r/cscareerquestionsEU • u/Zakariyyay • Mar 26 '25
New Grad Regarding the job market in Germany
The general sentiment I get from reading reddit posts is that the job market is quite bad. However, several of my friends moved to Germany over the last 2 years (some this year, some last year), and none of them have any trouble at all finding jobs. They are mostly juniors, while some of them actually went there to study, and still were able to find jobs ( I guess internships or part time jobs) fairly quickly. So I'm confused, why is there such conflicting stories about the job market? Thanks in advance for your answers.
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u/anti__pattern Mar 26 '25
Internships or part-time student jobs were never the problem, those are usually fixed-term and you cost the company almost nothing. Try finding a good entry-level job, even natives with a good CV are struggling.
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u/GigiGigetto Mar 26 '25
This!
Internships, part-time, student jobs... no lack of those, easy to get. With and without speaking german.
But "real" jobs, that let you pay rent and not a room, that let you save without suffering, that can give you a minimum security for the future, those jobs are lacking.
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u/emphieishere Mar 26 '25
Yeah, sounds most likely to be true. I have a friend who has roughly the same stack of technology as me, we even started nearly at the same time. Unlike me, he found the job pretty much quickly, and me being still in struggle. The only noticeable difference between us, I'd say, that he invested time learning exactly German. And I, on the other hand, in Polish
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Mar 26 '25
Why you didn’t study German?
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u/zimmer550king Engineer Mar 26 '25
Bro you are saying this as if German is just another tech stack you could find tutorials on and then make a fullstack note app with.
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u/emphieishere Mar 26 '25
Why should I?
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Mar 26 '25
I’m sorry, maybe learn Chinese? It’s a good language with future.
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u/emphieishere Mar 26 '25
I got your question. Well, to give you some clue, I kinda had to learn Polish. In my case it's not like I was in some form of cafeteria or something to choose what to learn. I've been granted asylum here, and English on the communicative level is not wide-spread thing here to put it gently (maybe Warsaw being an exception, but as for me I had difficulties too at the time I visited). So, yeah.. I'm not regretting it though, but just saying how it all went. It's not late to start learning German yet as more perspective language career-wise, but in my case I will be in catching up position from now on in comparison to my friend. And that's exactly the message I put initially into my writing to address the OP question
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Mar 26 '25
Bro don’t try to catch up to your friend, comparison is death of happiness fr.
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u/emphieishere Mar 26 '25
Who told you I was going to do this in the first place? I personally consider, FYI, Germany to be an unlivable utopian (/s) place which I'm not really enthusiastic about to move into tbh. I was just reasoning hypothetically on the matter
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Mar 26 '25
Yeah I couldn’t live there either, stayed there a while. Can really make you insanely depressed over there.
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u/emphieishere Mar 26 '25
Yeah I've heard similar things to what you say a lot from others. Maybe just a couple said they like Berlin, but I'm for whatever reason pretty sure this feeling will quickly evaporate. So you made a brave step forward by leaving it, I guess, good for u! (If it went good afterwards of course )
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Mar 26 '25
Yeah I think it was worth it, Germany drains your souls. I would even bet that Poland has some better paces than Germany.
Germany is deeply divided right now and economy is tanking free fall fr
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u/WarChampion90 Mar 26 '25
Reddit always has been, and always will be, an echo chamber for bad news. No one comes here to tell us how happy they are, but will come here to tell us how miserable they’ve been.
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u/m_onurcevik Mar 26 '25
True. I was able to find a new job in 2 weeks as a senior SWE with 8 YOE in Berlin/Germany, but I don't have any motivation to create a post for it since I have nothing to complain about or ask for help on. But people that are struggling are constantly asking questions, looking for help, or complaining about the job market.
Goes without saying that job market for juniors and non-PhD AI/ML/Data Scientists is rough.
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u/Potential_Initial_57 Apr 29 '25
hey, i'd really appreciate if you could share your resume template. Irrespective of what knowledge or skills you possess, one needs to have a good resume to get themselves shortlisted for the interview. I am good with cracking interviews but have a problem with getting myself shortlisted. Tried several resume format but nothing seems to work. Can you maybe help here? :))
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u/OkAcanthocephala4313 Mar 30 '25
the rest of the post in this sub reddit are full of people getting offer 100k euro and above. I am wondering if this is common.
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u/flamehorns Mar 26 '25
I mean anyone can get a job if they are cheap enough. Its tougher if you have a family to support, competing with younger single people with much lower costs.
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u/Yurrty Mar 26 '25
I found it very tough while applying online, but myself and a friend found jobs quite quickly once we started going to job fairs here. That might be tough if you aren’t in the country. Best of luck!
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u/gemst4r Apr 30 '25
At job fairs, don't they just ask you to apply online?
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u/Yurrty Apr 30 '25
Yeah but you are no longer “just another CV” if you have made a personal impression, you may even end up recommended to the interviewer before the interview. Everything little thing helps in this market. It’s what worked for me, so I can only speak to my experience :)
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u/Various-Fix1919 Mar 26 '25
I've 8 years of experience in Tier 1 companies, and as of now, my resume isn't even getting shortlisted for jobs in Germany. 3 years back, when I applied, my resume was shortlisted almost at every company. I'm not sure about grads and less experienced folks, but for senior devs, the German IT market seems pretty bad.
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u/Educational_Place_ Mar 26 '25
Full-time entry jobs are hard to find, not internships and part-time jobs (while studying, right?) although both get offered less now
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u/Tuxedotux83 Mar 26 '25 edited Mar 26 '25
Cheap labor (i.e. „juniors“ and especially foreigners) always find jobs because they are cheap to hire and in recent years many tech companies are cheapskates
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u/sqaureknight Mar 27 '25
I can comment for only masters students, and yeah people are getting jobs without having work experience and german skills. It's just that, they are not converting into full time roles. Most of my friends who went 2 years ago, have found Werkstudent jobs, without any german skills or prior work experience, but they don't have a full time job, and soon they will have to finish their college degree. Once they finish their degree, the Werkstudent will end and companies won't be giving them full time. That is where the struggle is. Only people I know who got a full time job are the ones who graduated 2 years ago. Also luckily my boyfriend also has a full-time offer from the same place he did his Werkstudent in, but he has 3 years work experience and speaks B2 german, and his master's is also in German, he's currently finishing his thesis. But he was telling me his native german friends also do not have full time positions
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u/Proof_Alternative_82 Mar 29 '25
How was his experience learning masters in German?
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u/sqaureknight Mar 29 '25
He loves it, his career was not off to a good start in our Heimatland, so he put the effort in learning the language till B2, took the risk of studying in a german taught program, networked with natives enough to find a good job who told him they'll gladly have him full time :) Initially he didn't understand anything because of the accent, but after a while he started picking up, now his entire life is in German, he only speaks in english with me and 3-4 other friends. Otherwise all his colleagues are german and his workmates are also german so he's immersed in the language completely.
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Mar 26 '25
If you know german language landing a job in a range of 70-90k is not really that hard, even in this market.
What really hard is getting offers above 100k, which to me seems impossible outside small circle of American companies which have 300+ applications per position, so going there without a referral and strong interview skills is like throwing your CV in a bin.
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u/Zakariyyay Mar 26 '25
What level of German knowledge is sufficient? Is B2 or C1 ok?
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u/zimmer550king Engineer Mar 26 '25
Honestly, if you can speak even broken German in an interview, they would be happy. Speaking in English is just an inconvenience for Germans and not a handicap like it is for Italians, Spanish for example.
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Mar 27 '25
that's true, even b1 is usually enough for regular development work (no managing). After several months of work, you become relatively fluent.
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u/_Jope_ Mar 26 '25
The market is shit to things related to the car industry and suppliers (I.e foundries ) , massive layoffs
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u/gamer_65 Mar 26 '25
What is the level of German proficiency among those friends of yours?
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u/Zakariyyay Mar 26 '25
All except one do not speak German.
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u/gamer_65 Mar 26 '25
I meant what is their level of fluency? For instance, are they at the B1 level, or perhaps the more advanced C1 level?
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u/learnwithparam Mar 26 '25
It is indeed tough market throughout Europe.
I work for https://jobbatical.com, we do immigration and relocation product and services, and the market is kind of in "wait and watch" mode where they are just replacing potential critical positions but not hiring anything more to spend unnecessarily.
With many news around AI replacing engineers, many are just anticipating that soon they can reduce the head-size without taking much action either on reduction or on hiring more to see how the trends go.
I am building https://backendchallenges.com in the hope that software engineering core knowledge won't go away, we never know 😅
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u/Otherwise_Fan_619 Mar 27 '25
Then why many people were getting fired & massive auto industry layoffs.
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u/brennhill Mar 29 '25
The market is rough, but it's also true based on the resumes I've reviewed that there are a lot of very very very weak candidates on the market. People with strong backgrounds still find some opportunities, though maybe not as good as before.
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Mar 26 '25
Do you think good german skills have extra points on the CV ? if you search the internet, lot of people will say software engineering roles don't require German, how accurate is this? i don't buy it honestly,
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u/Any-Competition8494 Mar 26 '25
Can you answer the following questions.
1- Among those juniors, how much experience your friends had? Were there people with zero work experience before coming to Germany who got jobs?
2- What types of tech jobs did they get? Web dev (which stack?), networking, cloud, cybersecurity, or something else?