The salary of a skilled German software engineer in this field is about 1/4th of the US counterpart. So I wish the German government luck in their endeavor, because they’re gonna need it.
Me too, but we've had a strong sequence of "the US is a horrible place to live" stories on the media for decades now, so that point of view is rarely objective.
I have friends that don't want to visit the US solely because of Trump being elected. Very smart software engineers.
Politics and worldview doesn't correlate at all with ones abilities, although this is often portrayed that way.
I don't doubt it, but for the very best the multiplier is greater than that, and not moving becomes harder. The difference is between lifetime wage slavery and financial independence at that point.
I’ve just moved to Berlin to look for software development work, and it’s nowhere near as bad as you are portraying.
Lower than the USA, yes; but even junior software roles are well above “wage slavery”. Housing and medical insurance are both much cheaper here (also food, but food is so cheap generally that it being cheaper here doesn’t make much difference, unlike rent and insurance).
Obviously this depends on the field and on your baseline in the US. I suppose if you made $100k/yr here, then making 60k euro there would not be that big of a deal, even though taxes are much higher. But if you made $500-700k/yr here in total comp (a realistic proposition for senior engineers in hot fields), such a move would be foolish. Remember, we’re not discussing the low end of the market here.
> $500-700k/yr here in total comp (a realistic proposition for senior engineers in hot fields)
Sure, but that level is paid to maybe 1-in-25 staff/principal/distinguished engineers at the top handful companies which make up maybe 1-in-25 of total jobs in the industry (order of magnitude)?
So for the 1-in-500 talents in the German coding industry, maybe it might be a worthwhile consideration to move halfway across the world with their families, but for the 499 even doubling their salary isn't all that enticing...
But those tend to be the people who make or break your strategy. You know, the ones who pick the right vision and how to get there, which the others then can help implementing.
You don't really have a good army without decent generals.
Ah, the classic hacker news big tech pay disbelief. People in big tech quote their pay everyone just assumes that it is impossible or extreme outliers. Those are indeed realistic numbers [0] and L3 through L7 are just the standard well outlined levels. The true outliers are the 4 levels above L7 which pay even more ridiculous amounts.
500 and 700k is about the level of comp of Google’s Staff and Senior Staff levels correspondingly, assuming a high yearly review rating. Let me assure you, there are a lot more of them than you think, at Google and elsewhere. It is true that almost all of the engineers at those levels are exceptional however.
I would say, atleast from the people I meet, that there is less drive to maximize income. Once you have enough money to rent a nice apartment or house and spend some money on holidays and hobbies, most people I know don't really want any more money or not that much more.
It also helps that labor protection laws are rather strong here and when you look at the US, it's horrible in comparison and not to mention the potential healthcare/other costs that could eat up your wage (I guess with total comp you mean including stock options or something like that, I've rarely seen that here, people prefer to be actually paid).
That and moving to another country, possibly permanently is quite difficult and taxing.
I've noticed this too, and it's not just about comparison with US - the relative salary compared to other jobs in Germany seems to be exceptionally low, from what I hear. I wonder what causes this anomaly?
After a recent stint living in Berlin and working for a German company I think it also may have something to do with the quality (and price) of higher education and the open EU job market. Many people I was working with were in their late 20's on their first job as a junior because they stayed in school much longer than they would have in the U.S. because it's a very low cost (and more of a societal expectation in Germany to have at least a Masters) so you've got a broader highly educated workforce rather than the U.S. where a bachelor/masters from an Ivy or Stanford will set you dramatically ahead of others. Also, you have a lot of highly educated people coming in from Italy, France, Greece (these are the most common ones off the top of my head I remember working with) that have an even worse labor market at home and are willing to work for less.
Compared to the US, you will not find many rich people in Germany. At the same time you will also not find many poor people. Generally, people are quite equal in Germany.
Maybe the distribution is much narrower, but it also seems that software salaries are on the lower end, which is the most surprising part to me. Or, as a German colleague of mine put it, "my no-good brother who takes construction jobs every now and then earns more than me in this software job", followed by revealing that apparently his wife still has to work for them to have the ends meet, because programmer's salary is not enough.
The average full time salary in Berlin is 40-50k before taxes. The median income of all Berliners is a lot lower than that, because we have many part timers and many people on social security. The programmers that I know get about 70k on average. Rent in Berlin is about 10€/m^2 (heating included), so 700€/month gets you an apartment for two.
I assume that the brother from your anecdote doesn't declare all his income (you are left with about 60% of your paycheck after taxes and mandatory insurances). I don't see how a programmer salary isn't enough for two people to make ends meet.
You know what else you will not find in Germany? Successful software companies. There’s basically SAP (which is a multinational that hides its revenues abroad) and hardly anything else. Hmm, I wonder why that is.
Define successful. I know of one German software company that's raking in money and large contracts, despite being staffed with underpaid junior developers and overpaid clueless managers. I had this eye-opening moment, after which I asked my boss, how is it possible that we have the expertise and yet they have the money...
Which they won't, if they pick the right company, in a place where the market, rather than the government, dictates what kind of benefits a company can offer.
>30 day vacation, paternity leave, health insurance, 40 hour week, unions support
And thank you for providing yet another (or rather a whole 5) perfect explanation of why it's darn near impossible to innovate in Europe.
