The lower bound of ~45k might be attributed to the German salary cutoff of the EU Blue Card (long term visa for skilled workers) at €45,552 [1]. When I was offered my first dev job (and first job in Germany), it was exactly this number.
Unfortunately, these too-low lower bands are negatively impacting the job market for everyone. Companies have no incentive to increase their pay if they know they'll always find someone willing to take the minimum band for a couple of years just to get into the country.
IMHO, the minimum salary required for a blue card/work visa, in any country not just Germany, should be slightly above what the median wage is for locals in similar positions as the point of skilled immigration should be to uplift the market, otherwise it's just another wage suppression scheme with extra steps that only benefits the employers at the expense of the workforce which now have less bargaining power.
Who cares what software company's in Germany want? They don't want to compete for talent and valuable projects, so talent will want to leave and the company actually wants to cease to be. If you are in Germany, you leave for swiss, Luxembourg, Netherlands for certain improvement, sv for the paygap, to chzekia, Estonia or Poland for a startup. Germany is a old folks home going broke, not a country to start a software development.
Around my area (Central Cali) H1B's are generally hired at a higher rate only because the position couldnt be filled by a 'local', especially for public positions. The FAANG's managed to abuse the system enough that rules have changed to something more like what you envision. At least from the hiring practices Im party to.
Having hired dozens of developers in Berlin over the last 10 years, I can confirm that these numbers look awfully low, at least for any major city in Germany. Munich should be even higher, Hamburg comparable to Berlin. 80k max is maybe for a mid level dev, surely not for anyone considered senior. Or I always overpaid, but then salaries should be related to the contribution to the overall success, not on the average of whatever other companies, so no hard feelings here.
Places like HN and r/CScareerquestionsEU tend to mostly attract career focused SW engineers who are always chasing to maximize compensation, interviewing, job hopping, sharpening their skills, learning new languages, having side projects, applying mostly at FANGs and product focused start-ups, etc. so it's normal for them to see high wages wherever they look, but when I look at my real world friends who aren't in these communities, nor are they too deep into chasing compensation or learning new tech, and are working at no-name companies, their wages are indeed quite low.
There's definitely different bubbles people live in, and this can skew your perspective either way, but I feel like HN definitely does not represent the average, but more the upper percentile.
Hamburg recently, I was offered 2K less than the polite minimum in the range I had to suggest (the company never suggested any range to begin with, should have been a warning). Offer was 75K, I was very unimpressed, TBH. Huge company.
I'm a grad student at a university from Berlin. We had a job fair a few weeks ago with ~15 companies where I asked every company representative what their salary for freshly-graduated sw engineers would be. About 80-90 % fell between 50k ± 5k € before tax (=brutto). Notable exceptions were finance sector jobs and jobs at American tech companies which offered closer to 70k ± 5k €.
You can often reach 90-100k as a senior dev (the real ones with +8y xp.) in major german cities with good negotiation skills at top tier companies. Senior devs can usually pick any company they want. The story is on the other side completely reverted for junior devs. Low pay (50-60k) and low demand. I've hired some junior devs in the past years and it usually shows why you pay a senior almost the double.
I'm not a software type guy (at least not by original profession) but I moved from the states to Germany and I think between taxes and lower salary it probably cost me ~30-40%
(I was on a plebeian 100k salary in a flyover state and even on a relatively quite high salary here it was lower than that when i started here wagewise the euro:USD comes into play though.)
I have never bothered to calculate it exactly and I would do it again in a heart beat every single time.
Too many things you can't put a pricetag on for me.
Too many things I always hated (driving to work and losing ~30-90 minutes) which went away forever.
I can also never be that terribly bored in a conversation with someone who speaks German, because I can just switch to German to practice if I find them to be tedious to speak with.
But I also hate when the weather goes over 70F, and don't terribly mind not seeing the sun for months, so I can understand why it sours some people
Not that I necessarily doubt these numbers, but by personal experience these always feel awfully low (even jobs paying to TVöD on entry level should put you above the median). Especially when going for larger enterprises I can only recommend negotiating - a lot is possible and realistic beyond the 90th percentile with even moderate experience.
Calling it awfully low is bit of stretch. I would have expected the top 10% to be higher but median not that different. I suppose HN attracts Crème de la Crème of German devs who might be earning higher because these numbers look quite alright to me. I get lot of XING jobs notification with salary ranges mentioned on it and majority of them have like 60K-80K salary ranges.
I've seen quite a few job positions in the German public sector that where trying to hire people with a CS education on a E8, which will be something around 36.000 euro per annum before taxes and social security. Although, there are extremely underpaying employers in the private sector as well. At the end of 2015 when I was a fresh graduate a company offered me 26000 (with a 42h week and 24 vacation days) for a Junior Java EE position, which even then was an offer which required a bit of chuzpah, to say the least...
For public services, entry level sw engineering with a master's degree would put you at ~52k€ (TVöD E13 I); with 1 yr of experience you would get ~+5k€; with around 3 yrs of experience you would get ~+9k€, surpassing the median salary if you have a master's degree. With a bachelor's degree you'd start at ~46k (TVöD E11 I, though E10 would be possible, too) and would need to wait a bit longer until you surpass the median.
Note that German public services generally base your base pay on your qualification (your degree), only then can your experience "shift" the base pay upwards. Also note that starting next year, they will get a 10 % salary increase...
Tl;dr public service employees earn pretty average
Actually the pay is based on the required qualification for this job. Oftentines, for software developers, they just require a bachelor's degree and will pay E11. If you apply with a higher degree, you will not be paid more..
My bad, thanks for the correction. From talking to colleagues who used to be on such contracts I understood they ended at 60k, but then probably they got some sort of experience accredited.
I wanted to move to Austria, because my wife is from there, but the salaries just make it untenable compared to Germany, especially when you consider that the COL is about the same or even higher in many places.
Because Austria is not a tech hub. It's a retirement home for the local boomers and a museum for milking tourists selling them chocolate balls with pictures of dead musicians ;)
Readit News
[1] https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/types/e...
IMHO, the minimum salary required for a blue card/work visa, in any country not just Germany, should be slightly above what the median wage is for locals in similar positions as the point of skilled immigration should be to uplift the market, otherwise it's just another wage suppression scheme with extra steps that only benefits the employers at the expense of the workforce which now have less bargaining power.
Places like HN and r/CScareerquestionsEU tend to mostly attract career focused SW engineers who are always chasing to maximize compensation, interviewing, job hopping, sharpening their skills, learning new languages, having side projects, applying mostly at FANGs and product focused start-ups, etc. so it's normal for them to see high wages wherever they look, but when I look at my real world friends who aren't in these communities, nor are they too deep into chasing compensation or learning new tech, and are working at no-name companies, their wages are indeed quite low.
There's definitely different bubbles people live in, and this can skew your perspective either way, but I feel like HN definitely does not represent the average, but more the upper percentile.
I have never bothered to calculate it exactly and I would do it again in a heart beat every single time. Too many things you can't put a pricetag on for me. Too many things I always hated (driving to work and losing ~30-90 minutes) which went away forever.
I can also never be that terribly bored in a conversation with someone who speaks German, because I can just switch to German to practice if I find them to be tedious to speak with.
But I also hate when the weather goes over 70F, and don't terribly mind not seeing the sun for months, so I can understand why it sours some people
Tl;dr public service employees earn pretty average
It's even worse over here ^^.