[Matthias247]

The pay well compared to other german companies. However not compared to US/FAANG companies.

As a reference, most of those companies will pay engineers according to the IG Metall Tarif, which can e.g. be found there: https://www.igmetall.de/docs_MuE_ERA_Entgelte_Juni2018_78d3e...

This is per month, and there's 13.26 monthly salaries per year.

Engineers will typically not receive the highest lines which are reserved for managers, but something below (e.g. EG15 in Baden-Württemberg).

There are some company specific and performance bonuses on top of that, which might be up to 30%, but are typically far less (and often not performance but age-based). In the end things top out far below 100kEur for most engineers there, with no chances to get higher without moving into people management.

I worked at one of those companies (not the listed ones, but a similar one) for a couple of years, and found these things pretty frustrating after a few years.

[orbifold]

So EG15 at 13.26 monthly salaries works out to about 70000, which is roughly a Assistenzarzt (medical doctor) makes after 4 years of work. If that is indeed true it is pretty pathetic. From what I've heard of people moving into industry with doctorates in physics, some of them make significantly more. One is a director of research at Bosch, the other works at IBM in Germany. Both had starting salaries north of 100k. Same is true of compensation at Siemens, I guess the key is to not be payed according to some Tarif.

[Matthias247]

Yes, if you get outside of Tarif things might look better. But at the company I worked this was reserved for >= senior manager positions.

Technically there existed individual contributor levels on that level. However they were only given to senior managers who failed at their job of leading people, instead of ICs that had been really good at what they were doing.