the IT wages in Germany aren’t as high, you’re looking at €3000-€5000 above your typical factory worker for the type of work they seem to be looking for, BUT therefor they also have German levels of workers right XD, just wait 5 years when Google decides to outsource somewhere else again, and realizes it can’t afford to pay the severance of all those employees
IT wages may not be as high in Germany as in Silicon Valley (cost of living is also a lot lower), but they are certainly a far cry from “cheap.” Also, German workers have much, much better labor conditions overall than US workers. They aren’t easy to cast aside like Google has a habit of doing.
Google, who was famous for employing Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) is now firing their python team. I wonder why they didn’t reassign them to the ML/AI division.
10 * 350k of total comp is 3.5 million dollars… guessing the german counterparts probably get 120k of total comp so only 1.2 million dollars, assuming it’s 1:1 staff swap.
Never heard of american software engineers at FAANG getting anything less than superstar sf bay wages, never heard of crazy wages in all of the EU for any kind of worker… but maybe someone can correct me on the german team’s salaries.
You get that working for Google in Bay Area if you’re senior, no matter the language.
Those guys were participating in Python itself, maintaining the Python tooling for the whole company, served as a help desk for everything Python… Yeah I’m pretty sure they had a big salary.
It’s not your little “glue libraries together” Python coding.
$350k includes the salary but also all of the health insurance benefits, taxes, stock options, office space and perks, compute hardware, software services… the works. An employer will have an averaged overhead factor for their skilled workforce, which can be anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5 typically. A worker with an annual pre-tax salary of $140k could cost Google $350k in overall expenses per year. Labor is expensive.
Also, these people weren’t just making simple Python scripts. Most of them were contributing core functionality into Python itself and managing the internal Python version and the ecosystem of Google software stacks that depend on it.
The Python team weren’t just random folks writing Python. Several are core Python contributors who maintained official forks, ran library matching for internal software, and gave back to the language and community. They didn’t just go for cheaper talent, they replaced some arguably irreplaceable engineers and shat over OSS at the same time.
Just for the sake of comparison, Alphabet had $308 billion in revenue and $74 billion in profit in 2023 if I’m reading the numbers correctly. But they need cheaper labour.
Publicly traded companies do not have a duty to pay their workers, they have a duty to pay their shareholders and to maximize profits.
If you can get the same job done overseas for less money why would you pay american labor? what’s the benefit?
Not saying I like the system, just saying that’s how it is. Gotta have some kind of fine or penalty for outsourcing, offshoring and 1099 contracting labor if you really want to fix it.
Shit should be changed but the majority election system is funded by the ownership class who greatly benefits from this not changing.
Sundar Pichai will go down as one of the worst tech CEOs. Dude appears as such a nice guy from podcasts I’ve listened with him but really awful at his job and has zero consistent personality. He’s a straight up corporate robot with no original opinions or idealogies. Unfortunately, none of that is visible or really matters because Google has infinite source of ad money so any KPIs are made irrelevant.
The KPIs are coming for their Ads Money too. I commented elsewhere about how Search is being bent to the will of Ads, and it’s Raghaven who’s being enabled by Sundar to do it. They’ve been hit with the problem that Ads isn’t growing as expected. Having worked with the new Google Ads dashboard, it’s no wonder why. It’s clunky, the mobile app is missing functionality, and the web app is broken on mobile. Throw on top the constant interruptions due to their AI flagging perfectly normal campaigns, and it’s enough to push people elsewhere. Sundar is the Ballmer of Google, and unless he’s deposed he will drive Google down the path the likes of IBM or Oracle.
The only staff who need firing is Sundar. Google and android should have been easy better by now but he made them stagnant.
Android is still the best mobile os but it could have been even better under better leadership. Plus they could have enabled and experimented with the OEM’s to allow for additional hardware buttons, button remapping, a native Dex on all Androids, official gcam port to all OEM’s so they don’t need to make their own camera algorithms and even the cheapest droid could have had flagship level cameras.
Why would it be in googles interest to provide better cameras to OEMs? Google has to love that people buy pixel phones because other vendors cameras are years behind
Because the market is bigger than Pixels and they could license much of it (I’d like to see more of it as open source, but it’s easier for a corporation to justify licensing the cutting edge stuff). I think a lot of OEMs would like access to Night Sight
Regardless of the actual software processing details, in the wider population of Android consumers I’m pretty sure it’s Samsung that has the reputation for photography.
Samsung’s advertising focus is on advertising things that people understand and think they want, not AI assistants and cleaner versions of Android. Most of the reviews of the Pixel 8 criticise no telephoto lens while Samsung tends to have an excess being shown off.
Like everything Google does, I’m not sure it is any good at understanding people as humans rather than people as aggregate statistical models and that shows in its consumer devices.
Samsung’s 10x camera is amazing, I’m pretty miffed they dropped down to a digial zoom 10x though and made it a 5x on the S24 series, even if it gives other benefits like higher quality mid zooms between the 3x and 10x.
I really hope they bring it back or someone else has a good 10x lens by the time I need a new phone.
Yeah, how’s that going to be cheaper? Unions in Germany aren’t known for that. Unless Germany has an easier route to cheaper foreign workers with visas working there?
Salariés are thrice are high in the usa, and rent is probably twice the amount. Munich is definitely cheaper than cali. They could have also moved to a cheaper place within the USA, however. Also local regulations don’t apply to big company in the USA, Germany might require subtler bribing.
Also, software people are not unionised in Germany, despite many of us being proper engineers (i.e. with a title), meaning it should be very easy. Well, my current company let me understand I should avoid talking about even a Betriebsrat (= mini union) if I were to make a career there sooo… No need to worry about that. Probably why they’re not moving to e.g. Paris. Good luck getting qualified people not covered by a “convention collective”.
Compared to software developer compensation in California, Germany is waaaay cheaper.
Heck, Munich is cheaper for Google than literally any of their US offices. You would make more by working for Google in Raleigh, North Carolina than in Munich.
The only European city that pays as well as the US is Zürich. The pay is really good there, about the same as Seattle.
Sad but true. Munich is extremely expensive for people living there and not owning their homes, which is a large portion of the population and salaries for highly skilled individuals is a complete joke.
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