[Vitaly]

I went to our local embassy in Tel Aviv but they were not very helpful, quite hostile actually. When I asked about the different kinds of visa, saying that I can apply in different possible ways (as self employed, as an employee of my own company sent overseas, etc) depending on which gives me the best chance to get the visa they said literally "we are not here to help you get into Germany, we are not a market for visas. you choose by yourself how do you want to apply and we'll send it back home for approval/denial"

so, I found a german lawyer over the internet to get advice.

Long story short (this is not legal advice, btw ;)

- self employment visa has some bizarre requirements like "investing 250K EUR and employing 5 locals" to get it "automatically". you can still get it with less but you'll have to prove your 'economic worth' to the region, which might not be trivial and needs a lot of paperwork.

- there is another kind of self employed visa, which is sometimes called an 'artist visa' and it is given to artists, teachers, engineers and some other well defined categories of self employed people. The problem with this kind of visa is that software engineers are not listed on the list, and are not legally considered 'engineers'.

me, I'll probably take my chances with the first kind. going to start the application process soon.

BTW, if anyone has any corroborating or conflicting evidence, I'll be very glad to hear it.