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I can tell one thing about Germany: the salaries are bad joke!!! Let’s look at Munich in particular. Salary €60k at first job after immigration unless you’re wa

by lnsru 5y ago

I can tell one thing about Germany: the salaries are bad joke!!! Let’s look at Munich in particular. Salary €60k at first job after immigration unless you’re wanted specialist joining Apple. That’s 3000€ every month after taxes where rent goes from 1000€ for 30 sq meters apparent to 1800€ for 3 rooms apartment in normal location. Now if you are car mechanic or some clerk salary goes towards €40k and one cannot afford living in Munich at all. Other cities might be better and salary will increase in the next job, but in total it’s not nice country for immigration. As a skilled guy in Poland I would have very similar lifestyle without going anywhere.

berndi 5y ago
You're right, an easy fix for this is to live and work outside of metropolitan areas where you get the same standard of living for a fraction of the cost.
forgingahead 5y ago
Out of curiousity, why do you think the salaries have been so low in Germany? For certain sectors I can imagine outsourcing has occurred to lower wage jurisdictions in Central/Eastern Europe, so maybe that has put some downward pressure on salary growth - but what about localised professions, like blue collar jobs etc? Or is it just generally white collar wages that are not that high?
- chefkoch 5y ago
  Equality is much higher in europe then the US. It's the same for lawyers, doctors etc.
- yobbo 5y ago
  The question is rather why software salaries are so high in USA. That is the real anomaly.
  - danielrpa 5y ago
    Because US tech companies are the most successful in the world and there is an immense demand for workers located in US-friendly time zones. It's simple market economics. I wouldn't be surprised if there is more demand for highly skilled tech workers in California alone than any other country in the world.
codeflo 5y ago
I find the tone of entitlement a bit hard to take. Yes, cities like Munich have a huge structural problem with housing and rent. Solutions are unfortunately hard. But it’s a problem for locals just as much as it is for immigrants. And of course Poland is a nice place to live as well, why do you make that sound like it’s a bad thing? It almost sounds as if you’re regretting some personal decisions, and are now blaming the country you moved to for not living up to unrealistic expectations.
- lnsru 5y ago
  I am not from Poland. Some colleagues were. They did careful calculations and went home. Do you see any viable solution how to end yearly 5% rent increase in Munich? I don’t. There’s enough empty land around the city in all directions.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    > Do you see any viable solution how to end yearly 5% rent increase in Munich? Don't live and work in Munich?
  - iso1631 5y ago
    Why is demand increasing in Munich?
    - chefkoch 5y ago
      Because lots of companies move there and the ones that are already here generaly do well. And of course there is a general trend of (younger) people moving to the cities (ofc less now because of covid).
  - codeflo 5y ago
    > I am not from Poland. Some colleagues were. They did careful calculations and went home. So what? Poland isn't a third world country by any stretch of the imagination. There's no law of nature that living in Warsaw must be worse than living in Munich.
  - 5y ago
kitten_mittens_ 5y ago
Cities in the US can be very steep too. I have a ~50 sq meter apartment that runs ~€3000 in Boston. When I lived in Germany, my salary was about half what it is here in the States. Taxes are much lower, my effective tax rate is closer to ~25% (state and local) than the 42% in Germany plus the 5% Soli.
- foepys 5y ago
  You only pay 42% for anything above 57,000€. Germany does have progressive income tax.
  - 2ion 5y ago
    Literally every "skilled immigrant" is supposedly earning 57k or more. Everything else is a strategic move to keep salaries low. So, evey skilled migrant looking to work harder and more is going to get taxed almost half of that effort plus social constributions (up to the limit) and soli (still exists). There are tax-free allowances like in night shift bonuses, but those apply not to most workers. The base tax exempted income is much too low as well. Should be at least double the current 10k or so.
    - foepys 5y ago
      No, you don't understand progressive taxation. You pay 0% on your first 10,000€, then a few percent for the next 12,000€ and so on. In 2021 in Germany for an income of 60,000€ you need to pay 11,735€ income tax, roughly 19.5%. there is also no soli tax anymore unless you are earning a top-2% income.
      - 2ion 5y ago
        I understand very well as I'm German. Anybody who is usefully skillful and economically useful will be earning north of 57k. Anybody who is all that and earning less than the equivalent German is a means to keep salaries low. There is an oversupply of cheap labour fuelling the Niedriglohnsektor already. That also means that high-performing individuals with an already appropriately high base income will be paying 42% on any € pay increase, which is not a good incentive to make people work more and/or more stressful and/or more highly skilled jobs /in Germany/. Why here, if you can be highly skilled and high earning in Switzerland and be able to achieve a multiple of net income and get a better pension system to boot?
Tarsul 5y ago
Munich is top 3 in most expensive German cities. Still, German city hubs are comparatively cheaper than those in other countries (e.g. Amsterdam, Paris, London, Barcelona) and with 60k€ you're around top 30% in Germany. I post these statistics just to say that other western european countries arent better than Germany in these regards. Also, I don't agree with the assignment that the salaries are a joke; it's just that the inequality in salaries is not as big as in America or elsewhere. Yes, this means that highly qualified people don't earn gangbusters (well, you could if you go freelancer) but this works for as long as there's no (significant) brain drain to other countries, which probably there is not as Germans like Germany. So, what I'm saying is that the "low" salaries are in a way the price for Germany being a nice place to live in.
smnrchrds 5y ago
Median household income in the US in 2019 was 62,400 EUR (69,560 USD). Median software developer salary in the US was 98,800 EUR (110,100 USD), and the US is known to be uniquely and grossly lucrative for software developers compared to the rest of the world. Considering 60k EUR per year individual income to be too little is a very SF tech area thing to say. As a mechanical engineer in Canada, I cannot relate to that at all.
- anovikov 5y ago
  And yet, in much cheaper Poland and even further much cheaper Ukraine software engineers easily make the same or higher amount. There is a popular topic on Ukrainian language developers forum dou.ua where they laugh about European IT salaries, exposing the obvious truth that living standards of developers there are several times lower than in Ukraine, and in the Valley, they are at best the same. That said, it's quite likely that Putin will have the last laugh.
  - chefkoch 5y ago
    I can't really believe that devs in the ukraine make as much as in germany. Why would then work a lot of devs here? Cost of living is a fraction there.
    - anovikov 5y ago
      Because the outsourcing industry is really advanced there... People just figured how to make money off foreigners. Typical salary for someone who is minimally capable of independently working (not senior level) is $4500 a month net. Rent is $400 a month, utilities are invisibly tiny (which isn't a surprise for a country with around $300 median salary). Developers have full time servants, gardeners, drivers etc., all in the middle of Europe. But, surely there is a terrible infrastructure and the country is in the slow-baking civil war and permanently on the brink of foreign invasion...
      - chefkoch 5y ago
Retric 5y ago
Paying 1/3 in after tax income on rent is generally considered affordable. In the US I have gone well past that threshold. It’s why having roommates in cities is so common.
- danielrpa 5y ago
  If you are in tech, it's not common to need a roommate outside the few super high cost of living cities in the US. Many of my SoCal friends have roommates, but none of my Dallas or Atlanta friends do (of course you can have roommates if you want, but at around <30% rent on income, it's not really required in most cases).
  - Retric 5y ago
    It also depends on how recently you graduated and how much commute you’re willing to have. I like walking to work which often means much higher rent.
schwanky 5y ago
I don't think the salaries are a bad joke, but if you bring that point up, also compare how worker rights etc. are a bad joke in the U.S. Whatever salary you get here, you will get a much more secure life than the equivalent (inflated) salary in the U.S. gives you.
MandieD 5y ago
Pssst… don’t work for “tech” companies in big German cities - work for old-school manufacturing firms in second-tier metro areas like Nürnberg and Braunschweig. Salaries are close to Munich/Berlin, housing is much closer to sane (but still rather fizzy at the moment, buy with caution!), and they’re grasping for any data scientist or DevOps engineer they can get ahold of (among others). German competence is a plus, but the only mandatory thing is that you show a willingness to learn some. Advantage of old-school manufacturing IT/dev jobs in Germany: the ones paying less than about 90k EUR are covered by the IG-Metall union rules - 35/40 hour workweek (depending on your contract) that your employer is terrified of letting you exceed, plus 30 days vacation.
- xtracto 5y ago
  My dream is working in a eastern Germany city like Halle/Saale, Jena or better yet Thangermunde, Stendal or other of those tiny towns with great communication infrastructure. All this while working remotely for a good tech company. The amount of cheap land and beautiful spaces in those ex-communist eastern German towns (Sachsen Anhalt) in amazing . I did research around those towns years ago, and got to know a lot of empty beautiful places.
  - vinni2 5y ago
    I am guessing you are a white guy. I personally know friends who got attacked with knife in Dresden.
    - xtracto 5y ago
      That's sad. Yeah racism is terrible in that part of Germany. I think magdeburg is horrible. I'm pretty far from white haha. I'm a Mexican living in Mexico. I'm not dark brown, but deeefinitely look Latino. My wife is dark brown though. We had an ok time while we lived in Germany. But we deffo got our share of racism . Nothing violent fortunately. I'd exchange that with the sad/crazy violence state that my country is at though. Constant fear...
nautilius 5y ago
A bit disingenuous to complain that the most expensive city is expensive. Just move somewhere else. Also, that equation changes completely if you have a family and kids and don't need to shell out (or save for) annual 5-6 digit day care or private school / college funds.
pjmlp 5y ago
Germany is a big place, you don't need to live in Munich. I have a pretty comfortable life here compared with what I could ever achieve in Portugal, no need to dream with FAANG salaries.
- algo_trader 5y ago
  Are software salaries even lower in Portugal? Or is it that there are simply no companies/jobs/growth? (also - doesnt the German weather get u down?)
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    You will be getting around 1000 euros netto straight out of university, with 14 month pay (christmas + summer packages). If you happen to do consulting to the major groups (telecommunications, banking, insurances, international brands like OutSytems,...) your salary will top around 2000 netto, unless you move into management. Those values are per month, and any fellow countryman/woman can gladly correct me for more up to date values. And that is when one was lucky to take an university degree and land a job on the degree's area, the minimum wage should be around 400 euros nowadays. Also you will also have the typical southern Europe culture that things get done when they are done, and in some sweatshops working conditions can be quite bad, and since not everyone can live on the main cities, sometimes that is the only software job in the area, so better not push it. Yes the weather isn't the best, however in northern Portugal we do happen to have a similar weather, and without central heating (unless you happen to live in very recent buildings from the last 20 years), otherwise common heaters and fireplace. Also the German region where I happen to live can have nice Summers as well.
rerx 5y ago
Big name US tech companies pay much higher salaries than typical for software engineers in Munich. Just browse https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&city=3722 https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&c...
- chefkoch 5y ago
  And they are a tiny fraction of german tech jobs.
saiya-jin 5y ago
You sure are picking very specific items from whole immigrating-to-another-country experience. People who emigrate purely for money tend to end up miserable from my experience. Since you mention Poland it gets into ridiculous territory - its a joke of democracy, extremely religious to the point when its not even fun to joke about. That part alone would make me leave for better places. And there are many more reasons to leave, mostly unfixable in one's lifetime. A week doesn't go by when I don't read about some horror story from Poland about pregnant woman dying due to hospital refusing to remove surgically fetus which died in her due to archaic religious laws, ending up predictably with sepsis and complete failure of organs. Women doing illegal abortions in shady places which end up in their deaths. 3rd world country proper. Utterly corrupted, and properly fucked up country just like its neighbors (I know since I was born in one of them and went countless times to Poland). The salary disparities in metropoles you mention are true mostly anywhere in developed world, and certainly true in eastern Europe at this point (Bratislava, Prague, Budapest etc.). If you plan kids its a nobrainer - every parent wants best for their children, and raising them in such society gives them already such a bad start in life. Yeah, i would take Munich above any place in Poland or countries around anytime.
invalidname 5y ago
True but 1,800€ for a good appt. is amazingly cheap. I live in Tel-Aviv and here you'd be lucky to get anything for under 2,000EUR. There's no public transport other than buses so getting anywhere is a nightmare. Cost of living is through the roof. Especially essentials like food etc. SF is MUCH worse. Healthcare there will kill you. It's easy to complain but things suck everywhere and the cost of living is rising all over. This is because of interest rates and commercialization of land ownership.
- MadSudaca 5y ago
  Finding solace by comparing oneself against outliers has never seemed to me to be a good strategy

by lnsru 5y ago

berndi 5y ago

You're right, an easy fix for this is to live and work outside of metropolitan areas where you get the same standard of living for a fraction of the cost.

forgingahead 5y ago

Out of curiousity, why do you think the salaries have been so low in Germany? For certain sectors I can imagine outsourcing has occurred to lower wage jurisdictions in Central/Eastern Europe, so maybe that has put some downward pressure on salary growth - but what about localised professions, like blue collar jobs etc? Or is it just generally white collar wages that are not that high?

chefkoch 5y ago
Equality is much higher in europe then the US. It's the same for lawyers, doctors etc.
yobbo 5y ago
The question is rather why software salaries are so high in USA. That is the real anomaly.
- danielrpa 5y ago
  Because US tech companies are the most successful in the world and there is an immense demand for workers located in US-friendly time zones. It's simple market economics. I wouldn't be surprised if there is more demand for highly skilled tech workers in California alone than any other country in the world.

codeflo 5y ago

I find the tone of entitlement a bit hard to take. Yes, cities like Munich have a huge structural problem with housing and rent. Solutions are unfortunately hard. But it’s a problem for locals just as much as it is for immigrants. And of course Poland is a nice place to live as well, why do you make that sound like it’s a bad thing? It almost sounds as if you’re regretting some personal decisions, and are now blaming the country you moved to for not living up to unrealistic expectations.

lnsru 5y ago
I am not from Poland. Some colleagues were. They did careful calculations and went home. Do you see any viable solution how to end yearly 5% rent increase in Munich? I don’t. There’s enough empty land around the city in all directions.
- qayxc 5y ago
  > Do you see any viable solution how to end yearly 5% rent increase in Munich? Don't live and work in Munich?
- iso1631 5y ago
  Why is demand increasing in Munich?
  - chefkoch 5y ago
    Because lots of companies move there and the ones that are already here generaly do well. And of course there is a general trend of (younger) people moving to the cities (ofc less now because of covid).
- codeflo 5y ago
  > I am not from Poland. Some colleagues were. They did careful calculations and went home. So what? Poland isn't a third world country by any stretch of the imagination. There's no law of nature that living in Warsaw must be worse than living in Munich.
- 5y ago

kitten_mittens_ 5y ago

Cities in the US can be very steep too. I have a ~50 sq meter apartment that runs ~€3000 in Boston. When I lived in Germany, my salary was about half what it is here in the States. Taxes are much lower, my effective tax rate is closer to ~25% (state and local) than the 42% in Germany plus the 5% Soli.

foepys 5y ago
You only pay 42% for anything above 57,000€. Germany does have progressive income tax.
- 2ion 5y ago
  Literally every "skilled immigrant" is supposedly earning 57k or more. Everything else is a strategic move to keep salaries low. So, evey skilled migrant looking to work harder and more is going to get taxed almost half of that effort plus social constributions (up to the limit) and soli (still exists). There are tax-free allowances like in night shift bonuses, but those apply not to most workers. The base tax exempted income is much too low as well. Should be at least double the current 10k or so.
  - foepys 5y ago
    No, you don't understand progressive taxation. You pay 0% on your first 10,000€, then a few percent for the next 12,000€ and so on. In 2021 in Germany for an income of 60,000€ you need to pay 11,735€ income tax, roughly 19.5%. there is also no soli tax anymore unless you are earning a top-2% income.
    - 2ion 5y ago
      I understand very well as I'm German. Anybody who is usefully skillful and economically useful will be earning north of 57k. Anybody who is all that and earning less than the equivalent German is a means to keep salaries low. There is an oversupply of cheap labour fuelling the Niedriglohnsektor already. That also means that high-performing individuals with an already appropriately high base income will be paying 42% on any € pay increase, which is not a good incentive to make people work more and/or more stressful and/or more highly skilled jobs /in Germany/. Why here, if you can be highly skilled and high earning in Switzerland and be able to achieve a multiple of net income and get a better pension system to boot?

Tarsul 5y ago

Munich is top 3 in most expensive German cities. Still, German city hubs are comparatively cheaper than those in other countries (e.g. Amsterdam, Paris, London, Barcelona) and with 60k€ you're around top 30% in Germany. I post these statistics just to say that other western european countries arent better than Germany in these regards. Also, I don't agree with the assignment that the salaries are a joke; it's just that the inequality in salaries is not as big as in America or elsewhere. Yes, this means that highly qualified people don't earn gangbusters (well, you could if you go freelancer) but this works for as long as there's no (significant) brain drain to other countries, which probably there is not as Germans like Germany. So, what I'm saying is that the "low" salaries are in a way the price for Germany being a nice place to live in.

smnrchrds 5y ago

Median household income in the US in 2019 was 62,400 EUR (69,560 USD). Median software developer salary in the US was 98,800 EUR (110,100 USD), and the US is known to be uniquely and grossly lucrative for software developers compared to the rest of the world. Considering 60k EUR per year individual income to be too little is a very SF tech area thing to say. As a mechanical engineer in Canada, I cannot relate to that at all.

anovikov 5y ago
And yet, in much cheaper Poland and even further much cheaper Ukraine software engineers easily make the same or higher amount. There is a popular topic on Ukrainian language developers forum dou.ua where they laugh about European IT salaries, exposing the obvious truth that living standards of developers there are several times lower than in Ukraine, and in the Valley, they are at best the same. That said, it's quite likely that Putin will have the last laugh.
- chefkoch 5y ago
  I can't really believe that devs in the ukraine make as much as in germany. Why would then work a lot of devs here? Cost of living is a fraction there.
  - anovikov 5y ago
    Because the outsourcing industry is really advanced there... People just figured how to make money off foreigners. Typical salary for someone who is minimally capable of independently working (not senior level) is $4500 a month net. Rent is $400 a month, utilities are invisibly tiny (which isn't a surprise for a country with around $300 median salary). Developers have full time servants, gardeners, drivers etc., all in the middle of Europe. But, surely there is a terrible infrastructure and the country is in the slow-baking civil war and permanently on the brink of foreign invasion...
    - chefkoch 5y ago

Retric 5y ago

Paying 1/3 in after tax income on rent is generally considered affordable. In the US I have gone well past that threshold. It’s why having roommates in cities is so common.

danielrpa 5y ago
If you are in tech, it's not common to need a roommate outside the few super high cost of living cities in the US. Many of my SoCal friends have roommates, but none of my Dallas or Atlanta friends do (of course you can have roommates if you want, but at around <30% rent on income, it's not really required in most cases).
- Retric 5y ago
  It also depends on how recently you graduated and how much commute you’re willing to have. I like walking to work which often means much higher rent.

schwanky 5y ago

I don't think the salaries are a bad joke, but if you bring that point up, also compare how worker rights etc. are a bad joke in the U.S. Whatever salary you get here, you will get a much more secure life than the equivalent (inflated) salary in the U.S. gives you.

MandieD 5y ago

Pssst… don’t work for “tech” companies in big German cities - work for old-school manufacturing firms in second-tier metro areas like Nürnberg and Braunschweig. Salaries are close to Munich/Berlin, housing is much closer to sane (but still rather fizzy at the moment, buy with caution!), and they’re grasping for any data scientist or DevOps engineer they can get ahold of (among others). German competence is a plus, but the only mandatory thing is that you show a willingness to learn some. Advantage of old-school manufacturing IT/dev jobs in Germany: the ones paying less than about 90k EUR are covered by the IG-Metall union rules - 35/40 hour workweek (depending on your contract) that your employer is terrified of letting you exceed, plus 30 days vacation.

xtracto 5y ago
My dream is working in a eastern Germany city like Halle/Saale, Jena or better yet Thangermunde, Stendal or other of those tiny towns with great communication infrastructure. All this while working remotely for a good tech company. The amount of cheap land and beautiful spaces in those ex-communist eastern German towns (Sachsen Anhalt) in amazing . I did research around those towns years ago, and got to know a lot of empty beautiful places.
- vinni2 5y ago
  I am guessing you are a white guy. I personally know friends who got attacked with knife in Dresden.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    That's sad. Yeah racism is terrible in that part of Germany. I think magdeburg is horrible. I'm pretty far from white haha. I'm a Mexican living in Mexico. I'm not dark brown, but deeefinitely look Latino. My wife is dark brown though. We had an ok time while we lived in Germany. But we deffo got our share of racism . Nothing violent fortunately. I'd exchange that with the sad/crazy violence state that my country is at though. Constant fear...

nautilius 5y ago

A bit disingenuous to complain that the most expensive city is expensive. Just move somewhere else. Also, that equation changes completely if you have a family and kids and don't need to shell out (or save for) annual 5-6 digit day care or private school / college funds.

pjmlp 5y ago

Germany is a big place, you don't need to live in Munich. I have a pretty comfortable life here compared with what I could ever achieve in Portugal, no need to dream with FAANG salaries.

algo_trader 5y ago
Are software salaries even lower in Portugal? Or is it that there are simply no companies/jobs/growth? (also - doesnt the German weather get u down?)
- pjmlp 5y ago
  You will be getting around 1000 euros netto straight out of university, with 14 month pay (christmas + summer packages). If you happen to do consulting to the major groups (telecommunications, banking, insurances, international brands like OutSytems,...) your salary will top around 2000 netto, unless you move into management. Those values are per month, and any fellow countryman/woman can gladly correct me for more up to date values. And that is when one was lucky to take an university degree and land a job on the degree's area, the minimum wage should be around 400 euros nowadays. Also you will also have the typical southern Europe culture that things get done when they are done, and in some sweatshops working conditions can be quite bad, and since not everyone can live on the main cities, sometimes that is the only software job in the area, so better not push it. Yes the weather isn't the best, however in northern Portugal we do happen to have a similar weather, and without central heating (unless you happen to live in very recent buildings from the last 20 years), otherwise common heaters and fireplace. Also the German region where I happen to live can have nice Summers as well.

rerx 5y ago

Big name US tech companies pay much higher salaries than typical for software engineers in Munich. Just browse https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&city=3722 https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&c...

chefkoch 5y ago
And they are a tiny fraction of german tech jobs.

saiya-jin 5y ago

You sure are picking very specific items from whole immigrating-to-another-country experience. People who emigrate purely for money tend to end up miserable from my experience. Since you mention Poland it gets into ridiculous territory - its a joke of democracy, extremely religious to the point when its not even fun to joke about. That part alone would make me leave for better places. And there are many more reasons to leave, mostly unfixable in one's lifetime. A week doesn't go by when I don't read about some horror story from Poland about pregnant woman dying due to hospital refusing to remove surgically fetus which died in her due to archaic religious laws, ending up predictably with sepsis and complete failure of organs. Women doing illegal abortions in shady places which end up in their deaths. 3rd world country proper. Utterly corrupted, and properly fucked up country just like its neighbors (I know since I was born in one of them and went countless times to Poland). The salary disparities in metropoles you mention are true mostly anywhere in developed world, and certainly true in eastern Europe at this point (Bratislava, Prague, Budapest etc.). If you plan kids its a nobrainer - every parent wants best for their children, and raising them in such society gives them already such a bad start in life. Yeah, i would take Munich above any place in Poland or countries around anytime.

invalidname 5y ago

True but 1,800€ for a good appt. is amazingly cheap. I live in Tel-Aviv and here you'd be lucky to get anything for under 2,000EUR. There's no public transport other than buses so getting anywhere is a nightmare. Cost of living is through the roof. Especially essentials like food etc. SF is MUCH worse. Healthcare there will kill you. It's easy to complain but things suck everywhere and the cost of living is rising all over. This is because of interest rates and commercialization of land ownership.

MadSudaca 5y ago
Finding solace by comparing oneself against outliers has never seemed to me to be a good strategy