I agree, actually. It's so hard to find a good job that doesn't pay like crap in Germany (I used to live in Cologne and Berlin). Try contracting with UK companies if you can find a remote gig, my QoL went significantly up after I stopped working with German companies.

define "pay like crap". My experience in Berlin is different, depending on your experience 60-90K EUR is possible. Combined with the relatively low cost of living in Berlin, you can live comfortably. I don't see London paying significantly more, while being a lot more expensive.

That's exactly what I meant by that. I've been in a few companies and I don't think the compensation structure for SWEs is fair for most of the German market. I do agree that Berlin is still fairly cheap.

Do you realize that you have taken on a defeatist conviction? People give you tips and you tell them it's impossible.

The facts however, are that these tips work for the people giving them.

> Where I live(Germany), the business who only need 2 developers already have them.

No new businesses get created in Germany and no people retire? Sounds like a bleak place.

> business who only need 2 developers already have them

it takes time, but you have to search continuously. people leave and get replaced all the time.

Well job ads are already the wrong approach. Go meet your local business in meetups, social gatherings, etc.

This is a medium sized EU city, not SV. There are no tech meetups here. Those may be a thing in big metro areas.

Start a tech meetup? That’s hard, but it’s also incredibly good for your visibility.

Even a medium size EU city should have a critical mass of developers by now.

Of course, it would be nicer if we just had decent employers in the first place.

agreed. I was visiting Bucharest last November and was surprised that there were multiple tech meetups on meetup.com. Perhaps I shouldn't have been, but ... I was just... pleasantly surprised. I wasn't there for work, but found a couple evenings where I ended up having the night to myself and stumbled on the idea of checking my meetup app and... bam - multiple places to go meet up with tech folks. More than I had time for actually...

Bucharest is capital, not 'just' an EU city, but it's by no means the largest nor would I think it has the most tech folks compared to other areas. (maybe that's wrong assumption though?)

Healthy ecosystem exists even in rather small cities. Up here in Vilnius, Lithuania, small-sized backwater EU city, we've quite a few meetups with a decent amount of networking opportunities. Sure it's not as SV scale. But even < 1million metro area can sustain that.