logoalt Hacker News

pkos98yesterday at 4:48 PM3 repliesview on HN

Not only, but also due to this. Relocation through switching teams is not possible. Compensation took a big hit due to dollar depreciation.

Worst case I'll end up being on unemployment insurance for a year, ~ 2800 EUR per month while travelling the world in my late twenties...

When property costs 1 million+ (the case in Berlin/Munich), financially it really doesn't matter whether I net 6500 EUR month working 50+ hours for FAANG or 4500 EUR working 35 hour weeks for a German corporate, even though the gross salary for the FAANG job is twice the German job.


Replies

patallyesterday at 5:56 PM

I never understand those calculations. You can buy houses in Berlin from around 350k. Maybe not in that area you are looking but still. With something like 600 to 800 sqm ground, house around 100 sqm, quiet neighborhood, 10 min walking to S-Bahn (i.e my grandmothers neighbors house that was sold a few month ago). Probably add 100k for renovation. But with 3.5k of savings a month (from 6.5k easily possible), you have paid it of in ~10 years.

show 1 reply
alberto-myesterday at 5:25 PM

> When property costs 1 million+ (the case in Berlin/Munich), financially it really doesn't matter whether I net 6500 EUR month working 50+ hours for FAANG or 4500 EUR working 35 hour weeks for a German corporate

Financially in the first case you can afford a mortgage on said property (barely, with some help from parents/partner, maybe aiming for something slightly out of the very city centre), in the second case you cannot. Also, 4500 net for a 35-hr week is something you will not easily find in a German corporate: at that level, levels.fyi only lists non-German multinationals. Unless you become a contractor, or rise really high on the corporate ladder.

But I agree on the rest of your comment, and I have also left Germany because of the massive amount of money that the government feels entitled to take from the pockets of the so-called “top earners” (i.e. anybody making the equivalent of 70'000 $) while giving back barely anything in terms of services.

kakacikyesterday at 5:36 PM

Unemployment office doesn't require you to constantly seek new jobs, prove that and keep going to unemployment office (to prevent exactly this? We have this here in Switzerland. They do give more here but costs are massive compared to Germany, and economy and society is way more nimble than glacial Germany it seems.

If that is lacking, German population mentality is worse that I thought, less efficient, more incompetent social-state-feed-lazy-me model, which is of course unsustainable. Ungood in global times, very ungood.

I have a friend who works quite high in sales for BMW directly in Munich, and even despite his general politeness he... isn't happy where company and Germany overall is heading. Was a big proponent of green deal before when everything was rosy, finally understood what a shoot-your-own-feet idiocy that was. Eastern wing of EU was screaming all this since beginning since this is by far the #1 issue they have with EU, but nobody in Brussels or Bonn gave a nanofraction of a f#ck..