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> Berlin will be Europe's Silicon Valley within a few years. Things that need to happen before this : 1. Salaries need to grow faster. Rent is really high for

> Berlin will be Europe's Silicon Valley within a few years. Things that need to happen before this : 1. Salaries need to grow faster. Rent is really high for the new comers specialists. 2. Companies need to increase the salary gap between good and bad workers. Right now you are not able to negotiate more than 10% on top of the "average" salary. 3. Germany needs to fix the privileges of employees having options / shares of the company. With the current legislation / founders attitude is quite boring and useless.

mhomde 8y ago
Yeah I guess that's what stemming the tide :) Also a lot of German companies seem to require that you speak German. I know awesome programmers/designers living in Berlin but if they work for Berlin companies they seem to earn a pittance of what they'd would in for instance Stockholm. But if more tech companies, like Soundcloud, imports themselves into Berlin and Germany, employees and all, that will change. Can it be because venture capital hasn't come to Berlin/Germany in a big way yet? Typically German companies seems more aimed at the German market rather than an international one, which maybe doesn't fuel a bubble as quickly.
- drinchev 8y ago
  Typical Berlin startups as of 2018 usually look for importing developers from other countries with relocation help. This, IMHO, is already the beginning of the salary increase, which is inevitable. Unfortunately the progressive taxation [1] is quite complicated and makes it impossible to increase your life-style with just a salary bump. I guess that's one of the reasons Berlin is still considered as temporary place to work, before you find "something better". 1 : http://www.drinchev.com/blog/germany-freelancing-and-taxes/ http://www.drinchev.com/blog/germany-freelancing-and-taxes/
valarauca1 8y ago
> Salaries need to grow faster Berlin software engineer salaries are seriously worse then any where in america. I’ve seen desktop IT support in the US MidWest pay more than developers in Berlin. Hard to convince me to move internationally and write code. I can just move home, write zero code, and spend all day telling people to try, “turning it off and on again”. Cashing identical value checks.
- arximboldi 8y ago
  While I would be happy to have higher salaries here, they are not really comparable to the US. Here you have a social system (free education, public health insurance) and work way less (hardly 8 hours a day, 25-30 days vacation as normal, etc.). For European standards salaries here are actually rather decent. With the current rent situation, I hope though they rise to the standards of the more affluent German south.
  - briandear 8y ago
    Let’s say you can make €45k in Berlin. Let’s say you can make €90k in the US. “Free” education costs roughly €45k per year. In the US, 2-3 weeks of vacation is normal (for tech jobs,) so let’s say in Germany, you get an additional week. Let’s now say that US workers work an extra 200 hours per year. So “free” education plus an additional week off plus 200 annual hours of less work. Costing €45k per year. In a work week, let’s say in Germany it’s 38 hours. So that week of extra vacation, plus the 200 extra annual hours, we have 238 extra hours of work. Not counting “free” university that means that extra time off costs you €189 per hour. Let’s say that a typical US state university costs €60k for 4 years. That represents about 315 hours of work (at the €189 per hour rate.) Which means that in just 2 years or less, the salary differential would pay for your university education. After that expense, then, for the rest of your career, you are essentially paying €189 per hour of extra time you get as a bonus for working in Germany. Taxes are excluded from this calculation, but while they are higher in Germany, you get more “stuff,” so it balances out on the tax side reasonably well. However, something that is relevant is that the cost of consumer goods is higher in Germany, so your disposable income is going to be less than the US. I am not saying Germany is “bad” — a great place to live, but in pure economic terms, you are definitely worse off by comparison to a similar job in the US.
    - cr1895 8y ago
      >In the US, 2-3 weeks of vacation is normal (for tech jobs,) so let’s say in Germany, you get an additional week Are you expected to take those 2-3 weeks? Is your time away actually respected? I'm sure for some it is, but I don't believe that to be universal. >a great place to live, but in pure economic terms, you are definitely worse off by comparison to a similar job in the US. Economic comparisons like this hardly capture all that accounts for the differences between these two scenarios. Work culture, quality of life, personal fulfillment, etc. This purely monetary estimation can be informative, but, it is only part of the story.
wellboy 8y ago
4. 100 Founders need to make billion dollar exits to fund universities, vc funds, industries

mhomde 8y ago

Yeah I guess that's what stemming the tide :) Also a lot of German companies seem to require that you speak German. I know awesome programmers/designers living in Berlin but if they work for Berlin companies they seem to earn a pittance of what they'd would in for instance Stockholm. But if more tech companies, like Soundcloud, imports themselves into Berlin and Germany, employees and all, that will change. Can it be because venture capital hasn't come to Berlin/Germany in a big way yet? Typically German companies seems more aimed at the German market rather than an international one, which maybe doesn't fuel a bubble as quickly.

drinchev 8y ago
Typical Berlin startups as of 2018 usually look for importing developers from other countries with relocation help. This, IMHO, is already the beginning of the salary increase, which is inevitable. Unfortunately the progressive taxation [1] is quite complicated and makes it impossible to increase your life-style with just a salary bump. I guess that's one of the reasons Berlin is still considered as temporary place to work, before you find "something better". 1 : http://www.drinchev.com/blog/germany-freelancing-and-taxes/ http://www.drinchev.com/blog/germany-freelancing-and-taxes/

valarauca1 8y ago

> Salaries need to grow faster Berlin software engineer salaries are seriously worse then any where in america. I’ve seen desktop IT support in the US MidWest pay more than developers in Berlin. Hard to convince me to move internationally and write code. I can just move home, write zero code, and spend all day telling people to try, “turning it off and on again”. Cashing identical value checks.

arximboldi 8y ago
While I would be happy to have higher salaries here, they are not really comparable to the US. Here you have a social system (free education, public health insurance) and work way less (hardly 8 hours a day, 25-30 days vacation as normal, etc.). For European standards salaries here are actually rather decent. With the current rent situation, I hope though they rise to the standards of the more affluent German south.
- briandear 8y ago
  Let’s say you can make €45k in Berlin. Let’s say you can make €90k in the US. “Free” education costs roughly €45k per year. In the US, 2-3 weeks of vacation is normal (for tech jobs,) so let’s say in Germany, you get an additional week. Let’s now say that US workers work an extra 200 hours per year. So “free” education plus an additional week off plus 200 annual hours of less work. Costing €45k per year. In a work week, let’s say in Germany it’s 38 hours. So that week of extra vacation, plus the 200 extra annual hours, we have 238 extra hours of work. Not counting “free” university that means that extra time off costs you €189 per hour. Let’s say that a typical US state university costs €60k for 4 years. That represents about 315 hours of work (at the €189 per hour rate.) Which means that in just 2 years or less, the salary differential would pay for your university education. After that expense, then, for the rest of your career, you are essentially paying €189 per hour of extra time you get as a bonus for working in Germany. Taxes are excluded from this calculation, but while they are higher in Germany, you get more “stuff,” so it balances out on the tax side reasonably well. However, something that is relevant is that the cost of consumer goods is higher in Germany, so your disposable income is going to be less than the US. I am not saying Germany is “bad” — a great place to live, but in pure economic terms, you are definitely worse off by comparison to a similar job in the US.
  - cr1895 8y ago
    >In the US, 2-3 weeks of vacation is normal (for tech jobs,) so let’s say in Germany, you get an additional week Are you expected to take those 2-3 weeks? Is your time away actually respected? I'm sure for some it is, but I don't believe that to be universal. >a great place to live, but in pure economic terms, you are definitely worse off by comparison to a similar job in the US. Economic comparisons like this hardly capture all that accounts for the differences between these two scenarios. Work culture, quality of life, personal fulfillment, etc. This purely monetary estimation can be informative, but, it is only part of the story.

wellboy 8y ago

4. 100 Founders need to make billion dollar exits to fund universities, vc funds, industries