Hi! I’m currently hunting for a new job and a really really good sounding place came along, but I’m having a hard time deciding whether it’s actually a good idea because my existing job is already pretty cushy, so a switch might not be worth it. Would love to collect a few more perspectives on this!
My current situation:
I live in Germany. The company I currently work at is my first workplace ever. I started there in late 2021, did my apprenticeship in 1.5 years and was taken as a Junior in early 2023. The economy wasn’t great at the time, so I had no wiggle room with the initial salary and started a bit low. I was promoted to regular exactly a year later in early 2024, and now that I’ve hit the internal requirements for senior that promotion is scheduled for sometime this year (the talks to find a senior project for me are ongoing, but my manager is visibly dragging his feet).
The pay raise system for my current company isn’t great, so my low starting salary hasn’t really grown at a pace that is acceptable considering my current duties and expertise. In hard numbers, I earn about 50k€ p.a. plus about 1.5k in performance bonuses (those aren’t promised, but I’ve consistently gotten them every year) plus I own some company stocks that make like 300€ a year. Further bonuses are that the company pays a part of my D-Ticket (Universal Bus/Train ticket for the entirety of Germany, it’s usually around 60€ a month but the company co-pays like 20€) plus they offer an Urban Sports Club membership with wich I can access all the gyms I’d ever want for 20€ a month.
The work is 100% remote, hours are completely flexible and overtime is compensated very fairly. Plus since I’m out of my trial period, it’s basically impossible to fire me (which is normal for Germany).
The cons of my current workplace are that it’s rapidly enshittifying. There’s a strong push towards using AI everywhere, even if it makes no sense. It’s also getting increasingly bureaucratic and annoying - many decisions can’t be made by regular developers and need to be pushed through random stupid committees, and many features we need to build are just stupid random requirements that management came up with without actually knowing shit about fuck.
I also hate the new hires, especially my team’s new architect who has a background in working for advertising and retail systems and now wants to do dumb shit like enforce customer tracking and aggressive data collection (we’re B2B, all customers are paying customers so collecting their data is a stupid and illegal idea).
Another frustration is that I was appointed as the dedicated person that needs to keep watch on our security and compliance. That has never been an especially thankful role - no matter how large of a security flaw I bring up, I get met with an eyeroll and a “we don’t have the time to fix that” from the side of the programmers and a very annoyed “why the fuck are you not doing anything about this??” from the side of the head security officer. Which ends in all security fixes being kind of my own problem. I’m extremely burnt out from that.
My stats:
In broad terms, my current skillset (which decides my market value) is the following:
- 3 years of extremely solid hands-on experience in React and Typescript (not the kind of experience that code-bootcamp people have, actual experience)
- 3 years of solid experience in everything AWS
- Security Engineering knowledge
- I’m extremely flexible, so I adapt to new tech very very fast
- Outstanding soft skills and mentoring abilities, I basically lead all of my teams meetings and onboard all the new colleagues
–> basically, I have all the capabilities of setting up, building and maintaining a state of the art web/cloud based project all by myself.
My job search so far:
Generally, I haven’t been super active in searching and only applied to the occasional very interesting seeming position. I got more interviews than you’d expect for someone who refuses to use AI to write their CV and does not write motivation letters. Those have led to two serious leads so far: one role for an extremely large company that loans out programmers (so it’s kind of a forward-deployed engineer role) for 65k which I declined because the role would entail pushing out AI slop all day. And another where my second interview is still upcoming, but it’s for an ISP who is known to pull customers into predatory contracts. The pay range is 62-75k but I’m on the verge of canceling the second interview because I disagree with their business practices.
In addition to that, I always have the option of nepotism and going to work at the small company my dad works at as an SPS/Delphi Programmer (the pay wouldn’t be the best but it’s always a fallback option).
Or I could take a shot and apply for the company my husband works at. He says he could put in a good word for me and get me a good chance at a role, but that would probably be embedded programming with like C, which I don’t find very fun or rewarding. And it would be for the military, I’m kinda iffy on that. But the pay and job security is great since it’s a place that follows IG-Metall Union rules.
The current offer I’m considering:
I randomly came across a very small (like 20 people) company who used to be an SAP consulting firm but hard-pivoted towards developing tools in a small niche where they compete with the current american monopoly for those tools (sorry, I can’t be more specific than that, it really is a tiny niche).
They’re extremely vocal about european data sovereignty (hell yes, no more working with AWS or Atlassian) and politically engaged in Open source, environmental projects and anti-nazi stuff.
They’ve been successful in their hard pivot so far and now they can’t keep up with customer demand and need to be rapidly expanding, but they still haven’t proven that it will work out long term so that expansion is risky for them. Coincidentally they’re looking for exactly what I bring to the table (deep expertise in React/Typescript with DevOps experience and a lot of autonomy) in a role where I basically solo-drive a small project from start to finish. They got those red flags where they say they’re “basically a family” and “like a startup”, so you know the workload will be extremely high and stressful, working on weekends will be normal and being on-call 24/7 will be expected.
But: I’m really interested in their niche. It’s a super cool ecosystem and even though I’d be getting a lot more architectural responsibilities than I should, that would be mitigated by the ecosystem being very opinionated on architecture so I can’t go too wrong. And from the people I’ve met so far, it seems like a genuinely nice, open working environment with basically no bureaucracy. It’s remote-first, but other than that the benefits are negligible. No more stocks, gyms or train ticket support for me.
But working at a place I I morally align with is a big factor for me. I have never talked to a company where data sovereignty is even considered, much less actually promoted like with them. And between all my interviews, AI has not been mentioned even a single time. All I know about their stance on it is how many of the people I met keep liking “AI is a dumb waste of money” posts on Linkedin. Which is a good sign.
I’ve had three interviews with them within the last week - first with their two “Face of the company/ people communication” guys (not HR, there is no dedicated HR person) then I got a small coding task which I absolutely aced so they wanted me for a technical interview the next day. They said they’d be thinking about it for at least the next week since they need to consider the other candidates, but the owner of the company was in my inbox the very next day asking to talk asap. The owner guy is the only one responsible for money allocation so he’s the one I had to talk to when it came to salary stuff.
He let me know that I absolutely aced all the interviews and literally every single person in the company unanimously wants me on board (I actually believe it, considering how many of them have checked out my Linkedin profile).
BUT while talking to him was extremely nice, our salary expectations were very far apart. My opinion on the role was that demand-wise it’s a Senior Software Engineer position with some aspects of Dev-Ops Engineer sprinkled in. The normal market rate for someone with 3-5 years of experience for that would be around 63-83k as far as I’ve seen, but the “startup workstyle”, broad responsibility, high amount of project ownership and high amount of technical autonomy, plus the fact they want someone who can contribute right from day 1 makes me think the upper half of that range would be appropriate. So my number is 73k.
He was… quite shocked. He said the absolute maximum amount of budget he has is 50k, because their current pivot is still quite a large risk. Basically, they can’t afford to spend more money than that if they aren’t 100% that they can make it back. And I do believe him on that, that number did not seem like a tactic to lowball me. I’ve done very, very deep research on the company and have found out trough the grapevine that their annual revenue is only in the ballpark of 800-1100k. I can see that a programmer asking for almost 10% of your annual revenue can be a bit offensive, haha.
Still, we ended the interview on a very good note and I still like the guy as a person. In my research I also came across the fact that he’d been considering turning the company into a Worker Cooperative when he retires (only like 3 years until then I believe) so I drilled him on his concrete plans for that. The plan apparently still stands and he explained the logistics of it to me - it sounded super solid, and I’m just way too on board with that kind of communist shit. He was also pretty flattered with how deeply I researched everything and how prepared I am, that’s definitely not the norm for applicants 🥹
Anyways, we didn’t come to an agreement on salary in that interview, none of us could even name a second number since we were literally 23k apart. So we decided to both crunch our numbers again, see what can be done and what compromises and risks we’re willing to take. We’re talking again on friday morning, and I’m pretty sure that where the final decision will be made.
I have talked it trough with my husband about a dozen times now, and the offer I will be bringing to that talk is 60k€ but for 35h/week. Our current rental apartment contract is limited to 3 years, at the end of which we will be buying a house. The next market collapse is coming, and we’re sure that having our own property will be the best way to weather it, so it’s a big goal that we both need to financially contribute to. That means that I can’t really afford to sell myself for much less than market value (AND much less than my current job! Which is 50k for 36h/week at the moment, but the yearly pay raises are next month).
I also know I’m way too enarmoured with this offer. There’s a heavy sunk cost fallacy going on and hating my current job is definitely pushing me to rash decisions. I totally see that I’m being a fucking vegan and letting my morals overshadow my financial self-preservation. But I also have enough savings to cushion a total catastrophe, and leaving my current company wouldn’t actually burn any bridges, so there’s a high chance they’d take me back if things don’t work out. Honestly… I don’t know. There’s plenty of ways to argue that I should stay at my current job, or that I should keep looking, or that I should take that new job. When I weigh the pros and cons, all the options end up at kind of an equal place.
Soo… does anyone have opinions on this? What would you do in my place…?
If you believe in their pivot, then join them. In 6 months the company will be making more money, you will have proved your worth and you will be in a good place to ask for a raise.
3 years into your career is still the beginning. A role like this could determine the direction of your next 10 years. What you need now is a path to greatness, not an extra $10k / yr.
The developers who avoid their skills rotting during this AI craze will do very well once the bubble pops. Be one of those developers.
First of all there is no such thing as “job security” in the modern capitalist system, so that should nor really be a factor in your decision.
Yes, shares or options are often used as additional compensation for non “C-level” staff by scrappy start-ups when they don’t have the cash flow to pay market-rate salaries. Fewer than 1 in 10 of those start-ups will ever do well enough for that compensation to pay out. If you believe in the mission, you may find that risk worth it.
There are almost no companies anywhere that aren’t shoving AI down everyone’s throats. You cannot avoid that right now. Instead ask about their strategy and try to find companies that are more rational sounding. There are a few good uses cases for the tech if managed by thoughtful and intentional strategists. However most companies are approaching it like your current one, which is just slop.
Of you like the people. I say, take a chance. If it doesn’t work out, try again. I spent over 10 years of my career hopping through startups before learning enough about myself and my goals and how the industry works to find the right fit.
American here so I’m wildly out of touch with how jobs work in Germany, but if they can’t afford you full time I like your idea of 35 hours a week. Work less so they spend less overall but they still have you for a good amount of time each week
at the end of which we will be buying a house. The next market collapse is coming, and we’re sure that having our own property will be the best way to weather it,
If you expect the market to collapse, why buy high before the collapse and not after?
He said the absolute maximum amount of budget he has is 50k, because their current pivot is still quite a large risk.
he’d been considering turning the company into a Worker Cooperative
You can offer to take the risk. Accept 50k in cash but demand 25k in shares or later payout. Since you take the risk, that should increase the figure, like 30k or 40k in shares.
If you expect the market to collapse, why buy high before the collapse and not after?
Mostly because we think hyper-inflation could absolutely happen. Basically all our saved up cash would have no value in that case, so we’d be back at square one. A house wouldn’t just disappear like that (hopefully)
You can offer to take the risk. Accept 50k in cash but demand 25k in shares or later payout. Since you take the risk, that should increase the figure, like 30k or 40k in shares.
Huh, that could actually be a real option I hadn’t considered! Thank you for the idea! Imma see what I’d have to do legally and how to contractually set that up, but it could be a good option that both sides would be happy with
Basically all our saved up cash would have no value in that case,
Inflation already doesn’t make it a good idea to keep everything in cash right now.
I don’t really know Germany specific law but here’s some things to consider.
- remote is worth at least 3k in salary over a hybrid or in person role.
- switching jobs is the best leverage you have for an increased salary as it affects future raises as well.
- startups tend to have increased overtime expectations.
- startups have an increased likelihood you are involuntarily looking for a job in 3-5 years, it’s much easier to find a job when you already have one.
- startups tend to offer stock as part of compensation, this is basically a lottery ticket, but you need to understand how it works if you’re planning on working at one.
- once you are tired of the bullshit at a place it’s time to move on to different bullshit that you aren’t tired of yet. There isn’t a perfect job.
- going back can be an option, sometimes it works out better.
- They absolutely can fire you in Germany after the Probezeit in Germany. Don’t ask me how I know.
- Leave your current company. You know it’s time.
- Do not settle for less than what you think you are worth. Every (future) employer will try to screw you. If they were really trying to save money, they’d be hiring for remote work in Romania or India.
I get met with an eyeroll and a “we don’t have the time to fix that” from the side of the programmers and a very annoyed “why the fuck are you not doing anything about this??” from the side of the head security officer.
You’re German. You know the answer to this already.
- You already opened a ticket.
- You wrote an email and encapsulated their reply on the ticket.
- You leave it with them and check back with w project manager monthly.
- …With stats as to how many are open, average time to fix, and how many are over the requirements for privacy and security (and maybe payment processing)
- You remind the PM and the CTO of the importance of privacy and the risks of being insecure and having a “solarwinds”-sized breach.
- Remind them that the auditor comes every year and they’ll want this data.
- Repeat.
It’s only thankless, but you let them decide what they want the auditor to see.
Also, compliance officer jobs - the boring, thankless, checklist kind - are very hot. I’ve seen capable compliance people “write their own ticket” to a great wage at a company that respects you.
You should work for the company. You’ll be happier, and worst case, you can always just sell out later and get paid more.
