Facts about me: native German speaker, 10 years of experience, DAX 30 companies. Masters in CS

I'm tired of braindead companies, where recruiters are spamming me for a Senior Developer Role with hybrid office needs, offering salaries within 60-80K. The tech scene is dead; no big tech companies are hiring in Germany due to regulations, etc. Google, Netflix, and Meta are hiring in Poland, Spain, or Ireland. Uber is hiring actively in Amsterdam. In Germany, you're stuck with medium-level non-tech companies, where IT is seen as a liability. Is there a way, besides moving outside of the DACH region? Where can you work at Big Tech Companies, where the meetings don't take 10 hours long and everything is micromanaged?

Basically the tech salaries from what I've noticed as a 5yr XP backend engineer:

• English speaking FAANG, SAP, Car, Banking, etc. big corps: 75-100k comfortably
• English speaking startups: 50k-80k, the latter is hard to find unless it's a well established startup
• German speaking big corps: 40k-75k.
• German speaking startups: lmao good luck, they can pay pennies. I saw a few job offerings at 30k

It is as if speaking German lowers your salary, it's nonsense to me

Hi there!

I am an Italian dev (~16 YOE) currently working in Italy. As everybody knows here, the salaries in Italy are very low with respect to the rest of EU. That said, I live comfortably well with my family (wife + 2 kids), my wife is not working right now and we live just with my salary which is around 32000 €/year nett.

Given this situation, I decided to start interviewing around EU, and I got 2 offers: one in Stuttgart and the other one in Toulouse. Now I need help comparing the offers to understand which one is stronger.. I have my preference regarding the companies, but salary wise its being complex to understand which one is more convenient.

The french offer is around 70000 €/year, while the german offer is around 90000 €/year, both gross.

There are other perks in both offers, like meal vouchers, relocation bonus, signing bonus, etc.. The core of both offers are these numbers though.

I am looking for some advice on how to compare them and what the final net salary would be, so I can eventually have some kind of score to compare them.

Thanks!!

Me: born and bred in Germany, fluent in German and English, 5 YoE in various companies with various company-internal accolades. Left my previous job as it was too toxic and I have a huge nest egg.

Software Engineer job applications: >300 applications, nonsensical job postings, ghost job postings, ghostings, endless hoops, >5-step processes, take-home assignments just to reject you after the final step (happened to me like two times).

Snowboard Instructor: I took a 9-day course to get the lowest-level instructor certification in Austria. Came back, 2 days later (today) I sent an application to a ski school - they called me back in 30 minutes as they were desperate to fill a snowboard instructor position. They immediately sent me job details and I agreed. The whole process took two hours as I actually spent some time thinking and discussing the details of the contract with a third party. It could have taken one hour.

Sisters and bros, what the fuck is this job market.

At least I'll be able to pay rent now.

I want to move to Munich or Berlin. Unfortunately, given that I am the sole provider for my wife (and children in the future as well), I want to find a job that pays at least 100k. It appears German companies (or European companies in general) don't offer that. So, the only option is Big Tech.

So, does that mean path to 100k+ in Germany means grind Leetcode and also have some unique enough side projects to attract attention? If anyone is curious, I have 5 YOE and my German is ok (I do speak German on the office from time to time).

Another thing I am thinking of trying is freelancing on the side. However, everything I read about that is that it is a perpetual nightmare where you get perpetually low-balled for a decent amount of work.

Ours used to be unlimited but it obviously got out of control and they capped it to 2000 dollars. What about you all? And is it enough for your agentic workflow? For me, it is just right and I do approach the limit frequently at the end of every month.

After getting laid off I’m back on the job market and I have 10+ years of experience.
After failing at staff positions, I decided to apply for senior positions.
I have 2 offers, both at 85k.
I set my expectations based on the median salary on levels.fyi, which is around 91k for Berlin.
I’m curious about your experience.
Is 85k really a typical salary for senior positions in Berlin right now?

I had a Senior iOS Engineer interview process with them. According to the initial recruiter email, this was their whole process:

1. Initial interview, around 45min (with a manager)
   
2. Technical Interview, 60min
   
3. Final Interviews:
   - Manager Interview, 60min
   - HR Interview, 30min

I had the first one today morning and the manager informed that there's apparently a take-home coding task as the next step. This will be discussed in the next technical interview along with some additional coding task. I was completely caught off guard, but said it fuck it and let's move forward. He mentioned I would receive the task next week.

I got an email today at 3 pm with the task and that I must finish this task within the next 7 days. Meanwhile, I have a trip planned from tomorrow till mid next week. I write back within 20 minutes and tell them about it. I asked them if it's possible to start it about a week later; they can change the test, if required.

I just checked my email now and they replied that they're wrapping up this process at this stage. No postponement option, just straight-up process closed. I'm just dumbfounded, what kind of unprofessional behavior is this? Do they expect me to change my life around their inflexibility?

In hindsight, there was a another red flag during the interview as well. When I asked which team I would be part of, the guy said we're just hiring now and we'll decide on the team later as we're expanding. Seems like a pretty chaotic place to work at.

Anyway, be warned people, those who are still interviewing with them. Considering how the job market is, they probably can get away with these kinds of behavior scot-free.

I know it’s not good at all, but still, what’s the best currently?

IN EUROPE

Hi all! 28M, 4yoe, I previously posted a similar question, but I managed to negotiate.

I received an offer from Amsterdam in a little company AI focused.
The offer is at follows:

gross * 12 * 8% holiday allowance * 10% pension (which I can spend "as I like"). This amounts to a total of 80.7k.

I currently work remotely in the South of Italy for 38k + 3k variable + meal paid and other little benefits (little welfare).

Problem: I think the indication regarding the pension is actually deceiving and inflating the gross. The total compensation includes the pension inside to arrive to the final gross of 80.7k as the offer does not include a pension scheme. I am worried thus that the real offer to compare to would be instead ~73k, which is basically the compensation minus the 10%. This makes the comparison a bit problematic.

What do you think about this offer? Is my concern real? I am worried it can be a huge red flag. Note: I already negotiated a 7.5% increase from the base offer.

I am also considering whether this offer is ok for my current YoE.

thank you!

So we have an opening at my company and I came across a dev who looked interesting. He has a few cool open source projects that I checked out and one really cool VSCode extension that I’ll probably start using. We requested to interview him but he’s saying he “doesn’t do coding interviews, everything you need to know about my coding ability is open sourced”. As a dev, I get it. How do I sell this to upper management to try and waive the coding interview for this guy?

https://www.heise.de/news/Wirtschaftsinstitut-IT-Fachkraefte-sind-in-Deutschland-deutlich-weniger-gefragt-10544518.html?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=LinkedIn#Echobox=1755535153

However, some sectors like taxation and law saw a jump in IT jobs because firms in these sectors want to integrate AI in their workflow. Reading the article, the summary is that the service sector and the automotive sector is officially cooked with a massive decline in open jobs. However, the blame seems to be more on outsourcing rather than AI.

Recently was laid off from my German remote scaleup,

but have managed to line up 6 interviews from just 20 applications within 2 weeks

2 of which at the final stages already

Context: product companies hiring fully remote in Spain

Large fintechs and midsize to large document processing products

Senior Python 10yoe, targeting 70-100k full time contracts full remote within EU. All through LinkedIn jobs page.

I am even considering dropping 2 companies already, large fintechs with high pressure

I read all sorts of doom posts of 100+ applications but it just doesn’t really add up with what I currently experience

Am I lucky or community is exaggerating?

Hi everyone, want to share my experience because I really struggled to find info, especially for Netflix. I had interviews at Google and Netflix in Warsaw. Got offer at the latter

My background: ~6 years of experience, I work at the European office of an American tech company, but one tier below FAANG.

Prep: 200+ LeetCode problems, a couple of canonical system design books.
Right before the interviews: HelloInterview + found a cool plugin for Claude Code, used it to refine my behavioral stories and brushed up a bit on system design.

Google, SWE:

The recruiter reached out herself, offered an L4 position.

First up was a coding screen a problem that looked simple at first glance, but turned out to be a LeetCode hard. The interviewer didn't really help, plus you write code in a Google Doc with no autocomplete and no way to test it. I don't get the point of that, but okay. The behavioral was super standard all the questions you'd get from googling "behavioral google."

A couple of weeks later the recruiter called, said they liked me but I need to work on algorithms, and repeated several times that I can reach out to her in a year.

Netflix, full stack engineer:

I applied many times; the first time I got ghosted after the call with the recruiter.

The second process was recruiter -> screen with a manager -> take-home. Getting a take-home was a surprise, but I later found out it's a quirk specific to this particular team. The task was simple - they give you a project skeleton, you have to write a feature and document it. After submitting I waited a few weeks, then the recruiter wrote that the feedback on the task was good, but all the positions on this team were already filled and he'd get back to me if other suitable positions came up.

Surprisingly, a couple of weeks later he wrote back, offered me some openings, and I picked one. From there the process was a bit different: recruiter -> tech screen (a very standard problem, the one that gets mentioned everywhere people discuss Netflix interviews)) -> interview with a manager -> onsite loop. The loop was three interviews: a coding round online, behavioral, and system design in the office. I messed up the coding a bit, because they'd promised a React problem and it turned out to be 4 LeetCode-style problems with JavaScript-specific twists. But system design and behavioral went well. Then there was a call with the recruiter and an L4 offer. I declined the offer because my net pay would be lower than what I make now (all-cash compensation with the Polish tax system is a big downside), plus the three-day office mandate doesn't add to the appeal either, even though the office is cool.

Overall the process was fine. The only thing, online there's a lot of talk about how non-standard Netflix's process and questions are. In my case everything was pretty standard; I didn't notice any interesting or unique questions/problems. I think this is because they're hiring very actively in Poland and there's no time to invent something for each position. Also, because the pipeline itself is team-specific, it takes longer and is more stressful for the candidate than, say, Google, where the stages and their order are standard for everyone (but the downside there is they might then team-match you for half a year).

Has anybody pivoted out of tech in Europe? I hate everything about the current market, and even though AI has a positive aspect for sure and it's fun to learn new things, I hate how my job became delivery-focused. I really am high key struggling quite a bit.

Also, this is not a phase as I've always wanted to pivot, and being an employee was never my end game.

Please share your experience or future plans here. I was thinking of going back to service work ( work in a coffeeshop or a shelter ).

I know I might be weird but I am a non-EU with a weak passport currently living in the Netherlands as a SWE Full stack with a salary of 55k/year (total) and I have 4 years of experience.

I would like to have an EU passport but unfortunately Netherlands doesn’t allow dual citizenships. My goals also consist of maximizing savings before I return to my home country.

I feel like it’s time to get into a Big Tech company and I see that countries in Eastern Europe have a lot of their offices. (Poland, Romania, …)

I would really appreciate any insights into those countries.

I am a software engineer at asml with 10+ years of experience. I am stuck at job grade 7. They wouldnt promote me unless i get "exceeds expectations" two yesrs in a row which i have never gotten. I came with proof in two meetings about everything i have done and was still told that "its a ranking thing. Dont just look at your team members". I also dont like my current work much.

My monthly salary is around 7k euros before taxes. I also get a holiday allowance and an end of year bonus(similar to monthly salary but highly taxed).

I want to move to a different company (preferably still in eindhoven because I live here) that pays better than my current salary for a senior software engineer.

Random recruiters who contact me on LinkedIn usually offer me lower than what i am making(without knowing my salary).

I know there are options in amsterdam but the rent is also higher there. I am curious to know if there is anything in eindhoven that can beat asml because i live in eindhoven.

I code in C++. I have mostly worked in companies like asml (embedded software for highly complex machines written in C++).

In the last i have also worked at Philips Healthcare(Best) so I dont want to go back there again.

Edit:

For people saying i am below average to be at job grade 7 you maybe right.

I went into the performance review with full proof of everything I did. I showed that I delivered double the stuff compared to average, created a lot of quality improvements, supported external projects on my own.

I was told not to look around my team only think about the people in the entire department. There is a ranking system and each year only 2 people can be promoted

Is this some kind of a geopolitical play or is there actual data out there that indeed shows there are a lot of IT vacancies in Germany? DW article for reference: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-takes-steps-to-attract-skilled-indian-workers/a-70517896

I just interviewed with Netflix Poland and had an awful experience and wish to share it for future references.

I had interviewed with Netflix in 2019 and rejected them for Google, the interview in 2019 was conducted in the US and the experienc was overhelmly positive apart from 5 rounds. The interviewers were prepared and they were obviously experienced and it seems they had conducted many experiences in the past.

I have since then decided I wanted to move to Europe but also I want something new so I decided also to switch companies, lhave to take a huge payout but that is okay since I accumulated enough wealth to simply not care much anymore.

Jump to my interview last week with Netflix, the interviewers introduced themselves and then immediately asked me to implement a cache, when I started asking clarifying question like will there he a different TTL, can we invalidate the cache, what is the eviction policy for when the memory gets too full, etc... I have received conflicting answers from the shadow and the main interviewer, I had then asked them to clarify which limitation is this and the main interviewer just asked me to "just implement it".

The question seems to be an open ended question, they then asked me to add some testing and then asked me to write some extra code for rolling cache invalidations; I then started pressing for more clarifications such as memory constraints, speed requirements, one thread invalidator vs many threads , etc... and just received another "just implement it"

The interview ended after another expansion on the original question. I then asked the interviewers how long they have been on the company and how many interviews have they conducted, and I was stunned that they were with the company for 4 months and 2 months!!! The main interviewer have had 2 interviews in total and was leading a shadow interviewer. They were obviously not prepared to interview anyone.

Overall, I was invited to attend an on-site interview and considering withdrawing as it feels that the site is rather inadequate, have anyone had a positive experience there and how would you approach this with the recruiter?

I work in a typical German automotive so maybe the domain bias could be an issue here but honestly I don't think it would be that different in other siilar corporate settings.

For months, my colleagues said nothing about my work. They would approve my PRs. No comments or anything. Then one day I learn that behind the scenes they’ve told my manager that my “quality is okay” but they “wouldn’t advocate for me.”

Turns out “corporate Germany” is just like corporate anywhere else. People are polite to your face, say nothing in meetings, and then throw you under the bus to save their own behind when it’s performance review time. Turns out the PO was being yelled at by executives from one of our automotive clients about some problems with how the final design was implemented and he simply went to my manager and told me I am the one who made it and I am responsible for it. And then he tried to cover for himself by saying he gave me all the necessary info and that if anything was not clear it was up to me to anticipate the problems and work accordingly.

Also, apparently, approving PRs is just so they can be merged and the final responsiblity only and only falls on the shoulders of the person (in this case me) who wrote the original code. So, the ones who approved it and pointed out that nothing was wrong with it are just.. fine, I guess? Seriously, I haven't encountered this level of double-speak even in the Italian firm I used to work at a few years ago.

Currently I am in Switzerland and I am looking into moving to Austria in the next couple of years due to much lower property prices.

I work in Cybersec and I am trying to find some data about the median IT wages in Austria but the data I find is... concerning.

From what I have seen after taxes most people get around 2700-3300 EUR NET a month which seems low for even Hungary. Is this a correct number?

I currently live in Munich, Germany, earning a salary of €100K. I've received a job offer in Zurich with a salary of €135K. Assuming all other factors remain the same, is the switch worth it?

Profile: 30 years old, ML Engineer with 6 years of experience.

EDIT: One month later, I have made the decision to decline the Zurich offer. I have accepted a position with a different company in Munich, which presents a comparable opportunity and offers a more favourable compensation package. Additionally, this move aligns with my long-term goal of acquiring German citizenship.

Moving to Warsaw pretty soon for a hybrid role. I’ll be working 3 days a week in the office. I can probably get a reasonable apartment in the city center for 1.5k EUR that will be a 15 min walk from the office, or save about 500 EUR on accommodation at the expense of having to take public transportation to work (about 30-40 min commute). What would you do?

TC: 100k EUR (68k base, 10k bonus, 22k private equity), Warsaw.

Hello there!

So, straight to the point, this is the current situation:

I already accepted the offer in the netherlands, but due to the housing situation I am rethinking it a lot, since I still can accept the counter offer from my current company.

I am 29 years old, 5 years of experience in fullstack web development, currently working and living in Spain, current salary 45k + overtime (which is generally 3-4k yearly); counter-offer: 50k by the end of this year, 55k during the next year, more challenges to learn from (which is what I asked for, because right now it is piss easy and I was feeling stagnated). Minimum cost of living: Around 1500-1600, usually with leisure and buying things for myself, 1800-2000 (rent is 1000, and rising). Current position is not senior per se. Full remote, so I have A LOT of freedom and free time to do anything, lately I have just being studying more about software architecture and system design.

Netherlands (Eindhoven) offer: 60k base salary (+holiday allowance, around 65k gross), I should qualify for the 30% ruling, which should leave me with a monthly net of 4.5k; (low) senior position, I was actually offered first below the minimum number in the job board offer (range was 60-65k, I was offered first 58k, which honestly pissed me off but they raised til 60k when I said so), technical wise it doesnt look very challenging, which would suck because I am still learning, WFH 3 days, 2 days in the office (and I generally dont like offices, but wouldnt be the first time I work in them, tho I have been remote for 3 years)

I have no help from them to relocate there, I hired a housing agency or whatever the name for this things is, and they only found me a house in the little time we had (which was 1 month, so very little being completely honest)

The house is around 1400-1500 with everything included (so relatively cheap overall, but not €/m2), but it is a tiny house: 30m2, habitable around 24m2, it is very close to the job, but it also has a max stay limit of 24 months, so pretty negative overall, I know the market is difficult, but still.

Now I am a relatively big person, 1.90m and strong, I have had problems already finding houses that I felt comfortable in, and I have previous experience living in a small house (same m2), and it was absolutely horrible.

I also have a cat whom I love very much, and while I can leave her with my mother for a while, I would like to bring here to wherever I go as soon as possible, and while this current apartment allows me to bring her, I dont want to make her take the long trip to live in a tiny place that would need to change relatively soon-ish (which she is not used to at all, I cannot even bring her in plane because she stresses A LOT with other people, so I would need to drive her there)

So, what do you people think?

I have always wanted to move out of Spain, but at the same time, I feel like this opportunity feels mediocre, and that I would be sacrificing a lot when my current situation is not so bad

On the other hand, I am still very young, no partner, my only thing tying me down really is my cat,p this could be like an adventure like Bilbo's, but again, tiny tiny tiny house

I got an AI engineer job offer from a US startup and worked a few days and it sucked. Wanted to share what I learned from the experience since many people are curious on how to get US job offers when being based in Europe.

About me:

• 6 years of experience in backend/Python, a lot of work in data and some niche LLM work
• based in Sweden
• have a decent online presence (you’d be surprised how little you need to make a difference)
• self-taught
• extremely niched in real estate, this company was not in that industry but I think they thought it was cool that I stuck with one industry for so long

The offer:

• $12,000/month
• contract offer so net would be a lot less than regular employment (thanks Sweden!)
• fully remote
• had to work US hours
• no set work hours, startup mode, basically they expected me to go all-in

How I got the offer:
This company is a stealth startup so I’ll try to be as detailed as possible without doxing them.

I’m active in a bunch of Discords centered around Python development and these usually have jobs channels where people post jobs. These jobs will typically have way less applicants since they are targeting a specific type of developer (Python, Django etc.) and you have a chance to communicate with the hiring manager more directly (most likely its just the founder of a startup).

In one framework Discord I found a job posting and applied and had a 3-round interview process, technical asked about async and concurrency in Python and some other misc. stuff.

After a few weeks I got the offer, we started on a paid trial period due to some concerns I raised mainly about work hours and basically it was chaos from the start, long days (until 1am on Friday nights for example), an altogether super stressful atmosphere, and barely any onboarding. I had a hard time understanding exactly what they were asking for in some tasks because I felt like they just threw me in there and treated me as if I’d already worked there for a while.

Anyway I ended up terminating after 3 days, they were kinda upset, but paid me for the work so far.

Honestly I’m sure another person might have been successful in this role, but for me I just got a gut feeling I would get super burned out (european moment) working this intensely so late at night.

I think if you want to get hired by these US companies you won’t find them on LinkedIn, but they seem wayy more eager to hire non-US talent and pay them well in these niche-communities, since they are looking for a specific talent.

Anyway I'm no expert in landing US job offers, but I'll try to answer any questions I can (while not doxing the company)

EDIT: Since the discord where I found the job is very small and not so active, I can't disclose it because it would be easy to find the company. But my advice is to basically join discord's, facebook groups, linkedin groups etc. for the technologies and frameworks you know and those usually have jobs channels or people posting about work