What Is It Like To Be a Programmer in Germany?

…through the eyes of an immigrant.

Declaimer

The information below might be subjective, as it’s based exclusively on my personal experience and impression from the life and work in Germany. It covers the period starting from 2011¹, when I first accepted a job offer and moved to Germany, as well as the work in four German companies as a software developer. Therefore, please don’t treat this as a handbook for expats, but rather as an overview from my perspective, which requires fact checking.

Moving to Germany

Motivation

There are many reasons why people relocate to Germany. It can be either a war, hard economical conditions, seeking for better life etc. However, in this post I will cover only cases of the skilled immigration, particularly, of software developers which is my case. Although, many aspects may be common for other specialties too.

It’s known that Germany is an industrial country and its economy is one of the biggest in Europe. As a result it requires a lot of highly-qualified workers, including software engineers. Needles to say, that this demand is significantly increased during the last years.

Therefore, if you’re motivated to move to Germany as a programmer you have good chances to succeed. What you may expect is a decent amount of software and IT related jobs of any kind and tastes and colors, high level of life standards, including the medical insurance, practically free education for your children, and many other social benefits.

On the other hand, there are also many reasons why people do not want to move to Germany or stay here for a long time. You must be prepared for the high level of bureaucracy, tough taxation of your income, need to learn new and comparably non trivial language (in case you don’t already speak German), infinite number of rules and obligations to follow, ruthless housing market and many more. I will try to cover most of these aspects below.

Legal Opportunities

When I first moved to Germany back in 2011 there were no such things like EU Blue Card, Skilled Immigration Act for qualified professionals² etc. The hiring process was much more complex than nowadays, and German companies were not keen to hire skilled workers from outside of the European Union (EU). This was especially true for small companies, as the existing laws put a lot of legal obligations on both the company and the applicants. Not everyone wanted to deal with the complicated bureaucracy, especially with its German implementation. Below is a short list of such requirements (out of my memory):

• The company had to prove it hasn’t found a candidate in EU countries;
• The applicant from non EU countries must pass though a complicated bureaucratical process in the local German embassy with a long and unspecified waiting period (we were waiting for the national visas about three months);
• The applicant’s spouse (if any) must prove the minimum knowledge of German language (A1 certificate). This might be pretty challenging for those, who never learned German before;
• etc.

All these requirements and many more do not exist today. It’s much easier for companies to consider applicants from other countries and demand is much higher. Since this year (2024) most of the procedures are simplified, especially new rules of naturalization apply. This opens a wide doors for those, who want to stay in Germany for a long period of time and eventually become a German citizen. You can achieve this more easily and faster than before.

When You Are Already There

Medical Insurance

You probably already heard about high standards of the medical service in Germany. As a legal resident you can expect any kind of medical treatment from the day one. However, it’s not for free, as some people tend to think. Well, let’s say, it’s free for those who don’t have any income, or they make less than some minimum. Here is how it works. First of all, everyone in Germany must be insured regardless of the employment status and, if you have income, you must pay some percentage from your wages every month. Your insurance covers family members too, by the way. If you don’t or cannot work your insurance is covered by those who works and pays. This system is, indeed, complex and it works only if everyone pays. You also don’t have to worry if you loose your job for some reasons - the medical insurance is still preserved. There are, of course, some limitations with coverage too. Insurance will not probably cover cases that aren’t directly related to your health. For instance some cosmetic operations or corrections.

Education and Childcare

If you have children you will be probably concerned about their education and the daycare system. Let’s be short here:

• The kindergartens are partially free. It depends on the federal state (Bundesland) and the amount of time a child will spend there. Attendance is not mandatory but advised for the better social adaptation;
• The majority of schools are public and free. Attendance is mandatory and strictly controlled by the authorities. If your child is in the school age and doesn’t appear in the school you are in troubles;
• The state universities, even most prestigious, are almost free (~100€ per semester). However, the accommodation is rather expensive, especially in such cities like Munich or Hamburg. Universities are not able to provide rooms for each of thousands student they have.

On the Job

Job availability

According to Eurostat in 2023, almost 10 million persons work as ICT specialists across European Union. The highest number (2.1 million) worked in Germany, which provided work to more than one-fifth (21.5 %) of the EU’s overall employed population working as ICT specialists. Among them there are about 900K professional developers (2019), which makes Germany the country with the highest number of software developers in Europe. Even having that many many developers the demand for such specialists is still preserved, and you can find plenty of job ads on all known boards.

Work-life Balance

When you start working in a German company you immediately may notice how much attention is paid to the work-life balance. Yes, Germans value it very much, and, hopefully, you will too. Work is often seen as a means for making money and there is strict separation between work and the life outside of work, where they try to find real pleasure and fulfillment. They prefer to spend more time with family, kids, friends or traveling, and the career doesn’t seem to be the most important goal in the life.

You will hardly meet workaholics who stay late evenings in the office to finish their work, who work on weekends or write emails at the late night. There are reasons for not doing that. Remember, your success, salary and promotions don’t corelate with how many extra hours you work. In some cases your extra effort might be treated negatively, e.g. as a result of your inefficient style of work or problems in the private life.

Finally, you are simply not allowed to work more than stated in your contract, even if you can. Of course, there are some exceptions, but they are all are strictly regulated by the labor law.

Apart from the work hours, companies are obligated to provide paid day offs (at least two days monthly for full time workers), paid sick leaves (up to six weeks) and other benefits that fit to the basic concept of employee’s well being. A typical full time contract includes 24-30 paid vacation days for 40 hours work week.

During my work in the several companies I never saw rush hours in the offices. Strict schedules or demand to finish/release something on a particular date or time virtually don’t exist. In general, when something should be done the simple rule applies: “If we were not able to do it today we will do it tomorrow.”. As a result, things are usually getting done a bit later³. Despite the slowness, Germans work persistently and, in most of the cases, finish what has been started and planned.

Work Culture

Working in IT means you will be surrounded by mostly highly educated colleagues, who usually behave respectfully and treat others the same way. Too, it is true for the boss-subordinate relationship. Managers, including those in upper level, try to avoid giving rigid orders, do top-down control, micromanagement or play bosses. In opposite - they try to apply a loose style of management, be friendly and “close to people”. As an indication of such attitude, they keep their office doors open⁴, that implies, you can enter any time and discuss whatever needed. You usually call them informally rather by names and not “Mr. …”⁵. I was a witness of many cases of their being supportive and helpful in not only business related affair, bun on the personal matters too.

Some companies implement so called “flat hierarchy”. As a rule, this kind of structure belongs to small companies that do not have long chains of management. There are also no job ranks like “junior”, “senior” etc. Everyone is a “software developer” or “software tester” etc. You can see this in some job ads or in company profiles, and it advertised as a company benefit. I have noticed, that Germans, in general, try to avoid anything that reminds any kind of hierarchy. I suspect, they try to get rid of some existing unpleasant stereotypes about them.

I was also a witness of excessive usage of word “manager” within the company, where almost a half of the staff had “Manager” in their job title: “Office manager”, “Data manager”, etc. even if they didn’t have a single one to manage. I guess, it was used as some sort of motivational factor.

Germans prefer to communicate rather verbally (in person or via phone calls) and avoid writing emails. I suspect, there are several reasons for doing so: all written stuff is considered as too formal, and they tend to be more “friendly”; “paper” assumes more responsibility, which some people try to avoid. This approach has its own drawbacks - the verbal information, if not put on the “paper”, if vague and eventually disappears. Despite of the ticketing systems, online documentation, the knowledge transfer flaw is common, because most of the important information, for some reason, still remains in the memory of colleagues, who have been in the company for a long time.

Integration/adaptation

When you first join a company you notice that your colleagues share a common corporate culture, which varies from company to company. Soon you discover that there is also a politics, that regulates the communication and relations between your peers. In order to feel a part of the team you need to integrate into this. The best way is to prove your being useful. It’s not always easy, especially in teams whose members work many years with each other and don’t tend to accept new members into their well established “harmonic and friendly society”. Here in Germany people are usually pragmatic and rational. Therefore, they do not judge one by what he/she is saying, but what he/she does. You might be a charming and very charismatic person, but that’s not enough - your words and doings will be carefully examined. This takes time and effort. And yes, your country of origin matters[^fn6]. Your previous work titles, seniority levels, education and the competences will be in doubt until you prove otherwise. According to the Aghajanyan’s second empiric low your effort should be ~1.5 times more than usual to achieve the same results as locals.

Professionalism

Here in Germany I met professionals with profound knowledge in their domain. Some of them are in the business for decades and know almost everything on the topic. I also saw brilliant programmers with the exceptional range of coding skills, who know how to make a good and reliable software.

I also noticed that the deep domain knowledge doesn’t always correlate with the software engineering skills. Although, many professionals combine them pretending to be good in both, but it is rather rare the case. You are either a good physicist or a good programmer, but not both.

In almost all companies[^fn7] there is a number of people, who work there for many years, even decades. Some of them are employed directly after their graduation and never worked anywhere else. Let’s call them the core staff. These are people who posses the most of the company knowledge, undocumented details, know-hows, and who initially implemented the software you, as a newcomer, will be working on. They will remain the main source of information during your first few months or even years in the new company[^fn8]. What distinguish them from the rest is their confidence about being exceptionally important for the company and the business. Therefore, they put a lot of effort to keep this status quo as long as possible. Some of them do it unconsciously due to the lack of self-confidence or professionalism. Some afraid of losing “stability”, which is, in most of the cases, illusory. Finally, there are people who did use repeatedly the same technologies for decades and aren’t able to accept the fact that there are alternatives too, and the same things can be done in much more efficient ways. Hence, they become very defensive in front of new ideas. Even if they realize that something has to be changed, the adaptation period is pretty long.

There is nothing extraordinary in such behavior. I would say, it’s natural reaction to protect ones old but tested habits. It would be silly and counterproductive to push immediately your ideas and “improvements” forward pretending to be smarter and more experienced than your other colleagues. After all, a wise man said: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Patience is the key. As I said earlier, Germans are skeptical, and need more time to get to know you and your super ideas better. If you offer something really good, be persistent, and don’t worry, it will eventually accepted - there are always open minded and flexible people among others.

What is said can be observed in other countries, companies and societies too. However, what makes German professionals stand out from the crowd is their pathological desire to create extremely complex systems. Starting from German bureaucracy, taxes, cars and finishing with the software engineering is way too complicated. I saw software designs that are literally represents Rube Goldberg machines with their terrifying complexities. In most of the cases, such systems are functional, but barely maintainable.

To be continued…

---

1. I’ve started to write this post in 2024, i.e. after almost 13 years in Germany ↩︎

2. Its provisions are entering into force gradually, by 1 June 2024 at the latest ↩︎

3. “A bit later” can be days, weeks or even months later ↩︎

4. So called open-door policy ↩︎

5. This must not be treated as their weakness, and that you are allowed to break the rules. Similarly, they are not your real friends too [^fn6]: Nobody will openly admit this, of course, and this is purely my personal observation. However, this effect is minimal if you work in an international company, where colleagues of different nationalities are broadly represented. [^fn7]: I wouldn’t count startups here [^fn8]: Duration depends on the domain and mindset of those people. ↩︎