Some people here seems not to realize that German salaries come with 30 days paid vacation, a year of parental leaves, first grade medical coverage in a relatively cheap country to live in.
If your life goes wrong, due to illnesses, unforeseen circumstances or unemployment, or if you plan to have a family, you're better off in Germany than in silicon valley with 160k.
Pretty sure I have to pay for health insurance with my actual salary in Germany, the employer does however cover half the cost of it. It does not come included (e.g. 100% payed by the employer) like with the national insurance system in Sweden. Also, I might be mistaken but only 20 vacation days are required by law and I have 24 days currently.
I do agree with the first grade medical card and the general cheapness of the country.
The point is, that in US the second you stop paying your medical insurance as a result of financial problems caused by job loss/illness/family issues/whatever, you don't have health insurance anymore. Sure, you can go to an emergency room and will be helped, but you are still going to get a bill for it. In Germany(and most of EU) even if you are paying nil towards the national health insurance, you are still fully covered for everything - no bill will ever be produced for any treatment that you receive. Various EU countries have the payments for national insurance structured in different ways - so in Sweden, the employer pays 100% - maybe in Germany it's split in half. It doesn't matter - the point is, you are covered regardless of your personal situation.
COBRA covers your health insurance if you're fired, for up to 18 months or so. You do generally have to pay premiums on it.
The US has free healthcare for people without an income. If you're making the federal minimum wage, you qualify for free healthcare via Medicaid in every state (someone correct me if there's an exception).
The US has numerous government healthcare assistance programs for people that are in some kind of bad position.
Nearly half of all healthcare coverage in the US is public healthcare at this point, not employer sponsored.
Your 50% number is false. That derives from a 2009 study that goosed the numbers by including some odd qualifications such as if you missed work due to illness at any point in the year you declared bankruptcy.
The numbers are bad enough to not need pushed higher artificially frankly. It's closer to 1/4 of all bankruptcies having been impacted by medical bills (2011 Northwestern study indicating 26% of all bankruptcies are partially - not solely - caused by out of pocket medical costs).
There are roughly 288 million people in the US that have health coverage.
The medical bankruptcies you're referring to affect less than 1% of the adult US population across ten years. Among that 1% are common repeat medical bankruptcies, so the number is in fact even smaller.
If you look at the total number of bankruptcies in 2016 - 770,000 - and the share of those that were entirely caused by medical bills, you're probably talking about 100,000 to 150,000 (out of ~250 million adults). The ACA, it is speculated, has improved the medical bankruptcy numbers since its 2010 passage, and the economy has improved dramatically since 2010-11.
Is it terrible? Yes it is. Did you expect me to say otherwise? However it does in fact affect a small portion of the US population. It's obvious that if you could pick a few things to change about the US financial system, one would be to be able to more easily discharge medical debts.
True, it causes problems with recruitment since it is very hard to get people to drop up to a week of holiday to join us. I would love to have 28 or 30 days..
For these rights people literally kill themselves to come to Germany.
Unfortunately with the decentralised IT industry, having the same benefits it's just a matter of negotiation. On top of that the amount of taxes that you pay for having "cheap" country to live in always averages those benefits.
Having a family here would be great as well, if they don't charge me a percentage of my income for kindergarten [1], a percentage of my income for health insurance, a percentage of my income for religion tax ( happily I'm an atheist ). Those all sound fair for low-skilled jobs, but not so much when you are heavily in demand IT-person ( the tax-bracket is too steep ).
Actually you can opt out of the tax without leaving your church (though they might consider this grounds to exclude you from services -- in practice however the only punishment is heartfelt disapproval).
Also it's important to point out that if you are a faithful member of one of the religions that enacts a church tax, that money goes to that church rather than to the state (who just collect it for the church, free of charge). So presumably you actually want them to get that money and are fine with the tax (although in practice most "believers" in Germany either opt out of the tax or complain about it because they're unhappy with the institutions of their religion).
AFAIK it's only the Catholic church and the Evangelical church who've done the necessary paper work and formed public bodies on the national level to be eligible to receive these taxes from self-declared members of their church. There's a small Muslim group that has managed to do this in two states but they're a minority sect (in Germany anyway). I guess for most religious groups it's just too much of a hassle compared to collecting money directly from church-goers (or mosque-goers for that matter).
No it is not 30 it is minimum 25.
Parental leave with a 60% paycheck than normal.
Medical is not first grade, it is notoriously horrible to get a doctor appointment for specific things as you hope to hop from practitioner to practitioner while they refer you.
Dental is not even considered.
I was under impression that in SV 160k barely covers your expenses, including insanely expensive rent. is it really possible to save 60k out of such salary?
health is yes cheap and problematic. it is not a full "health heaven" when you can't get any specialist appointment within 4 weeks. at least in berlin. same "termin" bulls* is valid for almost all services. i would rather pay more and get faster service.
and if you are not german or eu citizen, second part is also not valid. so qualified immigrants can't feel secure here. so berlin is a stop for me until i find some better place, not a city to settle in with my family and future kids.
30 days? I got 25 and something in the range of 25 to 28 is the most common. 30 is unusual, if you're not in a unionized job, older, negotiated hard for it etc.
I got 26 days at the local IT company where I started after university, and I now have 30 days at a big IT company (SAP). However, this is an IT worker's privilege. Among my friends in the manufacturing industry, the minimum 24 days seem to be common.
I'm pretty sure your friends in the manufacturing industry are bound by union contracts (Tarifverträge) which tend to define these things in ways that are meant to be difficult to adjust on a per-person (or per-company) basis to protect every worker equally.
I have friends working at agencies where unpaid overtime is the norm. I also have friends working in industrial jobs where they complain when they have to work 40 hours (rather than the normal 35) and every hour of overtime is merely compensated at 200%. Oh and he made a pretty decent wage straight out of school.
Talking about "privilege" in this context creates the false impression that all IT workers automatically have it better than traditional industrial workers in every aspect.
> If your life goes wrong, due to illnesses, unforeseen circumstances or unemployment, or if you plan to have a family, you're better off in Germany than in silicon valley with 160k.
Am I going to benefit from these as a foreigner not fluent in German language and having trouble navigating the bureaucratic maze of public healthcare and social support? My impression is that even the natives can get confused (see number of homeless and mental people on the streets or occupying the transport infrastructure).
It is a good idea. Not necessary though in order to access health care. If you are in an environment with lots of expats or generally mixed backgrounds you'll likely survive without speaking much more than a handful of German words per week if you really want to (Heidelberg, Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, ...). It does help you though, as finding doctors and especially employees in public office who are able and willing to discuss with you in English is not a given.
It's possible, but it severely limits you if you don't speak German. I've been working with large companies - either international branches or German multinationals - and they don't like to speak English at work. They can, but it is dumb to have ten German engineers to discuss a topic in slightly broken or less than perfect English, just because there is one guy in the room not able to speak German. Documents or code might be English, but the whole conversation around it is preferred in German.
This means when you don't speak German, you are mostly limited to work in projects where English is possible or the default - there are jobs like this, but this is actually limited.
I've met persons who were ten years in Germany and were not able to do a general conversation in a job interview in German. I would not hire them - other than for specific projects/tasks where that would not be a problem.
Bureaucratic it can be at times. Public healthcare though is very different from social support. Public healthcare is really simple compared to anything I've seen abroad, you sign up once and that's it. You only need to contact your (public) health care provider if your address changes or you marry, have children etc. At the doctor you present your health care ID, you usually don't have any interaction with your health care provider aside from that. Your monthly payment is automatically deducted from your salary (50%)/paid by your employer(50%).
There are many edge cases which _do_ get more complicated, as (public) health insurance premiums depend on your reported salary. Let's say you have different income streams from different countries, have to pay alimony but also support your parent financially.
> At the doctor you present your health care ID, you usually don't have any interaction with your health care provider aside from that.
Well, one thing. When your doctor writes you off sick, you get three copies of the sick note: One is for you, one is for your employer, and one is for your insurer. You get all three copies (they're carbon copies of the same form), so you have to mail the latter two. (The version for the employer has all the medical details blanked out.)
Minor caveat: Berlin is not Germany. Berlin is fairly international so a lot of the infrastructure adapts to that, including public services. You'll still run into plenty public service workers speaking only German (and maybe rudimentary English) outside Berlin.
"If I move to the US will I be able to navigate the bureaucratic maze of healthcare costs and private health services that cover only every other thing?"
If your life goes wrong, due to illnesses, unforeseen circumstances or unemployment, or if you plan to have a family, you're better off in Germany than in silicon valley with 160k.