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How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

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Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#301
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not paying off the principal, you're just renting from the bank without the benefit of having a landlord to fix things. Why bother?

Rents increase with inflation, a mortgage doesn't. I have a few older friends kicking themselves for not buying a property when they could afford it, rents have risen and there is a very real prospect that they will have to move out of the community they spent their lives in.

Mortages do increase with faster growing inflation, though, once the central bank reacts and increases the interest rates. Of course you can negotiate a fixed interest rate for some time period. So there are two buffers in between.

Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#302
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1- By living with roommates and renting a room (sometimes half a room). 2- By taking painfully long commutes to cheaper locations. 3- By living with parents/partner. This is not an option for most people, but probably what makes moving to a job a difficult situation. > what kind of people are able to afford a house? Apparently, half of Germany can't afford a home. - https://www.statista.com/statistics/246355/home-own…

Renting was a pretty good deal in Germany. Urbanization has caught up and its a terrible deal in major cities.

Just not true. German cities are constantly listed on „bubble“ lists, because property prices are rising way faster than rents. When you buy property in Frankfurt or Munich, you are betting on further price increases without any hope of profitability through renting it out.

Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And additionally 2.5k in church tax if you're catholic or lutheran. Woah, what? How does that work and why?

Well, we don't take separation of church and state as seriously as we should. The state collects the taxes for the churches, it's around 9% of your income tax. This happens automatically if you're baptized, and you have to leave the church if you don't want to pay this, which also happens at a government office.

I thought this was just a way to reduce money laundry. If the church would just receive donations, it gets hard to track where the money is coming from/going to. There's a church in Brazil that flies helicopters out of the temple carrying cash [1]. If you're a drug dealer there's no money laundry scheme better than this.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ciw8ciqPY_c

Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#305
post #289
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This sucks especially for people living in the countryside. But the fee isn't that much compared to what you have to pay in taxes.

No but what would you say if cancelling your Comcast subscription cost you "not that much" compared to 10% of your income? It's the craziest thing, to me at least, how the heck is this legal? Why can I sign someone else up at birth for paying stuff and yet not be the person liable? And then when they want to cancel my subscription, they have to pay a fine for cancelling? It's beyond me, even if it's not about a lot o…

Yes, I hate it too.

It gives the church too much power here in Germany.

The reasoning is often, that the churches are the biggest providers of social and health related charity. They own schools and hospitals etc. pp.

I never understood why they didn't simply nationalize these things if they think it should be paid by taxes.

I have no issue in paying taxes for hospitals and schools, but I don't want that part of that money also pays for some crazy faith.

Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#306
post #138
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the 100 is a typo? :P [as in "... varies between 100-2000€..."] I'm currently looking for a house in SW Germany, near the french border. I'd be happy if prices would max out at 2000€/m². I can not renovate a full building (both time and skill-wise), so - including necessary improvements - houses we're looking at start at about 1800€/m² and surpass 2200€/m². And we're not talking about "center of town" here or…

I don't think it is a typo. There are areas out in the sticks where nobody wants to move (because no internet, no mobile reception, no public transport, next city is 50km away, next supermarket 20km), where 100€/m² is possible. But anything marginally close to a railway track, Autobahn or federal road or any bigger city at all is far more expensive.

I ask due to a mixture of doubt, but also curiosity: Can you point to areas with prices in the 100Euro/m² range? For a house that's suited for living, and not destruction? My grandma's house might sell for that range (~200 Euro/m²), but it has 120m², was built at or before 1900 (as a poor farmers house) and there have been no meaningful improvements since the 1970s. So, as sad as it is: Best thing one can do is scap the house and build a new one. But then it's cheaper/easier to just buy some empty land.

That town is pretty much "Arsch der Welt", though they now have 50MBit/s internet since a few years. Next city (a small Kreisstadt) has multiple super markets and is 20km away. Mobile reception in the town is okay, I think they just skipped 3G for a decade and now partially swap 2G for LTE. Public transport to/from the Gymnasium [45m bus drive] is three times a day: Going there in the morning, and returning for 13 and 18 o'clock (so pupils can get to and from school for both the regular 6 lesson days and the longer 10 lesson days). For anything else you need a car; an electric car might work, since for most interesting hacker jobs you only need a total range of maybe 150km per day (outliers in both directions apply). OTOH, even if people might seem a bit skeptical of newcomers at first, they turn out to be super friendly. After all, it's easy to know everyone by name if you're just 250 people.

Where I live (Saarland) the "Bodenrichtwert"[0] alone is usually between 80 and 120 Euro for the "affordable" areas I looked at. So little chance getting more than a ruin for 100 Euro/m².

[0] For non-Germans: The "Bodenrichtwert" is the average price per m² of "raw land", that is, excluding improvements like houses. It is updated every 2 years to include recent sales in an area.

Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who grew up in the US, and works as a software engineer in Europe, I can't understand why anyone would ever choose to work as a developer in America. :) I have a very high quality of life here, strong protections as a permanent employee (increasingly less common in other industries in Germany, but not in tech!), a salary that is excellent compared to many of my peers, and comes with a purchasing power that…

> comes with a purchasing power that I imagine meets or exceeds someone in my same position in New York or the Bay Area That seems very unlikely. Housing is expensive in most of the major metropolitan areas in the US, but you more than make up for it with higher salaries. The rest of your argument makes perfectly good sense, there's lots to love about living and working in Europe! It may well be worth it to you. But…

> But it's disingenuous to mix those quality of life arguments with an argument about money.

Genuinely don't understand why you would see these as disconnected from each other.

> Tech workers in the US tech hubs live a financially/materially more comfortable life than those in Europe.

Obviously as you can see from my comment above, I disagree with this view.

Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#308
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a total of about 50% in social security contributions AND taxes. Assuming you are single and have no kids and your gross salary is 100k, you pay about 15k in social security contributions and 29k in income tax. And additionally 2.5k in church tax if you're catholic or lutheran.

thats roundabout 45% but yeah. Actually high earners pay less taxes than those stuck in the middle (like 40k to 60k) because after a certain threshold (i think around 60k) your contributions to health care (which is until then around 15% of your income) don't rise anymore (unless you have a very expensive private health care plan but thats on you ;)).

Additionally, I remember hearing that private healthcare can be cheaper for young healthy people as the public healthcare is a fixed percentage and the private is based on your circumstances. So many high earners pay less for healthcare than lower earners until they age/have families

Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we don't take separation of church and state as seriously as we should. The state collects the taxes for the churches, it's around 9% of your income tax. This happens automatically if you're baptized, and you have to leave the church if you don't want to pay this, which also happens at a government office.

I thought this was just a way to reduce money laundry. If the church would just receive donations, it gets hard to track where the money is coming from/going to. There's a church in Brazil that flies helicopters out of the temple carrying cash [1]. If you're a drug dealer there's no money laundry scheme better than this. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ciw8ciqPY_c

It has historical reasons. Back when Napoleon conquered Europe, the HRE redistributed some land from the Church to the secular rulers and in return promised to fund them via taxes and compensate them for the land. The church tax has since become more of a membership fee (you can just leave the Church and stop paying it), but the state still collects it for the Churches.

Re: How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

#310
post #308
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats roundabout 45% but yeah. Actually high earners pay less taxes than those stuck in the middle (like 40k to 60k) because after a certain threshold (i think around 60k) your contributions to health care (which is until then around 15% of your income) don't rise anymore (unless you have a very expensive private health care plan but thats on you ;)).

Additionally, I remember hearing that private healthcare can be cheaper for young healthy people as the public healthcare is a fixed percentage and the private is based on your circumstances. So many high earners pay less for healthcare than lower earners until they age/have families

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