8 ms·

The problem is not a lack of funds. The problem is bureaucracy and a lack of startup infrastructure. My feeling is that the people in charge have absolutely no

by rsp1984 8y ago

The problem is not a lack of funds. The problem is bureaucracy and a lack of startup infrastructure. My feeling is that the people in charge have absolutely no effing clue about how to most efficiently deploy this money so they will do what sounds good on paper but will have 0 effect in reality. If it goes how it usually goes the largest part of this money will likely to to universities and other research institutions where it will be spent financing open-ended research projects that, in virtually all cases, go exactly nowhere, due to lack of proper incentives to produce something that works. The rest of the money will be "up for grabs" by companies who have perfected the crafts and arts of getting grant money from the German or EU government. The bureaucratic hurdles and time frames are typically way too large for most capital constrained nimble startups who need to move fast. So it's mostly established and/or zombie companies that take advantage of this.

bitL 8y ago
A typical Berlin startup: - hires devs with extremely low salaries - gives 0.004% equity at best - is run by people that are "better than anybody else" - expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability - has managers with issues saying "thank you" - hires friends/family to higher echelons of company Does this sound like a recipe for success?
- SilasX 8y ago
  >expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability Doesn't that conflict with German labor law? Edit: Definitely agree about credentialism ("people that are better than anyone else"). Germany takes that to the extreme. Career change in your 30s? Not possible.
  - zeroname 8y ago
    > Doesn't that conflict with German labor law? I doubt it, Germans rank high in terms of unpaid overtime. https://www.dw.com/en/unpaid-overtime-a-common-phenomenon-in-germany/a-41847449 https://www.dw.com/en/unpaid-overtime-a-common-phenomenon-in... They also have some of the lowest wages combined with the rather high social security expenses. https://www.learngermanonline.org/salaries-and-living-costs-in-germany/ https://www.learngermanonline.org/salaries-and-living-costs-... Given that, I think Germany doesn't deserve its good reputation.
    - fruffy 8y ago
      Unpaid overtime definitely conflicts with labour law. There is also a maximum amount of hours you are technically allowed to work on a day, which is ten. Sixty hours also is the absolute weekly maximum with 48 hours being the regular maximum. However, if you do not report these hours no one will ever know.
      - zeroname 8y ago
        > Unpaid overtime definitely conflicts with labour law. I can't find any evidence that it does. It seems to be common practice: https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/342740-unpaid-overtime-common-in-germany/ https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/342740-unpaid-ove... If you receive a salary, you don't get paid by the hour. If your contract says you don't have a right for compensation (monetary or otherwise) for extra hours, then you don't. Negotiating such terms is up to the employee (or the unions). > There is also a maximum amount of hours you are technically allowed to work on a day, which is ten. That's a different thing from not being paid for hours you work extra.
        fruffy 8y ago
        https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/45108/is-overtime-always-paid-in-germany https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/45108/is-overt... I think this is a good summary of the law in practice. Any overtime has to be compensated by the employer. Obviously, there are ways people work around it if the employee is fine with it... However, if you go to court about unpaid overtime you are sure to win. This has obviously implications on your hireability though. On paper you are protected.
        zahrc 8y ago
        Use German resources if you want to learn about Germany. This is no offense but it's an annoying fact. https://www.arbeitsrecht.org/arbeitnehmer/arbeitszeit/so-lange-muessen-und-duerfen-sie-hoechstens-arbeiten/ https://www.arbeitsrecht.org/arbeitnehmer/arbeitszeit/so-lan... Tldr; employees and employers have to make sure that no-one oversteps the 10 hour maximum. Basically I could get fired if I do, because my employer could get into trouble.
  - sveme 8y ago
    I actually changed careers three times in my 30s. No issues whatsoever. Sounds like the proverbial Germans downtalking Germany And all the Germans agreeing. Then again, why would a society change for the better if there would not be all the internet and Stammtisch complaining and moaning about all that could be better?
    - jcbrand 8y ago
      As a foreigner living in Germany, this was one of the first things that I noticed and was a bit of a culture shock. Germans love to complain and seem to think that this is how you improve things. I believe there's some truth to that, and it seems to work for them, but it can cause chronic dissatisfaction and can cause intercultural issues when living or traveling abroad (where people aren't used to fielding so many complaints about poor service).
  - Matthias247 8y ago
    Officially there are regulations about maximum working times of 10 hours/day. That however doesn't prevent expectations from being higher. It however prevents tracking on the employer side for a higher amount of hours.
  - gsich 8y ago
    It does. But here is the hint: If you have a token you stamp out and work continues.
- chosenbreed 8y ago
  Oh...I was thinking of trying out my luck in Berlin...
  - hobofan 8y ago
    You still can. Biggest marker to avoid those problems is to avoid first-time founders. While repeat founders are quite rare in Berlin, most of their startups are compareatively healthy from what I've seen. Of course that's just a rule of thumb.
- obstbraende 8y ago
  That sounds like a degenerate organisation. But if we're sharing anecdata: My pay in this Berlin startup is very decent, I have respectable equity and it's a friendly & rational environment. I'm scared of US startup work culture, rather.
  - bitL 8y ago
    I remember one Deep Learning startup in Berlin ran by ex-Googlers that was offering 85k salary, minuscule equity, and expected a Stanford top-graduate with interview that had to demonstrate complete mastery of all Stanford Deep Learning courses and probabilistic graphical models... I hope it's not your employer, you are likely undervaluing yourself 10x otherwise.
    - Matthias247 8y ago
      For a graduate that would be a huge salary in germany. Most engineers with 10years of experience won't receive that. Therefore having high expectations around those candidates seems right. (That still does't mean I find the salary situation for engineers great in germany. Just that it seems to fit into the general scheme)
    - obstbraende 8y ago
      You probably need to factor healthcare, rent etc for a fair comparison to, say, the Bay area -- 85k affords a nice upper-upper middle class lifestyle (it scratches the 99th gross income percentile in germany). So 10x sounds like a stretch. What profile would you suggest someone who takes 200-800k € might have? (Tangentially, out of curiosity: Are you in a position to share what the ex-googlers worked on?)
- reacharavindh 8y ago
  Don't know about the rest of the points, but I looked into several job opportunities at Berlin, and was shocked by how low their offered salaries were. That was the end of my interest in looking for jobs at Berlin... I live in Denmark currently, and can attest that to some extent, salaries cannot be compared because of different social structures & expenses. Getting paid 50% of what I used to make in the US did not mean standard of living went to 50%. But, for a comp.engineer, US wins out by a huge margin in terms of money.
  - rurban 8y ago
    It's not 50%, it's more like 30%. German salaries are totally anti-engineering and pro-management.
    - distances 8y ago
      I think this applies to all of Europe though. London salaries are a bit higher, but of course not at the US levels.
      - omnimus 8y ago
        UK and Germany are also the countries with highest salaries if you don't count Scandinavia. Try to go to Poland or Czechia thats german border countries where the salaries are even much lower. Then again salaries in europe just work in very different way.
        rurban 8y ago
        UK and Switzerland only. Germany is traditionally a low-wage country.
        Rinzler89 8y ago
        You mean London and Switzerland. Excepting London, the UK on average is even more low wage than Germany, to reuse your expression. But London, just like Switzerland has an impossible property market if you want o buy something no matter how well you're paid.
- choot 8y ago
  I worked for a German startup, whenever i asked for a raise they threatened to import labor from Romania or Poland to replace me.
  - choot 8y ago
    It's sooo weird here on HN, even for sharing incident, victim gets downvoted.
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    So you got fooled. It is a free market, supply and demand. If you are outstanding you can earn more. If you are mediocre you can be more easily replaced. I would quit on the spot if any company would threat me like that. I would just tell them "Please do" and walk out from meeting, getting back to my computer to print out my resignation.
- hobofan 8y ago
  While that's a accurate generalization of Berlin startups, from what I can tell it's pretty much the same for startups anywhere (maybe with the exception of salary in contrast to SF, but the cost of living is absurd in comparision).
  - bitL 8y ago
    It's different if you have a shot at being rich in the Bay Area via a successful exit as an early employee, or if you, as in case of Berlin, get a laughable equity and instead are motivated by the "coolness" of startups and Berlin being a city for "hipsters", trading your peak effort/prime years for literally nothing. Of course, start up is a lottery in SF as well, but the potential wins are orders of magnitude higher than e.g. an amount of one-time mid-tier car purchase like it is with German startups.
    - hobofan 8y ago
      I value equity at 0, so that's why might be seeing them as not that different. If you are a bit of a startup veteran you can also make good bank at German startups, probably even more so if you come from SF. There are sadly (but also understandably) few software engineers that stay in the startup ecosystem for long, and those that do can be quite valued. That combined with the low cost of living, actually makes it very realistic to build up some wealth and achieve financial independence, no startup equity lottery needed. From everything I read on HN, that looks very different in SF.
      - bitL 8y ago
        In the Bay Area you now pay $3k/month for a room with 2 roommates ;-) Similar situation is going on around Seattle and Boston/Cambridge as well, though it's not as bad yet. Of course, more distant locations have lower rents, but one also wastes too much time by commuting.
- hnaz 8y ago
  That's the way it is in all European countries.
- hilti 8y ago
  "is run by people that are "better than anybody else" -> This is the same experience I made. A lot of founders in Berlin are narcissistic life artists with zero execution skills. They're good at producing pitch decks while having fancy Coffee Chai Latte at a hipster cafe in Berlin Mitte. In between making unmistakable phone calls so everyone would know after a minute that he/she calls him/herself CTO, CEO, CSO, COO or whatever and him/her is working on the next big thing of course. And it's all about global domination. To cut a long story short: we agree. ;-)
- StreamBright 8y ago
  Sorry but why Berlin? Munich has several very successful startups and excellent engineering community with serious investors and companies who can be either clients or potential purchasers of these startups. Why do you chose Berlin as a representative of German startup scene? I know they had some success but there is so much more in Germany. goo.gl/uPLVMy https://www.eu-startups.com/tag/munich/ https://www.eu-startups.com/tag/munich/
  - odiroot 8y ago
    Do you think that Munich has generally better culture in this industry? I don't even mean startups, just asking in general.
    - bitL 8y ago
      Munich is generally not as open to foreigners as Berlin. Even more foreigners are in Frankfurt, but most hate living there, despite getting a funding is much easier than in Berlin/Munich - it's fun to see ICOs popping up there 1 year after they were relevant, so if you follow US trends, you can apply them without much effort over there a year later and be celebrated for copying some already well-known idea.
      - StreamBright 8y ago
        I disagree. The companies in my network (anecdotal evidence) are full with international people. In our office we have nationals from 13 countries. This is the most diverse environment that I have ever seen (including San Francisco). There are some companies however who are hiring strictly Germans, just like with anything else the market will correct these mistakes. This is not the norm but the exception though. I am not sure what you are talking about when saying it is not as open. Renting an apartment is the most difficult part of moving to Munich. It is really bad. There are scammers, people do not want to deal with you if you don't speak German, etc, but this the downside. Getting registered, sorting out bank accounts, internet, mobile phone, socialising and any other aspect of being an ex-pat in Munich is average. The housing situation is the the result of supply and demand imbalance. I have had similar experience in San Francisco when people do not even reply to my email when I was using my Central European name but they were more than happy to reply to Steve. There are several options to mitigate that, you can just move to a smaller town around Munich the train connection is pretty good. Were you referring to the housing situation?
- odiroot 8y ago
  Let me compare with my "list" over nearly 5 years working here: 1. `Extremely` is an overstatement but yes. 2. Yep. 3. Yep, very common. Big egos everywhere. 4. Not really, never experienced myself. 5. That's hit and miss. 6. Yep, super common. Throw enormous tax burden on top of that (you don't really see your taxes working for you in this city).
  - DanielleMolloy 8y ago
    > (you don't really see your taxes working for you in this city). Or the tax-paid are even actively slowing down your work and success due to difficulties and mental barriers about understanding technology and its culture, ref. #GoogleCampus.
- iagooar 8y ago
  OK, so let's talk about what we, a Berlin startup that I co-founded, do offer: - fair salaries for the experience and attitude - no equity, because we believe that a fair salary is better than a lottery equity - we don't expect people to work overtime and value work-life balance a lot - we say thank you A LOT - we hire people who are the best fit for the job And since we're talking about this: we're hiring a software engineer in Berlin. We are a podcast hosting company, are profitable, have +1k paying customers, some really high-profile. Ruby on Rails, Angular, VueJS, Go, Nodejs, AWS, Heroku. Office in Kreuzberg, 60-65k €. Both founders are software engineers themselves and value solid, healthy codebases. Let's talk if you're interested.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomp 8y ago
    Thanks for including the actual salary. It annoys me when companies say “extremely competitive compensation” but then you realize it’s like 50k (in London).
    - iagooar 8y ago
      In my experience, not including the salary is a sign of weakness of a company. Why would you not include it, if it wasn't that you're afraid your salary is not fair? Or is it that people at your company would want to get a raise (they probably deserve) if they saw what you're willing to pay? In any case: I'm huge fan of transparent job postings and believe that they are a net positive for both sides.
      - tomp 8y ago
        I think most commonly it’s just a game, they don’t want to be the first to say a number because that sets a minimum salary, otherwise they might get someone clueless who’d be willing to take the job for less.. Unfortunately that’s like 99% of the companies!
- maa5444 8y ago
  I would wait next spring European election before deciding to move to Germany .... my friends
sophistication 8y ago
From the point of AI safety, slow progress seems to be beneficial.
dmix 8y ago
> The bureaucratic hurdles and time frames are typically way too large for most capital constrained nimble startups who need to move fast. Nailed it. Canada has wasted hundreds of millions investing in "startups" and it all ends up going to ex-corporate suits from some megacorp (IBM, Blackberry/RIM, etc, or even non-tech etc) who know how to game the system. That and wasted on over priced real estate projects like MARs in Toronto.

bitL 8y ago

A typical Berlin startup: - hires devs with extremely low salaries - gives 0.004% equity at best - is run by people that are "better than anybody else" - expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability - has managers with issues saying "thank you" - hires friends/family to higher echelons of company Does this sound like a recipe for success?

SilasX 8y ago
>expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability Doesn't that conflict with German labor law? Edit: Definitely agree about credentialism ("people that are better than anyone else"). Germany takes that to the extreme. Career change in your 30s? Not possible.
- zeroname 8y ago
  > Doesn't that conflict with German labor law? I doubt it, Germans rank high in terms of unpaid overtime. https://www.dw.com/en/unpaid-overtime-a-common-phenomenon-in-germany/a-41847449 https://www.dw.com/en/unpaid-overtime-a-common-phenomenon-in... They also have some of the lowest wages combined with the rather high social security expenses. https://www.learngermanonline.org/salaries-and-living-costs-in-germany/ https://www.learngermanonline.org/salaries-and-living-costs-... Given that, I think Germany doesn't deserve its good reputation.
  - fruffy 8y ago
    Unpaid overtime definitely conflicts with labour law. There is also a maximum amount of hours you are technically allowed to work on a day, which is ten. Sixty hours also is the absolute weekly maximum with 48 hours being the regular maximum. However, if you do not report these hours no one will ever know.
    - zeroname 8y ago
      > Unpaid overtime definitely conflicts with labour law. I can't find any evidence that it does. It seems to be common practice: https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/342740-unpaid-overtime-common-in-germany/ https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/342740-unpaid-ove... If you receive a salary, you don't get paid by the hour. If your contract says you don't have a right for compensation (monetary or otherwise) for extra hours, then you don't. Negotiating such terms is up to the employee (or the unions). > There is also a maximum amount of hours you are technically allowed to work on a day, which is ten. That's a different thing from not being paid for hours you work extra.
      - fruffy 8y ago
        https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/45108/is-overtime-always-paid-in-germany https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/45108/is-overt... I think this is a good summary of the law in practice. Any overtime has to be compensated by the employer. Obviously, there are ways people work around it if the employee is fine with it... However, if you go to court about unpaid overtime you are sure to win. This has obviously implications on your hireability though. On paper you are protected.
      - zahrc 8y ago
        Use German resources if you want to learn about Germany. This is no offense but it's an annoying fact. https://www.arbeitsrecht.org/arbeitnehmer/arbeitszeit/so-lange-muessen-und-duerfen-sie-hoechstens-arbeiten/ https://www.arbeitsrecht.org/arbeitnehmer/arbeitszeit/so-lan... Tldr; employees and employers have to make sure that no-one oversteps the 10 hour maximum. Basically I could get fired if I do, because my employer could get into trouble.
- sveme 8y ago
  I actually changed careers three times in my 30s. No issues whatsoever. Sounds like the proverbial Germans downtalking Germany And all the Germans agreeing. Then again, why would a society change for the better if there would not be all the internet and Stammtisch complaining and moaning about all that could be better?
  - jcbrand 8y ago
    As a foreigner living in Germany, this was one of the first things that I noticed and was a bit of a culture shock. Germans love to complain and seem to think that this is how you improve things. I believe there's some truth to that, and it seems to work for them, but it can cause chronic dissatisfaction and can cause intercultural issues when living or traveling abroad (where people aren't used to fielding so many complaints about poor service).
- Matthias247 8y ago
  Officially there are regulations about maximum working times of 10 hours/day. That however doesn't prevent expectations from being higher. It however prevents tracking on the employer side for a higher amount of hours.
- gsich 8y ago
  It does. But here is the hint: If you have a token you stamp out and work continues.
chosenbreed 8y ago
Oh...I was thinking of trying out my luck in Berlin...
- hobofan 8y ago
  You still can. Biggest marker to avoid those problems is to avoid first-time founders. While repeat founders are quite rare in Berlin, most of their startups are compareatively healthy from what I've seen. Of course that's just a rule of thumb.
obstbraende 8y ago
That sounds like a degenerate organisation. But if we're sharing anecdata: My pay in this Berlin startup is very decent, I have respectable equity and it's a friendly & rational environment. I'm scared of US startup work culture, rather.
- bitL 8y ago
  I remember one Deep Learning startup in Berlin ran by ex-Googlers that was offering 85k salary, minuscule equity, and expected a Stanford top-graduate with interview that had to demonstrate complete mastery of all Stanford Deep Learning courses and probabilistic graphical models... I hope it's not your employer, you are likely undervaluing yourself 10x otherwise.
  - Matthias247 8y ago
    For a graduate that would be a huge salary in germany. Most engineers with 10years of experience won't receive that. Therefore having high expectations around those candidates seems right. (That still does't mean I find the salary situation for engineers great in germany. Just that it seems to fit into the general scheme)
  - obstbraende 8y ago
    You probably need to factor healthcare, rent etc for a fair comparison to, say, the Bay area -- 85k affords a nice upper-upper middle class lifestyle (it scratches the 99th gross income percentile in germany). So 10x sounds like a stretch. What profile would you suggest someone who takes 200-800k € might have? (Tangentially, out of curiosity: Are you in a position to share what the ex-googlers worked on?)
reacharavindh 8y ago
Don't know about the rest of the points, but I looked into several job opportunities at Berlin, and was shocked by how low their offered salaries were. That was the end of my interest in looking for jobs at Berlin... I live in Denmark currently, and can attest that to some extent, salaries cannot be compared because of different social structures & expenses. Getting paid 50% of what I used to make in the US did not mean standard of living went to 50%. But, for a comp.engineer, US wins out by a huge margin in terms of money.
- rurban 8y ago
  It's not 50%, it's more like 30%. German salaries are totally anti-engineering and pro-management.
  - distances 8y ago
    I think this applies to all of Europe though. London salaries are a bit higher, but of course not at the US levels.
    - omnimus 8y ago
      UK and Germany are also the countries with highest salaries if you don't count Scandinavia. Try to go to Poland or Czechia thats german border countries where the salaries are even much lower. Then again salaries in europe just work in very different way.
      - rurban 8y ago
        UK and Switzerland only. Germany is traditionally a low-wage country.
        Rinzler89 8y ago
        You mean London and Switzerland. Excepting London, the UK on average is even more low wage than Germany, to reuse your expression. But London, just like Switzerland has an impossible property market if you want o buy something no matter how well you're paid.
choot 8y ago
I worked for a German startup, whenever i asked for a raise they threatened to import labor from Romania or Poland to replace me.
- choot 8y ago
  It's sooo weird here on HN, even for sharing incident, victim gets downvoted.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  So you got fooled. It is a free market, supply and demand. If you are outstanding you can earn more. If you are mediocre you can be more easily replaced. I would quit on the spot if any company would threat me like that. I would just tell them "Please do" and walk out from meeting, getting back to my computer to print out my resignation.
hobofan 8y ago
While that's a accurate generalization of Berlin startups, from what I can tell it's pretty much the same for startups anywhere (maybe with the exception of salary in contrast to SF, but the cost of living is absurd in comparision).
- bitL 8y ago
  It's different if you have a shot at being rich in the Bay Area via a successful exit as an early employee, or if you, as in case of Berlin, get a laughable equity and instead are motivated by the "coolness" of startups and Berlin being a city for "hipsters", trading your peak effort/prime years for literally nothing. Of course, start up is a lottery in SF as well, but the potential wins are orders of magnitude higher than e.g. an amount of one-time mid-tier car purchase like it is with German startups.
  - hobofan 8y ago
    I value equity at 0, so that's why might be seeing them as not that different. If you are a bit of a startup veteran you can also make good bank at German startups, probably even more so if you come from SF. There are sadly (but also understandably) few software engineers that stay in the startup ecosystem for long, and those that do can be quite valued. That combined with the low cost of living, actually makes it very realistic to build up some wealth and achieve financial independence, no startup equity lottery needed. From everything I read on HN, that looks very different in SF.
    - bitL 8y ago
      In the Bay Area you now pay $3k/month for a room with 2 roommates ;-) Similar situation is going on around Seattle and Boston/Cambridge as well, though it's not as bad yet. Of course, more distant locations have lower rents, but one also wastes too much time by commuting.
hnaz 8y ago
That's the way it is in all European countries.
hilti 8y ago
"is run by people that are "better than anybody else" -> This is the same experience I made. A lot of founders in Berlin are narcissistic life artists with zero execution skills. They're good at producing pitch decks while having fancy Coffee Chai Latte at a hipster cafe in Berlin Mitte. In between making unmistakable phone calls so everyone would know after a minute that he/she calls him/herself CTO, CEO, CSO, COO or whatever and him/her is working on the next big thing of course. And it's all about global domination. To cut a long story short: we agree. ;-)
StreamBright 8y ago
Sorry but why Berlin? Munich has several very successful startups and excellent engineering community with serious investors and companies who can be either clients or potential purchasers of these startups. Why do you chose Berlin as a representative of German startup scene? I know they had some success but there is so much more in Germany. goo.gl/uPLVMy https://www.eu-startups.com/tag/munich/ https://www.eu-startups.com/tag/munich/
- odiroot 8y ago
  Do you think that Munich has generally better culture in this industry? I don't even mean startups, just asking in general.
  - bitL 8y ago
    Munich is generally not as open to foreigners as Berlin. Even more foreigners are in Frankfurt, but most hate living there, despite getting a funding is much easier than in Berlin/Munich - it's fun to see ICOs popping up there 1 year after they were relevant, so if you follow US trends, you can apply them without much effort over there a year later and be celebrated for copying some already well-known idea.
    - StreamBright 8y ago
      I disagree. The companies in my network (anecdotal evidence) are full with international people. In our office we have nationals from 13 countries. This is the most diverse environment that I have ever seen (including San Francisco). There are some companies however who are hiring strictly Germans, just like with anything else the market will correct these mistakes. This is not the norm but the exception though. I am not sure what you are talking about when saying it is not as open. Renting an apartment is the most difficult part of moving to Munich. It is really bad. There are scammers, people do not want to deal with you if you don't speak German, etc, but this the downside. Getting registered, sorting out bank accounts, internet, mobile phone, socialising and any other aspect of being an ex-pat in Munich is average. The housing situation is the the result of supply and demand imbalance. I have had similar experience in San Francisco when people do not even reply to my email when I was using my Central European name but they were more than happy to reply to Steve. There are several options to mitigate that, you can just move to a smaller town around Munich the train connection is pretty good. Were you referring to the housing situation?
odiroot 8y ago
Let me compare with my "list" over nearly 5 years working here: 1. `Extremely` is an overstatement but yes. 2. Yep. 3. Yep, very common. Big egos everywhere. 4. Not really, never experienced myself. 5. That's hit and miss. 6. Yep, super common. Throw enormous tax burden on top of that (you don't really see your taxes working for you in this city).
- DanielleMolloy 8y ago
  > (you don't really see your taxes working for you in this city). Or the tax-paid are even actively slowing down your work and success due to difficulties and mental barriers about understanding technology and its culture, ref. #GoogleCampus.
iagooar 8y ago
OK, so let's talk about what we, a Berlin startup that I co-founded, do offer: - fair salaries for the experience and attitude - no equity, because we believe that a fair salary is better than a lottery equity - we don't expect people to work overtime and value work-life balance a lot - we say thank you A LOT - we hire people who are the best fit for the job And since we're talking about this: we're hiring a software engineer in Berlin. We are a podcast hosting company, are profitable, have +1k paying customers, some really high-profile. Ruby on Rails, Angular, VueJS, Go, Nodejs, AWS, Heroku. Office in Kreuzberg, 60-65k €. Both founders are software engineers themselves and value solid, healthy codebases. Let's talk if you're interested.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tomp 8y ago
  Thanks for including the actual salary. It annoys me when companies say “extremely competitive compensation” but then you realize it’s like 50k (in London).
  - iagooar 8y ago
    In my experience, not including the salary is a sign of weakness of a company. Why would you not include it, if it wasn't that you're afraid your salary is not fair? Or is it that people at your company would want to get a raise (they probably deserve) if they saw what you're willing to pay? In any case: I'm huge fan of transparent job postings and believe that they are a net positive for both sides.
    - tomp 8y ago
      I think most commonly it’s just a game, they don’t want to be the first to say a number because that sets a minimum salary, otherwise they might get someone clueless who’d be willing to take the job for less.. Unfortunately that’s like 99% of the companies!
maa5444 8y ago
I would wait next spring European election before deciding to move to Germany .... my friends

sophistication 8y ago

From the point of AI safety, slow progress seems to be beneficial.

dmix 8y ago

> The bureaucratic hurdles and time frames are typically way too large for most capital constrained nimble startups who need to move fast. Nailed it. Canada has wasted hundreds of millions investing in "startups" and it all ends up going to ex-corporate suits from some megacorp (IBM, Blackberry/RIM, etc, or even non-tech etc) who know how to game the system. That and wasted on over priced real estate projects like MARs in Toronto.