Berlin is one the cheapest capital cities in Europe. As such it attracts a huge amount of immigrants. That low cost is reflected in the pay. An experienced full stack developer would be fortunate to get 90-95k euro annually. That is plenty of money if you intend to stay in Berlin, but is not something you can save up and build a future with or transfer to another country. Also, housing is a huge problem there and it can take 6 months to find even a basic flat. I am an American developer that lived there for many years and my co-workers were usually Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Iranian, Russian, Lebanese, and now Indian. It was rare to find an actual German coder.
I had a hard time with German work expectations and management style. Also, their engineering approach is thorough but incredibly slow and over-built. The environment is hierarchy and credential based with little room for individual initiative or creative problem solving. I was used to improvising, experimenting, and thinking outside the box. It was not a good fit.
90-95k would be impossibly high in Belgium, which is but a stone's throw away from Germany. If that isn't enough money to save, you're doing something very wrong, or your idea of a cheap city might differ from mine.
Currently the market for software developers is very complicated in Germany.
Basically, the answer is: if you have a job, you stay there (at least until hopefully in a few years the job market situation for software developers in Germany improves).
The question should be "where did they go?" - to Switzerland, years ago already.
How do I know? I've met them there. My project of close to 40 people was over 80% German. Contractors overall were mainly German as well.
And it makes huge sense - in the German part language is largely the same where it matters and salaries are much better. Also there aren't nearly enough Swiss programmers to fill all the positions.
If I were German, I would be in Zürich right now, admiring its hideous bare concrete 20-21st century architecture.
People need to understand just how saturated San Francisco is with ads for AI companies right now. I know what these companies do, but I'm still amazed at how niche and bizarre the ads come across. They use an enormous amount of public space to advertise something only relevant to a few hundred people. Locals have a deep resentment of these companies.
I have seen company descriptions in job ads that list college achievements of founders. They are invariably young Asian men. I understand that it's a cultural signifier and don't judge them. But, I also understand that I will never hear back from them because I don't share that background. So, I never apply to any job listing that references college experience of either side, other than wanting a degree in general.
Someone once told me that American work culture used to be based more on intern-ship / apprentice type hiring but now obsess with formal degrees. I wonder how much of this shift in culture is influenced by the Korean, Chinese and Indian immigrants, as a formal education is a prerequisite to compete in these countries' job market? For example, it is quite common in India for employers to ask for our 10th and 12th standard marks / grade (because these are national exams) along with college grades - to apparently gauge "Consistency". Fluctuating performance, a break or dropout years all negatively impact you and can be nerve wracking for many freshers, until they manage to get some work experience. It is somewhat disappointing to see this culture permeate to America too, even though I feel quite conflicted about it - after all, everyone does want to hire the best / most competent / reliable candidate; but the other approach - a vocational kind of training - also has its merits and seems to have served American companies well too. (Zoho in India is experimenting with this kind of hiring in India where they are hiring high-school students, mainly from rural areas, and offering them a work cum study program. They don't get any formal diploma or degree though - https://www.zohoschools.com/ ).
> I wonder how much of this shift in culture is influenced by the Korean, Chinese and Indian immigrants
I think there’s an influence, but it’s amplifying a pre-existing trend. Bureaucratic societies favor formal credentials. The U.S. has become much more bureaucratic since the mid-20th century, and credentialism has grown. Reliance on degrees and other formal credentials also enables the universities to achieve political goals through admissions and grading policies. Asian immigrants in the U.S. have readily adapted to that system.
how many uncredentialed people's families go to private school with what you pay them?
it's one thing to hire some people for some roles with this sort of, diamond in the rough mentality. obviously that can be a good idea. but in my experience, if you try to take leadership in that way, you are spending most of your time persuading other people that it's a good idea, which they will reject, and consequently, it's of little influence.
then you look at people who become bosses who lack credentials (or whatever), and you find out it's only because they drop out of their competitive colleges to be fabulously successful. the true weirdos out there - whatever held them back from "credentials" doesn't stop them from becoming fabulously wealthy, but rarely do they go and hire anyone else. like they do not create enterprises, teams or even families. do you get it?
What you’re describing is the culture of credentialism. You can’t change it by yourself and it’s hard to fight against. But that’s my point.
The problem with credentialism is that the credential becomes the end, not a means to an end. There is a huge problem in India that there are far more people with credentials (often of dubious worth) than jobs for those people. The culture is very focused on “the track,” where you get the credential then go to the job unlocked by the credential. But the problem is that there’s very few people actually starting the businesses and creating jobs that would hire degree holders.
I don't think other cultures are driving much of the trend for educational check marks. I remember my dad and uncle talking about the awkwardness of being asked where they did their MBA's by colleagues/clients in the late 90s/early 00's and them trying to figure out how to navigate that as they didn't even have bachelors degrees. And I doubt whoever replaced them when they retired had less than an MBA.
Between increased regulation and greater competition for jobs, the degree requirements keep going up in a lot of/most industries. I also think there is a tendency for those that have reached a level of educational attainment to push back on others without equal numbers of checkmarks. Once a role is populated by MBA, PhD, MS or even BS, individuals don't like to see others doing the same work with less credentials. Maybe it's a 'I had to do this, so you do too' mentality or a sense that it devalues their own credentials.
I have suspected the influence is real. For a reference point, the majority of students at top tier US universities are Asian at this point, broadly. Not every top tier university but there's a trend to have about 30-40% Asian American students and then roughly 1/3 international which is heavily weighted toward China and India. This constitutes the largest group usually. So it's quite likely that universities adapt to this and hiring practices begin to reflect an intense interest in exam taking and credentials.
The thing about it is I view it similarly to how in the past "well-roundedness" and "leadership" was part of hiring and admissions. We laugh at that now but my understanding is the SAT score can be improved with long term studying. So intensive SAT studying seems like a new thing that isn't evenly practiced among people in the US. So at worst SAT score usage seems like a way for an elite group to preserve and replicate itself. I have no SAT score so I feel somewhat outside of this debate and have no experience with it.
I think it is a positive for an employer to ask for an SAT because it tells me right away I don't want to work for them. Once (a long time ago) I tried to upload my resume to apply for a job. The web page started asking me very basic questions, like a basic aptitude test. I was out. Tell me you do not know how to find and evaluate talent!
I think this is highly age-dependent. I took the SAT well over a decade ago and have significant work experience since then. It would be odd to require me to put down my SAT scores, which I don't even precisely remember.
But if I were < 5 years out of college, and especially if I had gone to school during COVID times (when SATs were not required by many colleges), I would completely understand why an employer might ask.
Basically, colleges used to act as a filter for SAT and other attributes. During the 2020-2025 period, they admitted students under fairly different standards, due in part to testing challenges and social movements.
It makes sense for an employer to want to do a little more diligence to ensure that students who were admitted during this period are similar to students admitted during the prior several decades.
It was required at my first job in 1989, for entry level actuaries.
In fairness, part of job performance was passing the actuarial exams, the first two of which were calculus and statistics. I imagine testing well on the SATs for a math or EE degree (what they hired) was a good indicator of passing tests.
I didn't take the SATs in the 80s but in 00s I don't remember any of the concepts translating well to understanding calculus or statistics and I scored well enough it gave me a free ride to college (well that was the PSAT but it was in line with my SAT score). If they wanted to test that they should have tailored an exam similar to my college when assessing my math capability.
No only sat scores but specifically they ask for the percentile band of your high school maths and hard sciences scores.
Not even kidding. I’ve been in a staff level+ role at 3 of the 5 faang. Applied to canonical because their products are interesting. I’m ~30 years past high school and i get hit with ‘what are your high school maths scores’. I answered the online form honestly and got a rejection email immediately on send. Phew!
Not at all kidding on that and there’s screenshots of the literally insane questions they ask online.
lol I know, I applied for them around 4-5 years ago and thought it was a joke... I did the first part which was some gimmic IQ tests and then I had to write an essay (which I didn't) !
This is the first year I made more money selling art than I did freelancing web dev. I just incorporated and formalized my web dev business (https://lcdbmg.com). A couple of weeks later I got a booth at an art festival and ended up selling many prints (https://lucidbeaming.com). I think the universe is telling me something.
I have done festivals before, so I knew what to expect. One thing I had this time was accepting credit cards and apple pay through an NFC app on my phone. Most people paid with apple pay and were glad I accepted it. Being in a sales booth is awkward at times, but I made friends with the other exhibitors. I had some good conversations with people.
I bet most of these were German government property at some point. Considering the time period they were produced, they were probably under security protocols as well. That doesn't just expire. You are right to wonder what the provenance and legal standing of this transfer was.
I've said it before that Mistral is underrated. They are looking at real world use of LLMs and tooling. Bespoke models are very appealing to lots of non-tech centered companies and state agencies. Also, Mistral's actual platform is useful. While others are watching performance leaderboards like this is some eSports stream, they are building real world uses.
I was working on a site to mashup Spotify playlists. I can't stand the "weighted shuffle" Spotify uses. It is also useless for niche genres or experimental music. Last week, I got it all the way to launch and then had reports of login problems. It turns out that Spotify changed its developer terms last year and I can't accept public users unless I'm in their partner program. That has a requirement of 250k MAU. So, everyone was declined when the tried to login. I'm limited to just 5 users. That sucks, but I invited 5 friends to use it and we just bang out epic playlists.
This turned out to be a huge waste of time. I built this without knowing that Spotify changed their policy for independent projects last year. I can't get it out of dev mode unless I register as a Spotify partner as a company AND
maintain a minimum of at least 250k MAUs. So, I'm limited to 5 users that I have to enter their account info by hand. What a bummer. Still, I really like the background animations I came up with.
Location: San Francisco
Remote: Hybrid or Remote
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Full-stack web, but recently React Native, Svelte, and RabbitMQ
Résumé/CV: https://joshuacurry.dev
Email: (on dev portfolio above)
I offer high yield with low drama. 15+ years experience across the modern web stack. Looking for contract work.
I had a hard time with German work expectations and management style. Also, their engineering approach is thorough but incredibly slow and over-built. The environment is hierarchy and credential based with little room for individual initiative or creative problem solving. I was used to improvising, experimenting, and thinking outside the box. It was not a good fit.
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