> 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.