The lower bound of ~45k might be attributed to the German salary cutoff of the EU Blue Card (long term visa for skilled workers) at €45,552 [1]. When I was offered my first dev job (and first job in Germany), it was exactly this number.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/types/eu-blue-card" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/types/e...</a>
Having hired dozens of developers in Berlin over the last 10 years, I can confirm that these numbers look awfully low, at least for any major city in Germany. Munich should be even higher, Hamburg comparable to Berlin. 80k max is maybe for a mid level dev, surely not for anyone considered senior. Or I always overpaid, but then salaries should be related to the contribution to the overall success, not on the average of whatever other companies, so no hard feelings here.
I'm a grad student at a university from Berlin. We had a job fair a few weeks ago with ~15 companies where I asked every company representative what their salary for freshly-graduated sw engineers would be. About 80-90 % fell between 50k ± 5k € before tax (=brutto). Notable exceptions were finance sector jobs and jobs at American tech companies which offered closer to 70k ± 5k €.
You can often reach 90-100k as a senior dev (the real ones with +8y xp.) in major german cities with good negotiation skills at top tier companies. Senior devs can usually pick any company they want. The story is on the other side completely reverted for junior devs. Low pay (50-60k) and low demand. I've hired some junior devs in the past years and it usually shows why you pay a senior almost the double.
I'm not a software type guy (at least not by original profession) but I moved from the states to Germany and I think between taxes and lower salary it probably cost me ~30-40%
(I was on a plebeian 100k salary in a flyover state and even on a relatively quite high salary here it was lower than that when i started here wagewise the euro:USD comes into play though.)<p>I have never bothered to calculate it exactly and I would do it again in a heart beat every single time.
Too many things you can't put a pricetag on for me.
Too many things I always hated (driving to work and losing ~30-90 minutes) which went away forever.<p>I can also never be that terribly bored in a conversation with someone who speaks German, because I can just switch to German to practice if I find them to be tedious to speak with.<p>But I also hate when the weather goes over 70F, and don't <i>terribly</i> mind not seeing the sun for months, so I can understand why it sours some people
Not that I necessarily doubt these numbers, but by personal experience these always feel awfully low (even jobs paying to TVöD on entry level should put you above the median). Especially when going for larger enterprises I can only recommend negotiating - a lot is possible and realistic beyond the 90th percentile with even moderate experience.
For those not in the know, there’s a ~10k minimum gap between West and (former) East German states, among a number of other skewing factors.
The article doesn’t seem to indicate how balanced the population of the survey has been, if at all.
I can't really confirm this data - atleast for my city it is very low. I started working fulltime last year and i'm already in the median and will crack the top 25% when 30 years old in some years. And my employee is not known to pay well.
Just to add, the net salary you recieve is about 60%. Also salary increments pay off less the more you get paid. Eg. going from 50k to 70k gives you as much net salary increase as going from 70k-100k.
Is this before or after taxes? When researching taxes in Germany, apparently there is a 9% tax if you belong to a church. What is that about? Did some politician read about tithing in the Bible and decide that money should go to them instead?