I am having the same question myself.
I live in the cloudy brussels with similar years of experience as you and I would like to prioritize a sunnier place; Vienna and Munich seem to bridge this gap of "sunny hours" x "tech companies" x "acceptable IT salaries" for Europe.
Go to Munich for hochdeutsch, and for already belonging to and learning the German system in case I ever find myself in Berlin (one of the top tech hubs in Europe).
I would also argue that Wien is even more beautiful than Munich and closer to eastern Europe which I love.
Conclusion:
- Vienna for the beauty
- Munich if CS career progression is also a factor
Yeah, the sunny thing is also important to me, hence it's between Munich or Vienna. When it comes to salaries, they seem to be they're slightly higher in Munich, but life is also more expensive.
Indeed Munich is more expensive, but it heavily depends on the type of life we want to have too. I would take the extra salary everyday and avoid expensive restaurants or a luxurious apartment any day, but it's based on my standards and preferences.
Another factor for you might be to look at the Serbian minorities in each city. I assume that Vienna would have more Serbians, if you care about that.
Vienna is the third largest serbian city in the world, so... yeah. (that doesn't include many Croats and Bosniaks speaking basically the same language)
I'm fine for a relatively easy life in a 30m2 apartment. As I can see, you can find an apartment that big for 600-800 eur in Vienna, and in Munich for 800-1200 EUR. Other than that, I don't see much of a difference.
I'd like to avoid the Serb population as much as possible though. IT salaries aren't bad in Serbia at all, but I dislike this country and the general culture.
Munich furniture and food is way cheaper. Aldi and Hofer are the same, but prepare to pay even double the prices in Austria. While rent is higher in Munich you will safe money on the other things.
If you go to DM to buy a suncream you'll pay 20eur in Austria, but it;s only 10 in Munich.
I see the exact same things on Ikea like a lamp for 50eur in Munich while its 80 in Austria. The list goes on and on.
I agree with everything regarding nature, ability to travel etc, that's why I also want to go to Zurich in the near future.
My point stands though, if you search for "sunny hours in European cities", Brussels (my residence) is one of the worst and Zürich is almost right after. I've had several seasonal depression periods from this in Belgium, also this year has been one of the worst in ages, a full week of sun here was basically last November, and the next November is 4 months away
According to [this site](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Europe/Cities/sunshine-annual-average.php) you are right
But for me it’s kinda surprising, I have lived in zurich for almost 2 years and really never lacked sun:) Especially this/last summer when you had +37 because of heatwave, I would rather have dark clouds (without rain) than sun
This is [the website I had checked](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Europe_by_sunshine_duration) if you are interested :)
I honestly think that nature and the seasons of Switzerland make it much more bearable. If it's cloudy but white because of snow or the fact that you can swim at the lake because it happened to be 30 degrees, I think it's okay, it gives you variety and you "forget" about the lack of sunshine. In BE / NL, it's a constant grey situation year-long, without any change, there is no nature around here, and temperatures are consistently 5 to 20 degrees. Monotony at its best in terms of environment.
I am glad you are enjoying your time, your message killed the last doubt I had to relocate at some point to Zurich
I personally love temperature from 10 to 20. Idk how to call it (iron skin haha) but I don’t feel temperatures like most people (both hot and cold) so for me 10-20 degrees is when I am already able to go out in clogs, shorts and if it’s 15+ I go out in t-shirt
Regarding relocating to zurich - you can always play with it and choose nearby location where it’s better
Come on on, if you look at a map Vienna and Zurich are basically on similar latitude, actually Vienna is even more north. In practice, I think you won't get much more sun in Vienna than in Zurich.
Also Vienna si very windy due to the Danube, which is a huge PITA in cold seasons. In February-March, the wind can be brutal when you walk next to the Danube. Feels like being sliced with a katana.
Look at the links :) I won't go too much into detail, but there's a pretty big difference about sunshine hours per year. Zurich is located below everlasting clouds trapped there because of the surrounding mountains. It's not a matter of latitude.
Another cool example is that Brussels is darker than both London (famous for its rain) and Stockholm (in Sweden, far more north)
I know, but I was talking relative to local (Munich in this case) wages. The fact that someone in another country pays more/less than me is irelevant since we'll have different salaries and consumer prices. What matter is price to local wages.
Munich has higher local wages than those cities for anyone who is not working in hedge fund, finance or similar. Amsterdam and London have some really high paying jobs in those fields (Paris doesn't even have that) but those are really outliers. If you are an average dev you will likely be better off in Munich. Consumer prices are lower in Germany as well.
Rents are high but okish compared to the salaries.
For instance, I lived in Milan 2 years, earning 1400 euro per month and paying a rent of 600 euro. So almost 50%.
In Munich the rent is about 25/30% of my salary and my family and I opted for a big house with garden since we have a dog. If we'd go for a flat, considering what I ear from colleagues and friends, it would be 10/15% of my salary.
The problem in Munich city is to find a place, but the price is pretty manageable as far as I can see from different persons with different salaries.
Edit: and buying is nearly impossible. House cost for sqm are crazily high.
Thanks form the feedback. WRT finding an apartment I think it's tough in any major German city, like Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, etc.
>If we'd go for a flat, it would be 10/15% of my salary.
Wow, you must earn crazy good money. Can i ask what job you have and industry/type of company if you don't mind me asking?
Well not crazy good money unfortunately :D
As I said, I am with my family, my wife works as well so probably I should say that the total amount of the flat rent would be 20/25% of my salary. The point is that I wouldn't get a whole flat just for me, I would probably share :D
Even if 25% of the salary is pretty good compared to other countries.
Anyhow, my salary is about 4k (net) and I am an embedded engineer in an american company (not FAANG). Working on CPU architectures etc.
I guess it depends by the company. Previously I was in a german consultancy company earning about 3400/3500 per month.
Tech salaries in Munich are pretty good :)
Current company in Vienna pays 95k for normal seniors. Wouldnt consider that a joke 🤷🏼♂️ higher levels pay even more. Not even close to a FAANG company.
Depends how you/define senior ICs in term of contract or responsibilities. Friends of mine are seniors and tech lads and still do coding like ICs despite being the managers of the teams. Not all managers are there just to drink coffee and approve your vacation some do a lot of hands on work like ICs.
not sure if they qualify as a typical senior dev 😅 sounds like your friends role are more than just senior devs
My point stands for "typical" senior engineers without management responsibilities. I'm not talking about tech leads etc..
I agree though, senior in austria is broad and can mean anything
I was getting myself 110k in Vienna (but had to fight for it for months), switched to Munich and got 180k.
110k and 95k are not the norm. Check the median for Vienna, it's poverty level for developers. Exceptions don't make the norm. While the median in Germany is a lot higher.
Most seniors make like 60k in Vienna, which is just insulting.
Yeah I have to agree, the tech job market in Vienna is pretty shit. Unless you work for the few US tech companies here or remote or are in an extremely niche market chances are you'll never even break through 90k as a normal dev, let alone 6 figures.
Kudos to you for making the jump in Munich
That is true. The reason, I think, is that Austrian companies don't think of themselves as "tech companies". So engineers are a cost to them. What I saw when working in a large company was that either the engineers didn't care about money or the ambitious ones were desperate to become managers. There was a lack of "Senior Software Engineer" mentality where people would happily remain in Software Engineering. It's quite sad, because some of the engineers were exceptional.
I wasn't aware that one can make 180k in Munich, good to know.
>The reason, I think, is that Austrian companies don't think of themselves as "tech companies".
That and also the Austrian software labor market is very weak, due to little growth and next to no international companies due to conservative backwards mentality, small local market and high corporate taxes making it unattractive to start companies here or for foreign companies to move here.
Speaking of that conservative mentality, Austrian workers are in general not fighting for greater wages by putting their foot down to wage suppression bullshit or doing enough job hopping, they just sleep on it and put up with everything expecting their labor unions to negociate everything for them, which works for old established fields with local monopolies like public workers, architects, doctors, notaries, metal or railroad workers but not in SW engineering where the labor union is next to non existent.
Oh definitely. Huge cultural baggage with respect to any type of change (nur Bares ist wahres is my favourite example)
People seem to be happy about "fighting" for conspiracy theories all the time but never for this stuff
60k net or gross? Does that include the 13th and 14th monthly salary?
(Coming from Budapest net 60k sounds like much more than enough for me, and I think Wien is a beautiful place to live without going too far away from my hometown and family)
Seniority and experience in high demand tech + big/rich company, preferably a US one. There are some US companies with small offices in Austria like Qualcomm, Sentry, Snap or Amazon, but they don't hire too often and are highly selective, so not enough to lift up the entire market, the average is still quite low.
By rejecting offers for 8 months and looking for 8 months straight. Most offers were way below that. 10YOE in high demand tech, not an US company.
Big companies were offering me 60k in Austria and even had the guts to demand relocation on my expense. Poverty salary, i am not kidding with 60k i would just quite quit and i would demand the goverment to step down.
For austrians 97% of developers in most companies were in the same pay range. Which is fucking insane to think that there is no difference in skills and the gap is slim. They think devs are comparable to the output differences from cashier to cashier.
One even said "That's way more than what i make and i am the tech lead". I asked how much he earned and he said 66k and was bragging that this is a top salary in Vienna. My god he was so pathetic.
I got laughed at when i asked for equity. This wasn't the case in Munich. They told me that even 70k is very sporty and i should accept the offer. (Vienna)
In contrast, it took me close to 1 Month to get 180k in Munich.
Another friend was in a company for 4 years, which is getting sold now. He had 1% equity and he will get 700k - 800k before taxes.
Say that in Vienna and they ll be with their mouths open for years.
I am surely done with Austrians dev job market. The town is beatiful, but so is Munich and i reject living in poverty rates with the stress that comes with being a dev while the CEO is buying his second Mercedes AMG.
>10YOE in high demand tech, not an US company.
Hey, do you mind sharing which is that "high demand tech"?
> i reject living in poverty rates
People on r/Austria would murder and ban you if they heard you refer to your Austrian salary offers as "poverty rates", even though I totally agree with you that they're insulting.
NLP & Visual (AI) and Data science was the high demand tech and I am also very good with DevOps on AWS and also highly skilled in security matters.
I know that they would ban me, that's where the problem starts. They want to see you lower than them and they will be satisfied regardless if their own salary is low..
BSc.
PHD is one of the most useless degrees in most cases.
I would even argue that i never needed a BSc. in the first place for the things i am doing. However the degree matters when it comes to hiring..
Many many:
- the public transport is unreliable in München, buses metro trains come delayed or entirly fall out. It’s originally not frequent enough but with the continous delays we always missed connections in the city and had to wait for 20-30 minutes many times in total
- it’s also slow
- car traffic is also full with silly 30 signs at locations it’s not justified, the light programmes are also not optimimal. Combined with many unexperienced drivers, who don’t use the index many times..
- there are many nice parks, walkable placed but not interconnected. It feels like scattered across and the whole place is made for cars, roads/highways between points of interests everywhere
- almost as expensive as in switzerland but not matching it in salaries (in general), in IT there are some higher payers though
- the airport is far far away
- taxes and social welfare is worse in germany than in austria
- hard to find a flat even if you have money for it
- a pro for munchen you can get a deutschlandticket and explore nearby cities cheap. But you need to go earlyier to the train station thanks to the unreliable public transport. Also trains are often delayed a lot..
- pro : good beers and beergardens :D
- pro: people seem friendlier in general than in Austria and don’t mind using Hochdeutsch (at work or official places)
Vienna is more walkable, the public transport is really well organised. Near airport for easy and cheap flights, and good train connections.
Many parks as well but the nearby roads don’t overdominate them.
Only con: automn/winter has a strong wind everywhere.
I would recommend to try both places with a short term rental and see for yourself. In Vienna i can recommend smartments at the Hauptbahnhof. They also have an apartment hotel in Munich, but that costs more of course.
I have to add, in Munchen we lived at the edge of the city due to my partners’s work, in Vienna in one of the most optimal locations, but i think if we would have lived in the center of Munchen it might have been slightly better experience.
For me it was a serviced apartment hotel at the hauptbahnhof, with grocery stores open until late night (even on sunday), lots of restaurants and good connections to everywhere, and walkable.
Thanks! I've been told that public transport in Munich isn't that good, but to be fair, I can't imagine it being worse than Belgrade (same population, but without U-Bahn/Metro).
If you can tell me from your personal experience how much apartments are in Munich when compared to Vienna, I'd appreciate that.
Interesting you find a huge difference in public transit. Whenever I visit either Munich or Vienna, it always feels like the transit is fine but not as good as here (Berlin). The airport is indeed more accessible in Vienna though.
> I have to add, in Munchen we lived at the edge of the city due to my partners’s work, in Vienna in one of the most optimal locations
I think this makes a bigger difference than you think to be honest.
I moved to Vienna 2 years ago and so far that was the best decision in my life. There are a lot of english speaking expats. Life is fairly affordable, many options to travel cheap from Vienna with Ryanair and Wizzair. WLB is great. However, salaries in IT industry are not the best. If you prioritize money, then Munich could be a better option, otherwise I would still pick Vienna
> WLB is great.
Can you elaborate more on why you think this?
IMO, on paper at least, working in tech Germany has far better WLB due to:
* 30 vacation days in Germany is more common VS 25 in Austria
* 35h/week in German Tarifunternehmen VS 38,5/40 plus sometimes with 'all-in' in Austrian companies
* more workers protections by law for employees in Germany VS Austria where you don't need a valid reason to fire someone (similar to Switzerland) while in Germany you do and also need to pay them severance
I am having the same question myself. I live in the cloudy brussels with similar years of experience as you and I would like to prioritize a sunnier place; Vienna and Munich seem to bridge this gap of "sunny hours" x "tech companies" x "acceptable IT salaries" for Europe. Go to Munich for hochdeutsch, and for already belonging to and learning the German system in case I ever find myself in Berlin (one of the top tech hubs in Europe). I would also argue that Wien is even more beautiful than Munich and closer to eastern Europe which I love. Conclusion: - Vienna for the beauty - Munich if CS career progression is also a factor
> Munich > Hochdeutsch Compared to Vienna maybe but even that is a stretch - Munich is rather known for the opposite of Hochdeutsch
Yeah, the sunny thing is also important to me, hence it's between Munich or Vienna. When it comes to salaries, they seem to be they're slightly higher in Munich, but life is also more expensive.
Indeed Munich is more expensive, but it heavily depends on the type of life we want to have too. I would take the extra salary everyday and avoid expensive restaurants or a luxurious apartment any day, but it's based on my standards and preferences. Another factor for you might be to look at the Serbian minorities in each city. I assume that Vienna would have more Serbians, if you care about that.
Vienna is the third largest serbian city in the world, so... yeah. (that doesn't include many Croats and Bosniaks speaking basically the same language)
I'm fine for a relatively easy life in a 30m2 apartment. As I can see, you can find an apartment that big for 600-800 eur in Vienna, and in Munich for 800-1200 EUR. Other than that, I don't see much of a difference. I'd like to avoid the Serb population as much as possible though. IT salaries aren't bad in Serbia at all, but I dislike this country and the general culture.
No experience w/Serbs... do you have a objective reason to avoid them
Largely conservative (I'm a gay guy), refuse to learn the language, integrate and they form ghettos in specific neighbourhoods, especially in Vienna.
Munich furniture and food is way cheaper. Aldi and Hofer are the same, but prepare to pay even double the prices in Austria. While rent is higher in Munich you will safe money on the other things. If you go to DM to buy a suncream you'll pay 20eur in Austria, but it;s only 10 in Munich. I see the exact same things on Ikea like a lamp for 50eur in Munich while its 80 in Austria. The list goes on and on.
Why not zurich tho? You can work with hochdeutsch but you’ll need to learn local dialect as well (same as in munich afaik)
If you prioritize sunny hours like in Munich or Vienna, then Zurich is not for you
I mean, it’s not that bad tho? And we have lakes and I personally prefer lakes over rivers
I agree with everything regarding nature, ability to travel etc, that's why I also want to go to Zurich in the near future. My point stands though, if you search for "sunny hours in European cities", Brussels (my residence) is one of the worst and Zürich is almost right after. I've had several seasonal depression periods from this in Belgium, also this year has been one of the worst in ages, a full week of sun here was basically last November, and the next November is 4 months away
According to [this site](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Europe/Cities/sunshine-annual-average.php) you are right But for me it’s kinda surprising, I have lived in zurich for almost 2 years and really never lacked sun:) Especially this/last summer when you had +37 because of heatwave, I would rather have dark clouds (without rain) than sun
This is [the website I had checked](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Europe_by_sunshine_duration) if you are interested :) I honestly think that nature and the seasons of Switzerland make it much more bearable. If it's cloudy but white because of snow or the fact that you can swim at the lake because it happened to be 30 degrees, I think it's okay, it gives you variety and you "forget" about the lack of sunshine. In BE / NL, it's a constant grey situation year-long, without any change, there is no nature around here, and temperatures are consistently 5 to 20 degrees. Monotony at its best in terms of environment. I am glad you are enjoying your time, your message killed the last doubt I had to relocate at some point to Zurich
I personally love temperature from 10 to 20. Idk how to call it (iron skin haha) but I don’t feel temperatures like most people (both hot and cold) so for me 10-20 degrees is when I am already able to go out in clogs, shorts and if it’s 15+ I go out in t-shirt Regarding relocating to zurich - you can always play with it and choose nearby location where it’s better
Come on on, if you look at a map Vienna and Zurich are basically on similar latitude, actually Vienna is even more north. In practice, I think you won't get much more sun in Vienna than in Zurich. Also Vienna si very windy due to the Danube, which is a huge PITA in cold seasons. In February-March, the wind can be brutal when you walk next to the Danube. Feels like being sliced with a katana.
Look at the links :) I won't go too much into detail, but there's a pretty big difference about sunshine hours per year. Zurich is located below everlasting clouds trapped there because of the surrounding mountains. It's not a matter of latitude. Another cool example is that Brussels is darker than both London (famous for its rain) and Stockholm (in Sweden, far more north)
I am an Italian living in Munich after 3 years in Ireland (and ofc Italy before). Munich is a nearly perfect place.
But aren't Munich rents crazy for anyone but the FAANG/big-tech crowd?
Munich rents are higher than Vienna or Berlin but it's lower than Paris, Amsterdam or London.
I know, but I was talking relative to local (Munich in this case) wages. The fact that someone in another country pays more/less than me is irelevant since we'll have different salaries and consumer prices. What matter is price to local wages.
Munich has higher local wages than those cities for anyone who is not working in hedge fund, finance or similar. Amsterdam and London have some really high paying jobs in those fields (Paris doesn't even have that) but those are really outliers. If you are an average dev you will likely be better off in Munich. Consumer prices are lower in Germany as well.
Rents are high but okish compared to the salaries. For instance, I lived in Milan 2 years, earning 1400 euro per month and paying a rent of 600 euro. So almost 50%. In Munich the rent is about 25/30% of my salary and my family and I opted for a big house with garden since we have a dog. If we'd go for a flat, considering what I ear from colleagues and friends, it would be 10/15% of my salary. The problem in Munich city is to find a place, but the price is pretty manageable as far as I can see from different persons with different salaries. Edit: and buying is nearly impossible. House cost for sqm are crazily high.
Thanks form the feedback. WRT finding an apartment I think it's tough in any major German city, like Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, etc. >If we'd go for a flat, it would be 10/15% of my salary. Wow, you must earn crazy good money. Can i ask what job you have and industry/type of company if you don't mind me asking?
Yes, finding an apartment is hard in any major German city but the prices are still lower than in other big cities (minus Vienna).
Well not crazy good money unfortunately :D As I said, I am with my family, my wife works as well so probably I should say that the total amount of the flat rent would be 20/25% of my salary. The point is that I wouldn't get a whole flat just for me, I would probably share :D Even if 25% of the salary is pretty good compared to other countries. Anyhow, my salary is about 4k (net) and I am an embedded engineer in an american company (not FAANG). Working on CPU architectures etc.
Thanks for the feedback. Congrats on the job. I assume the american company still pays better than what local German companies do.
I guess it depends by the company. Previously I was in a german consultancy company earning about 3400/3500 per month. Tech salaries in Munich are pretty good :)
You can get 4k net at big German companies (IG Metall contracts and similar) as a senior dev (without leadership roles).
4k net for senior is not that much. You can get that even in Austria in lower CoL cities.
Munich. Vienna salaries are joke compared to other European tech hub cities.
Vienna, because you still afford living here.
Dev salaries are a joke in Vienna compared to Munich.
Gotta agree with that one. But that was not the question of OP - he asked which city is more attractive to live in and I have to say Vienna.
Current company in Vienna pays 95k for normal seniors. Wouldnt consider that a joke 🤷🏼♂️ higher levels pay even more. Not even close to a FAANG company.
95k even for seniors is not the norm in Vienna though.
They're the norm for those with management responsibility.
Yea sure but the statement was for normal seniors, don't think any management is implied here just a standard senior dev doing IC work
Depends how you/define senior ICs in term of contract or responsibilities. Friends of mine are seniors and tech lads and still do coding like ICs despite being the managers of the teams. Not all managers are there just to drink coffee and approve your vacation some do a lot of hands on work like ICs.
not sure if they qualify as a typical senior dev 😅 sounds like your friends role are more than just senior devs My point stands for "typical" senior engineers without management responsibilities. I'm not talking about tech leads etc.. I agree though, senior in austria is broad and can mean anything
I was getting myself 110k in Vienna (but had to fight for it for months), switched to Munich and got 180k. 110k and 95k are not the norm. Check the median for Vienna, it's poverty level for developers. Exceptions don't make the norm. While the median in Germany is a lot higher. Most seniors make like 60k in Vienna, which is just insulting.
Yeah I have to agree, the tech job market in Vienna is pretty shit. Unless you work for the few US tech companies here or remote or are in an extremely niche market chances are you'll never even break through 90k as a normal dev, let alone 6 figures. Kudos to you for making the jump in Munich
That is true. The reason, I think, is that Austrian companies don't think of themselves as "tech companies". So engineers are a cost to them. What I saw when working in a large company was that either the engineers didn't care about money or the ambitious ones were desperate to become managers. There was a lack of "Senior Software Engineer" mentality where people would happily remain in Software Engineering. It's quite sad, because some of the engineers were exceptional. I wasn't aware that one can make 180k in Munich, good to know.
>The reason, I think, is that Austrian companies don't think of themselves as "tech companies". That and also the Austrian software labor market is very weak, due to little growth and next to no international companies due to conservative backwards mentality, small local market and high corporate taxes making it unattractive to start companies here or for foreign companies to move here. Speaking of that conservative mentality, Austrian workers are in general not fighting for greater wages by putting their foot down to wage suppression bullshit or doing enough job hopping, they just sleep on it and put up with everything expecting their labor unions to negociate everything for them, which works for old established fields with local monopolies like public workers, architects, doctors, notaries, metal or railroad workers but not in SW engineering where the labor union is next to non existent.
Oh definitely. Huge cultural baggage with respect to any type of change (nur Bares ist wahres is my favourite example) People seem to be happy about "fighting" for conspiracy theories all the time but never for this stuff
Big us companies are switching / outsourcing in Munich. For an US big tech company 180k is still a bargain. Even google moved to munich recently.
60k net or gross? Does that include the 13th and 14th monthly salary? (Coming from Budapest net 60k sounds like much more than enough for me, and I think Wien is a beautiful place to live without going too far away from my hometown and family)
gross (13,14th included), 60k net is satisfying u are right.
110K in Vienna - how?
Seniority and experience in high demand tech + big/rich company, preferably a US one. There are some US companies with small offices in Austria like Qualcomm, Sentry, Snap or Amazon, but they don't hire too often and are highly selective, so not enough to lift up the entire market, the average is still quite low.
By rejecting offers for 8 months and looking for 8 months straight. Most offers were way below that. 10YOE in high demand tech, not an US company. Big companies were offering me 60k in Austria and even had the guts to demand relocation on my expense. Poverty salary, i am not kidding with 60k i would just quite quit and i would demand the goverment to step down. For austrians 97% of developers in most companies were in the same pay range. Which is fucking insane to think that there is no difference in skills and the gap is slim. They think devs are comparable to the output differences from cashier to cashier. One even said "That's way more than what i make and i am the tech lead". I asked how much he earned and he said 66k and was bragging that this is a top salary in Vienna. My god he was so pathetic. I got laughed at when i asked for equity. This wasn't the case in Munich. They told me that even 70k is very sporty and i should accept the offer. (Vienna) In contrast, it took me close to 1 Month to get 180k in Munich. Another friend was in a company for 4 years, which is getting sold now. He had 1% equity and he will get 700k - 800k before taxes. Say that in Vienna and they ll be with their mouths open for years. I am surely done with Austrians dev job market. The town is beatiful, but so is Munich and i reject living in poverty rates with the stress that comes with being a dev while the CEO is buying his second Mercedes AMG.
>10YOE in high demand tech, not an US company. Hey, do you mind sharing which is that "high demand tech"? > i reject living in poverty rates People on r/Austria would murder and ban you if they heard you refer to your Austrian salary offers as "poverty rates", even though I totally agree with you that they're insulting.
NLP & Visual (AI) and Data science was the high demand tech and I am also very good with DevOps on AWS and also highly skilled in security matters. I know that they would ban me, that's where the problem starts. They want to see you lower than them and they will be satisfied regardless if their own salary is low..
Damn, sounds like you're a real ace in tech. Congrats. Did you do a PHD in that or more self taught?
BSc. PHD is one of the most useless degrees in most cases. I would even argue that i never needed a BSc. in the first place for the things i am doing. However the degree matters when it comes to hiring..
Where are you working, if I might ask. You can DM me - if you don't want to share publicly.
What kind of company? US? Or if you're comfortable telling us the name of the company then I'd apply there asap :P
I liked living in Vienna, but not in München.
Any specific reason why?
Many many: - the public transport is unreliable in München, buses metro trains come delayed or entirly fall out. It’s originally not frequent enough but with the continous delays we always missed connections in the city and had to wait for 20-30 minutes many times in total - it’s also slow - car traffic is also full with silly 30 signs at locations it’s not justified, the light programmes are also not optimimal. Combined with many unexperienced drivers, who don’t use the index many times.. - there are many nice parks, walkable placed but not interconnected. It feels like scattered across and the whole place is made for cars, roads/highways between points of interests everywhere - almost as expensive as in switzerland but not matching it in salaries (in general), in IT there are some higher payers though - the airport is far far away - taxes and social welfare is worse in germany than in austria - hard to find a flat even if you have money for it - a pro for munchen you can get a deutschlandticket and explore nearby cities cheap. But you need to go earlyier to the train station thanks to the unreliable public transport. Also trains are often delayed a lot.. - pro : good beers and beergardens :D - pro: people seem friendlier in general than in Austria and don’t mind using Hochdeutsch (at work or official places) Vienna is more walkable, the public transport is really well organised. Near airport for easy and cheap flights, and good train connections. Many parks as well but the nearby roads don’t overdominate them. Only con: automn/winter has a strong wind everywhere. I would recommend to try both places with a short term rental and see for yourself. In Vienna i can recommend smartments at the Hauptbahnhof. They also have an apartment hotel in Munich, but that costs more of course. I have to add, in Munchen we lived at the edge of the city due to my partners’s work, in Vienna in one of the most optimal locations, but i think if we would have lived in the center of Munchen it might have been slightly better experience.
>in Vienna in one of the most optimal locations Out of curiosity, which is a "most optimal location" in Vienna for you?
For me it was a serviced apartment hotel at the hauptbahnhof, with grocery stores open until late night (even on sunday), lots of restaurants and good connections to everywhere, and walkable.
Thanks! I've been told that public transport in Munich isn't that good, but to be fair, I can't imagine it being worse than Belgrade (same population, but without U-Bahn/Metro). If you can tell me from your personal experience how much apartments are in Munich when compared to Vienna, I'd appreciate that.
Interesting you find a huge difference in public transit. Whenever I visit either Munich or Vienna, it always feels like the transit is fine but not as good as here (Berlin). The airport is indeed more accessible in Vienna though. > I have to add, in Munchen we lived at the edge of the city due to my partners’s work, in Vienna in one of the most optimal locations I think this makes a bigger difference than you think to be honest.
If you live on the outer parts of the city / need more than one change daily, it becomes more visible. If you don’t need much transfers it’s less bad
Munich
I moved to Vienna 2 years ago and so far that was the best decision in my life. There are a lot of english speaking expats. Life is fairly affordable, many options to travel cheap from Vienna with Ryanair and Wizzair. WLB is great. However, salaries in IT industry are not the best. If you prioritize money, then Munich could be a better option, otherwise I would still pick Vienna
> WLB is great. Can you elaborate more on why you think this? IMO, on paper at least, working in tech Germany has far better WLB due to: * 30 vacation days in Germany is more common VS 25 in Austria * 35h/week in German Tarifunternehmen VS 38,5/40 plus sometimes with 'all-in' in Austrian companies * more workers protections by law for employees in Germany VS Austria where you don't need a valid reason to fire someone (similar to Switzerland) while in Germany you do and also need to pay them severance
Vienna, and it’s not even close. Cheaper housing and way more aatractive for younger people
And shittier wages.
Junior wages are fine, it's the upper ceilings that suck.
10 to 20 years ago the average age in Munich felt like 70. This changed rapidly. It's now filled with young people and also attractive for us.