Just the super weird "degrees are everything" culture. The foundation is, as helge5 mentions, that there are certain qualified professions where the guild shoul

Just the super weird "degrees are everything" culture. The foundation is, as helge5 mentions, that there are certain qualified professions where the guild should ~~get paid~~ certify everyone who practices. The stupidity is that "programmer" was counted as an "engineer," at least in my case. I see helge5 thinks you are allowed to practice CS without a qualification - I can only tell you that the Finanzamt Köln/Bonn disagreed. And as the other commenters noted, I _did_ say "selbständig" when I meant "freiberuflich". Can I get away with blaming autocorrect? :)