Germany doesn't have the resources to take on anything.
They have a shrinking economy and a rapidly aging population.
They have a shrinking economy and a rapidly aging population.
Germany's GDP is estimated at $4.4 trillion for 2023.
In 2008, the high before the crash, it was $3.7 trillion. Inflation adjusted that should be $5.4 trillion just to be even with 2008. They have never recovered.
During the good years of the 1990s for the global economy, 1995 was the peak for Germany, and that high was $2.6 trillion. That is $5.3 trillion today. You can pick most years from the 1990s though and it's a bad outcome inflation adjusted to today.
28 years later and the economy needs to increase by 20% just to catch up to where they were in the mid 1990s.
The reason Germany has passed Japan is because they have been suffering from an even worse economic stagnation the past two decades.
How long can Germany pretend things are fine?
We don't. But having the 3. largest economy still kind of negates that point:
"Germany doesn't have the resources to take on anything."
And I think we still have lots of enthusiastic space nerds as well - we just don't have any big company or project to draw them together, like Space-X or NASA did. All of the german/european projects are pretty fragmented.
What we don't have, is the dedication or the will to focus on space. And granted, there are quite some other problems waiting for solutions.
You have to be really patriotic to not take a 3x raise.
An interesting aspect of European salaries is that the best doesn't get too much more than the median.
This leaves Germany and others with mediocre devs (in general, of course there would be exceptions.)
And smart kids usually get very decent scholarships.
Yeah, those who don't want to leave friends and family behind, just for the money.
And hopefully, your friends feel the same about you.
Uprooting ones existence has to be worth it and money can make up for something, but not everything.
BTW if you know somebody of those, who can decently code, let me know… because I do not find them!!!
"BTW if you know somebody of those, who can decently code, let me know… because I do not find them!!!"
And depending on what you are looking for and what you can offer, I would be willing to relocate, if the conditions are right. Email is in my profile.
Like in a joke about Mongolia, where the population density is so low, some Mongolians never seen another Mongolian.
I'm two years in and yet to see a senior software engineer in real life in Germany.
Is it because of remote work? What about seeing your University friends (or did you take not a SE or CS related field)?
I immigrated to Germany from Israel (and to Israel from Ukraine), so my University friends are all over the world, but not in Germany.
Germany on its own very much could develop its own rocket, the question if just if this is a priority or not. And it isn't.
> Nothing useful is coming out.
They are doing engine test and structural test. Same as pretty much most second generation rocket startups.
And of course they are going 'nowhere' but that has nothing to do with Germany and everything to do with the economics of launch. There is a reason Virgin Orbit went bust. Astra is about to be bust. And a few others will follow soon enough.
The modern debt based economic systems tend to have that characteristic.
Problem is: a weak Germany is a problem for the current European economic balance.
When?
But lets not pretend the lackluster growth isn't related to issues with energy.