the stock market has been booming while my mortgage is under 1.5%. Whenever I have €1K lying around, I'd certainly not want to pay back 0.1% of my mortgage when I can save it instead.
If you must do this, then don't use the money on moonshots and pick something with low volatility.
Even if you don’t invest it, if you have other credit (car, credit cards) obviously paying those first is always a better choice too.
Many utilities give an 8-9% interest rate on bonds, with very little risk (Comcast isn't going bankrupt soon). That said, there's no such thing as zero-risk arbitrage.
Why bother?
Renting a house is more or less unheard of. If I want a house I need to buy one (or: “rent from the bank” as it were)
And the market price is basically “what two high income earners can afford if they pay interest only”.
So: if I want to live in a house at all, I need to buy it using borrowed money, and in the window I expect to live in a house (say 10-25 years) I couldn’t make a large dent in the principal regardless, because of the extremely low interest rates (around 1% now for mortgages) and the high prices that come from that. I don’t like it, but I don’t have a choice.
Also regulations strongly favor buying with borrowed money over renting. Interest can be deducted while those who rent from a landlord obviously pay interest too - indirectly through their rent - but in their case it isn’t deductible. So anyone who is forced to rent (e.g because they can’t afford the huge 15-20% down payment or aren’t paid enough to get the mortgage) is pretty much subsidizing the tax deductions of those who take mortgages.
I have a few older friends kicking themselves for not buying a property when they could afford it, rents have risen and there is a very real prospect that they will have to move out of the community they spent their lives in.
If not even this is enough to pursue home ownership, what kind of people are able to afford a house? Honest question.
Old houses belong to older generations, and new houses are bought by rich people. Young people don't stand a chance, for some cities even not with a lifelong mortgage - unless they live in countries like Singapore which explicitly tackled this problem.
You might remember American Standard advertising toilets that we re-engineered for efficiency by aerospace engineers. There's a reason why late-90s aerospace engineers pivoted to toilet architecture. (Hint: Not a passion for the throne.)
No, not really. Unlike in the US, other professions still make more to much more. Engineering pays same to slightly more. Tenured professors make more than most SWEs, but there are some SWEs who make more than that. Lawyers and notaries make much more. Doctors of course make much more. I bet architects make more as well but this one I have not checked. Any credentialed financial job makes at least as much. Managers in any industry will make more than any typical SWE (being a manager is how you typically break into the six figure range). But to answer your question, mortgages are affordable and most people rent.
But this is one of the most expensive cities. You can be lucky and be living in a small town 50-100km outside and if you don't have to commute daily, it's completely reasonable to buy a house (on rates) in your late 20s.
The kind where both partners have top jobs (less common) or receive inheritance (most common).
Only people who bought a decade ago, work in Finance or as a notaries or sold shares in a successful startup can afford it.
- People with 30+ year mortgages
- People living in the middle of nowhere who will work at the same crappy company for the rest of their lives (or lose everything when they are let go)
- People who commute 2h per day
- People who inherit at least 100k
- People who bought their first house 10 or 15 years ago and now think they're invincible because real estate prices have exploded
2- By taking painfully long commutes to cheaper locations.
3- By living with parents/partner. This is not an option for most people, but probably what makes moving to a job a difficult situation.
> what kind of people are able to afford a house?
Apparently, half of Germany can't afford a home.
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/246355/home-ownership-ra...
Yeah, nobody can. At least not without a huge mortgage. That's why house prices are one of the biggest political issues in Europe.
Munich, 28m2 flat, 1 room, built in 2019, price 720.000 EUR, location: right under the train tracks between inner and middle ring.
That's 25.000 EUR/m2 for a hole under the train tracks.
Old 100m2 flats between midle and inner rings go in munich for 1.5 million EUR if they are old and destroyed, and well over 2 million EUR if they are relatively new (2.5-3 million).
That's 15.000/m2 for old buildings requiring repairs and 25.000-30.000 EUR/m2 for new buildings.
So at least for Munich you are off by more than a 150x factor.
Saving 20k/year doesn't even give you 1m2 per year.
If you do not inherit a good amount of money or earn incredible well (like >100.000€) you will forever be a "poor" man in Germany or you can sell your soul for a house and pray that you earn enough till you retire to pay back your mortgage. Taxes are just too high and income too low...
This. I'm a freelance here in Berlin and I pay 950 Euro/month for the (public) health insurance. The insurance covers only myself, while my kids are covered by my wife's health insurance, which is another 800 Euro/month (half covered by the employer).
Note that before moving to Germany I was living in Switzerland, where I had a private insurance that was WAY cheaper that the German public one and had all sort of perks.
I'm currently looking for a house in SW Germany, near the french border. I'd be happy if prices would max out at 2000€/m². I can not renovate a full building (both time and skill-wise), so - including necessary improvements - houses we're looking at start at about 1800€/m² and surpass 2200€/m². And we're not talking about "center of town" here or even "built after 1990". More like "neighboring municipality" or "no way I move so close to the Autobahn Zubringer". Obviously Munich or Berlin are much more expensive, and "middle of nowhere" (like in "also no or little tech jobs") is cheaper.
But anything marginally close to a railway track, Autobahn or federal road or any bigger city at all is far more expensive.
That town is pretty much "Arsch der Welt", though they now have 50MBit/s internet since a few years. Next city (a small Kreisstadt) has multiple super markets and is 20km away. Mobile reception in the town is okay, I think they just skipped 3G for a decade and now partially swap 2G for LTE. Public transport to/from the Gymnasium [45m bus drive] is three times a day: Going there in the morning, and returning for 13 and 18 o'clock (so pupils can get to and from school for both the regular 6 lesson days and the longer 10 lesson days). For anything else you need a car; an electric car might work, since for most interesting hacker jobs you only need a total range of maybe 150km per day (outliers in both directions apply). OTOH, even if people might seem a bit skeptical of newcomers at first, they turn out to be super friendly. After all, it's easy to know everyone by name if you're just 250 people.
Where I live (Saarland) the "Bodenrichtwert"[0] alone is usually between 80 and 120 Euro for the "affordable" areas I looked at. So little chance getting more than a ruin for 100 Euro/m².
[0] For non-Germans: The "Bodenrichtwert" is the average price per m² of "raw land", that is, excluding improvements like houses. It is updated every 2 years to include recent sales in an area.
I ask that question and I make now nearly 6 figures.
Before it was passible to buy a flat and pay it off, now prices are where you wanna sell it in 30 years or so.
German mortages are known for the requirement to bring plenty money of your own.
- House price: 450K euro
- In Europe you usually need around 30% of the house in cash (20% for down payment and 10% for paperwork and the like). This means you need 135K euro saved. Saving 18K euro/year => you need to save money for 7 years
- Now you get a mortage for the 70% of the 450K euro (315K euro). Now depending on how much you want to pay every month, we get different outcomes. Let's say you are willing to pay 1500 euro/month of mortage: this means (roughly) you will be paying your house for around 17 years
- This all implies you will be earning 60K euro (or more) per year over the next 24 years of your life. Let's say you are at this moment 25 years old, so you'll get your house paid when you are 50.
This is the panorama for people who are supposed to be the top 10% tier in the society (in terms of gross income) in a country like Germany (but applies to any other western European country as well). Not bad, but not good either.
According to this statistic[0], that should be 39.1% (numbers are for net income, but top two brackets should fit 60k gross income). In a household with two working people that both have semi-decent jobs you'll have that (and with tech job + basically any other job, you'll beat that).
> Let's say you are at this moment 25 years old, so you'll get your house paid when you are 50.
Yes, that sounds about right, and from what I can gather isn't too different from how it worked in my parents generation. What do you expect? That you can pay off a house in 10 years?
[0]: https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-si...
That being said: after the war, housing was destroyed and had to be rebuilt, nowadays it's there already (and more than enough if I look at my family and others around us). The only problem is that now one doesn't need the lower third of incomes to build it and so it has become a playground for financialization games which basically make sure that wealth will steadily be reallocated one family with too many kids at a time...
10% down payment is quite common currently in Germany for a house.
The interest rates are just so low that waiting to get a loan and buy a house is mostly money lost by not getting that stupidly low interest loan.
In the UK, you wouldn’t pay more than a few thousand for a lawyer and associated conveyancing fees, and the vendor pays the realtor (usually in the range of 0.5-1.5% I believe).
We do have stamp duty (tax) which can be substantial eg 15,000 on a 500,000 property.
Don't believe the hype. The average developer salary is enough to feed a family of four, you just won't be able to buy a house in a sought-after suburb on a single salary.
This money also has to be paid upfront, and so is yet another hindrance for young, first-time buyers.
That's the only way.
Dev salaries are astounding. Senior engineers in the EU make less than entry level undergrads in the US or Canada. 60k Euros is 70k USD. People out of bootcamps with zero experience make more than that in the US. I don't have a single friend from university that I remember making less than 100k upon graduation. Mid-career salaries with bonuses and stock are 200k+.
I'm afraid that until things radically change in the EU we'll always have US tech giants. Living in the EU isn't worth a 4x pay cut for many people.
I have a very high quality of life here, strong protections as a permanent employee (increasingly less common in other industries in Germany, but not in tech!), a salary that is excellent compared to many of my peers, and comes with a purchasing power that I imagine meets or exceeds someone in my same position in New York or the Bay Area.
I won't pretend there aren't downsides (for example, stock as compensation is rare here, and not incentivised by the legal situation), but for me the upsides win over raw actuarial comparisons. I'd much rather have my compensation in Berlin than trade it for 2x or even 4x that in the US.
(Edit to add: once you bring rent, medical insurance and associated out-of-pocket costs, and paid time off into the picture, compensation in the US starts to look like a pretty raw deal IMO.)
On a purely subjective note: American work culture has lower trust and attempts to extract much more "productivity" from people doing the work compared to European companies, which is not always proportional to the salary differences. My sample size is fairly small (<5)
That seems very unlikely. Housing is expensive in most of the major metropolitan areas in the US, but you more than make up for it with higher salaries.
The rest of your argument makes perfectly good sense, there's lots to love about living and working in Europe! It may well be worth it to you.
But it's disingenuous to mix those quality of life arguments with an argument about money. Tech workers in the US tech hubs live a financially/materially more comfortable life than those in Europe.
Genuinely don't understand why you would see these as disconnected from each other.
> Tech workers in the US tech hubs live a financially/materially more comfortable life than those in Europe.
Obviously as you can see from my comment above, I disagree with this view.
The same salary in US could be viewed as 'you are rich' or 'you can't pay rent' depending on with city you live in. Now, you are talking about different continents.
I would compare the possible lifestyles and quality of life: how long does it take to buy a house/apartment? Can you afford to travel on vacation? Can you save money for your kids' college (or do you even need to do that)?
That said, with the rise of big tech satellite offices and remote work, there is definitely a path to €150k+ total comp without leaving the EU, and over time this should put upward pressure on salaries across the board (London is ahead of the curve here).
A soulcycle class is $35/pop. Even at one a day, on top of $4000/month for rent, and income tax, you're still left with roughly the amount a mid level engineer in a european city (excluding maybe London) makes pre-tax. No amount of Avocado toast, or whatever the sneaker fad changes that equation.
> However if you still buy the house in SF with that savings you tend to again lose all benefit.
That's no different to buying a house in London or Amsterdam say, except once you've dumped $1m into your "modest" home, you're still earning 2.5x what the person in London/Amsterdam is.
"You can't make rent"/"You can't buy a house with a reasonable commute" an a software dev salary is almost entirely a California and NYC-area phenomenon.
A "typical" software developer (even a junior) could afford a decent house within a reasonable commute in ~7 of the top 10 metro areas in the US (Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta). In the remaining 3 (NYC, LA, DC), you'd probably end up with an unpleasantly long commute, although plenty of people make that choice. If you go further down the list of metros, the ratio is similar.
> How long does it take to buy a house/apartment?
In any of the metro areas mentioned above, you should be able to buy a house on a software dev salary as soon as you've save a 5-10% down payment (so $25-50k for a $500k house, more if you want something bigger/in a nicer area). The difference in salaries vs. Europe would typically allow you to save that within a couple years.
> Can you afford to travel on vacation?
Unambiguous yes - you can afford the monetary cost of a vacation on a software dev salary. Families in much less lucrative fields than software still take vacations.
Paid time off is trickier - European norms are for employers to provide much higher amounts of PTO for all employees, while most American firms are much stingier with it. This is something to explicitly shop around for and use as a decision criteria in a job hunt. There are definitely large American firms that provide 20-25 PTO days standard for new employees.
> Can you save money for your kids' college (or do you even need to do that)?
Annual tuition & mandatory fees at the flagship state university in the median state is ~$12k, so ~$48k for a 4-year degree. This excludes living costs, but you have to pay living costs at European universities as well. If returns on your college investments keep pace with tuition increases (many states have programs that can explicitly guarantee this), then you can pay tuition after 18 years by saving $2700/year per child.
You didn't mention healthcare, which often comes up, but software devs working as full-time employees will typically have good health insurance available through work, so that's not a problem in practice either.
There are tons of reasons to prefer Europe vs. the US (culture, a preference for dense living, lower-pressure work environments, more paid time off, etc.) but overall buying power isn't really one of them. Your salary will buy you more "stuff" (housing, cars, vacations, savings, etc.) in the US, unless you choose to live in one of the highest-cost regions of the country without a correspondingly high salary.
Yeah, you have to buy the perks that are free (because your taxes go toward useful things) in the EU, but you make so much more money, that buying them is easy.
The US is a really strange place. It's far worse for 90% of people than the EU, but for the top 5% or so, it's unimaginably better.
2) Your kids won't get shot in the school.
3) You don't have to drive 20 minutes to the closest store to buy bread and milk.
4) I have 35d of paid vacation, while AFAICT in US you're lucky if you get 20. I'd get a brain melt or die from overworking if I had any less vacation days than now.
I've never been to US so I overly generalize and cherrypick based on what I've read, but I think what I wrote above will ring bell to many others.
Apart from that, other issues like: being close to family etc.
I could imagine going to US for a few years and get $$$ and get back, but overall, US does not seem to me like an American dream from the 90s anymore.
2) An average of three children die per year in school shootings, giving odds of roughly 1 in 800,000 (hard to tell with such tiny sample sizes). Your child is more likely to be struck by lightning and far more likely to die in a fire or car accident. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/11/lockdown-...
3) That is just not true unless you live in a rural area. I don't know where you get that from. Denser cities have groceries often within walking distance, and most suburbs will have plenty of grocery stores within a 5-10 minute drive.
4) Unlimited PTO is extremely common for tech companies in the US. It's not uncommon for me to see people taking 7+ weeks.
There are issues in the US of course, but I really would not completely trust low-effort media narratives. There's a reason people come here.
About the shootings, yes, media coverage is skewing things a lot. I live in France and my friends abroad think there's an islamic terrorist attack happening here every week.
Anyway, the US society feels way more class-divided. Even if as an employee of FAANG I would get a good health insurance, the way the system works overall for average folk just doesn't make me feel like living in such a system. (What if I lose a job for whatever reason? No fancy insurance anymore!). And as someone with a "preexisting condition" I'm actually not sure how my case would be treated in case I wanted to apply for a visa.
2. There is a long long long distance between the average case and the worst case that you are describing, especially for engineers. Sharing a room with 3 people or living in a van is very very very far from the average case. Pretty much no engineer needs to do this. If they are, they are doing it to save to the max or doing something very wrong.
3. Same with health insurance. You don't need FAANG for good health insurance. 92% of people have health insurance. Granted, that is of varying quality but being uninsured is far from the average case.
My sense of the US vs. western Europe is that the US is quite a bit worse if you are in the bottom 30%, slightly better in the average case, and much better for the top 20%. And engineers easily make it into the top 20%. So perhaps the peace of mind is worth it since rock bottom is so awful in the US. But there still is a big difference between average and worst case, and the media hyper focuses on the worst case.
Re: housing + medical costs, yep, the quick math says that unless things go really terribly wrong, in a few years one should build up a substantial safety net despite the costs.
For young and healthy (new graduates etc.) it definitely makes sense to go to US for a few years (and then perhaps come back as a remote person in Europe and start a small EU office, I know that's how many EU offices of US second-tier (non-FAANG) big techs have started).
Rent in SF-NY is high, but it's not that high. It's far less than the extra money that you make. $3k/month will get you a nice apartment just for yourself, no roommates. $4k/month will get you something awesome.
On $150k/year, which is what my students make as their entry-level salaries at Google and friends, you can buy an apartment in almost every metro area in the US so that you don't even need a car. As a mid career developer you can easily afford a house even in SF-NY. I don't even have a driver's license...
> Even if as an employee of FAANG I would get a good health insurance, the way the system works overall for average folk just doesn't make me feel like living in such a system.
That's the thing. The US works for the people in the top 5% and is pretty bad for the people in the bottom 90%.
> And as someone with a "preexisting condition" I'm actually not sure how my case would be treated in case I wanted to apply for a visa.
Visas don't have healthcare checks. You'll be fine.
I’m pro-US and SF/NY as anyone but this isn’t accurate. If you want a house comparable to one you’d get in a MCOL city like Sacramento/Portland (3-4 bd, 1800+ sqft, good schools), you’re going to be forking over $2m+. That’s not very easy to achieve even for SF engineers. You need to be staff at FAANG or similar and preferably with a high earning partner (lawyer, doctor, executive, etc). Otherwise you’re gonna be house poor.
I still agree US is generally very good for engineers, especially ones in SF/NY/Seattle. But let’s not fool people with saying real estate is also very affordable...
AFAIK, SaaS companies aren't charging demonstrably less for their applications in the EU than they are in the US. So the ratio from development to commercial value in the EU is significantly higher.
In other words, management/founders/investments/equity holders should be far more profitable in the EU and its to the detriment of the individual engineer. Income inequality is therefore in theory more exacerbated.
Is Canada that much better though? I briefly considered it but I determined that the high rents and not so high wages would not be worth it for a move.
> Well, seniors can make like 70-80k€ where I live, which is like the 3rd percentile in my country. Still true though, the salaries are not great compared to the US.
That also means you have no room for growth. In the US 200k/year would put you in the 10th percentile for household income. You have plenty of room to build up from there. The thing about the EU is that not only are salaries low, the ceiling is also low.
To be fair the gap between senior developer and entry level salaries is pretty big here. Entry level salaries might around 30k (which is close to the median overall full time salary here if you live in the capital).
The interview process in startup can be more draining than that. Currently, it's more like 4 / 5 steps with (sometimes) 6+ hours homework. Yik.
60k is more for senior developers. Junior get less.
Other than that the cost of living in Germany is quite low (lower in Berlin than in the South) and it's a very nice and stable country.
You need to filter beforehand for salary. Most places expect to pay around 60-70k max. But getting the higher salary is more a matter of finding the company willing to pay it than just "being good".
As one CTO said during salary negotiations: "There are a lot of 100k devs working 60k jobs"
I can't see a mid-size startup / domestic company needing to pay 100k to get the devs they need, at least from my experience in Europe.
Actually, mid-size startups (the ones that are more tech-focused than usual) that have just closed a funding round, and AI divisions of automotive startups (so domestic companies) are the two biggest groups I receive 6 figure offers from (based in Berlin).
I live in Berlin and I've never seen even a 6 figure senior software engineer position.
I'm also in Berlin with a 6 figure comp but I have 10+ years experience (DevOps role) and the company is not German.
It's always shocking to me how low European SWE compensation is. Is it similar for other skilled professionals? What do accountants, lawyers, civil engineers, pilots, physical therapists, etc. make?
I understand the demand side. I think the European tech industry is much less successful than its American counterpart, and therefore has less money to pay. But I don't understand the supply side. Why would anyone with the intelligence and drive needed to become a software engineer pursue that field?
Instead of... what? It's not like you can make 2x the salary easily by instead becoming something else. Salaries are pretty flat, if you want to make money you should invest in somethig or have your own company.
Also: I'm not sure it's' a good idea to pick jobs based on salaries. It's good to not worry about money at all (which almost no SWEs' need to). After that I'd recommend pursuing sommething one finds interesting.
Edit: I think there is a cultural difference in the US where one is expected to aggregate net worth/savings throughout one's career, for many reasons (ability to send kids to better schools, saving for rainy day e.g. sickness, ...). In a welfare state I don't have that priority. I wouldn't switch to a job paying 2x the money unless it's really a interesting job! Because there is almost nothing that 2x the money would do to my lifestyle, the future prospects or security of my family etc.
ALSO, this is only possible because we each make 150% of the median household income in our city. Our country is awful for the average person, it really really is.
Oh yeah forgot to mention the combined $90,000 in debt we have in student loans(so we can get these jobs) and car payments(so we can drive and exist in society).
It's just such a stupid way to organize a society...
To drive this point back to the conversation at hand--these American pressures are what drive the mindset that dominates most of any English speaking dev forum.
I just don't believe that's true. Many, many more Germans immigrate to Switzerland, the UK or even America than vice versa. That's primarily because professional salaries in the latter are higher. That strongly suggests that at least some non-negligible proportion of German professionals care about compensation.
Another angle I didn’t think of is the work-hard-retire-early mindset which of course means that a) you work hard and expect high comp for it b) if you do long hours and have little holiday, you have a higher interest in retiring early, which requires lots of capital.
My SWE salary is with 6w holidays, haven’t done many workweeks over 40h yet in a 20 year career. I don’t just expect to work to 70, I want to work to 70. My work life balance means I have more than enough time for gardening and travel without retiring. Retiring at 70 requires a lot less capital than doing so at 55.
German savings rates are 50% higher than America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gross_nat...
and the cycle repeats
Most of the other professions pay less. From the list you gave, and the people I know, I would assume the sorting is roughly:
* physical therapists (can't go much lower in pay)
* pilots (there are just way too many, except for those in old contracts at the big airlines they are almost paid like bus drivers)
* accountants (usually a normal salary, but nothing special)
* civil engineers / software engineers roughly on the same level, although the latter has an easier time finding a job
Lawyers and doctors earn a lot more than engineers (at least looking at my friends in these fields), but they usually also work more, leading to a similar hourly rate.
One thing you have to account for in Germany vs the US:
* Much higher job stability.
* Most people work 35-40h a week and never do unpaid overtime.
* 6 weeks paid vacation per year is normal.
* You almost never get called into work on the weekend.
* CoL isn't as insane as in SF or Seattle, so your salary buys you a decent life.
* No copays if you get chronic conditions, cancer or some such. So you don't need to save up for a medical catastrophe.
exactly. I made that as a Junior in my first full-time job in Munich in 2000 already. Then moved on to freelancing and for the next decade never invoiced less than EUR 12K/month (average was actually EUR ~16K). I did a lot of hours and paid a lot of tax but it also got me fast cars, holidays in Italy, Austria or Switzerland (just for the weekends) and a nanny to help look after my kids. And I wasn't even an outlier since anyone who I worked with (often via places like Hays or Allgeier Group etc) was on pretty much the same.
What I've noticed in the recent years (I moved around 2009) is there has been a push to "Arbeitnehmerüberlassung", which is basically a racket where the outsourcing agency hires you out to their clients, they skim the margins and leave the employees with a crap salary. They sit in their clients office and are second class employees. When the project ends they're moved on to the next company if they're lucky or are asked to come in to the office (not on the client site but the place where they organize this type of slavery), then they get to call prospective clients and beg for jobs that they themselves have to do. It's surreal and idiotic but it's peoples fault for putting up with it instead of just freelancing and writing their own invoices.
25 vacation days per year and 40h plus overtime included sometimes are more the current norm for most dev positions on the market now.
Maybe you can show me where I can find these 40h/week no-overtime with 30 days/year vacation jobs so I know where to move next.
Overtime is perhaps more about the company and oneself, but in my experience is something you decide to do it or not. If you do it companies pay for overtime. I never done overtime (because companies pay pennies for it :) )
That describes every job I've had in Sweden over last 6-7 years or so. But then again I've made a conscious effort to void some of the 'crunchier' industries (like game studios and certain startups), which admittedly does mean getting paid a bit less.
Overtime does happen but French law requires I be able to recover my time (RTT). In my experience there is a mad rush to use up that time before 31/12 so you'll see an additional holiday season around Nov-Dec. Else, it goes away and that time is lost to the fiscal year.
You can do it in Berlin if you go the freelancer route but that comes with it's own complications in Germany.
like what? being able to do your own tax and get refunds for all your expenses the way you should? an accountant who does once a year your "EkSt Erklaerung" costs you anywhere between 600-1000 (once a year) and it saves you anywhere between 5K - 25K depending on what your year was like and the expenses you had.
If you want to get rich either be a founder or go to the US for a chance at that. If you want a good and happy life with private time your average western European country is great.
Median incomes in Germany are about 25% lower than the US. Yet SWE compensation seems to be 50%+ lower than the US equivalent. That would suggest that other skilled professions must make significantly more than SWEs.
For example in the US, bankers or lawyers are roughly on par with high-end SWEs. I'm would assume German bankers and lawyers are making well more than 60k. If that's the case, what incentive would talented Germans have to pursue software instead of other higher-paid careers? (I could be wrong on my assumptions, maybe skilled professionals in Germany are just much less compensated relative to the median worker in general.)
Most numbers I can find via quick googling seems to put the median annual salary for a SWE in the US at around €75-78k and €55k in Germany. That is pretty close to the 25% number you quoted.
For me, I can say I didn't consider salary when choosing my field. It's just not a common concern, you're expected to study something you're good at and would enjoy doing. Medical and law were definitely not even remote thoughts for me.
It was a happy accident that software engineers are paid so well (relatively). I suppose I just assumed all MSc fields are roughly equal and quite acceptable as far as salary goes.
The US is very individualistic in comparison, and in my opinion it is not doing well in this regard. Things like crime, violence etc all increase when people are pushed into poverty.
Wealth should not be the absolute measure of a person in society, because that would mean the market would decide the value a person brings to society, which is the wrong take on things in my opinion. Mainly because not everything should be handled by the free market. (healthcare for instance, should not be dictated by market forces).
There’s nothing “tilted” for life when you struggle to make ends meet while paying sky-high rent and having no prospects of ever owning your home.
It's only fair. Once you get old, the young and healthy will pay for your hospital stay, too, through the insurance mix.
But we could also just let you die because you can't pay the treatment.
You'll have to decide, there's no free cake in the end.
Everybody will also pay for all the infrastructure you might be using and the others not.
So it's just lame to frame it like that's the only thing.
There's a nationwide pension fund, unemployment "insurance", long-term care insurance and what not. All of this is cross-financed in a mix by everybody who's paying into it.
Also: Lots of people switch from private health insurance back to public health insurance once they get old, because then costs are rising. A welfare state also supports those who have "suddenly" become poor so they had to make that switch... ;-)
In aggregate software engineers don't make less than any of those fields if that is what you are asking.
Why would anyone with the intelligence and drive needed to become a software engineer pursue that field?
Because it's pretty fun, relatively easy if you have knack for it, easier to find a job, and on the whole quite well paid and comfortable work.
My interest is largely orthogonal to that discussion. Assuming you're not leaving the continent, why would anyone (besides those who are very passionate about software) choose to be a European SWE instead of a European actuary?
Healthcare is a major example. Most people in the netherlands i know who work in healthcare do so because they want to help people, not to get rich.
So you have a much lower net amount of cash, but you get real benefits that would be part of your negociation in the US.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1789/umfrage/...
These are not stunning by US standards, but important to consider that life costs are very different, e.g. you get actually significantly less than this gross salary in your bank account but in return you have unemployment insurance, free school and university for your kids (or super cheap evening masters for you), health insurance with no significant deductibles (except dentistry), and a serious pension of which you can actually live once you're over 67. Hours are generally reasonable and social protections good, outside the worst quarters of the big cities you have a very safe environment, ...
All in all a good quality of life, but not eye watering salaries.
Some people might simply not be in the luck in regards to intelligency, luck, wealth etc compared to you, but that does not mean they should be held back by it in my opinion.
There's also some offers in berlin for meaningfully higher, I'm just taking a ballpark average for senior.
The interview process there is a lot more sensible. Pay is the same.
60k is not unusual for entry-level people in "established" companies (outside of an union's contract).
The answer is absolutely not -- you can easily make 70k USD in India as a decent mid-level engineer which is the same as Germany. And you get to live like a king in your own country, don't have to learn German, put up with racism etc. In fact, a lot of US companies hiring in India pay more in India than Germany! I know a couple friends making ~200k in Amazon India at 8-10 years of experience.
not that I know anything about Indian tech companies but please don't say that compensation is at FAANG companies. because those are not representative of the industry in general. Otherwise why would India be known for cheap dev's if Mid-levels can easily earn 70k.
This hasn't gone unnoticed by investors. See PG's recent tweet - https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1381669057548713984?s=20
The US runs the risk of being "China'ed" again, in a different field -- this is not outsourcing anymore, this is real competitive software products being built in India.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
1. Unprecedented for "average" engineers (i.e. not leading their field) until very recently
2. Offered by extremely profitable big tech companies or less profitable companies with giant pools of funding
3. Offered by companies that highly value software engineers
4. Offered in extremely competitive markets
The vast majority of employers in Germany, and in most of the world, don't meet those criteria. It's unreasonable to compare the average German tech company to the best paying American tech companies.
Compared to the best paying software jobs on earth, German tech pays pretty badly. But so do most companies. I used to live in a city with a population of ~1 million, and most local "tech" companies paid new grads $60k - $80k, with senior developers landing between $100k and $150k. That's much closer to Germany pay than Silicon Valley pay.
Don't know why people here like quoting those companies as if they're representatives of the industry in general. Even in 'SV' most startups are not paying 300k. Most likely 150k~ for a senior.
Median dev job earnings in the US are around 90k. Last time I remember from bls
I took an offer from Google instead, for more, but it's in Zurich.
I pay half of what I would pay to public health-care and still get better service.
Overall, the international clients pay much better than the local ones.
Especially for entry-level positions, degrees are relevant to get a foot in the door. Once you advance to mid-level, people tend to ignore certifications and/or degrees - at the corporate job I am now, I didn't even include them in my application, just mentioning them in my CV. If you survived in the job market for a few years, noone questions your capabilities.
What is more important later-on are recomendation letters ("Arbeitszeugnisse") from former employers (which they are required by law to give, and as they cannot make them sound negative, they tend to use a system of nice-sounding, but coded messages if you were not a good employee, e.g. "he always had good relationships with his colleagues" means "he did smalltalk all day, but did not work", or "she was always showing sociality" translates to "she's an alcoholic".)
When it comes to finding a job a lot of startups (specifically in Berlin) don't require it (the example that I have from a friend is she worked in customer support in a German startup).
A lot of these startups need to communicate in English so being a native English speaker is an advantage.
The issue arises if you want to apply for a work visa for any of these positions. Only a certain number of countries allow you to apply for a work visa while being in the country on a tourist visa (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan, South Korea AFAIK (possibly the UK after Brexit)).
If you're not from any of these countries you'll have to go back to your home country and apply for a visa there.
I don't think I've ever shown my CS diploma anywhere before HR wanted a copy after signing the contract. Of course it was on the CV, but I am relatively sure it didn't influence them hiring me or not. (Got hired without CV as well...)
There are a ton of positions (especially with larger companies) that "require" a degree, and I don't know how many will skip that, but compared to 10-15y ago I see a lot more "requires a BSc or 3-5y of work experience" or something along the lines.
The reality is that there are lots of not so great software engineers working for not so great salaries in not so great projects. That kind of stuff is hard to hide in a good interview. Supporting people with getting a visa is costly for companies so they tend to do that only with good people. Quality is the main reason to do this.
If you apply to work for a more traditional or more "German" company, you may find that things like the subject your uni degree is in, or formal recommendations from previous employers (Zeugnisse) suddenly matter a lot more.
If you're in your early twenties and don't have much experience, it can be tough to get a job and a degree certainly helps.
If you're over thirty and have worked for many companies, nobody asks for your degree anymore.
"This is assuming that you are single and not a church member, because there is an extra tax (around 9% of your income tax) if you belong to one."
Wtf germany?
I have found more info:
https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/german-church-tax-kirche...
it is a complete non-sense to me, if ever you wanted to give, why you are not allowed to decide the amount and to who you give?
And 9% is a very important amount in my opinion!
The more crazy, if ever you wanted to change your situation to declare yourself not a church member, then you have to fill forms with multiple id, and pay 30euros of fee.
It's important to know what amount that's 9% of. In case of the German Kirchensteuer it's 9% of your income tax [0], not of your gross income or even after tax income.
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchensteuer_%28Deutschland%2...
Schools also have religious instruction as a main class, although you can opt out. I'm a lifelong atheist but thoroughly enjoyed the religion classes, even picked it as a minor in my upper division classes. This might have changed, though, I left Germany 30yrs ago.
I didn't regularly attend the religion classes, but I did once or twice and they gave me candy for memorizing the ten commandments. Organized religion is a-ok in my book! (In high school, they offered an "ethics" class as alternative to denomination-based religion classes, but I guess in the much smaller elementary school the student numbers wouldn't have justified that.)
But many of my millenial friends aren't even baptized, so they don't have to pay the tax. Also, you can "leave" a church any time you want.
For a small fee and an in-person visit to an office "near" you! Or so I've heard (I live in Germany but have never been a church member here so I wouldn't know myself).
This sucks especially for people living in the countryside.
But the fee isn't that much compared to what you have to pay in taxes.
It's beyond me, even if it's not about a lot of money. Which, I guess, is why it still exists and everyone just swallows it and the church can do things like approve fighting HIV and then launch an investigation when they employed condoms, recommending "natural" contraception methods (in detail) in the same investigation document as well as recommending husbands/wives to just not have sex to not give their partner HIV (and outside of marriage obviously doesn't exist). (I found this via the wikileaks talk at 36c3 and was rather weirded out https://wikileaks.com/popeorders/document/Attachment_9-Commi... )
It gives the church too much power here in Germany.
The reasoning is often, that the churches are the biggest providers of social and health related charity. They own schools and hospitals etc. pp.
I never understood why they didn't simply nationalize these things if they think it should be paid by taxes.
I have no issue in paying taxes for hospitals and schools, but I don't want that part of that money also pays for some crazy faith.
Aside from FAANG and Fintechs, I don't think that London is that much better than Munich or Berlin, especially after rent. The rest of the UK was really bad salary-wise.
Germany, (and most european countries in general) have far more local levels of distinct cultures (dialect, traditions, community etc). People do not easily want to leave the place they grew up in.
Our experience was that there is a big pool of talent in both Munich and Berlin, but the number of high-tech startup jobs is much less than you would find in the U.S. coastal corridors.
The job market is much less efficient. I find that it's much harder to find about about good candidates and to get our name out there as a company. The only reliable source of engineering candidates for us in Munich has actually been HN.
More Info: I recorded a podcast about our experience with the Bavarian U.S. development organization: https://bavarianusoffices.libsyn.com/accelerating-rd-with-un... We're hiring in Munich: https://www.uncountable.com/careers
What exactly makes it less efficient? Lack of networks?
It's not very widely used, because either some employees fear repercussions by their employer, or the just need the money. I've done it in the past and it's awesome.
Check who’s hiring in X on HN.
Apply.
Realize the company is located in Hamburg, Germany.
Get hired.
Move.
Enjoy life in a stable, wealthy, European country.
Except unless you plan to buy a house in a town in the middle of nowhere, of course! Those are quite cheap.
The startup paid for the flights, the visa fees (if any, I don’t remember), the container to put our crap in (it was a logistics startup so they knew how to do this rather well), and prepaid for an AirBnB for 3 months for us to find housing.
We had hang ups in getting my wife recognized such that we could get on the more lucrative tax schedule of tax class 3 (one earner). The Germans are sticklers for the details but common sense prevailed and our paper work was finally honored and we got a blue card which means my visa is tied to my working and making a minimum amount.
We live now in Berlin and absolutely love it here. We don’t interact with the government much so maybe that’s why but all-in-all it’s awesome out here. I don’t worry about getting shot or anything like that.
My comment was a bit flippant. But it was something I thought about from time to time. Here not at all.
I think perhaps the perception of risk in the US is blown way out of proportion due to the media frenzy around shootings, which are still pretty rare overall in the US. If you consume mass media, you will generally overestimate the risk by several orders of magnitude. (This is, for example, why many Europeans believe the stereotype that the US is so dangerous, when the vast majority of it is actually much safer wrt violent crime than most large cities in Europe.)
If you were afraid there, you should be afraid here. (I personally don't think you should be afraid in either place.)
I’m sorry to hear you were mugged and twice, too! That’s crazy. Not crazy that crime happens just that it blows away my thesis that I’m more or less free from having to think about it living here in Berlin.
I did have a fancy road bike I bought in Hamburg stolen. But I think that’s more or less me being stupid.
Ah, the pre-covid days. Nowadays you might as well say "move to Mars".