4 ms·

It seems to me that I've heard some complaints from within Germany that the Blue Card is not so much about getting the best talent, but in fact is about getting

It seems to me that I've heard some complaints from within Germany that the Blue Card is not so much about getting the best talent, but in fact is about getting the cheapest talent. The salary requirements are quite low, and in my experience, startups in Berlin have their eyes on those requirements when they start talking to you about offers. I'm not sure about the source of the complaints, but I would imagine that native German talent is not too happy about having their compensation undercut by foreigners who might happily work for the Blue Card minimums in order to come here. Just my speculation. It would be not unlike the H1-B situation in the U.S.

bayesianhorse 12y ago
The Blue Card has a salary minimum of 37.128€. That might not sound much, but I'd say this amount is far from "undercutting" entry-level salaries. The problem with the theories about undercutting wages of "native talent" is that there is virtually no unemployed native talent. Of course, all Germans believe they are paid too little. The only way wages would rise dramatically would be if employers went into a crazy competition mode, and they seem to know that this would be bad for every employer. Higher wages only serve to "steal" employees from another employer, they don't increase the work force per se. There is no comprehensive way to tell if immigration lowers salaries, since you can't just add and subtract jobs in the complex system of a national economy. Also, I find it hard to justify any right for "native talent" to shut out "non-native talent". Both are human beings and there is no such thing as a birth-right to higher compensation.
- thejdude 12y ago
  Still, we NEED higher salaries in Germany. I've seen so many people waste away on stupid code that should never have been written. (Instead, how about using a framework that automates away 90% of grunt development?) Most of the time I'm working in projects that I could have written myself in months, and they have two-digits of developers working on it for years sometimes. The incentives are exactly the opposite of what made Germany big in high-tech manufacturing. We treat developers as the mediocre, cheap code monkeys they often are (using the word "mediocre" so I don't have to swear on HN).
  - bayesianhorse 12y ago
    How would higher salaries make coding more productive? That seems to be an unwarranted assumption. Developer productivity and project management is a large field. I sometimes feel that programmers, especially the idealistic ones, tend to overestimate their own performance, and underestimate the problems of project management.
    - thejdude 12y ago
      It's definitely a large field, and management is hard in its own way. The way to measure developer performance is easy though: you have to look back instead of forward, then you see what people get (or rather: got) done. Sure, if you're an idealist and aren't used to estimation, you tend to underestimate the effort for a given feature or bug.

bayesianhorse 12y ago

The Blue Card has a salary minimum of 37.128€. That might not sound much, but I'd say this amount is far from "undercutting" entry-level salaries. The problem with the theories about undercutting wages of "native talent" is that there is virtually no unemployed native talent. Of course, all Germans believe they are paid too little. The only way wages would rise dramatically would be if employers went into a crazy competition mode, and they seem to know that this would be bad for every employer. Higher wages only serve to "steal" employees from another employer, they don't increase the work force per se. There is no comprehensive way to tell if immigration lowers salaries, since you can't just add and subtract jobs in the complex system of a national economy. Also, I find it hard to justify any right for "native talent" to shut out "non-native talent". Both are human beings and there is no such thing as a birth-right to higher compensation.

thejdude 12y ago
Still, we NEED higher salaries in Germany. I've seen so many people waste away on stupid code that should never have been written. (Instead, how about using a framework that automates away 90% of grunt development?) Most of the time I'm working in projects that I could have written myself in months, and they have two-digits of developers working on it for years sometimes. The incentives are exactly the opposite of what made Germany big in high-tech manufacturing. We treat developers as the mediocre, cheap code monkeys they often are (using the word "mediocre" so I don't have to swear on HN).
- bayesianhorse 12y ago
  How would higher salaries make coding more productive? That seems to be an unwarranted assumption. Developer productivity and project management is a large field. I sometimes feel that programmers, especially the idealistic ones, tend to overestimate their own performance, and underestimate the problems of project management.
  - thejdude 12y ago
    It's definitely a large field, and management is hard in its own way. The way to measure developer performance is easy though: you have to look back instead of forward, then you see what people get (or rather: got) done. Sure, if you're an idealist and aren't used to estimation, you tend to underestimate the effort for a given feature or bug.