7 ms·

I don't really care how much someone in USA earns. As a software engineere in germany you are earning good money. There are no killings in cities, affordable

by sigi45 10y ago

I don't really care how much someone in USA earns. As a software engineere in germany you are earning good money. There are no killings in cities, affordable health care, high quality living standards, university costs 150$ for 6 month, no donald trump, 30 days real holiday (i take them, everyone does, every year), seldom over hours, parental leave. Btw. IT is more than google, apple, facebook and twitter. And no we do not have anywhere in germany rent prices like in NY or in SF. Perhaps, only, if even in the middlest of the centere.

rev_bird 10y ago
...can I come over?
pmcpinto 10y ago
I agree, in most part of Europe is possible to live better with less, compared with USA. I think it's a bit insane that a lot of companies in USA doesn't allow parental leave, pressure employers to don't take any vacations, etc etc
vikascoder 10y ago
All great points. Just to put in the "con" perspective: 1. It's good money, not insanely great money for software engineering field. You can not hope to earn 200k USD as a senior engineer ever and hence even a few folks from Germany seem pretty keen to have a 4-5 year stint in the US to earn some quick bucks. (also the exchange rate nowadays is killing it for Euro). You can see the effect in terms of how much you percentage of your salary you pay as rent and from my personal experience it was a lot (close to 30-40% of your entire paycheck, some germans in not so blessed fields pay almost 50%). The social security aspects covers for it as far as you enjoy it. 2. Jobs are secure as soon as you sign a permanent contract and get over the "Probzeit" period and there are seldom any "at-will" employment contracts. The flipside? startup culture never really kicked off until recently, hiring is slow and firing is even slower(harder) leading to plenty of dead-beat employees hanging around in corner offices in some organizations. You have copy-cat IT companies like Rocket Internet whose sole business model is to copy ideas from the US and implement them in Europe. So the variety of jobs are definitely not more than what the US provides. 3. As a result, the general lifestyle is living "frugally". If you like that it's fantastic. But everything is comparatively "expensive" than the US apart from certain things like Beer. e.g. Branded clothes like Timberland, Levis etc are sold at a premium where you can get those for 40 bucks in an outlet mall in the US. So buy IKEA/H&M/C&A with your software salary. You do have countries where salaries are high like Switzerland but you also have insanely high living costs.
sremani 10y ago
>> university costs 150$ for 6 month. This is not a German miracle, its simple demographics, most of the Germans are in their productive years of 40s and 50s and their population in teens and 20s is tiny, so their investments are low even though at per-capita level they look tremendous. This is the reason why Germany's hope is automation. They are demographically not in a great place. of course, this will come home to roost in 20 years or so. [edit] Demographics link: http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/age_structure.html http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/age_structure.html
- cylinder 10y ago
  Or maybe they figured out that relying on population growth to drive the economy is a Ponzi scheme. Eventually you can't add more population so you have to reckon with aging one day, might as well solve the problem ASAP. Automation combined with exports allows you to grow your economy without adding humans. If they still wanted to, they could turn on the migration spigot at anytime. Plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists to pick off out of Eastern Europe, Iran, etc. Labor has already come in on its own.
- MrDosu 10y ago
  Interesting trivia: If you are from a foreign country and come to Germany to study in the universities, you also pay only that amount. There is a lot of diversity here nation wise in the universities. Education is considered a human right.
- ThePhysicist 10y ago
  So far population in Germany keeps increasing, as it is one of the most popular countries for immigrants worldwide (and I'm not talking about refugees), so there's a large influx of people from within the European Union as well as from outside of it. Currently there are around 200.000 more deaths each year than births, which is still easy to compensate through immigration. Concerning the birth rate Germany is maybe a bit ahead of the curve, but the problem is similar in most Western countries, even the US. Recently birth rates have been increasing again by the way, so it's not clear if the historically low rates will prevail in the long run. Also, the fact that education is free isn't really related to demographics, in fact University education has always been free, and the only attempt to introduce a (very moderate) tuition fee in 2006 was fully reversed a few years later due to pressure from various organizations.
walshemj 10y ago
But how does this compare to other professions say a lawyer or a medical doctor with the same experience. I suspect in Europe and the UK in particular engineering is seen as a lower status profession - may be less so in Germany
- Cephlin 10y ago
  In the UK when I tell people I'm a programmer, software engineer, web developer, systems engineer or whatever role I've had at the time, they usually ask me to fix their Windows machine... I guess that's the level of respect we get here.
  - steevenwee 10y ago
    In my experience that's not specific to the UK.
SmokyBourbon 10y ago
It's worth pointing out that, while health care in Germany is better than most of Europe, it is well below the standards Americans are accustomed to. Americans have a much higher survival rate for cancer and other serious diseases due to advanced diagnostic procedures and higher pay for physicians. Americans are comfortable asking doctors for more tests and services when the doctor doesn't think its necessary because the patient and their employer pay the doctor's salary. This leads to waste and higher costs but also allows for earlier detection of serious diseases and for better treatment. If you're young, healthy, and your family doesn't have a history of cancer or heart disease, Germany's health care system might be a good deal. It's one of the best in Europe and, like the United States, people travel from all over the world to receive treatment there. But you will want to move back to the United States when you get older. Per capita Germany performs about half as many MRIs, CT scans, c-sections, coronary bypasses, or knee replacements as the U.S. And, if you're over 65, you have very little value to the public system. Doctors will merely manage your pain rather than work to extend your life regardless of your age like they do in the U.S. Germany has a good health system and Germans enjoy a life expectancy comparable to Americans but it's a system designed to please the young, healthy taxpayer. For me, a few extra vacation days and some beer in my youth aren't worth getting surprised by late-stage cancer or suffering with a bad knee when I get old. Side note: More Americans need to know about Long-term Care Insurance. It's super cheap if you buy it when you're younger (50's) and it'll save your family a fortune when you get old.
- cinemaisdope 10y ago
  Would you mind putting sources for these claims? There exist many contradictory claims [1]. 1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/cancer-spending-higher-in-u-s-than-in-europe-and-so-is-cancer-mortality/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/cancer-spen...
  - SmokyBorbon 10y ago
    Well, if you're going to read that magazine you should expect to see contradictory information as it hasn't been a reputable publication for quite some time. And, yes, I do mind.
tehlike 10y ago
Devil's advocate: US economy, startups, and so on are stronger than that of Europe's.
- astrange 10y ago
  Do we know which % of US states are doing better than Europe? I'm sure it's not all of them. (I think we should measure virtue by carbon footprint/chance of horrible death/crime/etc and not by GDP.)
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  That is really a weird blanket statement: Both places have their own weirdness. You probably aren't going to do so well with a start-up in rural Mississippi or Indiana, mostly because folks don't have much money to spend on your wares, yet in some other areas it'll seem like they are doing well. Same thing with Europe. There are a lot of countries and economies and different regulations there and it is quite hard to compare with the overall thing.
  - tehlike 10y ago
    eh that's true for any country on its own. Each country has both developed & tech savy areas and less/savy areas.
cylinder 10y ago
I agree. People stop reducing your life to dollars (or €). That said, I think the USD is propped up in ways that others are not due to its status in the world. They'd an advantage for some, certainly. And Euro is weakened by rest of EU, if Germany were standalone their currency would be higher than now.
- Shanea93 10y ago
  As a European, I think of Europe as being similar to the United States: Each country is it's own state and part of a whole. In my opinion, saying that if Germany were standalone they would have a stronger currency is the same as saying "If California were standalone they would have a stronger currency". The US has its Mississippi, Europe has its Greece.
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  If there was no Euro, Germany would have a much harder time selling their stuff to the rest of Europe that "it's weakening the Euro". It's on purpose, part of the plan.
synicalx 10y ago
> There are no killings in cities I mean yeah if you ignore all the people shooting up malls, attacking people with machetes, driving trucks into crowds etc, Germany's a really peaceful place.
- luan42 10y ago
  That is just not true. Look at the numbers, and not on your feeling you get from the news. For I stance start with the number of bullets fired by police!
  - synicalx 10y ago
    The statement was "There are no killings in cities", which is clearly not true - there ARE killings in cities. There are probably less overall than in America, but I really don't care enough to check.
    - aplummer 10y ago
      "Probably"! The gun death rate is just over 10x higher in the US per capita (10/100000) v (1/100000), it's a massive difference.
      - synicalx 10y ago
        Ok? Cool? If you can be bothered to go back and re-read my last comment, you'll notice I never once mentioned guns or even expressed a passing interest in comparing gun death rates.
        cr1895 10y ago
        You literally said, "if you ignore people shooting up malls" in the context of Germany being peaceful.
- sigi45 10y ago
  Yeah it is. Why the heck do i have to read such stupid comment @hn? Do you really mean this or did you just use it as a troll counter argument?
234dd57d2c8dba 10y ago
You act like everyone in the USA has to wear body armor, has to set broken bones themselves and lives in tent cities. I have amazing dental, health, and eyecare. Free routine health checkups such as physicals, heck I even get a free gym membership. I drive a 350HP luxury sedan. Oh and I've never shot anyone, had to shoot anyone, or been the victim of a crime other than petty theft where my car was broken into one time. But I do have the freedom to participate in shooting sports (and I do) whenever the heck I want and I don't need to ask mommy for permission. If that's not high quality living standards, you must make 500k a year and be rich because I don't know what is. I think your media has drastically altered your perception of what America is and is not. Tech workers are well compensated and I'd rather be making six figures in America. I'm sure your country is very nice as well, but there is not enough freedom.
- MulliMulli 10y ago
  This is turning into a pissing contest.
  - whorleater 10y ago
    Every $COUNTRY v $COUNTRY or $CITY v $CITY turns into a pissing contest because no one wants to admit they made the wrong choice in settling down somewhere, and end up presenting the best of their place and burying the worst.
    - Cephlin 10y ago
      "But my city has a better system for burying the worst than yours!"
- cr1895 10y ago
  >I think your media has drastically altered your perception of what America is and is not. You're doing well for yourself, but aren't you also presenting an altered perception of America? Very, very few people in America are as fortunate as you.
charlesdm 10y ago
You're right. But why not make use of the best of both worlds? If you can work remotely and make $100-150k a year working from Germany or France, then you get the benefits of living in Europe but with an equivalent US salary. I know several developers who have tripled or quadrupled their after tax income, without having to work any harder.
tomcam 10y ago
> There are no killings in cities http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36882445 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36882445
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/01/us/chicago-murders-2016/ http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/01/us/chicago-murders-2016/ This is what they are talking about; not terrorist attacks which are sporadic.
runT1ME 10y ago
This is such a weird reply. If you are talking about where you'd rather live, then it makes sense to talk about all things given you like your choice. However, that's not the discussion. Wouldn't it be more productive to say "how were american engineers able to get so well paid, and how can we emulate that in Europe?"

by sigi45 10y ago

rev_bird 10y ago

...can I come over?

pmcpinto 10y ago

I agree, in most part of Europe is possible to live better with less, compared with USA. I think it's a bit insane that a lot of companies in USA doesn't allow parental leave, pressure employers to don't take any vacations, etc etc

vikascoder 10y ago

All great points. Just to put in the "con" perspective: 1. It's good money, not insanely great money for software engineering field. You can not hope to earn 200k USD as a senior engineer ever and hence even a few folks from Germany seem pretty keen to have a 4-5 year stint in the US to earn some quick bucks. (also the exchange rate nowadays is killing it for Euro). You can see the effect in terms of how much you percentage of your salary you pay as rent and from my personal experience it was a lot (close to 30-40% of your entire paycheck, some germans in not so blessed fields pay almost 50%). The social security aspects covers for it as far as you enjoy it. 2. Jobs are secure as soon as you sign a permanent contract and get over the "Probzeit" period and there are seldom any "at-will" employment contracts. The flipside? startup culture never really kicked off until recently, hiring is slow and firing is even slower(harder) leading to plenty of dead-beat employees hanging around in corner offices in some organizations. You have copy-cat IT companies like Rocket Internet whose sole business model is to copy ideas from the US and implement them in Europe. So the variety of jobs are definitely not more than what the US provides. 3. As a result, the general lifestyle is living "frugally". If you like that it's fantastic. But everything is comparatively "expensive" than the US apart from certain things like Beer. e.g. Branded clothes like Timberland, Levis etc are sold at a premium where you can get those for 40 bucks in an outlet mall in the US. So buy IKEA/H&M/C&A with your software salary. You do have countries where salaries are high like Switzerland but you also have insanely high living costs.

sremani 10y ago

>> university costs 150$ for 6 month. This is not a German miracle, its simple demographics, most of the Germans are in their productive years of 40s and 50s and their population in teens and 20s is tiny, so their investments are low even though at per-capita level they look tremendous. This is the reason why Germany's hope is automation. They are demographically not in a great place. of course, this will come home to roost in 20 years or so. [edit] Demographics link: http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/age_structure.html http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/age_structure.html

cylinder 10y ago
Or maybe they figured out that relying on population growth to drive the economy is a Ponzi scheme. Eventually you can't add more population so you have to reckon with aging one day, might as well solve the problem ASAP. Automation combined with exports allows you to grow your economy without adding humans. If they still wanted to, they could turn on the migration spigot at anytime. Plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists to pick off out of Eastern Europe, Iran, etc. Labor has already come in on its own.
MrDosu 10y ago
Interesting trivia: If you are from a foreign country and come to Germany to study in the universities, you also pay only that amount. There is a lot of diversity here nation wise in the universities. Education is considered a human right.
ThePhysicist 10y ago
So far population in Germany keeps increasing, as it is one of the most popular countries for immigrants worldwide (and I'm not talking about refugees), so there's a large influx of people from within the European Union as well as from outside of it. Currently there are around 200.000 more deaths each year than births, which is still easy to compensate through immigration. Concerning the birth rate Germany is maybe a bit ahead of the curve, but the problem is similar in most Western countries, even the US. Recently birth rates have been increasing again by the way, so it's not clear if the historically low rates will prevail in the long run. Also, the fact that education is free isn't really related to demographics, in fact University education has always been free, and the only attempt to introduce a (very moderate) tuition fee in 2006 was fully reversed a few years later due to pressure from various organizations.

walshemj 10y ago

But how does this compare to other professions say a lawyer or a medical doctor with the same experience. I suspect in Europe and the UK in particular engineering is seen as a lower status profession - may be less so in Germany

Cephlin 10y ago
In the UK when I tell people I'm a programmer, software engineer, web developer, systems engineer or whatever role I've had at the time, they usually ask me to fix their Windows machine... I guess that's the level of respect we get here.
- steevenwee 10y ago
  In my experience that's not specific to the UK.

SmokyBourbon 10y ago

It's worth pointing out that, while health care in Germany is better than most of Europe, it is well below the standards Americans are accustomed to. Americans have a much higher survival rate for cancer and other serious diseases due to advanced diagnostic procedures and higher pay for physicians. Americans are comfortable asking doctors for more tests and services when the doctor doesn't think its necessary because the patient and their employer pay the doctor's salary. This leads to waste and higher costs but also allows for earlier detection of serious diseases and for better treatment. If you're young, healthy, and your family doesn't have a history of cancer or heart disease, Germany's health care system might be a good deal. It's one of the best in Europe and, like the United States, people travel from all over the world to receive treatment there. But you will want to move back to the United States when you get older. Per capita Germany performs about half as many MRIs, CT scans, c-sections, coronary bypasses, or knee replacements as the U.S. And, if you're over 65, you have very little value to the public system. Doctors will merely manage your pain rather than work to extend your life regardless of your age like they do in the U.S. Germany has a good health system and Germans enjoy a life expectancy comparable to Americans but it's a system designed to please the young, healthy taxpayer. For me, a few extra vacation days and some beer in my youth aren't worth getting surprised by late-stage cancer or suffering with a bad knee when I get old. Side note: More Americans need to know about Long-term Care Insurance. It's super cheap if you buy it when you're younger (50's) and it'll save your family a fortune when you get old.

cinemaisdope 10y ago
Would you mind putting sources for these claims? There exist many contradictory claims [1]. 1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/cancer-spending-higher-in-u-s-than-in-europe-and-so-is-cancer-mortality/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/cancer-spen...
- SmokyBorbon 10y ago
  Well, if you're going to read that magazine you should expect to see contradictory information as it hasn't been a reputable publication for quite some time. And, yes, I do mind.

tehlike 10y ago

Devil's advocate: US economy, startups, and so on are stronger than that of Europe's.

astrange 10y ago
Do we know which % of US states are doing better than Europe? I'm sure it's not all of them. (I think we should measure virtue by carbon footprint/chance of horrible death/crime/etc and not by GDP.)
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
That is really a weird blanket statement: Both places have their own weirdness. You probably aren't going to do so well with a start-up in rural Mississippi or Indiana, mostly because folks don't have much money to spend on your wares, yet in some other areas it'll seem like they are doing well. Same thing with Europe. There are a lot of countries and economies and different regulations there and it is quite hard to compare with the overall thing.
- tehlike 10y ago
  eh that's true for any country on its own. Each country has both developed & tech savy areas and less/savy areas.

cylinder 10y ago

I agree. People stop reducing your life to dollars (or €). That said, I think the USD is propped up in ways that others are not due to its status in the world. They'd an advantage for some, certainly. And Euro is weakened by rest of EU, if Germany were standalone their currency would be higher than now.

Shanea93 10y ago
As a European, I think of Europe as being similar to the United States: Each country is it's own state and part of a whole. In my opinion, saying that if Germany were standalone they would have a stronger currency is the same as saying "If California were standalone they would have a stronger currency". The US has its Mississippi, Europe has its Greece.
NetStrikeForce 10y ago
If there was no Euro, Germany would have a much harder time selling their stuff to the rest of Europe that "it's weakening the Euro". It's on purpose, part of the plan.

synicalx 10y ago

> There are no killings in cities I mean yeah if you ignore all the people shooting up malls, attacking people with machetes, driving trucks into crowds etc, Germany's a really peaceful place.

luan42 10y ago
That is just not true. Look at the numbers, and not on your feeling you get from the news. For I stance start with the number of bullets fired by police!
- synicalx 10y ago
  The statement was "There are no killings in cities", which is clearly not true - there ARE killings in cities. There are probably less overall than in America, but I really don't care enough to check.
  - aplummer 10y ago
    "Probably"! The gun death rate is just over 10x higher in the US per capita (10/100000) v (1/100000), it's a massive difference.
    - synicalx 10y ago
      Ok? Cool? If you can be bothered to go back and re-read my last comment, you'll notice I never once mentioned guns or even expressed a passing interest in comparing gun death rates.
      - cr1895 10y ago
        You literally said, "if you ignore people shooting up malls" in the context of Germany being peaceful.
sigi45 10y ago
Yeah it is. Why the heck do i have to read such stupid comment @hn? Do you really mean this or did you just use it as a troll counter argument?

234dd57d2c8dba 10y ago

You act like everyone in the USA has to wear body armor, has to set broken bones themselves and lives in tent cities. I have amazing dental, health, and eyecare. Free routine health checkups such as physicals, heck I even get a free gym membership. I drive a 350HP luxury sedan. Oh and I've never shot anyone, had to shoot anyone, or been the victim of a crime other than petty theft where my car was broken into one time. But I do have the freedom to participate in shooting sports (and I do) whenever the heck I want and I don't need to ask mommy for permission. If that's not high quality living standards, you must make 500k a year and be rich because I don't know what is. I think your media has drastically altered your perception of what America is and is not. Tech workers are well compensated and I'd rather be making six figures in America. I'm sure your country is very nice as well, but there is not enough freedom.

MulliMulli 10y ago
This is turning into a pissing contest.
- whorleater 10y ago
  Every $COUNTRY v $COUNTRY or $CITY v $CITY turns into a pissing contest because no one wants to admit they made the wrong choice in settling down somewhere, and end up presenting the best of their place and burying the worst.
  - Cephlin 10y ago
    "But my city has a better system for burying the worst than yours!"
cr1895 10y ago
>I think your media has drastically altered your perception of what America is and is not. You're doing well for yourself, but aren't you also presenting an altered perception of America? Very, very few people in America are as fortunate as you.

charlesdm 10y ago

You're right. But why not make use of the best of both worlds? If you can work remotely and make $100-150k a year working from Germany or France, then you get the benefits of living in Europe but with an equivalent US salary. I know several developers who have tripled or quadrupled their after tax income, without having to work any harder.

tomcam 10y ago

> There are no killings in cities http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36882445 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36882445

NetStrikeForce 10y ago
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/01/us/chicago-murders-2016/ http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/01/us/chicago-murders-2016/ This is what they are talking about; not terrorist attacks which are sporadic.

runT1ME 10y ago

This is such a weird reply. If you are talking about where you'd rather live, then it makes sense to talk about all things given you like your choice. However, that's not the discussion. Wouldn't it be more productive to say "how were american engineers able to get so well paid, and how can we emulate that in Europe?"