throwaway908365

You have an easier time earning money in a high-cost area and are then able to move to a lower-cost area when you are retiring. I on the other hand, can not do the opposite. Additionally, while we Europeans like to make ourself feel better through the "US health insurance bad" meme, there are some US regulations, that make the difference even greater (e.g. there is no such thing as a 401k in Germany).

This is not how taxes work. 42% is the marginal rate, not the effective rate.

Think about it this way: I am in the top earning 2%. It is only possible to buy such a home if you have a partner, who makes similiar numbers and then together decide to dedicate your life to it. The 98% of the rest cannot do it. Ergo I am either not earning enough or we have to accept, that you cannot really buy property within a top-tier city in Germany. In the end the whole debate turns into young vs. old and heritage vs. salary.

Welcome :). Berlin in January is tough, even for German standards.

1. Just get a tax advisor who is fine speaking English with you. Just let him do everything in the beginning. Afterwards you can do more of that yourself. Try to be classified as Freiberuflich, not Gewerbetreibender. It helps if you have an engineering degree, but he can help you with that.

2. Do at least two gigs per year (Scheinselbstständigkeit).

3. Use HAYS and others to start it of.

4. Continue to learn German. Maybe do some German interview training or something to get in. There are teams working in English, but you will have an easier time overall.

> 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.

It is gross, but very hard to compare, because it does not include your employer having to pay halfes on social securities. Actual gross would be something like 120k, but with obligatory expenses, you cannot opt out of.

Net would be something like 55k if you are single, but you already paid into a mandatory retirement plan and you, your kids (and laughably also your partner) are health insured.

> - 13th salary as a Christmas gift (so +8.3% salary)

My 100k number is all-in.

> Also, with a bit of searching, you can rent a house with garden for €2000 per month even in large cities like Hamburg or Berlin. As a result, an 100k€ annual salary will be enough for you alone to comfortably bankroll a family of 5 - something that's almost impossible in the bay area due to high rents and insane costs of living.

That is true. But you have to say goodbye to any romantic dreams about owning any property big enough for children (within a nice area of such a city), if you and a similiarly well-doing partner do not want to work for it for the rest of your life. If you have not come across FIRE, that might be okay as well.

Have not been laid off and I am not living in the bay area, but in Germany. Still wanted to offer some perspective.

~15 years fullstack and DevOps experience, visited top local university, no degree. Mostly Python + some other languages. Have been interviewing for Lead SE/DevOps/SRE roles as well as some architecture positions.

My findings about the German job market for developers:

- Remote-work is here to stay. Almost all companies are okay with full-remote, those who are not, want ~2 days in the office per week.

- Companies are starting to do leetcode-style interviews. Sometimes some FizzBuzz level to check basic understanding, going up to harder problems unrelated to the position. Unless they are very hard, you will just get used to that.

- Remote or hybrid meetings with multiple participants are horrible for interviewing. The delay makes you come across slow and is very distracting, when you need to look sharp.

- If you want to earn money in Germany, you have to join a bigger company.

- Bigger companies do their development in Java with a minority being MS shops. Python is for data science and DevOps.

- The missing degree is mostly not a problem. Sometimes the CTO's PHD makes it one.

- Landing lead/lower management roles seems to be difficult if you have limited experience leading people. Those seem to be mostly staffed internally.

- The market value for a profile like mine in a big German city seems to be around 100k € including some small bonus.

- There are many offers under that number. I think I would get hired almost instantly if I would accept offers for 80k €.

- All-in all IT does not seem affected by the downturn yet.

While these numbers are not directly comparable to the US (lower cost of living, better social security, health-insurance included and not tied to your job etc.) my subjective feeling is, that I am getting taken advantage of here. 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".

For the time being, freelancing is the way to go in Germany, even though you are fighting against regulations.