[toomanybeersies]

Are wages in Germany not competitive? Are software engineers in Germany going hungry because they don't get paid enough?

If people want to be greedy and run to the country where they get paid the most that's their prerogative, but they aren't starving back home.

I left my home country in search of riches, but that was a choice. It's not like I wasn't living a comfortable life back in the motherland. I don't think that (employed) software engineers anywhere in the world are going hungry.

[zxcmx]

I didn’t go hungry but I didn’t feel like I was getting ahead. I felt like assets and capital were getting returns, like my cost of living was going up but my wages weren’t. I left (not Germany and not to the U.S).

People already well off were fine but people who had to work for a living were not being rewarded.

There are many reasons not to leave a place (family and security paramount) but if multinational companies are perfectly happy to move jobs around I think workers should feel equally free to vote with their feet in the much more limited way we are able.

[gaius]

If people want to be greedy

Why are engineers “greedy” for wanting a fair wage but European managers not “greedy” for underpaying Workers and keeping the value produced for themselves?

[icebraining]

In my limited experience, European managers don't keep the value to themselves, they are just worse at obtaining it in the first place (lower revenue per employee).

[ahartmetz]

I have heard stories...

Large company X has hundreds of people working on software that could be done by a team 1/20th the size in 1/2 of the time. Lower / middle managers want to expand their influence by having more people working for them, so they try to impede efficiency as much as possible(!!!).

So, upper management wants to increase the size of the money bag (mostly a good incentive), lower / middle management only wants to take as much as possible out of that bag. Upper management doesn't know enough about software to reign in middle management. Because if you are going to tell people how to do their work, you better know very well what you are talking about.

[icebraining]

Yes, obviously they aren't competitive. And the word "problem" had no requirement for starving last I checked.