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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

>salaries seem to be too low. You are often getting low-balled because "it would not fit within the salaries of the other team members".

Preach it! CoL in German cities is far too high for how low skilled dev wages are. 100k at 15 years work experience is an insult when you look at Munich/Berlin house prices and that new grads can get 60k.

And DW posted a YouTube video yesterday about how Germany has a shortage of software developers and they need to actively recruit from India and Pakistan. [1]

More like a shortage of desperate people willing to be low balled and a shortage of companies paying good wages.

Companies in Germany need to start paying ICs more and stop complaining about shortage of workers. Simple.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Mch8xDCZU

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Oh... that about "we have too few SW devs"... I've been hearing that for decades (literally) also about medical personell... Truth is, they just do not pay enough!!! As you say, 100k would be just fine for 5 to 10 years in some small city... but Munich, Berlin, Hamburg... you have to talk 140k for 15 years real experience.

>but Munich, Berlin, Hamburg... you have to talk 140k for 15 years real experience.

Outside of FANGS & MANGAS, German companies would start laughing if you ask for that much for IC positions, even senior ones.

That kind of cheese is usually reserved for management/corporate bootlickers high up the command chain.

Actually I had more that one offer for 140k. For example from Magna. But yes, it is not easy. And I have 20+ years of experience. Note, I do not say they actually pay that, but what they should pay, if they want to find the people.

I strongly disagree. Here's a family home with garden in the Berlin area that you can rent-to-own at 1900€ per month: https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/135035667

So with a 100k€ annual salary, one working parent alone can buy the house and feed the entire family. You consider that an "insult"?

We are talking about someone with 15 years experience though. 100k @ 15 years is too low when new grads now start at 60k.

So you hire someone who has 14 years of extra experience and brings a lot more value to the company and only pay them 40k extra?

That's why I'm saying it feels like an insult.

15 years of experience might also mean they are excellent at PHP+jQuery but have never heard of Rails+React ;)

Sure, we are getting into semantics now. 15 years experience could mean knowing how to lead and bring up a team and product form scratch or it could also mean 15x 1 year experience if that person was constantly switching stacks/companies.

It's why we should compare salaries for positions rather than YoE.

> 15 years of experience might also mean they are excellent at PHP+jQuery but have never heard of Rails+React ;)

Not in this case. It is 15 years of proper software engineering and devops experience, for times in leading positions with additional responsibilities.

The problem is, when you retire, you cannot pay the rent for the house anymore... what do you do then?

The cost published does not include heating or any other utilities, that adds up pretty quick!

It's rent-to-own so if you start early enough, you'll own the house by the time you retire.

And yes, heating and utilities add up. But we're talking about a salary that after taxes will be 3x to 4x the down payments.

First, 100k EUR is _before_ tax which I believe you might be confusing here. After tax you get maybe 50-ish % of that so you end up with something like 50k EUR per year. In no European country that would be enough to "buy the house" and even more so in Germany.

Secondly, I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts here. What if you:

* Lived in the EU

* Being salaried 100k EUR (which is probably around 90th percentile)

* Worked for a _global_ company with a _global_ product deployed on a _global_ market with _global_ competition

And now some of your colleagues are from the US and you:

* have the same responsibilities as they do

* have the same skill-set needed for given position as they do

* have the same impact, or potential for it thereof, as they do

* have to go through the same agony of being and staying among top performers

And yet your US colleagues are salaried 2x-3x as much as you are. Without taking RSUs into a picture because that's a very rare thing to have in European companies.

What are your thoughts about this? Do you attribute this difference solely to the cost of living?

The offer I linked to was literally a "buy the house with monthly installments and no upfront payment" offer. So yes, you can "buy the house" if you can afford those 1900€ per month in addition to food and heating.

Also, with 2 kids and 2 adults out of which only 1 is working, you'll get heavy tax deductions, so I'd expect an effective tax rate of around 15%. That 100k€ gross will turn into 85k€ after taxes. Deduct another 10k€ annually for top-tier health insurance for everyone, 1900€ per month = 23k€ annually for the house and that leaves you with about 4300€ each month to spend on food, clothing and heating.

This might be just me, but I think if you pay people so that they can have a very nice lifestyle where they live, that's a "good salary". If the absolute $ number is higher in San Francisco than it is in Germany, then you either need to pay them more to match the lifestyle, or maybe hire in cheaper markets.

Germany in general seems to be very remote friendly. Many larger companies even have programs where you can go on a work-vacation to a tourist resort and they'll organize a co-working space and necessary permits. I guess that's why you see salaries equalize more throughout Germany while in the US the regional differences are quite strong.

> so I'd expect an effective tax rate of around 15%. That 100k€ gross will turn into 85k€ after taxes.

Your calculus is far far from reality so your further reasoning is therefore flawed from the very start. 4-4.5k EUR is probably more realistic.

Moreover, property prices around EU are generally speaking anywhere from 3k EUR to 15k EUR per sqm. For a 100sqm home that's 300k EUR for the cheapest one, 700-800k EUR as a median and more expensive ones over a 1M EUR. Even with the 90-th percentile salary such as 4k EUR per month (after tax), how exactly do you envision buying a home with that sort of prices?

Software engineers are being grossly underpaid in Europe and all this recurring bullshit around housing prices, living costs etc. is just a bullshit that capitalist companies will spread to convince people such as yourself to start considering your colleagues as a "threat" and not just human beings who want to be paid what they are deserved.

My purchasing power, even with the 90-th percentile salary in EU, is _nowhere_ near the purchasing power I'd have with the same skills I have if I had lived in the US and that's where all the discussion can stop. If we take some of the other European countries as an example that gap is going to be even much larger. Purchasing power coefficients are a real thing you know.

https://www.steuerklassen.com/kinderfreibetrag/rechner/ with 100k€ income and 2 Kinderfreibetrag and no further deductions comes out at 18k€ taxes which is 18%. So to reach the 15% I predicted you only need 3k€ in additional deductible expenses like trash, cleaning, gardening, daycare, etc.

Dude(?), you’re seriously mixing things up. It’s not Switzerland and there are no 18% taxes in Germany. Stop spreading all this nonsense. Calculation for Bavaria with 2 kids, 100k and Steuerklasse 3. Every month: Brutto. 8.333,33 € Netto 5.581,90 €

There is shitton mandatory insurances and payments. Income tax alone does not really matter. Rundfunkgebühr is very real tax and can’t be avoided.

Edit: sorry, I am rude. But downplaying all the so called insurances, that must be paid from salary is not nice. They must be paid in full and can’t be avoided. I would love to decide about my retirement by myself instead of funding current retirees.

Please, stop spreading the nonsense and incorrect information. It's not anywhere near what you state and if it had been that way, we would have a tax oasis in EU which we clearly don't.

I don't think that is how it works. In the ad the Kaltmiete is €1900, which is simply the rent without utilities. It does not mean that a. you are eligible to buy that property b. the buy-to-rent price will be the same.

And even if it was, the legal costs alone add up to a few tens of thousands of EUR for a property like this (eg. if the property is worth €500k, you are looking at at least in the order of €50k of legal costs and taxes...). But I don't know of any bank that would lend you 100% of the price of the property you want to buy, if you do please introduce me to them...

If it really was so easy, everyone would be buying these properties. But the upfront costs are simply prohibitive.

Then let's go with buying this more fancy house for no upfront down payment, then 3k€ monthly, and paid off over 30 years: https://www.immobilienscout24.de/baufinanzierung/finanzierun...

"But I don't know of any bank that would lend you 100% of the price of the property you want to buy, if you do please introduce me to them..."

Here's a FAQ on buying a house without any prior capital. Obviously, the interest rate is going to be higher... https://www.immobilienscout24.de/wissen/kaufen/finanzierung-...

Every lender (Wüstenrot, Interhyp and Sparkasse) were ok with 100% lending as long as I was able to bring in my own 10% for legal/buying procedure. Of course it was during cheap money phase. Now it might be different. I also wouldn’t buy a house from last century anymore with current insane gas and electricity prices. And this makes things complicated since new buildings are very rare.

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