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Comment by tdrz | Hacker News Reader

I found the article quite good but has missed a couple of points that need to be mentioned:

1. The attitude of the average German consumer

It seems to me that one of the national sports in Germany is to find cheaper deals for pretty much anything (and then brag about it). Even if it's fractions of a euro! After trimming down on everything that they could, the manufacturers and service providers had to finally reduce quality. This happened to such an extent that the famous "Made in Germany" is now meaningless, if not worse.

2. The attitude of the average German manager

"I am your boss, you are the employee, now shut up and do as I say" attitude does not work well in knowledge-based industries like Software. And I believe this is one of the reasons why Germany is behind in digitalization, let alone in digital innovation.

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1. Made in Germany for consumer products might be worth less today but the export of industrial supplies like machines, chemicals and materials are much more important to the economy as a whole. Outside of Germany it is still quite respected - to the point where foreign companies give themselves and their products German sounding names while slapping German flags on their boxes to sell more.

2. Why software Made in Germany doesn't work well has a number of reasons but I'd say that it is primarily because it is much harder to raise capital for things that only might work 1 out of 50 times. People who start businesses are much more risk-averse and most try to be profitable or self-financed from year 1. This makes them uncompetitive in innovative sectors.

1. You are correct that German industrial exports are highly respected. The issue is manufacturers in other countries (eg. Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Türkiye, China, Romania, Spain, Mexico) have caught up. And oftentimes those manufacturers are themselves German companies. This has in turn commodified a major portion of the German industrial base.

2. France has a similarly ossified financial culture, but has a much more robust tech industry compared to Germany (eg. Ubisoft, Datadog, Capgemeni, Dassault Systemes, Dataiku, Alcatel-Lucent, Thales, Orange, etc)

Germany has a strong base, but some reform is absolutely needed to upskill their economy.

Germany has SAP, ...

But that's just 1 champion (well, actually 2 because Siemens has a robust R&D presence) whereas there are multiple in France. In general, R&D in the software and electronics space seems stronger in France due to the robust MIC, Aviation, and Telco sector spending a lot of money on R&D

I think he meant SAP but in a satirical way

> I am your boss, you are the employee, now shut up and do as I say

This would also not work in engineering and never did. In fact, it's likely one of reasons why german engineering was so good: because people would (and still do) tell their boss bluntly what is wrong.

Can confirm this in science too. German masters/PhD students are much more willing to correct the professor on a topic, then I. England. N=1, of course.

Well, I'm just reading the Oppenheimer biography, who studied in the US, UK and Germany, and he came to the very same observations. And tried to encourage his students in Berkeley successfully to be more critical and interrupt the professors.

I don’t have an informed opinion, but with my limited interactions with Germans, the problem with software engineering is that it is not considered a high status profession. The smart German would rather go into law, medicine, accounting (!!) or teaching, than into software development. It is true that before Brexit salaries were much lower compared to the UK, and that only recently, after Covid, they skyrocketed. So this perception may have changed for the younger generations.

Mind, this is my poor man’s sociologist analysis, but it seems that they rely heavily on foreigners, which are very hard to attract because of the language and bureaucratic barrier. From what I see, even companies that pay good salaries (say ~100K total compensation for a senior) mainly employ foreigners.

>It is true that before Brexit salaries were much lower compared to the UK

And people from the UK say the opposite, that engineers are not respected and paid in the UK the way they are in Germany. I think the low/high PoV of your salary depends in which bubble you hang around. Every market is flooded with low pay offers, but yes, I feel like in Germany, unless you work for big-tech, SW engineering is pay way less compared to other positions, in contrast to the US where tech wages rule over the rest.

>only recently, after Covid, they skyrocketed

I don't think you're correct, maybe that was true at the height of the market a year or so before, but recently after the tech market fell and layoffs happened, I see most companies rarely hire and when they do they exclusively want skilled seniors for mid-level pay. I don't see those skyrocket salaries anymore after the market collapsed.

Same info I got when I talk to people who recruit/hire: a year or so ago they were struggling to hire and had to increase pay or hire juniors and train them, but now they get a tone of experienced applicants for every opening that they can dictate pay.

> And people from the UK say the opposite, that engineers are not respected and paid in the UK the way they are in Germany

I was referring to software developers. Before 2016-17, a software developer in London would make twice as much as in Berlin. Now it seems you’d make slightly more in Berlin than in London.

> I see most companies rarely hire and when they do they exclusively want skilled seniors for mid-level pay.

I know that Zalando, Delivery Hero, Hello Fresh and other similar companies pay more on the entire scale (from junior vs junior to principal vs principal) than comparable companies in London. Salaries skyrocketed in the sense that just a few years ago they would be lower than in London. I know Meta pays higher salaries in Germany than in the UK for fully remote roles (I was told by an internal recruiter last year).

It’s possible, though, that if one is in the lower part of the distribution their salary may be higher in London, but I haven’t investigated.

> Now it seems you’d make slightly more in Berlin than in London.

Out of curiosity, got any sources to back this up?

> Zalando, Delivery Hero, Hello Fresh [...] pay more on the entire scale [...] than comparable companies in London.

The thing is London has a lot more tech jobs than just overrated web-shops and shitty food delivery apps that depend on underpaid bicycle delivery workers from abroad to be profitable (basically modern salve labor).

In London you have big-oil, big-real-estate, all the FAANGs, finance, HFT, AI, med-tech and many opportunities to be a contractor for 600 pounds/day in the City, opportunities far above what working for some web-shop and food-delivery app pay in Berlin, as those are mostly body-shop visa factories anyway that burn people out (from what I've heard).

I'm not advocating for one or the other, I don't have a dog in this fight, but the upper end salaries in London vastly overtake the upper end spectrum in Berlin. And anecdotally, the last salaries offers I got in Berlin were all laughable. I got better offers in the semiconductor industry in Dusseldorf working less hours.

I’m not arguing the morality of food delivery platforms (and I’ve only mentioned one because some friends work there), I’m saying that they pay better than in London.

In Delivery Hero and Hello Fresh, I know seniors making 100K, staff engineers making 150K, so I suppose principals would make 200K. This is more than similar roles make in London. Also, talking to people that work there, I wouldn’t call these places body shops, rather they seem to work less than I do (maybe you could argue they are visa factories, because they don’t employ many Germans, even though EU citizens don’t need visas).

I think I am in the upper end of the spectrum in London (>200K), and I am exploring the possibility of leaving the UK. The only offers that come close to my current compensation are from Germany or the Netherlands. Taxes are also lower than in the UK, which was surprising to discover. Hedge funds aside, in London I get worse offers, around half of my current income, like in Spain.

Finally Berlin is relatively poor, I wouldn't be surprised if salaries were higher in Bavaria, Hamburg or North-Rhine Westfalia.

>In Delivery Hero and Hello Fresh, I know seniors making 100K, staff engineers making 150K, so I suppose principals would make 200K.

Question, are these salaries documented anywhere or is it your insider knowledge? Also, I don't doubt people with such wages exist in Berlin at these companies, but how many seniors and principals are those food companies hiring now in this economy? I sense it's not easy now to get one of those six figure jobs.

I helped two friends in their negotiations, so I know exactly how much they make (between 140 and 160K total compensation). They were hired early this year. I also interviewed for similar companies in Berlin and Munich (I refused two offers and I was discarded by one company).

On levels.fyi, salaries seem to be slightly lower, but still in 6 figure territory: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/delivery-hero/salaries/soft...

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/hellofresh/salaries/softwar...

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/zalando/salaries/software-e...

According to their websites, Delivery Hero and HelloFresh are still hiring senior, staff, principal and senior principal engineers.

Anyway, I know many “average” engineers making 80-100K as seniors in Germany (I mean people that don’t do leet code, that don’t negotiate much, that don’t care too much about their career), in hyper unionised companies with massive benefits and ironclad job security.

>I know many “average” engineers making 80-100K as seniors in Germany[...]in hyper unionised companies with massive benefits and ironclad job security

Do you have any examples or info on which are such companies please. AS an average engineer looking for senior pay, you got my interest.

Mind, I’m not using the word “average” derogatorily, I’m referring to good senior developers that simply don’t follow trends, don’t do leetcode and don’t spent too much time chasing pay rises (I unfortunately had to, because of my family’s economic issues and because I live in the UK, where you either own property or you can’t live like a civilized man).

I know people working for BMW, VW, Bosch, NXP, Infineon (some in Germany and some in Austria) earning that much. Some do security, others embedded, others CRUD stuff in Go or C#.

I don’t know if these jobs require Germans to follow the German corsus honorum (Gymnasium, BSc, MSc) and so are not accessible to those that attended a Realschule (foreigners seem to be exempted).

> "I am your boss, you are the employee, now shut up and do as I say"

I don’t mean to be disrespectful in any way, but (there’s always a but after that opening) if that’s you’re experience working in Germany, I’m afraid you’re either ignorant of culture in other countries, or not working in a job with a lot of impact, or responsibility. The German work culture is distinctly the opposite, namely people being blunt in what they say and brutally honest with their superiors.

>This happened to such an extent that the famous "Made in Germany" is now meaningless, if not worse.

This was originally an anglo pejorative meant to denigrate the quality of German goods. Mild irony.

>2. The attitude of the average German manager

>"I am your boss, you are the employee, now shut up and do as I say" attitude does not work well in knowledge-based industries like Software. And I believe this is one of the reasons why Germany is behind in digitalization, let alone in digital innovation.

My experience has been the complete opposite.

Could you provide some references that back up your claims?

haha number 1! 20 years later i'm still traumatized about my boss who would spend the whole lunchtime speaking about gas prices

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