Germany plans €3B in AI investments • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#111

Post by adventured » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

mrdodge wrote: post #49

biglenny wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorant? It's a well known fact that European tech salaries (especially SWE salaries) are dwarfed by American/SV salaries. Just look up the difference in what GOOGLE pays its American vs EU employees. This doesn't even take into account taxation rate, which is favorable in US. Virtually every "How much do you earn?" thread that pops up on HN has loads of comments with Europeans being surprised at the amount of money…

It's going to get even more extreme in the near future. Tesla is embarrassing all of the German auto manufacturers mightily. I think they'll need one or two to go down before they break out of their complacency.

It's forecast that Germany will lose around 1/3 of its auto industry jobs over the next few decades, in the switch to electric vehicles. Areas of auto manufacturing that they are very good at, are simply going to go away when everything is electric.

I would expect BMW to struggle the most among the German giants, if Tesla doesn't stop growing soon. The rise of Mercedes back to top form was a bad enough of a hit for BMW, then Tesla comes along poised to sell $40 billion worth of cars every year in the near future (all of which cost far more than ~$35k, which is a direct shot at all the luxury makers).

Germany is sitting in a great position nationally (epic trade surplus, good national finances, and reasonably fine household finances), now is the time to aggressively invest if you're them, to try to build out a large number of new technology jobs.

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#112

Post by rurban » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

omnimus wrote: post #99

distances wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this applies to all of Europe though. London salaries are a bit higher, but of course not at the US levels.

UK and Germany are also the countries with highest salaries if you don't count Scandinavia. Try to go to Poland or Czechia thats german border countries where the salaries are even much lower. Then again salaries in europe just work in very different way.

UK and Switzerland only. Germany is traditionally a low-wage country.

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#113

Post by choot » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

choot wrote: post #64

bitL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A typical Berlin startup: - hires devs with extremely low salaries - gives 0.004% equity at best - is run by people that are "better than anybody else" - expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability - has managers with issues saying "thank you" - hires friends/family to higher echelons of company Does this sound like a recipe for success?

I worked for a German startup, whenever i asked for a raise they threatened to import labor from Romania or Poland to replace me.

It's sooo weird here on HN, even for sharing incident, victim gets downvoted.

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#114

Post by Matthias247 » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #97

Matthias247 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay well compared to other german companies. However not compared to US/FAANG companies. As a reference, most of those companies will pay engineers according to the IG Metall Tarif, which can e.g. be found there: https://www.igmetall.de/docs_MuE_ERA_Entgelte_Juni2018_78d3e... This is per month, and there's 13.26 monthly salaries per year. Engineers will typically not receive the highest lines which are reserved f…

So EG15 at 13.26 monthly salaries works out to about 70000, which is roughly a Assistenzarzt (medical doctor) makes after 4 years of work. If that is indeed true it is pretty pathetic. From what I've heard of people moving into industry with doctorates in physics, some of them make significantly more. One is a director of research at Bosch, the other works at IBM in Germany. Both had starting salaries north of 100k.…

Yes, if you get outside of Tarif things might look better. But at the company I worked this was reserved for >= senior manager positions.

Technically there existed individual contributor levels on that level. However they were only given to senior managers who failed at their job of leading people, instead of ICs that had been really good at what they were doing.

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#115

Post by thwy12321 » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #101

thwy12321 wrote: post #9

The people in these countries dont respect programmers, they pay them peanuts. How are they going to innovate?

Having worked as a programmer for 6 years in an EU country, the salaries are pretty reasonable, in the top tier of office workers, below exec level. Maybe it's the US programmers, particularly the ones in Sillicon Valley that are being over - paid? The way I understand it, you can only expect six-figure salaries for working in one of the top companies in SV, and that only if you have graduated from one of the top uni…

People fresh out of school are making six figures, its common. Software produces massive value, we arent overpaid, we are underpaid.

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#116

Post by pgtan » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #58

nradov wrote: post #4

Oh great, more industrial policy. I'm sure the results of this program will be just as spectacular as Japan's fifth-generation computer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer

It can work out well and it can fail. While experiments like Japan's fifth generation computer may have failed to produce commercial results, it still trained a generation of very able scientists. Without the significant spending of the US government, the Silicon Valley would not exist in its current form either. During a time when software and hardware applications had no large market, the military and the governmen…

> It can work out well and it can fail.

No, it will fail, as every German project of this kind failed. Someone will get rich, the project will close after some years. The overrated Germany is socialism 2.0.

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#117

Post by zeroname » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #103

zeroname wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use German resources if you want to learn about Germany. This is an English speaking forum. Unless you have evidence that the English resources contradict the german ones, calling me out on this is pointless. > Tldr; employees and employers have to make sure that no-one oversteps the 10 hour maximum. That's not the point. The point is do you have a right to get compensated for extra hours. Let's say you're hired fo…

> The contract says you're not entitled to compensation for overtime. As far as the law is concerned, I see no problem here whatsoever. You don't. The Bundesarbeitsgericht (the highest court for labor disputes) does: https://juris.bundesarbeitsgericht.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung... You can include clauses that allow limited unpaid overtime, for example "36 hours per week and up to 16 hours of unpaid overtime per month"…

If you actually look at the court case, the guy won because the contract was unclear on its terms, not because such terms are inadmissable in general. That's why the lower court didn't decide in his favor. The decision doesn't generalize across all contracts.

> You can include clauses that allow limited unpaid overtime, for example "36 hours per week and up to 16 hours of unpaid overtime per month", but then, as an employee, you should treat that as a 40 hours contract.

That's besides the point. The question is, is that paid overtime? If you ask me, it isn't because any extra hour worked doesn't translate into extra money.

> Unpaid overtime cannot be agreed upon retroactively, it must be in the initial contract.

It didn't claim otherwise, I explicitly said it has to be in the contract and from what I read in other places, it seems commonplace.

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#118

Post by hilti » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #32

rsp1984 wrote: post #25

The problem is not a lack of funds. The problem is bureaucracy and a lack of startup infrastructure. My feeling is that the people in charge have absolutely no effing clue about how to most efficiently deploy this money so they will do what sounds good on paper but will have 0 effect in reality. If it goes how it usually goes the largest part of this money will likely to to universities and other research institution…

A typical Berlin startup: - hires devs with extremely low salaries - gives 0.004% equity at best - is run by people that are "better than anybody else" - expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability - has managers with issues saying "thank you" - hires friends/family to higher echelons of company Does this sound like a recipe for success?

"is run by people that are "better than anybody else" -> This is the same experience I made. A lot of founders in Berlin are narcissistic life artists with zero execution skills. They're good at producing pitch decks while having fancy Coffee Chai Latte at a hipster cafe in Berlin Mitte. In between making unmistakable phone calls so everyone would know after a minute that he/she calls him/herself CTO, CEO, CSO, COO or whatever and him/her is working on the next big thing of course. And it's all about global domination.

To cut a long story short: we agree. ;-)

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#119

Post by raverbashing » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

gsich wrote: post #108

odiroot wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that Munich has generally better culture in this industry? I don't even mean startups, just asking in general.

Munich is generally nicer then Berlin. Probably a bavarian trait.

Oh not even close

Re: Germany plans €3B in AI investments

#120

Post by adventured » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

zwaps wrote: post #16

thwy12321 wrote: post #9

The people in these countries dont respect programmers, they pay them peanuts. How are they going to innovate?

Since only relative income count, you have to expand your comment by saying that these countries - Do not respect Bankers and CEOs - Do not respect academics - Do not respect managers - Respect teachers too much - Respect waiters and delivery drivers too much etc. It's all relative. It's all trade-offs. In the US, you can get actual rich by working a normal dev job. On the other hand, many of my US high school teache…

> On the other hand, many of my US high school teachers literally had to work at Wal-mart on the side. Unthinkable elsewhere.

US teachers are among the best paid teachers on earth. What US teachers are arguing about, is they believe they should be paid something closer to good nurse wages or engineers (ie closer to $80k to $100k, rather than $60k or $70k).

Some facts:

Entry level US high school teachers earn 1/3 more than in Japan or Ireland. They earn more than in Canada. They earn around 40% more than in New Zealand. They earn 80-100% more than in Israel. They earn slightly more than in the Netherlands and Austria, and 20% more than in South Korea (which pays its teachers very well vs their national income).

Entry level elementary school teachers in the US earn about 1/3 more than in South Korea, about 20% more than in Austria, 10-15% more than in Canada, 30-40% more than in Ireland and Japan, and drastically more than in countries like New Zealand or Italy.

At both high school and elementary levels, for both entry level and 10 years of experience, the US outranks Canada, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Austria, New Zealand. It's very comparable to what you see in the Netherlands and Australia for those.

Across each field of education, the US comes in in the top seven or eight for teacher pay, typically closer to the top 5. The one place it lags abnormally is the top end pay scale for teaching, where salaries don't match what you'd expect based on the mid-tier and entry level teacher salaries the US offers.

The US only consistently trails a few countries like Germany and Switzerland, when it comes to teacher pay. Those two pay particularly well for teaching (Switzerland more or less matches what you'd expect given their very high national incomes; and Germany pays an unusually outsized salary for teachers based on their national income level).