[Roritharr]

Many Large Engineering companies in Germany have their headquarters in relatively small towns. See Waldorf for SAP, Wolfsburg for VW, Zuffenhausen vor Porsche... There's many examples. Germany is pretty dense so many services are available Nationwide, and even the smallest towns usually have a few food delivery places that deliver to them. Normally the next larger city is less than an hour's drive by car away, so it's very doable to live in small towns. It also has a bit to do with salaries in Germany, which tend to be on the low side, even for highly qualified engineers if you compare it to SV levels.

[deng]

Walldorf at least is 15min from Heidelberg/Mannheim. Zuffenhausen is literally a district of Stuttgart. And Wolfsburg is a city of 120.000 people, and already VW has to pay a good "Wüstenzulage" (desert bonus) to get top talent, so they can afford taking the ICE (fast train), which takes an hour to/from Berlin.

[Roritharr]

Sure, but neither Heidelberg/Mannheim nor Stuttgart and Wolfsburg really are that meet the criteria that american people consider "big cities".

We don't have that many million people hubs in Germany so it's more common. And even with "Wüstenzulage" many Engineering salaries at VW are nowhere compared to SV salaries for engineers.