I mean 22€ is a cashier’s salary before taxes in Munich and good salary in some unnamed place in nowhere. This average number does not provide much useful information. University MINT freshmen make €55k in bigger cities, hard to imagine who can work for less nowadays.
It depends as always. Whole industry is unionized in Germany and big companies pay according union's tables. These stupid tables are for 35 hour weeks. Last company was able to get 40 hours contract and it was ok. The company I denied during interview offered only 35 hours and plus 5 hours that must be negotiated every year. €95k and 35 hours is doable, but rather rare. €100k with 40 hours contract is on the higher end (in Munich). Subtract -15% for less experience, another -15% for bad location and another -15% for small companies. Add +20% for perfect match. Add another 30% for FAANGs as a stock bonus.
I don't understand the 35/38h contracts instead of 40h. Where did this come from?
What exactly do you mean by bad location? Non city centers? Country sides?
Shouldn't companies located at country sides pay higher to attract talent who otherwise won't relocate there?
My experience with German workforce is that they (orc, not all) care really less about doing actual work, being proactive, and focusing on growth. And instead, they focus on documentation (and bureaucracy), don't rock the boat/don't take risk/do as minimum as possible to not get fired. Is yours similar?
Bad location might be 40 miles away for Munich city center. The company claims, they are not in Munich and can’t pay that level of salaries despite being in the same high cost area. Maybe locals with real estate might be interested in such positions. No way to attract talents from outside.
The weird working hours come from factory workers. Same union is for white collar and production workers. Basically a win for production workers and a salary loss for others. The unionized salary system has a very important time component. One can be mythical 10x engineer and the other slacker. The slacker is 5 years more in the company. And their salary difference is probably only couple percent. Because you can’t compare deliverables of the two employees. That’s discrimination. The manager must assess everybody individually depending on their individual performance. Funny is it. Based on such salary system any personal initiative makes no sense. Why rock the boat or propose something novel when this does not affect salary (in positive way).
Time for conclusion about work culture in Germany and minus points for me. The big companies are dying dinosaurs. The work culture is a cargo cult where performance is secondary thing. The most important thing is to not rock the boat and prepare for long years to come and yearly pay increases after union’s strikes. This year they are targeting +7% for everybody. So sit tight, do bare minimum, collect salary. That’s the mantra in big German companies. I worked for 3 such companies and they all were the same. My friends report similar things from other German corporations. Politics and bureaucracy.
This is a nail in the coffin for the whole country. Personal initiative is worthless trait. No personal initiative, no startups, no wealthy people with good technology understanding. And the circle closes: no wealthy people with good tech skills, no startup funding and no startups. While traditional industries shrink.
