[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.