[Czarcasm]

Flawless communication between team members is important when developing complex products. If my team was primarily comprised of people who only fluently speak German, and we are located in Germany, is it not reasonable for me to set a requirement that new candidates must speak fluent German?

Why are you entitled to have people speak your language, when you are the immigrant?

[Workaccount2]

They can speak German, the just can't speak it to a level that would fool a life-long speaker.

I work with plenty of engineers who speak English as a second (or even third) language. It's not really an issue.

[JAlexoid]

That's quite a stretch.

I have experienced breakdown in communications due to English not being good enough many, many times.

There's plenty of stories in comments here, about how bad offshore teams are. In most cases it's just a result of poor communications(due to lack of English proficiency). I've had to switch to other languages to explain some basic things about "what the client actually wanted", because of breakdown in communications.

[MrGilbert]

Because it's equally hard to find good workforce here in Germany. Besides, I expect every IT worker to be able to at least understand, if not speak English in a way that two foreigners can understand each other pretty well. How else did you acquire your knowledge? By only falling back to literature in your language? That seems kind of limiting if you are working in IT.

Your "entitlement" argument sounds a bit harsh for me, to be honest.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Because it's equally hard to find good workforce here in Germany.

1) There's no shortage of developers just a shortage of pay.

2) It's also hard to find doctors, that doesn't mean hospitals should compromise and let everyone practice who doesn't speak the language practice medicine just because there's a shortage.

Similarly, a lot of companies don't want to compromise on the language skillset, especially if most of their products are only for the local market that will be used mainly by other German speakers. So having devs not fluent in the local language and not understand the little details and semantics in requirements written in German, means a lot of time wasted with translations and clarifications.

It's the first argument HN brings against offshoring, saying it doesn't work because foreign devs don't understand the business and semantics of a foreign language or culture. Why do you think it suddenly doesn't also apply with foreign workers on-shore?

>How else did you acquire your knowledge? By only falling back to literature in your language? That seems kind of limiting if you are working in IT.

The limiting factor is not other developers, although it could be sometimes. It's the managers who don't use English on a regular basis like IT workers do, especially if like I said before, their company mostly caters to the German speaking market, and they wish to address developers directly for questions and feedback in meetings without only reaching out to the German speakers in the team to have to transalte further.

If you have a company meeting in the US or UK, is it not in the local language ? Why would any other country be different?

[shiroiuma]

>If you have a company meeting in the US or UK, is it not in the local language ? Why would any other country be different?

It's really simple: English is the international language of business. So a German IT professional can easily get a job in the US or UK, because every college-educated German speaks English fluently. Same goes for every such person in China, India, Russia, France, everywhere really. So US and UK companies routinely hire professionals from outside those countries.

The reverse isn't true: how many Brits or Americans can speak German well enough to relocate to Germany and get an IT/software job there? Almost none. So German companies are limited to candidates from Germany, Austria, and part of Switzerland and maybe a few people from some other nearby countries maybe. American and UK companies, OTOH, have all the best candidates from around the world available to them.

>1) There's no shortage of developers just a shortage of pay.

Sure, offering more money than any other company in Germany would probably get a company their pick of candidates. But it'll also increase their costs a lot and make them less competitive internationally. Don't forget though: German companies aren't just competing with other German companies for candidates: they're competing with companies in other countries, especially English-speaking countries. German candidates aren't stuck in Germany: they can easily move to English countries and work there too. Can German companies really afford FAANG-level salaries?

>2) It's also hard to find doctors, that doesn't mean hospitals should compromise and let everyone practice who doesn't speak the language practice medicine just because there's a shortage.

If you have people dying left and right because there's no medical treatment due to a doctor shortage, then yes. At some point, there really is a such thing as a labor shortage and you have to adapt.