[rockyj]

Yeah, the numbers in Germany are not so rosy. If these numbers are true, we are looking at -

- An "average" salary of around 65K / year

- This after (an average of) 5-6 rounds of interviews

- 6 months of "probation", with only 2 weeks of notice

- And all after 4-6 years of degree/s and 4-5 years of experience (so around 10 years of investment)

Then after taxation 65K annually means around 3500/month in pocket. Then with the current prices - around 1200 goes in rent alone. Not a lot of room to spend after that. Then, prices keep going up and even a simple (new) car is around 20,000. Not to mention the stress / savings you have to keep since people can be let go anytime. To top it, there is a ceiling in Germany - unless you are extra-ordinary forget making above 100K ever even after 25 years of experience.

IT / software dev is a "barely survivable" kind of job in Germany right (sadly) now. I do not recommend it to kids in school/uni anymore (again unfortunately).

[deng]

It's the median salary: 50% of people earn more than 62.4k. 10% earn more than 80k. It's still low compared to the US, but what isn't?

For this, you get proper health and unemployment insurance, usually 30 days of paid vacation, up to 6 weeks of sick leave with full salary, up to 10 days to take care of sick children with full salary, paternal leave, the right to work part-time if desired, and so on. I don't know where you get the "people can be let go anytime" have from, because Germany is pretty famous for its "Kündigungsschutz" and it's very hard to let people go because of performance issues alone, which is why things like stack ranking and performance improvement plans pretty much do not exist here.

I can understand if young people without kids do not care about these things and just want the money. However, once you get older, you'll see the advantages.

[rockyj]

I agree with you partly. The benefits are great & fairly above international norms. But I do not agree with the "firing protection" anymore. Last year alone I saw thousands let go in Berlin in fairly large organizations like neobanks for example. I myself saw my previous employer let go of 30% of the staff over the year. A simple Google search of - "Berlin IT firings 2025" will give you a picture.

[mixmastamyk]

That’s interesting, how does hard-to-fire law combine with a company that needs to have layoffs?

[yobbo]

Hard-to-fire typically means only specific and provable reasons are valid.

"Shrinking the org" is a valid reason.

[menaerus]

I guess it works for companies which are not part of the union?

[Ylpertnodi]

"The union" should be "a union", of which, companies are rarely a part of ie zero. Their workforce may be a member of a union, some equals in grade may belong to different unions.

[menaerus]

Thank you for your generous correction but you could rather address the point I was trying to make.

[yobbo]

On page 41 you can find average, median, and top10 salaries for Germany by experience levels. Junior/regular/senior medians are 52.5k/60k/67.5k.

Average is 62.4k.

[simfoo]

Whenever I read those reports I can't help but wonder who they are actually asking. I'm definitely in a bubble working in Munich and either for US subsidiaries or at least close to them (automotive, ai, robotics, aerospace and others) - but it's a pretty big bubble because it's easily thousands of engineers within one or two hops. And we all make north of 100k€! No-one with more than 5-10 years of experience would accept an offer below 90k and I know a lot of folks that earn 150k+. The statistics always feel very low-balled

[rednalexa]

This experience is common in my circles even in the US as well as those I know in Europe. May be a bi-modal distribution where some industries are vastly underpaying while some industries are the opposite and paying well above the average. This seems to have happened in a lot of career spaces. The vast majority will be in the first group too, which is why sampling would get a result like the one in the survey?

[KellyCriterion]

Want a bet?

Loose your job right now and you wont see this 100k+ for a veryyyyy looooong time. People are taking cuts of 50% just to get any employment.

[KellyCriterion]

Ah getting downvoted by someone who is very likely not looking for a job currently in Germany? :-D

[rockyj]

Yeah, don't get why you were down voted. What reality are people living in and how do I transfer in that timeline

[funkyfiddler369]

Germans won't tell you how much they earn, ever. It keeps salaries down in all industries.

These fucking Tarifvertraege have kept salaries from growing, too. The people would have pushed a long time ago but the truth is masked well enough.

Those who don't believe the shit, earn more. It is sad and the change and progress happens elsewhere. Enjoy one or two decades of German companies looking like they still matter. Nobody will account for the reasons later on. It's a shame.

And an average of 65k to the average person is gooood.

[NoiseBert69]

These numbers are far off reality.

80k€+ isn't a high salary for job in a Tarifunternehmen if you stay with it for 5+ years.

Many of my colleagues cracked 100k€ this year without being AT and having crazy high position ratings.

[pbmonster]

> Many of my colleagues cracked 100k€ this year without being AT and having crazy high position ratings.

And for each of those guys there's 2 people working for 48k and happy about it. They've been at the same shop for 15 years, in a team of the only 3 people doing software in the entire company. Probably somewhere a bit rural, and/or north of Frankfurt.

IGM is not the default.

[KellyCriterion]

Let me guess: They are working in one of the IGM-connected companies?

[nasmorn]

But are they? A Berlin startup was paying this average salary to the Indian/Pakistani devs they sponsored and fully expected to jump ship in the next 12 months. Why would they not pay 70k-75k and have your pick in the upper half of the domestic market.

[nine_k]

Maybe recent immigrants were the key demographic polled? That would easily describe the skew.

[yodsanklai]

It's a bit more complicated than this. First, averages hide a lot of variability, both in skillsets and salaries. You have SWEs earning very high income. Also there's the question of opportunities. Some of these SWEs/devs could have had better prospects in different fields, while others not. And there's also the question of whether you like what you do. For many people, programming is a passion.

[nine_k]

What are some jobs that pay significantly more? Is it easier to be a factory worker? (I suppose factory workers cannot be let go as easily.) Does work in finance, or in medicine, or some other highly educated job pay materially more?

[pbmonster]

Yes, medicine pays better, median is around 100k but with significant back loading towards the second half of the career.

Finance can be (much) better, but feels like far fewer jobs, especially outside Frankfurt. I'm not sure finding a high paying finance jobs is easier than finding a software job at the German office of an American firm (which pay similarly well).

> I suppose factory workers cannot be let go as easily.

It's important to look at comparable companies. If you're a SE at a company with many factory workers, firing the SE is usually equally as difficult as firing the factory worker. They usually have the same protections and are in the same union. Software shops just tend to be smaller and those have lower job security.

[carlosjobim]

Yes to all of those jobs. If you move from Germany to the United States.

There's a reason why some European countries loosed up to 30% of their population to America-bound emigration.

Consider also that if you're a German, your own country hates you and your very existence. The US doesn't have anything against Germans.

[throw20251220]

> - 6 months of "probation", with only 2 weeks of notice

Talk to Arbeitsamt, hiring in Germany is a huge risk as soon as your company is 10+ people. By the way, the two weeks notice goes both ways. There’s a risk on both sides.

> - And all after 4-6 years of degree/s and 4-5 years of experience (so around 10 years of investment)

Everyone is a Doktor there so your investment is most likely worthless. You did your reps at the Uni, profs instilled into you that you’re crème de la crème, but can you do the job, or are you just good at following orders.

[kuerbel]

Those numbers can't be right.

[N19PEDL2]

At least in the Frankfurt area, they are.

[siva7]

Are they? 100k+ isn't seldom here for the seniors.

[blell]

Don’t worry, the situation will drastically improve with the new plan of importing thousands of Indians into the EU.

[rockyj]

What plan? I do not know what reality people live in. I am an Indian myself, migrated 12 years ago. There are around currently 20000 students from India in Germany. I have talked to a dozen of them in my neighborhood, only 1 in 10 can even find a job post graduation in current market

Proof - https://youtu.be/2x-aQy730Ew?si=y6hKNp9G6TOI_mtT

[blell]

That means there should be 0 of them in Germany.

[rockyj]

Not sure of where you are coming from. But thousands come in and go every year. A few hundred are able to land a job after graduation / post-graduation (in Germany). Zero is not theoretically possible with so many universities looking for international students.

[perelin]

Dont bother, that was a borderline right-wing comment. Dont need to guess which political party the fella is voting for.

[surgical_fire]

Tip: The parent comment reads more accurately if you play Erika in the background.

[barbazoo]

> Don’t worry, the situation will drastically improve with the new plan of importing thousands of Indians into the EU.

You mean the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93European_Union_F...? What industry are these “thousands of jobs” in exactly?

[blell]

Ask Canada.

[barbazoo]

> Ask Canada.

Canada, where immigrants came in under various immigration programs? As far as I know Canada and India don't have a trade agreement comparable to the one India has no with the EU. Hopefully one day. Apples to Oranges comparison though I think.

(I'm aware of companies abusing the LMIA system and I'm not saying that this or that level of immigration is sustainable)

[tsss]

That sounds about right to me, maybe a tad too low. In my experience it's more like 2-3 rounds of interviews and 70-75k€/year with 5 YoE and a college degree, which amounts to 3700€/month net income and you can't expect much improvement on that even with 25 YoE unless you become some sort of corporate middle manager.

Germany is the biggest cuck country in the world.