4 ms·

My god, I live in the same city and I'd love to work there. Unfortunately, they've only been hiring senior engineers for years now and I'm not at that level yet

by Sakos 4y ago

My god, I live in the same city and I'd love to work there. Unfortunately, they've only been hiring senior engineers for years now and I'm not at that level yet. Maybe someday.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
I guess they're not flush with cash. From what I noticed most small German/EU companies developing complex SW projects like this, that aren't backed by well funded VC funds, don't bother with hiring dozens of juniors like other unicorns usually do since they don't have the money. They prefer to wait and only hire the "perfect candidate", usually experienced seniors withe the right skills willing to work for the salaries they can offer, which usually aren't much. I also have a DeepL competitor in my EU country and their hiring practices are similar, rarely hiring, and mostly senior devs and ML PHD grads from the local university. And they're not paying insane salaries either, which probably explains why they hire so rarely. It doesn't help that up until recently Meta and Google were sucking away all the local ML talent to their offices in US/London/Zurich for n times the local ML wages. DepL is probably in a business that's difficult to monetize successfully because: 1) it's just difficult to successfully polish and scale up products of big-tech complexity when you don't have big-tech money. 2) many situations still require translations be done by a certified professional (educational, legal, immigration, documents, contracts, medical records, etc) 3) for the casual use case of tourist/travels, Google's point the camera at things and get the translation, is something DeepL is missing, and those consumers are unlikely to pay any subscription fees when Google does it for "free" anyway 4) human certified translators are still relatively cheap in the EU due to the oversupply of grads in this domain (their wages are trash most of the times) so there's no economic market pressure to automate humans out of this job 5) It's rare, but sometimes DeepL still makes pretty big mistakes, making it unusable for professional scenarios without humans proofing the final result (once, it translated the German word "Post" from a sentence to "the German post office" in English, even though the text was about the Austrian post office lol. I guess it's because their models were trained on texts from Germany mostly so "Post" in German texts must always be "the German post office" to them even though German is officially used in ~5 countries. Or sometimes DeepL emits several words from a sentence changing the meaning completely, etc.) The company I work for has the webpage UI in nearly a dozen languages, and all translations are done by professional humans, because despite DeepL being the best, it's not always perfect, and no company will risk its reputation by having translation mistakes on its home page.
- indigo945 4y ago
  Software engineering salaries are just very low in Europe in general, when compared to the US. A junior in a major city in the US with a Bachelor's degree and no relevant job experience will make more than a senior with 10+ years of experience in Germany. I'm not exaggerating: Kununu.com has €86,000 p.a. as the top-end for a "realistic" software engineering wage in Germany, glassdoor.com lists $84,000 p.a. as the low end for their "most likely" range.
  - willsmith72 4y ago
    Yep, worked in Germany and moving to North America, can confirm. Base salaries are still a bit lower but the kicker is the missing equity
    - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      Can I ask with what visa did you go to the US? L1?
      - willsmith72 4y ago
        Canada so much easier, with express entry.
  - poisonborz 4y ago
    I can't believe this still always comes up when discussing US vs any other country's salaries. Yes, a country where you have zero public healthcare, social services, no public higher education or state pension funds can have lower income tax thus higher salaries. And then pay 10k for a hospital visit. I will happly choose the other way every time.
    - indigo945 4y ago
      Those salaries are gross salaries, not net. The much higher tax burden is on top of that.
rurban 4y ago
Not only seniors. Just python and go experts. https://jobs.deepl.com/ https://jobs.deepl.com/

by Sakos 4y ago

My god, I live in the same city and I'd love to work there. Unfortunately, they've only been hiring senior engineers for years now and I'm not at that level yet. Maybe someday.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

I guess they're not flush with cash. From what I noticed most small German/EU companies developing complex SW projects like this, that aren't backed by well funded VC funds, don't bother with hiring dozens of juniors like other unicorns usually do since they don't have the money. They prefer to wait and only hire the "perfect candidate", usually experienced seniors withe the right skills willing to work for the salaries they can offer, which usually aren't much. I also have a DeepL competitor in my EU country and their hiring practices are similar, rarely hiring, and mostly senior devs and ML PHD grads from the local university. And they're not paying insane salaries either, which probably explains why they hire so rarely. It doesn't help that up until recently Meta and Google were sucking away all the local ML talent to their offices in US/London/Zurich for n times the local ML wages. DepL is probably in a business that's difficult to monetize successfully because: 1) it's just difficult to successfully polish and scale up products of big-tech complexity when you don't have big-tech money. 2) many situations still require translations be done by a certified professional (educational, legal, immigration, documents, contracts, medical records, etc) 3) for the casual use case of tourist/travels, Google's point the camera at things and get the translation, is something DeepL is missing, and those consumers are unlikely to pay any subscription fees when Google does it for "free" anyway 4) human certified translators are still relatively cheap in the EU due to the oversupply of grads in this domain (their wages are trash most of the times) so there's no economic market pressure to automate humans out of this job 5) It's rare, but sometimes DeepL still makes pretty big mistakes, making it unusable for professional scenarios without humans proofing the final result (once, it translated the German word "Post" from a sentence to "the German post office" in English, even though the text was about the Austrian post office lol. I guess it's because their models were trained on texts from Germany mostly so "Post" in German texts must always be "the German post office" to them even though German is officially used in ~5 countries. Or sometimes DeepL emits several words from a sentence changing the meaning completely, etc.) The company I work for has the webpage UI in nearly a dozen languages, and all translations are done by professional humans, because despite DeepL being the best, it's not always perfect, and no company will risk its reputation by having translation mistakes on its home page.

indigo945 4y ago
Software engineering salaries are just very low in Europe in general, when compared to the US. A junior in a major city in the US with a Bachelor's degree and no relevant job experience will make more than a senior with 10+ years of experience in Germany. I'm not exaggerating: Kununu.com has €86,000 p.a. as the top-end for a "realistic" software engineering wage in Germany, glassdoor.com lists $84,000 p.a. as the low end for their "most likely" range.
- willsmith72 4y ago
  Yep, worked in Germany and moving to North America, can confirm. Base salaries are still a bit lower but the kicker is the missing equity
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    Can I ask with what visa did you go to the US? L1?
    - willsmith72 4y ago
      Canada so much easier, with express entry.
- poisonborz 4y ago
  I can't believe this still always comes up when discussing US vs any other country's salaries. Yes, a country where you have zero public healthcare, social services, no public higher education or state pension funds can have lower income tax thus higher salaries. And then pay 10k for a hospital visit. I will happly choose the other way every time.
  - indigo945 4y ago
    Those salaries are gross salaries, not net. The much higher tax burden is on top of that.

rurban 4y ago

Not only seniors. Just python and go experts. https://jobs.deepl.com/ https://jobs.deepl.com/