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Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

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Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#101

Post by madez »

mehdix wrote: post #35
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's tech illiteracy is a self-inflicted consequence of its pitiful salaries in this field, treating IT like a cost center that has to be outsourced to wherever is cheaper and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence. Consequently, Germany's most brilliant tech minds leave for The Valley, Zurich or London. You reap what you sow.

> companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence I witnessed this and moved out of the large rich corporate to a small startup to keep my sanity.

Care to share your experience?

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#102

Post by TulliusCicero »

oblio wrote: post #82
TulliusCicero wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High paying American bigcorps mostly have perfectly fine work life balance. Getting double the vacation time (6 weeks instead of 3) when I moved from the US to Germany was very nice, but going back I'll have 5 weeks, which isn't too bad.

> Getting double the vacation time (6 weeks instead of 3) when I moved from the US to Germany was very nice, but going back I'll have 5 weeks, which isn't too bad. I keep hearing this. Yes, you will get 5 weeks. But what about your wife, your uncle, your friends? In Germany they're all guaranteed to have the same number of days off, access to healthcare, etc. When you have kids you have a bunch of weeks/months off be…

Nitpick: the number of vacation days in Germany does vary a bit, though by much less than in the US.

Agreed, I'd love it if all Americans were entitled to 5 or 6 weeks of vacation, plus the various other benefits that are standard in most of western Europe. Unfortunately, the GOP exists, so that's not happening anytime soon.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#103

Post by Truman2014 »

ulfw wrote: post #87
odiroot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The state of the German IT industry outside of a few select places (Berlin, mostly) If Berlin IT industry is a golden standard I'm really not very hopeful for Germany.

It is. And yes, there is no reason to be hopeful.

Who lost the war.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#104

Post by tomp »

oblio wrote: post #82
TulliusCicero wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High paying American bigcorps mostly have perfectly fine work life balance. Getting double the vacation time (6 weeks instead of 3) when I moved from the US to Germany was very nice, but going back I'll have 5 weeks, which isn't too bad.

> Getting double the vacation time (6 weeks instead of 3) when I moved from the US to Germany was very nice, but going back I'll have 5 weeks, which isn't too bad. I keep hearing this. Yes, you will get 5 weeks. But what about your wife, your uncle, your friends? In Germany they're all guaranteed to have the same number of days off, access to healthcare, etc. When you have kids you have a bunch of weeks/months off be…

But that's the point of US, no? It's the best country for the best people. So, the best people go to the US... (well, many at least... I'm still holding out... for now, I value European way of life but I envy US political & legal systems, in particular their freedom of speech).

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#105

Post by guitarbill »

rb2k_ wrote: post #85
PinguTS wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funfact: more than 30% value in a car is software, which is highly interconnected via various type of networks namely, LIN, CAN, MOST, FlexRay, Ethernet. Most current premium cars have more than 10 of those networks and around 100 to 130 ECUs that talk to each other. So much about: they don't know about software. BTW: The difference between IT and automotive aka embedded is that embedded should work even without DevO…

Having worked at a German company (in Germany) that creates tooling for that kind of software development. They had a huge smalltalk program that created embedded C code (AUTOSAR/MISRA if I remember correctly). Tests only ran manually and the coverage wasn't particularly high. I don't recall any automations that would have stopped you from saving new code that breaks tests to the smalltalk image. Even though it 'work…

Seems to be true in the UK, too. I've heard bad things about e.g. Jaguar Land Rover. As another comment says, this is probably an issue with the embedded industry as a whole. There are great tech companies you can work for, which usually have a very high standard (ARM seems to be great).

Stuttgart/Baden-Württemberg is quite conservative. The real mystery for me was why their engineering pride of doing things correctly doesn't translate to the tech industry. I don't have experience in Berlin/Hamburg/Munich, but it'd be interesting to compare.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#106

Post by est31 »

nosianu wrote: post #64
est31 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a German soon to be CS graduate and right now my favourites are SV and London. I'll try to get into a company that can sponsor L1 visa for SV first and then I'll try London. The German job market is precisely as described by GP: you are competing all the time with remote people in countries with much smaller cost of living and the wages are super low compared to aforementioned places. Germany has great schools, a…

> I'm a German soon to be CS graduate As someone who was in that position ca. 20 years ago and then moved to SV for almost a decade: I don't think I would have dare to make such a sweeping claim as you: > The German job market is precisely as described by GP As a completely new entry into the job market, despite plenty of real work experience (during the last two years of my study the study was "secondary", I managed…

Thank you both for your input. I don't want to leave Germany on a permanent basis. I'm looking forward to the German job market in 5-7 years, maybe more, maybe less, depending on how much I like it.

As for well-known vs not well known: usually bigger companies have more employee protections, more career possibilities, pay better, etc. In small companies you have more power and control, and to some this makes them more interesting. I think larger companies are better but maybe I'll be annoyed by the bureocracy and switch to a smaller company, idk :).

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#107

Post by tomp »

ascar wrote: post #93
odiroot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything above high 60's is really a pipe dream in this current market.

Hard truth: It also heavily depends on how good you are. The salaries talked about are usually the top 10% maybe 20%. Like people throwing around Facebook and Amazon salaries. They only employ a small percentage of devs. That leaves at least 80% that earn considerably less and 50% that earn below the mean.

Quick math lesson: 50% earn below the median. For salaries (in general, I've no idea what it's like for developers in particular) the right-hand tail (high performers with extremely high salaries) and the lack of left-hand tail (no salaries are negative) shifts the mean (arithmetic mean a.k.a. average) upwards so it's actually (usually) going to be more than 50% of population earning below the mean.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#108

Post by adventured »

k__ wrote: post #91
odiroot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The state of the German IT industry outside of a few select places (Berlin, mostly) If Berlin IT industry is a golden standard I'm really not very hopeful for Germany.

I started freelancing in 2014 and somehow ended up only working for US companies after 4 years. Even german startups feel to be a few years behind.

If you don't mind me asking, was it primarily a pay rate issue, or the number of freelancing opportunities that were available?

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#109

Post by srrr »

odiroot wrote: post #70
adrianN wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the case. I believe the problem is that large German companies tend to be hardware companies. They're used to development cycles that take years and extremely conservative in adopting new methods. Management and company culture is not used to dealing with fast changing development methods (where fast is anything that changes more often than once a decade). Rigid processes for compliance with exte…

> Salary for developers really isn't that much of an issue. Yes, it absolutely is. And Berlin is the best example; we're even underpaid by German standards.

Many (senior) developers I know in Berlin get 80000€/year gross income. That is in the top 6% of incomes in Germany. (Top 6% income bracket in the USA would be 150000$/year.)

I don't even get 80k€/year and have a very luxurious and high quality life in Berlin.

Resource: https://wid.world/simulator/

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#110

Post by adventured »

srrr wrote: post #109
odiroot wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salary for developers really isn't that much of an issue. Yes, it absolutely is. And Berlin is the best example; we're even underpaid by German standards.

Many (senior) developers I know in Berlin get 80000€/year gross income. That is in the top 6% of incomes in Germany. (Top 6% income bracket in the USA would be 150000$/year.) I don't even get 80k€/year and have a very luxurious and high quality life in Berlin. Resource: https://wid.world/simulator/

The median software developer - out of nearly 1.3 million developers - in the US makes ~$107,000 per year for 2019. A senior developer should be up near $150,000 even outside the primary major tech cities. The top 10% tier of developers starts over $160,000.
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