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Comment by glitchalumni | Hacker News Reader

Well I can only talk about the tech sector, but basically companies in DE/AT complain that they can't find senior+ engineers for 45k/year (pre-tax) for years now - the salary ranges have been kind of a joke (even at the top end) for quite some time and the whole discussion about the labour shortage is a political straw man.

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salaries for tech workers are a joke in DE/AT when accounted for cost of living, taxes and what other professionals are making. the incentives do not match the work put in, hence why they can't find people and are in constant state of "wonder".

what seems to be the way to go is people ladder hopping every 2 years to make it to a managerial level, because when you not a manager you are nothing in Germany salary wise. the tech worker career track simply does not exist.

Real wages everywhere are stagnant.

Higher salaries are eroded by high cost of living and higher taxes

Problem for that region isn’t that wages aren’t growing. The issue is that they are very low to begin with. France for instance pays senior engineers much better. Poland pays better when adjusting for cost of living. Germany is on average not competitive even within its own region.

A junior at AWS in Poland makes more than the 45k listed above.

Not surprising but even outside of FAANG companies in Europe you can get a much better deal in another country

45k is a joke. Mid level engs at aws hit 90k+.

Many public sector positions in tech are paying this much

45k? how much is it after taxes for a family of 3?

Depends if on the setup.

If you are married, it depends on what your partner earns.

If you are not married, after tax and social contributions (health insurance, unemployment insurance, state retirement fund and some other insurance) roughly 30k. Your kid is health insured for free. And you will get some money from the state each month for the kid.

Also at least 20 days of PTO, parental leave and a lot of potential sick leave (20d/y if you have a kid) for that purpose alone.

Addendum:

IT sector seems to have an average of 75k in the former West, 58k in the former east.

From my experience, ~42k was an entry level job with a bachelor degree in the east.

for a single it's 2400€ net

Around half of it is what you get out, +/- around 5% depending on whose the more earning party.

In Germany if you marry you get the option to either both stay Steuerklasse 1/4 or you get to downgrade one which has to pay a little less taxes while the other one stays higher taxed.

Patriarchially that's why married women always earn less in their Steuerklasse 5 (even if they would be paid the same) because they pay the more taxes, so that the husbands in Steuerklasse 3 pay less taxes.

Not making this up, in case you want to smash that slur button.

Oh, and it also is only useful when one party (statistically the husband) makes 60% or more of the combined income because all untaxed Freibeträge are always accounted to the one with the better income in a Gemeinsamer Güterstand.

Not entirely true. In the end, you pay taxes from the yearly household income and the tax class does not change that. Tax class can only regulate how much of that you pay per month during the year. If you pay excess, you get it back with next year’s tax return. If you paid less than you had to, you’ll have to pay that difference. It makes zero sense to switch to 3/5 if you earn the same - literally zero benefit.

https://allaboutberlin.com/tools/tax-calculator

I built it to answer this question

So true and traurig.

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