Ask HN: Do US engineering skills translate well to European companies? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do US engineering skills translate well to European companies?

#21

Post by mvcatsifma » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 9:19 AM UTC

dandrew5 wrote: post #15

mvcatsifma wrote: post #14

Learn (some) German. Admittedly not an engineering skill - but it will be greatly appreciated by your German colleagues. Background: Dutch engineer who lived in Germany for 3 years, and worked for one of their largest engineering orgs.

Thanks for the tip. I've enrolled in an A1 class with Goethe Institute starting in April. In your opinion, how difficult would it be to rent or potentially own a home on a single engineering salary? Looking at prices on https://www.immobilienscout24.de/ , it does not seem possible after accounting for taxes. A salary of 60k ends up being about 3.2k net per month. If renting a home takes 2k of that, I may need to reco…

It’s 20+ years since I lived in Germany (Berlin). At the time it was pretty easy to rent a high quality property for a reasonable price. I know a lot has changed since then, and the “global housing crisis” is also affecting Germany. Sorry can’t give you more details than that.

I am confident my language skills advice still applies.

Re: Ask HN: Do US engineering skills translate well to European companies?

#22

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:09 AM UTC

thiago_fm wrote: post #13

The issue won't be your technical skills. The german engineering quality only applies to hardware and physical goods. It's a different culture. That you'll need to spend a lot of energy to understand. Also german is a hard language to learn. Typically US people got it easy and don't understand such complexities, but this can be a time consuming endeavor. Typically Americans have a very naive understanding of how the…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do US engineering skills translate well to European companies?

#23

Post by iteria » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

deafpolygon wrote: post #18

iteria wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in the the US you will be salaried and expected to be available for 40 hours a week. This does not mean you will be actively working 40 hours a week any given week. Especially if you are experienced. Work is mostly delivery based with very little regard to how long work actually takes to complete. This means that depending on your skill for advocating for reasonable delivery timelines and the culture of the compan…

I think you're looking at this from a very privileged lens. I have experience in the IT sector as a manager and while many openly say that the expectations are 40 hours a week wink wink but be expected to answer the phone 24/7 whenever we need you. Oh, 60 hours already this week? Too bad. Taking time off? Oh, if you even have time. In the companies I have worked, taking 10 days off a year was considered a perk.

I will not deny that. I'm not say that all companies are like this, but I am saying that it is not mandatory to live like this. I never have worked a crazy amount of hours even working for a WITCH and it was not an issue. The US does not give you balance by default, but I am saying that it is perfectly viable to avoid those kinds of companies. No one has to work 60 hours all the time. It won't cost you your career. It might cost you money. I will be the first to admit that I'm not a super high earner, but I have never struggled to pay my bills.