My 2 cents: Just finished my first month in Munich as a Web Dev after moving from Australia.
Company is great and colleagues are lovely. German bureaucracy sucks but apart from that it has been an experience of ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’ when it comes to the job and culture.
Honestly linkedin has had the best results for jobs, that and using a template for CVS and cover letters.
There’s plenty of work and plenty of good companies, just keep applying and keep the effort in each application low.
I interviewed the same here as I did anywhere else, job is at an English speaking company and my German level is still only at basics but that’s something to build when you arrive.
Just apply from stability overseas and have them fly you out and sort the visa, don’t take a big risk at a time like this otherwise.
Taxes and, as Allendoerfer rightly corrected me, the various social securities (unemployment insurance, healthcare, pension ect.) which you benefit from are almost half of your income, living expenses are high in some cities (Munich rent is mental). 58,000 euros is the normal minimum for a blue card, lower for tech jobs, but I would advise not taking less otherwise you’ll have serious stress by not having a decent income on top of the cultural change and no support network.
To add to that: Taxes are not 50%, but there are mandatory social insurances you have to pay: Health insurance (+elderly care insurance), unemployment, pension system. They make up the biggest chunk for low to medium sized incomes.
Your employer also pays into these insurances for you, which does not show up on your job-offer. So effectively you get 20% more than advertised.
It's a total of about 50% in social security contributions AND taxes. Assuming you are single and have no kids and your gross salary is 100k, you pay about 15k in social security contributions and 29k in income tax. And additionally 2.5k in church tax if you're catholic or lutheran.
thats roundabout 45% but yeah. Actually high earners pay less taxes than those stuck in the middle (like 40k to 60k) because after a certain threshold (i think around 60k) your contributions to health care (which is until then around 15% of your income) don't rise anymore (unless you have a very expensive private health care plan but thats on you ;)).
Additionally, I remember hearing that private healthcare can be cheaper for young healthy people as the public healthcare is a fixed percentage and the private is based on your circumstances. So many high earners pay less for healthcare than lower earners until they age/have families
Well, we don't take separation of church and state as seriously as we should. The state collects the taxes for the churches, it's around 9% of your income tax. This happens automatically if you're baptized, and you have to leave the church if you don't want to pay this, which also happens at a government office.
I thought this was just a way to reduce money laundry. If the church would just receive donations, it gets hard to track where the money is coming from/going to. There's a church in Brazil that flies helicopters out of the temple carrying cash [1]. If you're a drug dealer there's no money laundry scheme better than this.
It has historical reasons. Back when Napoleon conquered Europe, the HRE redistributed some land from the Church to the secular rulers and in return promised to fund them via taxes and compensate them for the land. The church tax has since become more of a membership fee (you can just leave the Church and stop paying it), but the state still collects it for the Churches.
As a Blue Card holder, upon registration in town hall, they ask about your religion and if you don’t want to pay church tax, you have to say you have no religions.
Germans also can get out of the church “in an official sense” and stop paying that tax.
Good to hear that you like it. Munich can be lovely in the summer, you'll surely enjoy it. Also: Enjoying a real bavarian Biergärten is something I really look for after Corona.
After seeing the size of them when empty I really am keen to see them in full swing. It’s beautiful here, touring by bike has been fantastic, it must be amazing when everything has leaves!
Varies quite a bit. For me it was just a verbal interview with technical questions about how I would approach different problems. I sent a link to my GitHub beforehand and they were happy with what they saw so there wasn’t anything practical.
> To sum up: if you are single and opt for "live cool and don't care about expenses" style, then an average developer salary will be enough (it might be harder if you have a family to feed).
> On the other hand, if you choose to go the student-like route (living in Wohngemeinschaft and not eating out too much), you can easily manage with just 1.200-1.500 EUR per month, and save the majority of your salary.
I know it may be an unpopular opinion, but saving 18K Euro/year leads you nowhere (first world problems, I know) if you would like to buy a decent house (not flat) in the suburbs of a medium-size German (or western European) city. Decent houses cost around 450K Euro (or more).
Savings is for a down payment. Then you pay mortgages on the house and any savings are much better to keep (retirement, buffer, ..). If I were to save to buy my house (€800K) I'd certainly not be living in it before the kids move out, at which point I no longer need a house.
The price of a house on the market has a pretty simple formula: it's what two incomes can pay per month times the interest rate they expect over some horizon, and the expected monthly pyament of the principal (if any).
Where I live, I can stop paying back the loan when the loan is under 70% the valuation of the house, so it's then interest-only after that. And of course there are better uses of money than paying a mortgage: in recent history the stock market has been booming while my mortgage is under 1.5%. Whenever I have €1K lying around, I'd certainly not want to pay back 0.1% of my mortgage when I can save it instead.
Sure the market says you should put the money into stocks, but from a risk perspective this is not meaningfully different from paying off your mortgage and then borrowing money at an incredibly low interest rate for the sake of buying stocks. It's still trading on margin.
If you must do this, then don't use the money on moonshots and pick something with low volatility.
If course, but there is little chance to borrow money without security at 1% as the mortgage interest is and it’s currently trivial to beat. There are literally savings accounts with interest rate over my mortgage interest, meaning there is a zero risk arbitrage opportunity.
Even if you don’t invest it, if you have other credit (car, credit cards) obviously paying those first is always a better choice too.
> There are literally savings accounts with interest rate over my mortgage interest, meaning there is a zero risk arbitrage opportunity.
Many utilities give an 8-9% interest rate on bonds, with very little risk (Comcast isn't going bankrupt soon). That said, there's no such thing as zero-risk arbitrage.
When the savings are state guaranteed in the savings account, the risk is basically limited by the credit rating of the nation. It’s never zero but for stable economies it’s as low as you get
> If you're not paying off the principal, you're just renting from the bank without the benefit of having a landlord to fix things.
Renting a house is more or less unheard of. If I want a house I need to buy one (or: “rent from the bank” as it were)
And the market price is basically “what two high income earners can afford if they pay interest only”.
So: if I want to live in a house at all, I need to buy it using borrowed money, and in the window I expect to live in a house (say 10-25 years) I couldn’t make a large dent in the principal regardless, because of the extremely low interest rates (around 1% now for mortgages) and the high prices that come from that. I don’t like it, but I don’t have a choice.
Also regulations strongly favor buying with borrowed money over renting. Interest can be deducted while those who rent from a landlord obviously pay interest too - indirectly through their rent - but in their case it isn’t deductible. So anyone who is forced to rent (e.g because they can’t afford the huge 15-20% down payment or aren’t paid enough to get the mortgage) is pretty much subsidizing the tax deductions of those who take mortgages.
Rents increase with inflation, a mortgage doesn't.
I have a few older friends kicking themselves for not buying a property when they could afford it, rents have risen and there is a very real prospect that they will have to move out of the community they spent their lives in.
Mortages do increase with faster growing inflation, though, once the central bank reacts and increases the interest rates. Of course you can negotiate a fixed interest rate for some time period. So there are two buffers in between.
Not to mention, if you live in any Western country, real estate capital gains since 2010 have been immense, so interest-only mortgages could have made sense.
Exactly. So you live in the house. The question is whether a €1k should be saved or invested or paid towards the house so you leave it (after say 10-20 years) with 50% loans instead of 70%?
It's one of the outstanding problems of the current world. Not only in Germany, but there are also even crazier countries that most people can't afford to buy a small apartment their whole life.
Old houses belong to older generations, and new houses are bought by rich people. Young people don't stand a chance, for some cities even not with a lifelong mortgage - unless they live in countries like Singapore which explicitly tackled this problem.
I believe it was a combination of two factors (I'm not Singaporean so it would be nice if someone could correct me). Most of the housing units are owned by the government and are leased out to prospective owners based on a pseudo-waiting list type system for a fixed term (50 years?), and Singapore tends to build more housing than the west.
Engineering is always a boom/bust. Germany doesn't have local industries that have the need for the wacky salaries being paid in some verticals.
You might remember American Standard advertising toilets that we re-engineered for efficiency by aerospace engineers. There's a reason why late-90s aerospace engineers pivoted to toilet architecture. (Hint: Not a passion for the throne.)
> I assume engineering positions are on the top bracket of salary distribution.
No, not really. Unlike in the US, other professions still make more to much more. Engineering pays same to slightly more. Tenured professors make more than most SWEs, but there are some SWEs who make more than that. Lawyers and notaries make much more. Doctors of course make much more. I bet architects make more as well but this one I have not checked. Any credentialed financial job makes at least as much. Managers in any industry will make more than any typical SWE (being a manager is how you typically break into the six figure range).
But to answer your question, mortgages are affordable and most people rent.
if we're talking Germany then architects don't earn a lot. Some do but many of them earn less than people in administration in big companies (so less than 60k). Mechanical engineering and IT (Engineers) earn comparatively high in Germany; yes doctors and professors earn more (which is not surprising, or maybe only to people in SV?) but aside from that you don't have a lot of people who earn more. Actually, most lawyers earn less than 60k€ (seems pretty much like a winner takes all market). If you're looking from an American perspective the wages of teachers in Germany are impressive (especially since they don't pay much in taxes), around 60k€ (and dont have to pay 15% in health care nor 10% for their pension like usual workers!) so they are easily in the top 20% wages for Germany.
Of course my sample size is limited, but except in some rare circumstances where I live (Munich) people don't just buy or build a house before they're 40-50 unless they got money from their parents. Even with a job in tech. The pay absolutely looks great when viewed from a perspective of having less, but if you're actually saving up for a house and want to stay here and not live somewhere remotely, it's really hard.
But this is one of the most expensive cities. You can be lucky and be living in a small town 50-100km outside and if you don't have to commute daily, it's completely reasonable to buy a house (on rates) in your late 20s.
I think now the prices are more expensive in Germany overall, although there is less variation... Paris is very expensive it's true. But you'll be damned to find a decent home under 500k in the whole South Germany. And they are not nearly as nice as the old french houses. I'm really contemplating relocating or buying something in France at the moment.
- People living in the middle of nowhere who will work at the same crappy company for the rest of their lives (or lose everything when they are let go)
- People who commute 2h per day
- People who inherit at least 100k
- People who bought their first house 10 or 15 years ago and now think they're invincible because real estate prices have exploded
Mind, the ownership statistics may not be fully reflective of the ability to afford a home in Germany. There's a long rental tradition in Germany with strong tenants rights.
Just not true. German cities are constantly listed on „bubble“ lists, because property prices are rising way faster than rents. When you buy property in Frankfurt or Munich, you are betting on further price increases without any hope of profitability through renting it out.
Price/sq meter varies between 100-2000€, so it really depends on your region, lifestyle and choices. If you have a normal salary (or both working) you can afford a small house. Mortgages also tend to be reasonable in Germany.
Munich, 28m2 flat, 1 room, built in 2019, price 720.000 EUR, location: right under the train tracks between inner and middle ring.
That's 25.000 EUR/m2 for a hole under the train tracks.
Old 100m2 flats between midle and inner rings go in munich for 1.5 million EUR if they are old and destroyed, and well over 2 million EUR if they are relatively new (2.5-3 million).
That's 15.000/m2 for old buildings requiring repairs and 25.000-30.000 EUR/m2 for new buildings.
So at least for Munich you are off by more than a 150x factor.
Saving 20k/year doesn't even give you 1m2 per year.
A flat in a horrible region of Regensburg (a very nice and very old Roman town in Bavaria) right beneath the rail tracks costs 5000-6000€/m2 (they will have nice interior though). And Regensburg is not even a high income city for software engineers in Germany.
If you do not inherit a good amount of money or earn incredible well (like >100.000€) you will forever be a "poor" man in Germany or you can sell your soul for a house and pray that you earn enough till you retire to pay back your mortgage. Taxes are just too high and income too low...
This. I'm a freelance here in Berlin and I pay 950 Euro/month for the (public) health insurance. The insurance covers only myself, while my kids are covered by my wife's health insurance, which is another 800 Euro/month (half covered by the employer).
Note that before moving to Germany I was living in Switzerland, where I had a private insurance that was WAY cheaper that the German public one and had all sort of perks.
Swiss here as well with kids... and the appartments (currently renting for 2400/per month) we look for at the moment are 1.2 Mio CHF which is nearly equal in USD and thats for 4,5 room 110sqm.
Would be interested if you did a good trade by moving to Berlin as I see loads of tech jobs overthere but afraid I would just make my situation worse to be even less able to afford something in Switzerland in the longterm. Do you have more or less money after all deductions and rents etc?
I think the 100 is a typo? :P [as in "... varies between 100-2000€..."]
I'm currently looking for a house in SW Germany, near the french border. I'd be happy if prices would max out at 2000€/m². I can not renovate a full building (both time and skill-wise), so - including necessary improvements - houses we're looking at start at about 1800€/m² and surpass 2200€/m². And we're not talking about "center of town" here or even "built after 1990". More like "neighboring municipality" or "no way I move so close to the Autobahn Zubringer". Obviously Munich or Berlin are much more expensive, and "middle of nowhere" (like in "also no or little tech jobs") is cheaper.
I don't think it is a typo. There are areas out in the sticks where nobody wants to move (because no internet, no mobile reception, no public transport, next city is 50km away, next supermarket 20km), where 100€/m² is possible.
But anything marginally close to a railway track, Autobahn or federal road or any bigger city at all is far more expensive.
I ask due to a mixture of doubt, but also curiosity: Can you point to areas with prices in the 100Euro/m² range? For a house that's suited for living, and not destruction? My grandma's house might sell for that range (~200 Euro/m²), but it has 120m², was built at or before 1900 (as a poor farmers house) and there have been no meaningful improvements since the 1970s. So, as sad as it is: Best thing one can do is scap the house and build a new one. But then it's cheaper/easier to just buy some empty land.
That town is pretty much "Arsch der Welt", though they now have 50MBit/s internet since a few years. Next city (a small Kreisstadt) has multiple super markets and is 20km away. Mobile reception in the town is okay, I think they just skipped 3G for a decade and now partially swap 2G for LTE. Public transport to/from the Gymnasium [45m bus drive] is three times a day: Going there in the morning, and returning for 13 and 18 o'clock (so pupils can get to and from school for both the regular 6 lesson days and the longer 10 lesson days). For anything else you need a car; an electric car might work, since for most interesting hacker jobs you only need a total range of maybe 150km per day (outliers in both directions apply). OTOH, even if people might seem a bit skeptical of newcomers at first, they turn out to be super friendly. After all, it's easy to know everyone by name if you're just 250 people.
Where I live (Saarland) the "Bodenrichtwert"[0] alone is usually between 80 and 120 Euro for the "affordable" areas I looked at. So little chance getting more than a ruin for 100 Euro/m².
[0] For non-Germans: The "Bodenrichtwert" is the average price per m² of "raw land", that is, excluding improvements like houses. It is updated every 2 years to include recent sales in an area.
Well, if the house should be worth anything, it won't be that cheap, yes. What you can find tons of is stuff like "Denkmalgeschützter Bauernhof Brandenburg" for really cheap, because the renovations will cost you big time. Same without Denkmalschutz (historical building protection), just not that cheap. A newly built house will cost far more than 100€/m² because building houses is expensive after all, and as you said, usually the ground is worth almost as much.
Well, then that's quite a fallacy to compare a house in the 100 Euro range to a 2000 Euro house, isn't it?
That's like buying an utterly broken, old Porsche for scrap value and then wondering how repairs like a new engine and a new $everything are costing you a fortune.
Sorry, but even 450k Euros for a house is very cheap for the current crazy market in Germany. At that price don't expect to be in a nice area or be close to any major city or good facilities.
Totally depends on the region..and public transport such as local trains tend to be good and most cities small enough for cycling to work or commuting in. Even hlHamburg or Munich is not like London or New York.
Recently, near my grandmother's, public transport got a new train stop in the outskirts of Frankfurt. House prices in the adjacent villages have more than doubled. And they weren't cheap to begin with, considering it is commute distance to Frankfurt.
Do you know if Europe's negative rates have made mortgages more or less challenging to receive. I can see it going either way as any interest is better than negative bond yields but how much effort are you going to put in if a mortgage rate is suppressed as well?
At least in Sweden they have made the rules around getting a mortgage stricter and stricter over the past 4-5 years. The income requirements have gotten stricter, they're requiring that you put down more money up front and that you make larger monthly principal payments.
Let's do some simple (and probably wrong, but hey) maths:
- House price: 450K euro
- In Europe you usually need around 30% of the house in cash (20% for down payment and 10% for paperwork and the like). This means you need 135K euro saved. Saving 18K euro/year => you need to save money for 7 years
- Now you get a mortage for the 70% of the 450K euro (315K euro). Now depending on how much you want to pay every month, we get different outcomes. Let's say you are willing to pay 1500 euro/month of mortage: this means (roughly) you will be paying your house for around 17 years
- This all implies you will be earning 60K euro (or more) per year over the next 24 years of your life. Let's say you are at this moment 25 years old, so you'll get your house paid when you are 50.
This is the panorama for people who are supposed to be the top 10% tier in the society (in terms of gross income) in a country like Germany (but applies to any other western European country as well). Not bad, but not good either.
> top 10% tier in the society (in terms of gross income)
According to this statistic[0], that should be 39.1% (numbers are for net income, but top two brackets should fit 60k gross income). In a household with two working people that both have semi-decent jobs you'll have that (and with tech job + basically any other job, you'll beat that).
> Let's say you are at this moment 25 years old, so you'll get your house paid when you are 50.
Yes, that sounds about right, and from what I can gather isn't too different from how it worked in my parents generation. What do you expect? That you can pay off a house in 10 years?
my grandparents both were classical workers (so apprenticeship for men, nothing for women) and bought their houses, paid off 'til their 50ies (middle income bracket I guess). My parents were academics (probably upper third income bracket), paid off their house 'til their 50ies (my mother converted to housewife after buying the house!). Now, if I were to buy the house my parents live in, I'd have to pay around ~1.5M€ I guess. Not sure how I should do that (with a partner and kids) 'til 50, even being a tad higher in income than my parents.
That being said: after the war, housing was destroyed and had to be rebuilt, nowadays it's there already (and more than enough if I look at my family and others around us). The only problem is that now one doesn't need the lower third of incomes to build it and so it has become a playground for financialization games which basically make sure that wealth will steadily be reallocated one family with too many kids at a time...
Well the money still needs to be paid at some point. If you go the 10% deposit route, you will get slightly worse interest rates and overall higher monthly payments. Payments that you need to maintain for ~20 years…
That is mad. On a 500,000 EUR house, 50,000 EUR goes to realtors and lawyers?! What on earth are they doing for that kind of money? Is that including some large tax?
In the UK, you wouldn’t pay more than a few thousand for a lawyer and associated conveyancing fees, and the vendor pays the realtor (usually in the range of 0.5-1.5% I believe).
We do have stamp duty (tax) which can be substantial eg 15,000 on a 500,000 property.
When I bought a 250K€ apartment in the Netherlands, my total cash outlay (down payment plus costs) was around 40K€. Anecdotal point supporting those pointing out that owning a 450K€ home in Europe is indeed still within reach for someone saving a modest amount each year.
Well, assuming everything goes according to plan we are reaching the peak and housing will have to go down again. I don't know when this will happen, it could happen within 5 years, it could happen no earlier than 10 years.
I don't care about past performance, I'm only looking at the future and unless there will be a future building boom in the cities to increase supply(spoiler alert, it won't because a million reasons) and unless there will be a sharp drop in internal and external immigration to the cities with jobs, prices will keep rising.
It's already rising in the US, if the central bank figures out how to meet the 2% goal year over year it will raise the interest rates in a few years. Probably not before 2024 though.
Especially when the populational trends imply that demand for housing will go down on the distant future. Future performance is almost guaranteed to decouple from past performance at some point.
Your points are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
I'm not looking at any undetermined future point in time, if I'm ranting about housing prices it might be not unrealistic that I'd like to buy one in the next few years - and I've seen absolutely zero indication that the prices would suddenly drop by 20-40% to the point where I'd call them reasonable, like 15 years ago.
The incredible increase in house prices tracks a dramatic decline in interest rates. Interest rates were at 1% last year, below inflation! I have no idea how interest rates will change in the next few years, but I do know they will not decline at the same rate as over the past 10 years. As soon as they go up, the prices will decline.
Things will be different on the far future. The exact point when it will change is a matter of speculation, and all the warnings about timing the market apply. You implied a high certainty that nothing will change, ever, and talked about 15 years things.
There is a high likelihood that nothing will change in 5 years (even though COVID19 reduces those odds a lot, because a bunch of people just died). And there is very high likelihood that things will change a lot in 40 years. Time things at your own risk.
not everywhere. and there's some evidence that big corps are buying up houses and becoming mega-rentiers. always a chance these companies could collapse and then the market would be flooded with houses as they liquidate.
Its not an unpopular opinion in my book. The first sentence, especially the "it might be harder if you have a family to feed", is distressing. If an average developer salary is not enough to do that, then, what are the jobs that DO allow you that ?
> If an average developer salary is not enough to do that, then, what are the jobs that DO allow you that ?
Don't believe the hype. The average developer salary is enough to feed a family of four, you just won't be able to buy a house in a sought-after suburb on a single salary.
And let's not forget that in Germany, one has to add around 15% on top of the house price: taxes, notary and - almost always - the real estate agent cut.
That real estate agent fee is sickening. It's shocking that they can charge a percentage of the value of the property. With ever-rising house prices they're earning more and more without doing any additional work.
This money also has to be paid upfront, and so is yet another hindrance for young, first-time buyers.
Any time these guides come up they are simply shocking. I love Europe, I grew up there.
I don't understand why anyone would stay as a developer in the EU. Software is simply not valued.
Dev salaries are astounding. Senior engineers in the EU make less than entry level undergrads in the US or Canada. 60k Euros is 70k USD. People out of bootcamps with zero experience make more than that in the US. I don't have a single friend from university that I remember making less than 100k upon graduation. Mid-career salaries with bonuses and stock are 200k+.
I'm afraid that until things radically change in the EU we'll always have US tech giants. Living in the EU isn't worth a 4x pay cut for many people.
As someone who grew up in the US, and works as a software engineer in Europe, I can't understand why anyone would ever choose to work as a developer in America. :)
I have a very high quality of life here, strong protections as a permanent employee (increasingly less common in other industries in Germany, but not in tech!), a salary that is excellent compared to many of my peers, and comes with a purchasing power that I imagine meets or exceeds someone in my same position in New York or the Bay Area.
I won't pretend there aren't downsides (for example, stock as compensation is rare here, and not incentivised by the legal situation), but for me the upsides win over raw actuarial comparisons. I'd much rather have my compensation in Berlin than trade it for 2x or even 4x that in the US.
(Edit to add: once you bring rent, medical insurance and associated out-of-pocket costs, and paid time off into the picture, compensation in the US starts to look like a pretty raw deal IMO.)
I'm from New Zealand, but work in Europe. Recently I started working remotely for an American firm part-time. Those few hours I work for the Americans equates to about 3x the amount of stress from my EU job but with absolutely no protection (at-will clauses). There is such a palpable difference in culture, management style that I am fairly certain I would never work for an American firm again.
Out of curiosity, what were some of the differences in work culture you experienced? I've never worked outside the U.S., so would be interested to hear a different perspective.
Not OP - but I've worked with American and non-American tech companies. For similar-sized companies, my experience was that American companies are more obsessed with productivity and metrics, with more frequent meetings involving people who don't need to be present (including at least one one who is a level or 2 too high, but justify their presence by having to say something which occasionally derails the meeting).
On a purely subjective note: American work culture has lower trust and attempts to extract much more "productivity" from people doing the work compared to European companies, which is not always proportional to the salary differences. My sample size is fairly small (<5)
> comes with a purchasing power that I imagine meets or exceeds someone in my same position in New York or the Bay Area
That seems very unlikely. Housing is expensive in most of the major metropolitan areas in the US, but you more than make up for it with higher salaries.
The rest of your argument makes perfectly good sense, there's lots to love about living and working in Europe! It may well be worth it to you.
But it's disingenuous to mix those quality of life arguments with an argument about money. Tech workers in the US tech hubs live a financially/materially more comfortable life than those in Europe.
The only problem with your comparison (and I'm not saying devs don't make less money in EU) is that you can't just convert one currency to the other. You have to compare purchasing power and quality of life.
The same salary in US could be viewed as 'you are rich' or 'you can't pay rent' depending on with city you live in. Now, you are talking about different continents.
I would compare the possible lifestyles and quality of life: how long does it take to buy a house/apartment? Can you afford to travel on vacation? Can you save money for your kids' college (or do you even need to do that)?
Fair point, quality of life has a lot of non-fungible aspects (and I saw this as someone who has lived in 5 metro areas and 3 continents over the last 15 years), however the difference does not all get eaten by cost of living, especially if you stay disciplined. A single reasonably strong SDE you can pretty easily be making $250k, even after exorbitant bay area rents you can still save/invest 1-2x your total equivalent EU salary. Even just coming and living a frugal lifestyle for 5-10 years can be life changing.
That said, with the rise of big tech satellite offices and remote work, there is definitely a path to €150k+ total comp without leaving the EU, and over time this should put upward pressure on salaries across the board (London is ahead of the curve here).
Sure, and I'm in no way doubting that developers make more in US than EU. I'm just saying that it would be better if we had a comparison that was more realistic in terms of what you can actually get with your money - and also other things like healthcare, overtime, vacations, work culture.
I've made this point many many times on this site, but if you make 150k in san Francisco, and pay 4k a month on rent, you have more left over after rent and tax than a mid level developer in europe makes as a gross salary.
If you can only make 150K in San Francisco, you'd be better off moving to a MCOL or LCOL US city where you can make nearly that much and have no trouble paying rent. It's only worth working in San Francisco if you're making 200K+ and think you have a good shot at making 300-500K in ~5 years or so (or if you're already making >300K, obviously).
When I made ~$150k in SF, that equated to $8k/month after-tax. $2k/month for a decent studio/1-bedroom apt near Golden Gate Park. I felt very comfortable and very much enjoyed my quality of life on that salary.
The actual number is irrelevant; If you make <roughly average amount> in SF, and pay <way over the odds> for rent, post tax and rent, your leftover money is still more than a mid level engineer in Europe, even in London where the costs of living are proportional. If you make 2/3/500k it only skews in the balance of the bay area.
Which is a fun and profitable adventure for a kid out of college, but a functioning middle-class American grown-up owns his home. That "more left over,' while a lot, is not terribly much against the price of a family home here.
But the avocado toast ain’t cheap either! Neither is your Soulcycle class! People seem to find a way to spend their money one way or another anyway! But if you save the money, sure. However if you still buy the house in SF with that savings you tend to again lose all benefit. Thus the only way to do this correctly is make a lot of money in Sf for a decade, save most of it, move to some European country and don’t earn at all (this no tax).
> But the avocado toast ain’t cheap either! Neither is your Soulcycle class
A soulcycle class is $35/pop. Even at one a day, on top of $4000/month for rent, and income tax, you're still left with roughly the amount a mid level engineer in a european city (excluding maybe London) makes pre-tax. No amount of Avocado toast, or whatever the sneaker fad changes that equation.
> However if you still buy the house in SF with that savings you tend to again lose all benefit.
That's no different to buying a house in London or Amsterdam say, except once you've dumped $1m into your "modest" home, you're still earning 2.5x what the person in London/Amsterdam is.
> The same salary in US could be viewed as 'you are rich' or 'you can't pay rent' depending on with city you live in. Now, you are talking about different continents.
"You can't make rent"/"You can't buy a house with a reasonable commute" an a software dev salary is almost entirely a California and NYC-area phenomenon.
A "typical" software developer (even a junior) could afford a decent house within a reasonable commute in ~7 of the top 10 metro areas in the US (Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta). In the remaining 3 (NYC, LA, DC), you'd probably end up with an unpleasantly long commute, although plenty of people make that choice. If you go further down the list of metros, the ratio is similar.
> How long does it take to buy a house/apartment?
In any of the metro areas mentioned above, you should be able to buy a house on a software dev salary as soon as you've save a 5-10% down payment (so $25-50k for a $500k house, more if you want something bigger/in a nicer area). The difference in salaries vs. Europe would typically allow you to save that within a couple years.
> Can you afford to travel on vacation?
Unambiguous yes - you can afford the monetary cost of a vacation on a software dev salary. Families in much less lucrative fields than software still take vacations.
Paid time off is trickier - European norms are for employers to provide much higher amounts of PTO for all employees, while most American firms are much stingier with it. This is something to explicitly shop around for and use as a decision criteria in a job hunt. There are definitely large American firms that provide 20-25 PTO days standard for new employees.
> Can you save money for your kids' college (or do you even need to do that)?
Annual tuition & mandatory fees at the flagship state university in the median state is ~$12k, so ~$48k for a 4-year degree. This excludes living costs, but you have to pay living costs at European universities as well. If returns on your college investments keep pace with tuition increases (many states have programs that can explicitly guarantee this), then you can pay tuition after 18 years by saving $2700/year per child.
You didn't mention healthcare, which often comes up, but software devs working as full-time employees will typically have good health insurance available through work, so that's not a problem in practice either.
There are tons of reasons to prefer Europe vs. the US (culture, a preference for dense living, lower-pressure work environments, more paid time off, etc.) but overall buying power isn't really one of them. Your salary will buy you more "stuff" (housing, cars, vacations, savings, etc.) in the US, unless you choose to live in one of the highest-cost regions of the country without a correspondingly high salary.
This is spot on. We made exactly the same calculation and you make more money, have better healthcare, can buy a better house, and save far more money in the US than in the EU as a developer.
Yeah, you have to buy the perks that are free (because your taxes go toward useful things) in the EU, but you make so much more money, that buying them is easy.
The US is a really strange place. It's far worse for 90% of people than the EU, but for the top 5% or so, it's unimaginably better.
Sure, I agree with you on everything. Your comment is a bit more detailed than just converting EUR to USD, and gives a better feeling on the actual difference. As I mentioned on my comment, I was not disagreeing that the dev make more money in US, but just that the parent comment was not considering some things you have to pay in US, that makes the difference a bit smaller
1) In Europe you don't get unexpected medical bills for tens/hundreds thousands of dollars when you have some medical issue.
2) Your kids won't get shot in the school.
3) You don't have to drive 20 minutes to the closest store to buy bread and milk.
4) I have 35d of paid vacation, while AFAICT in US you're lucky if you get 20. I'd get a brain melt or die from overworking if I had any less vacation days than now.
I've never been to US so I overly generalize and cherrypick based on what I've read, but I think what I wrote above will ring bell to many others.
Apart from that, other issues like: being close to family etc.
I could imagine going to US for a few years and get $$$ and get back, but overall, US does not seem to me like an American dream from the 90s anymore.
1) That almost certainly will not happen with the health insurance as a software engineer.
2) An average of three children die per year in school shootings, giving odds of roughly 1 in 800,000 (hard to tell with such tiny sample sizes). Your child is more likely to be struck by lightning and far more likely to die in a fire or car accident. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/11/lockdown-...
3) That is just not true unless you live in a rural area. I don't know where you get that from. Denser cities have groceries often within walking distance, and most suburbs will have plenty of grocery stores within a 5-10 minute drive.
4) Unlimited PTO is extremely common for tech companies in the US. It's not uncommon for me to see people taking 7+ weeks.
There are issues in the US of course, but I really would not completely trust low-effort media narratives. There's a reason people come here.
I exaggerated in my post, but the general difference is: in US to access high paying jobs, you can either live in city centres where rent is sky high, or suburbs which are very car-centric. This is not compelling to many Europeans. I might not be earning six-digit salary, but I don't share a room with 3 people and don't live in a van (this is probably grotesque but there were many stories like that on HN alone).
About the shootings, yes, media coverage is skewing things a lot. I live in France and my friends abroad think there's an islamic terrorist attack happening here every week.
Anyway, the US society feels way more class-divided. Even if as an employee of FAANG I would get a good health insurance, the way the system works overall for average folk just doesn't make me feel like living in such a system. (What if I lose a job for whatever reason? No fancy insurance anymore!). And as someone with a "preexisting condition" I'm actually not sure how my case would be treated in case I wanted to apply for a visa.
1. Even if you spend another $3000/month on housing (ridiculous and unrealistic), that's just $36000 a year. That's far exceeded by the pay increase in the US.
2. There is a long long long distance between the average case and the worst case that you are describing, especially for engineers. Sharing a room with 3 people or living in a van is very very very far from the average case. Pretty much no engineer needs to do this. If they are, they are doing it to save to the max or doing something very wrong.
3. Same with health insurance. You don't need FAANG for good health insurance. 92% of people have health insurance. Granted, that is of varying quality but being uninsured is far from the average case.
My sense of the US vs. western Europe is that the US is quite a bit worse if you are in the bottom 30%, slightly better in the average case, and much better for the top 20%. And engineers easily make it into the top 20%. So perhaps the peace of mind is worth it since rock bottom is so awful in the US. But there still is a big difference between average and worst case, and the media hyper focuses on the worst case.
Thx for the reply. It's always difficult to evaluate things from the outside without having full context.
Re: housing + medical costs, yep, the quick math says that unless things go really terribly wrong, in a few years one should build up a substantial safety net despite the costs.
For young and healthy (new graduates etc.) it definitely makes sense to go to US for a few years (and then perhaps come back as a remote person in Europe and start a small EU office, I know that's how many EU offices of US second-tier (non-FAANG) big techs have started).
> I exaggerated in my post, but the general difference is: in US to access high paying jobs, you can either live in city centres where rent is sky high, or suburbs which are very car-centric. This is not compelling to many Europeans. I might not be earning six-digit salary, but I don't share a room with 3 people and don't live in a van (this is probably grotesque but there were many stories like that on HN alone).
Rent in SF-NY is high, but it's not that high. It's far less than the extra money that you make. $3k/month will get you a nice apartment just for yourself, no roommates. $4k/month will get you something awesome.
On $150k/year, which is what my students make as their entry-level salaries at Google and friends, you can buy an apartment in almost every metro area in the US so that you don't even need a car. As a mid career developer you can easily afford a house even in SF-NY. I don't even have a driver's license...
> Even if as an employee of FAANG I would get a good health insurance, the way the system works overall for average folk just doesn't make me feel like living in such a system.
That's the thing. The US works for the people in the top 5% and is pretty bad for the people in the bottom 90%.
> And as someone with a "preexisting condition" I'm actually not sure how my case would be treated in case I wanted to apply for a visa.
Visas don't have healthcare checks. You'll be fine.
> As a mid career developer you can easily afford a house even in SF-NY.
I’m pro-US and SF/NY as anyone but this isn’t accurate. If you want a house comparable to one you’d get in a MCOL city like Sacramento/Portland (3-4 bd, 1800+ sqft, good schools), you’re going to be forking over $2m+. That’s not very easy to achieve even for SF engineers. You need to be staff at FAANG or similar and preferably with a high earning partner (lawyer, doctor, executive, etc). Otherwise you’re gonna be house poor.
I still agree US is generally very good for engineers, especially ones in SF/NY/Seattle. But let’s not fool people with saying real estate is also very affordable...
Compared to most jobs, developers are still pretty valued. I'm a junior software engineer in Sweden with an MSE degree. My entry salary was a bit lower than average for this industry at $50,000/year ($3000/month after taxes), but that's still higher than what 95% of nurses make in this country.
It's not, but I (as the parent has pointed out) find it astounding that salaries are so low compared to the US. Not necessarily because of absolute value of the salary, but because of the relative value to the biz people work in.
AFAIK, SaaS companies aren't charging demonstrably less for their applications in the EU than they are in the US. So the ratio from development to commercial value in the EU is significantly higher.
In other words, management/founders/investments/equity holders should be far more profitable in the EU and its to the detriment of the individual engineer. Income inequality is therefore in theory more exacerbated.
Well, seniors can make like 70-80k€ where I live, which is like the 3rd percentile in my country. Still true though, the salaries are not great compared to the US.
Is Canada that much better though? I briefly considered it but I determined that the high rents and not so high wages would not be worth it for a move.
The situation in Canada changed a lot in the past 2-3 years. It used to be that hearing about people making 200k mid-career in Canada was rare, now it's becoming more common. You're still taking a ~25% pay cut compared to the US. It really depends though, if you work for a large US company in Canada you are far better off than working for a Canadian company.
> Well, seniors can make like 70-80k€ where I live, which is like the 3rd percentile in my country. Still true though, the salaries are not great compared to the US.
That also means you have no room for growth. In the US 200k/year would put you in the 10th percentile for household income. You have plenty of room to build up from there. The thing about the EU is that not only are salaries low, the ceiling is also low.
Canada is Vancouver or Calgary? What place you have in mind? Speaking for Montreal 200k basically unheard here. Industry is predominately gaming or banking, and the talking about median of 100k base for senior, bonuses are around 10%
GTA and Vancouver. No idea how the rest of Canada is. Yeah, I hear that gaming in Montreal is poorly paid and Canadian banks don't care about software; I don't know anyone that is well paid by a Canadian bank.
I guess it's differs quite a bit between specific countries, but where I live (which is pretty close to as far east as you can get without leaving the EU) that might had been the case a couple of years ago, but now 60k pre tax is not at all an exceptional salary reasonable for a senior developer (I'd around 80k is close to the upper bound). And the living expenses are not even close to the more expensive W. European cities, you can get a fairly decent 2 bedroom apartment in a relatively good area for below 200k.
To be fair the gap between senior developer and entry level salaries is pretty big here. Entry level salaries might around 30k (which is close to the median overall full time salary here if you live in the capital).
I personally know multiple senior devs in Poland doing multi-year contracts at 110-130k eur per year. In Western Europe, with their skillset, they'd probably get just 20-30% more, so the gap is closing even at the top end of the market.
Eastern Europe,or at least some parts of it, already seeing tech salaries getting closer to those in western Europe,while cost of living is still fairly reasonable.
I just got a 6 figure non-senior position in Berlin. Sent out close to 100 applications and went into interview processes at around 30 places. 80-90k is definitely doable if you are good and take your time (I was looking for 3-4 months).
You need to filter beforehand for salary. Most places expect to pay around 60-70k max. But getting the higher salary is more a matter of finding the company willing to pay it than just "being good".
As one CTO said during salary negotiations: "There are a lot of 100k devs working 60k jobs"
Actually, mid-size startups (the ones that are more tech-focused than usual) that have just closed a funding round, and AI divisions of automotive startups (so domestic companies) are the two biggest groups I receive 6 figure offers from (based in Berlin).
Maybe it is an "ALDI" job. Aldi is known for overpaying their shopkeepers by about 30%, but expects them to do the work of at least 2 shopkeepers at other stores. Still makes sense from a business side.
I personally know people have made 6 figures in non-senior positions in Berlin working for German subsidiaries of multi-national companies, just "Software Development Engineer". I don't know if that happens through job listing offering 6 figure salaries or entering at a lower salary and getting raises.
> 60k is more for senior developers. Junior get less.
It's always shocking to me how low European SWE compensation is. Is it similar for other skilled professionals? What do accountants, lawyers, civil engineers, pilots, physical therapists, etc. make?
I understand the demand side. I think the European tech industry is much less successful than its American counterpart, and therefore has less money to pay. But I don't understand the supply side. Why would anyone with the intelligence and drive needed to become a software engineer pursue that field?
> Why would anyone with the intelligence and drive needed to become a software engineer pursue that field?
Instead of... what? It's not like you can make 2x the salary easily by instead becoming something else. Salaries are pretty flat, if you want to make money you should invest in somethig or have your own company.
Also: I'm not sure it's' a good idea to pick jobs based on salaries. It's good to not worry about money at all (which almost no SWEs' need to). After that I'd recommend pursuing sommething one finds interesting.
Edit:
I think there is a cultural difference in the US where one is expected to aggregate net worth/savings throughout one's career, for many reasons (ability to send kids to better schools, saving for rainy day e.g. sickness, ...). In a welfare state I don't have that priority. I wouldn't switch to a job paying 2x the money unless it's really a interesting job! Because there is almost nothing that 2x the money would do to my lifestyle, the future prospects or security of my family etc.
This is a great point. I'm American and my girlfriend and I make close to the same amount of money. We have recently decided to live(buy a home etc.) off of just one salary and completely invest the other salary because the penalty for getting sick and losing your job in the USA is so high that we don't feel comfortable spending most of both salaries.
ALSO, this is only possible because we each make 150% of the median household income in our city. Our country is awful for the average person, it really really is.
Oh yeah forgot to mention the combined $90,000 in debt we have in student loans(so we can get these jobs) and car payments(so we can drive and exist in society).
It's just such a stupid way to organize a society...
To drive this point back to the conversation at hand--these American pressures are what drive the mindset that dominates most of any English speaking dev forum.
I just don't believe that's true. Many, many more Germans immigrate to Switzerland, the UK or even America than vice versa. That's primarily because professional salaries in the latter are higher. That strongly suggests that at least some non-negligible proportion of German professionals care about compensation.
Obviously there are tons of people who want to do this. But the difference I think is that fewer people feel the need or expectation to aggregate wealth over their career.
Another angle I didn’t think of is the work-hard-retire-early mindset which of course means that a) you work hard and expect high comp for it b) if you do long hours and have little holiday, you have a higher interest in retiring early, which requires lots of capital.
My SWE salary is with 6w holidays, haven’t done many workweeks over 40h yet in a 20 year career. I don’t just expect to work to 70, I want to work to 70. My work life balance means I have more than enough time for gardening and travel without retiring. Retiring at 70 requires a lot less capital than doing so at 55.
Germans are probably more successful at saving! I do think though that if you asked “is it important to have a well paying job” or “important to retire rich” I think more would agree in the US (although few would succeed). I don’t have any numbers for this hypothetical interview question though.
I mean you can definitely earn more than 60k in Germany. I don't know about Berlin though. In Stuttgart, Frankfurt or Munich this would be too little to get a senior developer.
Most of the other professions pay less. From the list you gave, and the people I know, I would assume the sorting is roughly:
* physical therapists (can't go much lower in pay)
* pilots (there are just way too many, except for those in old contracts at the big airlines they are almost paid like bus drivers)
* accountants (usually a normal salary, but nothing special)
* civil engineers / software engineers roughly on the same level, although the latter has an easier time finding a job
Lawyers and doctors earn a lot more than engineers (at least looking at my friends in these fields), but they usually also work more, leading to a similar hourly rate.
One thing you have to account for in Germany vs the US:
* Much higher job stability.
* Most people work 35-40h a week and never do unpaid overtime.
* 6 weeks paid vacation per year is normal.
* You almost never get called into work on the weekend.
* CoL isn't as insane as in SF or Seattle, so your salary buys you a decent life.
* No copays if you get chronic conditions, cancer or some such. So you don't need to save up for a medical catastrophe.
> I mean you can definitely earn more than 60k in Germany.
exactly. I made that as a Junior in my first full-time job in Munich in 2000 already. Then moved on to freelancing and for the next decade never invoiced less than EUR 12K/month (average was actually EUR ~16K). I did a lot of hours and paid a lot of tax but it also got me fast cars, holidays in Italy, Austria or Switzerland (just for the weekends) and a nanny to help look after my kids. And I wasn't even an outlier since anyone who I worked with (often via places like Hays or Allgeier Group etc) was on pretty much the same.
What I've noticed in the recent years (I moved around 2009) is there has been a push to "Arbeitnehmerüberlassung", which is basically a racket where the outsourcing agency hires you out to their clients, they skim the margins and leave the employees with a crap salary. They sit in their clients office and are second class employees. When the project ends they're moved on to the next company if they're lucky or are asked to come in to the office (not on the client site but the place where they organize this type of slavery), then they get to call prospective clients and beg for jobs that they themselves have to do. It's surreal and idiotic but it's peoples fault for putting up with it instead of just freelancing and writing their own invoices.
Freelancers in Germany also have a problem which is called "Scheinselbstständigkeit". If you do too much work for only one client (there are no clear rules to follow) the public social security system might decide you are to be treated like an employee and your client suddenly has to pay pension insurance and health ensurance for the time you worked for them. Companies fear that because it's a huge chunk of money and to my knowledge this also contributed a lot to "Arbeitnehmerüberlassung" spreading so much into highly skilled positions.
Only if your company has a base in Germany. In my case I worked remote for a US-only company as Scheinselbstständiger, got the full US rates (ie 3x higher than german rates), and paid normal insurance. They had to pay nothing into the German SS system.
While I agree that software developers in Europe are heavily underpaid (compared to what US developers) get, I think we are compensated just fine in terms of vacation and working time. In my experience, 30 vacation day per year IS the norm. And at most 40h/week of work (it's something in which European companies "are better" than US ones: they don't work as much as Americans).
Not true, 25 vacation days per year is the norm in Austria and most of Europe, anything above that and you're in a privileged position, and most dev contracts have statements where any potential overtime is covered by you salary and not paid extra. And overtime does happen especially during crunches for releases (yeah, i know management sucks but it sucks everywhere I looked in Austria).
Maybe you can show me where I can find these 40h/week no-overtime with 30 days/year vacation jobs so I know where to move next.
Sorry, I don't know about Austria. But at least in my experience in Germany, France, and the Netherlands I always got around 28-30 days of vacation per year.
Overtime is perhaps more about the company and oneself, but in my experience is something you decide to do it or not. If you do it companies pay for overtime. I never done overtime (because companies pay pennies for it :) )
Well, in Germany there's the Arbeitszeitgesetz ("work time law") which handles some of those things. I think unpaid overtime is not really common in Germany, especially in "better jobs".
Also agreements with trade unions etc. take care of a sane base-level of holidays and payment.
Germany is also "heavy regulated" in the sense that good people will just choose a job with a competitor who gives you 30 days of free time and paid overtime, although he might pay less.
I think work-life-balance tips slightly over to the worker in a welfare state, because you can choose to earn 100 Euro/month a less but have more holidays AND still have not to worry about paying doctor bills.
Maybe you can show me where I can find these 40h/week no-overtime with 30 days/year vacation jobs so I know where to move next.
That describes every job I've had in Sweden over last 6-7 years or so. But then again I've made a conscious effort to void some of the 'crunchier' industries (like game studios and certain startups), which admittedly does mean getting paid a bit less.
I worked in France and vacation was 28 days for us, 2.333 days/month.
Overtime does happen but French law requires I be able to recover my time (RTT). In my experience there is a mad rush to use up that time before 31/12 so you'll see an additional holiday season around Nov-Dec. Else, it goes away and that time is lost to the fiscal year.
> I mean you can definitely earn more than 60k in Germany. I don't know about Berlin though. In Stuttgart, Frankfurt or Munich this would be too little to get a senior developer.
You can do it in Berlin if you go the freelancer route but that comes with it's own complications in Germany.
> but that comes with it's own complications in Germany.
like what? being able to do your own tax and get refunds for all your expenses the way you should? an accountant who does once a year your "EkSt Erklaerung" costs you anywhere between 600-1000 (once a year) and it saves you anywhere between 5K - 25K depending on what your year was like and the expenses you had.
Yeah monthly taxes for the first year is a pain although it goes down to quarterly after that. It also makes it harder to get a mortgage and that you will likely not be picked when looking to rent a flat over employed people. There are also uncertainties around how long and how much you can work for a single client without causing issues for your client, although I usually don’t do contracts longer than 6mo. I think it still is far better than working salaried, at least for me.
Definitely, I'm also freelancing in Germany and wouldn't go back to salaried for now. I didn't know the details of the multiple client requirement for my first year, let's see if that comes back to bite me at some point.
You also have 38h/weeks, 20+ holiday days per year, actual free weekends, many free public services, affordable healthcare with fair insurance that doesn't try to bankrupt you, ... So it balances out. How much do you have to save per month for that 200k health emergency in the US? In Germany - 0€.
If you want to get rich either be a founder or go to the US for a chance at that. If you want a good and happy life with private time your average western European country is great.
Yeah, I should have been clearer. I'm not trying to litigate the US vs. Europe debate, which I think has been discussed many times. My question more was about within Europe, the relative attractiveness of software vs other professional fields.
Median incomes in Germany are about 25% lower than the US. Yet SWE compensation seems to be 50%+ lower than the US equivalent. That would suggest that other skilled professions must make significantly more than SWEs.
For example in the US, bankers or lawyers are roughly on par with high-end SWEs. I'm would assume German bankers and lawyers are making well more than 60k. If that's the case, what incentive would talented Germans have to pursue software instead of other higher-paid careers? (I could be wrong on my assumptions, maybe skilled professionals in Germany are just much less compensated relative to the median worker in general.)
Median incomes in Germany are about 25% lower than the US. Yet SWE compensation seems to be 50%+ lower than the US equivalent.
Most numbers I can find via quick googling seems to put the median annual salary for a SWE in the US at around €75-78k and €55k in Germany. That is pretty close to the 25% number you quoted.
All skilled professions have lower pay in Europe, there isn't a "get rich" path. Doctors usually earn more but nowhere near US levels.
For me, I can say I didn't consider salary when choosing my field. It's just not a common concern, you're expected to study something you're good at and would enjoy doing. Medical and law were definitely not even remote thoughts for me.
It was a happy accident that software engineers are paid so well (relatively). I suppose I just assumed all MSc fields are roughly equal and quite acceptable as far as salary goes.
Also, it is not just about me being able to afford a proper lifestyle. I want the people with less paying jobs which are still considered vital (caretakers for instance) to also have a nice life without too much worry or abhorrent poverty.
The US is very individualistic in comparison, and in my opinion it is not doing well in this regard. Things like crime, violence etc all increase when people are pushed into poverty.
Wealth should not be the absolute measure of a person in society, because that would mean the market would decide the value a person brings to society, which is the wrong take on things in my opinion. Mainly because not everything should be handled by the free market. (healthcare for instance, should not be dictated by market forces).
Well said. Obviously I wouldn't mind earning more, it goes without saying. But I do appreciate the fact that my siblings, nieces and nephews can have a humane life at whatever their profession is, and can study to their full potential regardless of their parents' income. And that my parents and grandparents can have a dignified life at old age, with proper care and without fear of ending destitute.
You can make a very decent living on an SWE salary in Germany, and still get to live in a social democracy with a stronger emphasis on "social" than the US (i.e., very solid public services like transportation, education or health care) with a work/life balance that's more strongly tilted in favor of "life" than the US, from what I understand. It's a trade-off, but it's worth it for many.
You’re saying it like everyone can’t wait to live in a welfare state and having to provide for the “welfare” of others. I for one am not looking for anything else than good healthcare.
There’s nothing “tilted” for life when you struggle to make ends meet while paying sky-high rent and having no prospects of ever owning your home.
Nah, there's much more than roads in a welfare state.
There's a nationwide pension fund, unemployment "insurance", long-term care insurance and what not. All of this is cross-financed in a mix by everybody who's paying into it.
Also: Lots of people switch from private health insurance back to public health insurance once they get old, because then costs are rising. A welfare state also supports those who have "suddenly" become poor so they had to make that switch... ;-)
You'd have to tilt a lot more than what Germany does to make it worth it; equivalent healthcare in the US is only €15k in additional costs. (The messy healthcare situation the US is famous for only really affects the poor.)
It only _directly_ affects the poor- regardless of whether I as can afford these things, it benefits me to live in a society where everyone (including "the poor") is educated to a high standard, is not living in fear of financial distress due to minor illness, and is able to pursue their vocations out of choice rather than necessity
Those numbers are normal in the US too for embedded or game software. Faang salaries are at least 20% higher than other software jobs and counting stocks it can be almost triple a salary for a SWE that is outside the west coast SV culture and isn't a quant. For games and some other interesting problems it is a matter of non monetary compensation. But I have no idea why people writing hardware drivers or engine control software make so much less than someone writing some web back end that is mostly gluing bits together. Even MS pays so much less than Amazon its bizarre.
I don't want to rehash the many long debates about whether it's better to be a SWE in Europe or America. There are arguments both ways, and it's been pretty well discussed.
My interest is largely orthogonal to that discussion. Assuming you're not leaving the continent, why would anyone (besides those who are very passionate about software) choose to be a European SWE instead of a European actuary?
Because money wasn't the deciding factor? When I became a programmer we didn't have the term software engineer, and we were reviled for our lack of social skills and poorly paid. I miss those days. All my coworkers were motivated by love of the job. If you wanted to make money you went into banking or finance or law.
It's very hard to compare European and US salaries: in a lot of European countries, you have social security, unemployment and retirement coverage provided by the state and financed by taxes on the salary.
So you have a much lower net amount of cash, but you get real benefits that would be part of your negociation in the US.
These are not stunning by US standards, but important to consider that life costs are very different, e.g. you get actually significantly less than this gross salary in your bank account but in return you have unemployment insurance, free school and university for your kids (or super cheap evening masters for you), health insurance with no significant deductibles (except dentistry), and a serious pension of which you can actually live once you're over 67. Hours are generally reasonable and social protections good, outside the worst quarters of the big cities you have a very safe environment, ...
All in all a good quality of life, but not eye watering salaries.
If you are a developer in the US you are probably receiving all of that except college tuition. Worth the extra 60K/year in my opinion but I see the appeal of having the option to live off of social programs if needed
it is also not about you being able to afford those things.
It is about the rest of society and the people around you also being able to afford those things. To allow people from poor backgrounds to go to university and contribute on the intellectual level they posses, it is so that people working on some of the nasties and most dangerous jobs that still require doing. (heavy industry, most healthcare jobs) can live without the desperation of poverty.
Some people might simply not be in the luck in regards to intelligency, luck, wealth etc compared to you, but that does not mean they should be held back by it in my opinion.
You should revisit this, in the last couple of years this has moved quite a bit, I'd say it's closer to 70-75 now.
Obviously you'll get more in the states (or even frankfurt!), but it's changing rapidly.
There's also some offers in berlin for meaningfully higher, I'm just taking a ballpark average for senior.
The problem with Germany and many parts of Europe is Nearshoring. Why overpay a developer at Berlin if Polonia is just 200km away? Same goes for Vienna and Hungary. I'm sure silicon valley salaries wouldn't skyrocket that much if the Mexican border was closer and less restrictive.
Startup take themselves way too seriously. That is reflected in their interview process. I have the benefit of having a few years of experience so I jump to companies which are led by people older than 30-35 and have some experience as well.
The interview process there is a lot more sensible. Pay is the same.
60k for a senior engineer in Berlin is too low. 75k at the lower end is quite reasonable and 80-90k is definitely possible, if you're good at what you do.
The salaries in Germany for engineers are astoundingly low. Good engineers from India (I'm Indian working in SV) often ask me if it's worth migrating to Germany since US immigration is so hard.
The answer is absolutely not -- you can easily make 70k USD in India as a decent mid-level engineer which is the same as Germany. And you get to live like a king in your own country, don't have to learn German, put up with racism etc. In fact, a lot of US companies hiring in India pay more in India than Germany! I know a couple friends making ~200k in Amazon India at 8-10 years of experience.
> you can easily make 70k USD in India as a decent mid-level engineer
not that I know anything about Indian tech companies but please don't say that compensation is at FAANG companies. because those are not representative of the industry in general. Otherwise why would India be known for cheap dev's if Mid-levels can easily earn 70k.
Also, to caution folks who think India is only a place for "cheap devs", there is a perfect confluence of factors happening right now that is driving salaries up and incentivizing good engineers to stay back in India -- immigration restrictions, remote hiring and a domestic startup scene. Some startups who are building for the US/international market are all but Indian, they only have a US HQ for ops, sales etc.
The US runs the risk of being "China'ed" again, in a different field -- this is not outsourcing anymore, this is real competitive software products being built in India.
Indian tech salaries are very bi-modal. I'm not talking about body shops here - I'm talking about capable engineers who can get hired in SV, though not necessarily at FAANG. Think tier 2/3 cos. These engineers know their worth and want to maximize their earning potential. If it were easy to immigrate to the US they would choose SV in a heartbeat, but are looking for alternatives. My advice to them it's either SV or stay back in India, it's certainly not worth immigrating to Germany (I don't know about other EU countries, only have first hand experience in Germany)
It would also be helpful if you post example job posts etc or salary reports etc rather than explain the dynamics.
Though I agree the dynamics of remote work have being beneficial to capable engineers everywhere not just indian ones.
The salaries seem really low. The absolute highest paying job listed on their site is a 110,000 euro salary, but you can get more than that with zero experience in California. I wonder if it would be better for software engineers in Germany to simply get remote working jobs for US companies.
You also get (probably) 30 days of paid vacation a year and up to 6 weeks of sick pay paid by the employer (and after that by your health insurance). You can't just compare the raw numbers to get a full picture.
Money isn't everything to everyone. Different people value different things. I could probably get a job in the US with my work experience, but I'm happy here in Sweden, even though I make less than $100k a year. It's enough to pay for my lifestyle, so why should I trade a big part of my 30 days of vacation for more money which I don't need?
1. Unprecedented for "average" engineers (i.e. not leading their field) until very recently
2. Offered by extremely profitable big tech companies or less profitable companies with giant pools of funding
3. Offered by companies that highly value software engineers
4. Offered in extremely competitive markets
The vast majority of employers in Germany, and in most of the world, don't meet those criteria. It's unreasonable to compare the average German tech company to the best paying American tech companies.
Compared to the best paying software jobs on earth, German tech pays pretty badly. But so do most companies. I used to live in a city with a population of ~1 million, and most local "tech" companies paid new grads $60k - $80k, with senior developers landing between $100k and $150k. That's much closer to Germany pay than Silicon Valley pay.
I don't think any German companies compare to Google/Airbnb/Coinbase. And it's not guaranteed that if you move to Mountain View you'll get a job at Google. Just saying.
> I mean it's just so far off. Check levels.fyi, Google/Airbnb/Coinbase will be paying $300k+ for software engineers with 4+ years of experience.
Don't know why people here like quoting those companies as if they're representatives of the industry in general. Even in 'SV' most startups are not paying 300k. Most likely 150k~ for a senior.
Median dev job earnings in the US are around 90k. Last time I remember from bls
I work for a US company, but since they're hiring remotely, I'm competing with other European developers. I earn less than I would have earned at my last Dutch employer (which, to be fair, paid comparatively well).
I got an L6 offer from Amazon AWS in Berlin well in excess of 100k not including stock, which was into 6 figures over 4 years, but of course Amazon's 5/15/40/40 vesting schedule and rarity of stock refresh means you can't easily convert into yearly TC.
I took an offer from Google instead, for more, but it's in Zurich.
You are a freelancer right? I always feel the US salaries are more comparable to EU freelancer salaries; I never made less than E100/hr as freelancer for the past 25 years working for EU companies. And often (if the economy is good etc), over 250/hr is doable. Sure you need to buy your own insurance (if you don't want public hospitals or minimum welfare if you get fired) but other than that I don't think it's that far off.
I'm surprised the article says nothing about certifications and or degrees, only work experience. I don't work in Software Engineering but I would have assumed that - like anywhere else in Germany - a university degree is required more often than abroad. Or am I wrong about that?
German proverb: What you have written on paper, you can happily carry home. Having degrees is giving you an advantage.
Especially for entry-level positions, degrees are relevant to get a foot in the door. Once you advance to mid-level, people tend to ignore certifications and/or degrees - at the corporate job I am now, I didn't even include them in my application, just mentioning them in my CV. If you survived in the job market for a few years, noone questions your capabilities.
What is more important later-on are recomendation letters ("Arbeitszeugnisse") from former employers (which they are required by law to give, and as they cannot make them sound negative, they tend to use a system of nice-sounding, but coded messages if you were not a good employee, e.g. "he always had good relationships with his colleagues" means "he did smalltalk all day, but did not work", or "she was always showing sociality" translates to "she's an alcoholic".)
For certain visas you need a university degree (for example the job seeking visa).
When it comes to finding a job a lot of startups (specifically in Berlin) don't require it (the example that I have from a friend is she worked in customer support in a German startup).
A lot of these startups need to communicate in English so being a native English speaker is an advantage.
The issue arises if you want to apply for a work visa for any of these positions. Only a certain number of countries allow you to apply for a work visa while being in the country on a tourist visa (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan, South Korea AFAIK (possibly the UK after Brexit)).
If you're not from any of these countries you'll have to go back to your home country and apply for a visa there.
I don't think I've ever shown my CS diploma anywhere before HR wanted a copy after signing the contract. Of course it was on the CV, but I am relatively sure it didn't influence them hiring me or not. (Got hired without CV as well...)
There are a ton of positions (especially with larger companies) that "require" a degree, and I don't know how many will skip that, but compared to 10-15y ago I see a lot more "requires a BSc or 3-5y of work experience" or something along the lines.
They matter only if you are a junior. I've worked with (and hired) Germans that never finished university. But if you don't have a degree, you need to be obviously good at what you do to get hired for good jobs.
The reality is that there are lots of not so great software engineers working for not so great salaries in not so great projects. That kind of stuff is hard to hide in a good interview. Supporting people with getting a visa is costly for companies so they tend to do that only with good people. Quality is the main reason to do this.
Honestly depends on the company -- I have no problem despite the fact that both of my degrees are in the arts, but I also work for a very international company (English is the language we work in, it has a lot of folks in it from nontraditional backgrounds).
If you apply to work for a more traditional or more "German" company, you may find that things like the subject your uni degree is in, or formal recommendations from previous employers (Zeugnisse) suddenly matter a lot more.
it is a complete non-sense to me, if ever you wanted to give, why you are not allowed to decide the amount and to who you give?
And 9% is a very important amount in my opinion!
The more crazy, if ever you wanted to change your situation to declare yourself not a church member, then you have to fill forms with multiple id, and pay 30euros of fee.
> And 9% is a very important amount in my opinion!
It's important to know what amount that's 9% of. In case of the German Kirchensteuer it's 9% of your income tax [0], not of your gross income or even after tax income.
Yes the connection of state and church in germany is really creepy to me too. Even if you are not part of a church it is backwards for the state to collect church fees at all and accordingly forces you to check the checkboxes on nearly all official forms what church you belong to. In addition we have to remember that Chancellor Merkels party which is one of the big two parties is called the "christian democrats" it is also totally common for the main news programs of public service broadcaster networks to report on the pope and bishops as if they were relevant political figures and also broadcast church service programs on sundays. The church bells will ring at incredible volume on sundays and other days without any mercy and everything has to be shut down on sundays, not even grocery shopping is possible.
What's even weirder: church attendance is super low compared the US, the average German pays not to go but on the flipside churches act like social service arms of the government (meals on wheels, eldercare, etc.)
Schools also have religious instruction as a main class, although you can opt out. I'm a lifelong atheist but thoroughly enjoyed the religion classes, even picked it as a minor in my upper division classes. This might have changed, though, I left Germany 30yrs ago.
I grew up in a rural village in Germany. The church operated the kindergarten and the retirement home, and ran some youth organizations with stuff like kids' summer activities. One city over the church ran the hospital, like, to the point where they had nuns on-site. I never really looked too deeply into it but it always felt weird to me how entangled the church is with what is basically treated as public services and hence public finances, since they still get to apply their religious values to hiring discrimination and that sort of thing.
I didn't regularly attend the religion classes, but I did once or twice and they gave me candy for memorizing the ten commandments. Organized religion is a-ok in my book! (In high school, they offered an "ethics" class as alternative to denomination-based religion classes, but I guess in the much smaller elementary school the student numbers wouldn't have justified that.)
The religious service providers are reimbursed by the gov and by social insurances just like any other commercial provider. They also get to enjoy lesser worker's protection laws, e.g. they may fire employees who convert away from their religion.
Hah, to a Croatian that sounds fantastic, you can actually opt out! Here the government just gives gobs of money to the church, which then in turns does the propaganda for the said government.
For a small fee and an in-person visit to an office "near" you! Or so I've heard (I live in Germany but have never been a church member here so I wouldn't know myself).
No but what would you say if cancelling your Comcast subscription cost you "not that much" compared to 10% of your income? It's the craziest thing, to me at least, how the heck is this legal? Why can I sign someone else up at birth for paying stuff and yet not be the person liable? And then when they want to cancel my subscription, they have to pay a fine for cancelling?
It's beyond me, even if it's not about a lot of money. Which, I guess, is why it still exists and everyone just swallows it and the church can do things like approve fighting HIV and then launch an investigation when they employed condoms, recommending "natural" contraception methods (in detail) in the same investigation document as well as recommending husbands/wives to just not have sex to not give their partner HIV (and outside of marriage obviously doesn't exist). (I found this via the wikileaks talk at 36c3 and was rather weirded out https://wikileaks.com/popeorders/document/Attachment_9-Commi... )
I always thought that the top talent is actually leaving Germany to seek better opportunities elsewhere (already since 20y+). Main destinations Switzerland, UK, ...
Swiss labor market is tiny, so not much capacity there. UK no longer in the EU so getting a job there is harder I think. US is across the pond, might be too far away for a lot of people. So I'd say the labor market is a lot less flexible than you might think - lots of top talent still wants to work where they grew up / where their family is.
It shouldn't be hard at all to get a visa for the UK - the main requirement is a job that pays more than 25k GBP I think.
Aside from FAANG and Fintechs, I don't think that London is that much better than Munich or Berlin, especially after rent. The rest of the UK was really bad salary-wise.
this. People are a lot more bound to their local community compared to many americans in my experience.
Germany, (and most european countries in general) have far more local levels of distinct cultures (dialect, traditions, community etc). People do not easily want to leave the place they grew up in.
We (Uncountable) opened up a Munich office in 2018 and have been building an engineering team there after having personnel only in SF.
Our experience was that there is a big pool of talent in both Munich and Berlin, but the number of high-tech startup jobs is much less than you would find in the U.S. coastal corridors.
The job market is much less efficient. I find that it's much harder to find about about good candidates and to get our name out there as a company. The only reliable source of engineering candidates for us in Munich has actually been HN.
> The job market is much less efficient. I find that it's much harder to find about about good candidates and to get our name out there as a company. The only reliable source of engineering candidates for us in Munich has actually been HN.
What exactly makes it less efficient? Lack of networks?
What’s the chance someone with experience, but no education could get a job in an EU country. I’ve always assumed that that’s off the table for people like myself.
They are rate, but §8 of the TzBfG (Part-Time Work and Fixed-term Employment Contracts Act) anyone who has worked for a company for at least 6 months has the right to reduce their monthly hours. Companies can only refuse in very dire situations (like the company going bust otherwise). Of course the pay will be proportionally reduced as well.
It's not very widely used, because either some employees fear repercussions by their employer, or the just need the money. I've done it in the past and it's awesome.
I'm also enjoying life in a stable, wealthy, European country. It just came to my mind, recently, that affording a decent house (not flat) in this idealized European country of mine is still quite hard as long as one is an employee. Comfortable life starts when one works for himself (not freelancer, but owning a small company).
Except unless you plan to buy a house in a town in the middle of nowhere, of course! Those are quite cheap.
I thought US house prices were insane until I saw what houses are going for here. It’s crazy. But we have consigned ourselves to apartment/rental living for our stay here. In fact we love our apartment so much here in Wilmersdorf so much that we’d love to buy it but the going rate for such a place (85 sq meters, 3 rooms, 2 baths) is >500k euros and only rising.
I did, yes. I moved with my wife and two dogs and most of our stuff to Hamburg.
The startup paid for the flights, the visa fees (if any, I don’t remember), the container to put our crap in (it was a logistics startup so they knew how to do this rather well), and prepaid for an AirBnB for 3 months for us to find housing.
We had hang ups in getting my wife recognized such that we could get on the more lucrative tax schedule of tax class 3 (one earner). The Germans are sticklers for the details but common sense prevailed and our paper work was finally honored and we got a blue card which means my visa is tied to my working and making a minimum amount.
We live now in Berlin and absolutely love it here. We don’t interact with the government much so maybe that’s why but all-in-all it’s awesome out here. I don’t worry about getting shot or anything like that.
Germans complain a lot about the government and lengthy procedures because they mostly haven't experienced what its like in other countries. Stickler for details but if you get those right everything is smooth and swift and no one asks for under the counter money or sends you away just because they don't like your face.
thank you for your detailed response. I have some family in Germany and have thought about trying something similar, so I love to hear others' experiences.
Yes. In Portland where I lived we didn’t make enough to live in the nicer parts of town so we lived in the north east near Gresham and crime was a problem out there. Lots of gang violence.
My comment was a bit flippant. But it was something I thought about from time to time. Here not at all.
As a fellow east Portlander who stayed in Berlin a couple Summers ago and absolutely fell in love with the place, I really appreciate the story and applaud your successful relocation.
Well, for some additional anecdata: I've been mugged/attacked twice as much in Berlin (where I live) than I was in Detroit (where I grew up).
I think perhaps the perception of risk in the US is blown way out of proportion due to the media frenzy around shootings, which are still pretty rare overall in the US. If you consume mass media, you will generally overestimate the risk by several orders of magnitude. (This is, for example, why many Europeans believe the stereotype that the US is so dangerous, when the vast majority of it is actually much safer wrt violent crime than most large cities in Europe.)
If you were afraid there, you should be afraid here. (I personally don't think you should be afraid in either place.)
I could hear the sirens and the shots in the backyard of my house. :/ though my perception of their frequency could be biased.
I’m sorry to hear you were mugged and twice, too! That’s crazy. Not crazy that crime happens just that it blows away my thesis that I’m more or less free from having to think about it living here in Berlin.
I did have a fancy road bike I bought in Hamburg stolen. But I think that’s more or less me being stupid.
It's much higher in about five specific counties in the US. The vast majority of the US has less violent crime overall (guns, plus everything else) than most large cities in Europe. For a simple example in Berlin you get pepper sprayed by stick-up kids, whereas in the US mountain west there isn't much mugging at all (due to the fact that a mugger is about 50/50 to get a wallet or a bullet in response).
The mistake is to think of the US as uniform. Most of it is extremely peaceful.
Lowest homicide rate in a US State is 1.5 in Maine, average is 5. Germany has 0.9 on average.
In general poverty (which is more common in the US) leads to violence and other crimes. Bringing weapons into conflicts usually escalated them and leads to worse outcomes.
Wow, surprised by the downvotes. I'm genuinely curious to know if this sounds absurd to HN commenters. Are people really starting jobs abroad and relocating in these times?
Company is great and colleagues are lovely. German bureaucracy sucks but apart from that it has been an experience of ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’ when it comes to the job and culture.
Honestly linkedin has had the best results for jobs, that and using a template for CVS and cover letters.
There’s plenty of work and plenty of good companies, just keep applying and keep the effort in each application low.
I interviewed the same here as I did anywhere else, job is at an English speaking company and my German level is still only at basics but that’s something to build when you arrive.
Just apply from stability overseas and have them fly you out and sort the visa, don’t take a big risk at a time like this otherwise.
Taxes and, as Allendoerfer rightly corrected me, the various social securities (unemployment insurance, healthcare, pension ect.) which you benefit from are almost half of your income, living expenses are high in some cities (Munich rent is mental). 58,000 euros is the normal minimum for a blue card, lower for tech jobs, but I would advise not taking less otherwise you’ll have serious stress by not having a decent income on top of the cultural change and no support network.