[raxxorrax]

There is a profound lack of developers to start. I was in a German startup and it was awesome. Product didn't pan out for the mass market (medical devices) but the few devices we build by hand are now used for studies in clinics. So it wasn't at all wasted. Software sucks though because I wrote it shortly after finishing my studies with negligible experience. But it works at least. I got support from another developer at some point into the project, but finding qualified people was basically impossible.

Still, developers are probably mostly active in traditional industries. Manufacturing needs software experts for example, the product isn't necessarily software itself. There are advantages and disadvantages to that. Overall I don't think Germany/EU is friendly for startups. There are grants for some business ideas, but it is mostly older established folk that know the details of successfully getting capital.

In general, I think there is a huge fear of being "left behind digitally". Not so much in the industry itself than in politics or on a personal social level. The demographics responsible for implementing digital innovations often speak english and just use international solutions. There is little "local patriotism" in software. Perhaps there is also a strong idealism which lets people get involved in open source instead of creating business models and market digital services. Again, advantages and disadvantages.

edit: To the question about the kind of medical devices perhaps in reaction to the "shitty" software I mentioned: medical devices that cannot kill you and were mostly for diagnostic support. It was safe, the software "architecture" was all over the place though.

[ChuckNorris89]

>There is a profound lack of developers to start.

I don't think so. Judging by the low salaries most companies are offering in parallel with the huge number of devs on reddit from outside of the EU wanting to move to Germany it doesn't look like there's a shortage of developers, quite the contrary.

If there was a shortage, pretty shore we'd see higher salaries being offered.

[pmontra]

Or they don't want to pay more than that so they don't find developers. I saw friends moving from Italy to the UK, Germany and the USA because of that. Maybe developers from Germany move to other countries as well.

[nogabebop23]

Germany recruit and attracts a lot from Eastern Europe, specifically Romania. This definitely helps keep salaries lower

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I have worked with Romanian software developers, in the past.

Basically, I was quite impressed with their brilliance and almost insane work ethic.

The ones I worked with were kind of unorganized, but that was a small sample.

[oblio]

Romania barely has 100k devs in total, I doubt they move the needle that much.

[Grollicus]

I think there's a cultural difference. Developers don't seem to be trusted as much here, which means software development isn't that much of a difficult job which would merit higher pay. The "meat" of the work - architecture, design etc. doesn't seem to be done by software developers so much as by specialized roles, often people who don't or almost don't code. These roles are paid comparably better, but if you lump all the web devs and people implementing business logic into the same category you'll get lower wages on average.

[raxxorrax]

That might indeed be true, but it can probably be detrimental to the software industry as a whole. I think at least basic coding experience is needed to plan architecture and design maintainable software to start with. Especially for getting experience for the viability of available solutions.

I have seen more software projects fail because of over-engineering for alleged maintainability, extensibility and a too generic design. Some would say that violates KISS. Many have shifted to more iterative development, which doesn't exclude the need for a solid architecture and extendable software, but it can improve time to an MVP. Quality can suffer, but you also gain experience.

Business logic can be as complex as you want. In fact one of the highest paid field resolves around optimizations in this particular field. SAP is an example here but there are others. "Cubing" data on your normal business data server isn't trivial, but allows to answer questions about trends management is very interested in and they have all the money bags.

Still, developers aren't payed that badly to be honest and you have options to reduce your workload, so that you don't end up with 60h work weeks or regular crunch. Projects might take as long as some unrelated airports in some setups I guess. If you code in a quiet smaller city, you can kiss 6 figures goodbye of course, but in many cases you are the best paid person in the room.

[pythonwizz]

What kind of medical devices did you build?

[raxxorrax]

Sorry, I am not available for hire right now. I have some experience with regulated software for medical devices, but any generic developer could learn the regulatory requirements with a little effort. Mostly related to ISO 62304 and in general ISO 13485. The tools to meet regulatory compliance are general tools developers employ in most projects already. The important part is that the development process is formally defined.

The device I worked on was classified as IIa. There was a focus on a thorough risk analysis and we ensured mechanism were in place to shut down the device in any case of emergency.

I don't want to say what kind of device it was, it had to do with higher frequency ultrasonic sensory.

[pythonwizz]

We are starting to develop a medical device, so if you are interested please provide your contact information.