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Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

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Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#841

Post by aleph_minus_one »

neonstatic wrote: post #561
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German. I am very certain this is not true. The "just learn the language" people are typically rather people who are very talented in learning new languages (and often indeed to this as adults as a personal hobby - often even with languages from very different families), and thus are often…

Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

> Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

The kind of people that I know and have in mind are not this way. They often rather compete for the most complicated and different language families. :-)

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#842

Post by aleph_minus_one »

anthonj wrote: post #615
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are not an engineer you must have an almost excellent level of local language --> an excellent level of a language is only possible if you are immersed daily over a long time and have the time to study I disagree: for many jobs, it is expected that you have a decent level of English, but at least in Germany, you are often not immersed a lot in English. So you have to get decent in English with barely any imm…

Some level of english is required in every country. And you are exposed to it quite frequently in a way or the other (which european country doest start teaching it from elementary school? ). My uni required me to follow course in english and write and defend a thesis in English. You are exposed to english a lot . And on top of that it's a simple lanuge. Try to lean polish, or chinese. Or german as a Japanese native.…

> which european country doest start teaching [English] from elementary school?

I never had English lessons in primary school (Germany), and as far as I am aware, English lessons in primary school are still not that common.

> You are exposed to english a lot.

This is not my experience.

> And on top of that it's a simple lanuge.

Getting some elementary, broken knowledge of English is not very hard (English is more forgiving here than German or Russian). Getting good in English is insanely hard (much harder than for many other languages like French).

> Try to lean polish, or chinese. [...] Won't be that easy.

For me, finding a (near-)native speaker for widespread languages would be rather easy:

Option 1: I work for an international company. Thus finding someone who is either native speaker or at least very good in the respective language would not be hard.

Option 2: You are aware of "superconnectors", i.e. the persons who know "everybody"? Well, I know a few of these people. Just give one of them a call: "Hey, do you know someone cool who speaks language X well and is willing to serve as a teacher for Y hours/week? For this, I am willing, for example, to teach this person programming or whatever this person wants."

The non-easy part is just finding the necessary time for learning the respective language.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#843

Post by aleph_minus_one »

carlosjobim wrote: post #809
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hey need to do 10x more than someone who is simply "a native" to the country (or... you'll stay in a position and just rot until you move on). Staying in a position for a long part of one's life is a very common situation for many Germans, too. The whole concept of that you must have a career seems to be deeply ingrained in US mentality. So, I have a strong feeling that a lot of immigrants who feel they hit a glass…

> The whole concept of that you must have a career seems to be deeply ingrained in US mentality. But it makes more sense. If you're a normal human being, the longer you work with something the better you become at it. That's just natural. And then you should have your compensation increased to reflect that, or move to other ventures where your skills have better use.

> or move to other ventures where your skills have better use.

Switching the job too often is a red flag for many companies in Germany.

The system in Germany is based on the idea that it should both not be so easy to quit your position at the company and for the company to fire you (cancellation periods hold for both sides).

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#844

Post by carlosjobim »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #843
carlosjobim wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole concept of that you must have a career seems to be deeply ingrained in US mentality. But it makes more sense. If you're a normal human being, the longer you work with something the better you become at it. That's just natural. And then you should have your compensation increased to reflect that, or move to other ventures where your skills have better use.

> or move to other ventures where your skills have better use. Switching the job too often is a red flag for many companies in Germany. The system in Germany is based on the idea that it should both not be so easy to quit your position at the company and for the company to fire you (cancellation periods hold for both sides ).

Then it's no wonder if skilled workers want to leave.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#845

Post by stickfigure »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #494
pessimizer wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be annoying when somebody politely and indirectly asks you to stop calling kidnapped slaves "immigrants."

But that's not what they did, they acted like people were already using that definition and started pulling out the wrong numbers. Also can you explain why "involuntary migrant" is fine but "involuntary immigrant" isn't? (I mean I'd probably default to stronger language than "involuntary" but let's stick with that for now.)

Don't feed trolls.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#846

Post by programmertote »

hunterpayne wrote: post #466
programmertote wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds similar to what you experience in the US especially as a first gen immigrant. I see a glass ceiling (for the lack of a better word) here. Most of the leadership positions are occupied by US-born (mostly Caucasian) and/or to some degree, Indian immigrants. Sometimes, I truly wonder how/why this person got into the leadership role because it's fairly obvious that s/he lacks the essential qualities required…

Have you ever worked for a European company? You could say the exact same things about every country on the planet except the US version is probably less extreme. Also the US companies are probably more complex to run so its more visible. I once worked for a company that probably manages some of your retirement. They had a team of 50 people working on a compiler for an internal language. Not a single person on that t…

I think you misunderstood my comment. What I'm saying is that the same issue can be observed in the US (i.e., it's not Germany specific).

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#847

Post by aforwardslash »

ItsYan wrote: post #680
aforwardslash wrote: post #673

One of the reasons is that Germany is not a friendly country for non-german speakers (and/or if you dont have the right profile); I've worked for a while in both Berlin and Munich. In berlin you get away with english, except anything official - from opening a bank account to any interaction with the city council or government services. They will go out of your way to make you feel unwelcome if you are not a fluent ge…

Tja, Nie im Leben würde ich zu Bayern gehen. I'm surprised that despite its claim to openness and tolerance, cities like Hamburg, Bremen or Hannover are not capitalising on this.

Lol. Honestly, I love Munich, but I totally understand why certain movements galvanized there :p its easy to be on a high horse on a rich land - if something is not right, must be someone else's fault.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#848

Post by froh »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #651
froh wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2y? sounds like some fitness sth scam. not the real thing. no clubs, where people share their hobby.

Every service provider and every membership in Germany.

nah.

I'm talking TuSpo 1846 or Post SV or Dt. Alpenverein or Gesangsverein whathaveyou or Tanzsportverein Blau Weiss or Freunde der Modelleisenbahn sth or LSVD or Kleingartenverein etc etc etc

traditional clubs with a constitution and real self organized base democratic involvement and leadership

you get the idea.

not the "let's save some tax" scam pseudo clubs where you are not a voting member but just a service customer.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#849

Post by NorthSouthNorth »

merb wrote: post #267
NorthSouthNorth wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get B1 with a bit of spare time. With kids, I understand it's a different situation; however, it took me about 2 years to get there, learning in my spare spare time (which after a certain point was just listening to audio books before bed). The compounding effect works. BUUUUT, even with B2, it's just not enough for avoiding "the look", as you put it. I think you need flawless C1 or something, idk. Don't care…

Most b2 holders can’t even speak German. B1 is not that much better nowadays. You get tons of applications for a job where people struggle with the basics with these and as a small company with only DACH customers it’s most often not worth it

I wonder if it’s people gaming the system to get the certs or just that you have high expectations.

B2 should mean one is confident in most conversational situations. I’m at this level and have no issues conversing at all but make a lot of small mistakes.

With that being said, being in a meeting with a group of natives from the same region is brutal.

And learning that dialect is just something you can only do through exposure which you won’t get because nobody is going to hire someone who takes a few months to a year to be able to understand and speak like you (which is completely understandable).

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#850

Post by marcus_holmes »

account42 wrote: post #649
marcus_holmes wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's human nature to be "racist" since people generally prefer to be with others similar to themselves. This is blatantly and obviously not true. Especially when discussing ex-pats, as you'd realise if you gave it 5 seconds' thought.

Expats actually prove the rule, otherwise we would not need a word for them.

That's just ridiculous. We have words for everything. Multiple words for everything. Having a word for "people who live in a country that isn't where they grew up" doesn't then mean that everyone else is inherently racist.
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