in Munich: starting salaries with a masters are 55-60k€ (before tax!) at average car related companies (even for non-CS-grads doing SWE with a physics/math background), 60-70k€ at the actual car companies. Social sciences/other jobs with masters: 42-50k€, below that with a bachelors/apprenticeship. Independent of the education in IT you should be able to reach 50k after 5 years (excluding grunt work) and 80k with a masters. Some engineers I know have been taken by electronics industry as PMs for 120k€ straight out of grad school. Rents are high (20€/m²), so other parts of Germany might be better overall (subtract 20-30% of salaries).
All this doesn't hold true for a lot of immigrant labor and people working at startups, where you are offered 30-40k€ with a masters (these kindd employ most of the immigrant labor I think - of course there's the odd 100k YC). Imho this (at current rent levels) is exploitation and something which makes working in Munich not particularly attractive for anyone not from Germany or getting a job at a car company.
1. They absolutely can and do, but many sell themselves short.
2. Big caveat: There are absolutely many conservative managers who insist on speaking perfect German / not switching the team language because of the new junior dev, so there will definitely be job openings where immigrants are discriminated against at those big corporates, but IME that doesn't apply to the companies as a whole.
The reverse is obviously also true: If you want to work in a young, international, open culture, you might prefer startups, but most of them offer lower salaries.
they can of course (and are), but there are still a lot of underpaid jobs (compared to cost of lving) out there (and these companies are not going out business strangely, so they seem to find labor). Basically for a german it doesn't make a lot of sense to take a job, where you will be having the life of a barkeeper in Berlin (e.g. hustling through at <50k€) - and frankly, these jobs exist and they find employees, so imho this is mainly people "wanting to live in Germany" (at whatever the social cost)
All this doesn't hold true for a lot of immigrant labor and people working at startups, where you are offered 30-40k€ with a masters (these kindd employ most of the immigrant labor I think - of course there's the odd 100k YC). Imho this (at current rent levels) is exploitation and something which makes working in Munich not particularly attractive for anyone not from Germany or getting a job at a car company.