The following story is a story of my colleague that has decided to move to Germany to pursue a career in electrical engineering. Let's call him Mark to differentiate him from upcoming stories from other colleagues. He describes his first steps, his first experience working in Germany and also how much he earned when he was working on various positions in the electrical engineering field. And a lot more. He is currently working as an electrical design engineer but it wasn't this good when he first came to Germany. He had to work hard to get to the current position...

*NOTE: You will see a lot of numbers in his story, regarding salary and hourly rates. Also net (after tax) and gross (before tax) income. This story and the numbers inside are just one example. Germany is a big country and prices vary between regions, including cost of life, salaries and hourly rates. Also a big role is a tax category you fall into, depending whether you are solo, married or married with wife and kids. In any case, do your research.

After graduating from university (graduate study of electrical engineering majoring in electrical power engineering) I searched for years to get a normal job in my field in my country but without success. I decided to go abroad and I decided that I will move to Germany, as many people from my country do. I come from the southeast Europe.

I had 2 years of electrical work internship, 5 years telecommunications and sales, 2 professional internships abroad, excellent knowledge of English language and a bunch of other additional less important experiences and achievements. Married, no children, 32 years at a time of the departure.

Since I had a relatively well-paid job, even though not in the profession, I didn’t want to search for any kind of job, just to be able to say that I work in Germany, while barely making it to the end of the month.
I wanted to work in my field so I was concentrating on searching for electrical engineering jobs. I have spent over a year in applying for various positions but without any success.

Mostly without any employer response.

I then finally realized a couple of things. First of all,  without no German language skills and without hands-on working experience from Germany (or at least for German companies elsewhere in the world), it is almost impossible to land a job in Germany. The fact that I was applying for jobs in Germany at the time of looking for a job was even more of a deal breaker in the eyes of potential employers. Companies whose official corporate language is English or for which it is
sufficient knowledge of English alone are almost non-existent in Germany. Although almost every employer requires knowledge
of that English, whether that is a necessity or not to be able to function properly on a daily basis in an office environment.

The plan was to go alone, find a job and after about 6 months, if it all seems sustainable, get my wife to join me in Germany. So, when I get there, I will immediately start to learn German and always work on getting a better job.

After spending some time researching living expenses in Germany, I have concluded that with  monthly income of about €1000 € I can barely survive, with €1500 € I have enough to get me by for a month and €2000 or more would be enough for a normal life.

It is highly advisable to take the income stories of people with a grain of salt because everyone likes to brag and people often leave out crucial details when they talk about how much they earn in Germany. A large number of them who have € 2500 or more net income per month forget to mention that it is with a number of various extras on the salary and with 220+ hours of work per month. You can take some rough conclusions from their stories, but the reality is often much different.

And when the differences between provinces (between states and regions in Germany), smaller and larger cities, etc. are additionally taken into account, it is difficult to obtain
the real picture.

Wages are not as good there as they used to be. And life is noticeably more expensive.
I thought that if I achieve to earn net €2000 per month and especially when my wife comes and she start to work too, that things will look pretty good.

As the initial jobs were quite poorly paid for several months I was looking for a better offer that would satisfy me more both professionally and financially. Jobs exclusively in a German company where I would work only with the Germans (hence be forced to learn the language quickly and not rely on English) was in focus.

€14.00-15.00 (€30,000/year) is already a solid hourly rate given to those with a little more experience or to those in better companies. That hourly rate would bring me to the desired income of about €2000 net per month.

The only way to get more without experience and language is to work in the exceptional
unfavorable conditions (e.g. constantly on the constructions sites, constantly overtime
work, etc.). Ironically, I saw the first offer that seemed more than good to me on local online job portal in my country.

The hourly rate was 12.20 € + 5 € extra per hour. The  5 € supplement was reportedly non-taxable which significantly raised the net income (I'll explain later in the article what is this).

It was a "Zeitfirma" (type of company in Germany specialized in hiring personnel on a temporary basis, usually for lower skilled jobs) company in the north of Germany. I signed up for the ad. That was my first application for a non-engineering job, though still in electrical engineering field, as an electrician. The next day I received an email from the company literally asking me: When I can start ?. In the last couple of months prior to applying for that job, I worked on my German language skills and managed to learn a little bit, so I had some of the most basic vocabulary though without the ability to have a normal conversation about anything.

 I quit my job at the company where I was working at the time, closed everything in my country (accounts and everything) except the foreign currency bank account and headed to my better tomorrow. There was no turning back.

Since it was a "Zeitfirma" type of company, the employer was very friendly during the whole process of applying and interviewing for a job.

The reason for them to be so friendly is that "Zeitfirma" type of companies hire workers only to outsource them as soon as possible to a construction site somewhere, so the only thing that matters to them is that they can sell me to someone.

especially for the good/experienced ones. The lowest skilled electricians will probably end up somewhere in remote areas of Germany only to pull cables and close to no need to use the language on a daily basis during the work time. I didn't mind, I knew that this was my stepping stone to something better, a direct ticket to a German job market and I would also be well paid for a job that requires the lowest level of skill in electrical engineering field (pulling cables).

I soon started working in this "Zeitfirma". In the first month on this job I was constantly moving around working on different construction sites, where I would move every week from one to another construction site. One week, the job is done and then the next construction site. So it was pretty dynamic. The company was taking care of finding me an accommodation on every construction site and I was paying for it out of my pocket.

The accommodations were in most cases rooms in someone's house and the price range was 18 - 25 € /day for the room which is not particularly cheap. I could, of course, take care of the accommodation by myself but since I didn't speak the language and I was moving every week to a next construction site, I quickly gave up on that option. All in all, the company was there for me, they took care of everything and my sole responsibility was to get up, go to work, do the best I can on the job and then repeat this the next day.

The company of this kind is, of course, aware of the fact that the people that come to work for them are always on the lookout for new, better, opportunities so they try to a certain extent to make people feel pleasant working for them in a hope that this will in return prolong the stay of the employees at least for a little bit.

After the first month working for this company they finally found me a client that was to keep me for a longer period of time. It was a huge metal factory (ironwork) with over 170 years of tradition!
This factory hosts in their premises over 100 smaller companies from different areas of expertise that then offer their services to the factory.

I was stationed in one of the three electrical engineering companies that were servicing the electrical systems of the factory. Huge premises, countless electromechanical systems, substations etc. A whole lot to do and a whole lot to learn. To my current employer to which I was outsourced was only important that I am in a good physical shape, decent human beign (read: normal) and a team player that is ready to learn a lot. So that was not an issue. We had a team of five. One young engineer, one team leader (30+ years of experience) and then me and my two buddies, the three stooges.

Only one of the guys spoke somewhat English (since I still couldn't speak German) so I was sticking to him a lot at the beginning so that I could have some sort of communication with them.When I realized how much of a problem is the fact that I don't speak German, I asked my boss (as a joke at the beginning) to write down 5 words every day that he expects me to memorize. Although this was somewhat a joke from my side, they liked the idea lot and accepted it. After a couple of months of doing so, I was able to take over basic assignments based on our communication.

Since the price this company pays for me has gone up with every quarter (every three months staying with them), they told me that I started to cost them around €50.00 / hour after the fourth quarter with them, given all the extras, so they unfortunately decided not to extend the contract with my "Zeitfirma"...

The workers in the metal industry in Germany get a special extra on every hour of work. I got this extra raised every quarter and at the very end with that company I was getting €2.5 / hour bonus. All in all so far, I was mostly earning €2500 net / month, where it also from time to time went over €3000 / month, if I had a little bit of overtime. The key component was the € 5 / hour, tax free, which would give me an extra of €900 / month. To receive this €5 / hour I needed to be at least 100km away from my home address.

Without this, my basic salary would be €1600 net / month, that is, around €26,000 gross / year. 

After roughly one year with the same employer/client, my company informed me that I am starting to work for another company. It was time to go since, as mentioned above, I got a little too expensive. 

At this moment, I was thinking of being eligible for a raise. I insisted that they find me a company to work for within 30 km of my current place of residence. I also asked for a raise, from €12.20 to €16.00. This initiative gave some results. It took them only two days to find me a new employer and it was around 20km distance from my place. They also gave me a new hourly rate of €14.00.

The had departments for software engineering, hardware engineering, variable speed drives, site electricians and a panel building workshop. I joined the panel building team. Since I already had experience with panel building, only after a month on this job, they asked me if I would like to start to work directly for them.

The hourly rate was €14,00 for the new workers and after first year this would get to €15.00. Only the people that work for years over there and are very experienced would get €16.00 / hour. In any case, the offer was on the table.

I was thinking to myself - this is definitely a step forward, I would get rid of the "Zeitfirma" and the constant change of sites and I would finally start to work in a regular, normal company and altogether for a better pay. Hm, it would be overall a better salary but worse monthly income. This is due to the fact that I would lose those extras on the hourly rate and I would end up only having a basis salary. Nevertheless, this was not a deal breaker. I was definitely into sticking to the plan to join this company as their employee.

At the moment they had a vacancy for an electrical designer (in German: Elektrokonstrukteur | E-Planer). I told them I would like to apply for this job since this is where I see myself more than in my current assignment (working in a workshop wiring panels) and that I find this position significantly more interesting. The electrical design job would mainly be about drafting wiring diagrams in Eplan in which I had close to zero experience at the time.

They gave me two weeks probation to see whether I will show progress and the will to learn. After these two weeks they told be that they are satisfied with what I have shown and that I got the job. We agreed on €43,000.00 / year gross which gave around €2500 / month net plus a 13. paycheck. We agreed on discussing further details of the contract the job later on. Why?

We quickly learned how "Zeitfirmen" protect themselves from losing employees (their main source of income). The built in a clause in the contract witch their employees which prohibits their employees to be hired by the company where they outsource their employees for a certain period of time. They build this clause also in the contracts with their clients (where they outsource their employees). After a period of back and forth in negotiations, they agreed on keeping me for the next 9 months as outsourced and then I can be hired directly at this company.

In the meantime, I was contacted by several companies via the German business social platform Xing offering me employment. Since I still haven't signed anything with my current employer, I responded to these and in one of those companies I had and offer for an engineering position. I was asking for a gross yearly salary of €65,000. The seemed very interested, but since the recruitment process for this position prolonged for over a half a year, I came to a position where I needed to decide whether I will continue to pursuit this offer or I simply accept the offer my current employer gave to me. Taking into consideration some thing happening in my private life at that moment, I decided to take the offer from my current employer. And this is the job I am still working on at the moment of writing this article.

So here I am. After 3,5 years in Germany, started to work as a cable puller and now free from "Zeitfirma", working in an engineering company and earning €43,000,00/y gross.

I have an office that I share with one of my colleagues. We work on the same job, as hardware designers and we mainly work in Eplan on a daily basis. The hardware design department has 4 people. The colleagues are always ready to give a helping hand in case I am stuck with something. After all, we are a team and we are all on the same side.

When I first started to work on this job, they gave me enough time to accommodate. We started with simpler assignments and with time, I started to get more complex ones. Given that the work is done mainly on a computer, the dictionary is always there so this makes it easier for me to learn the language while I work, e.g. when I need to quickly translate some more complex phrases.

This job is an ideal environment to both learn the work and the language. I could probably get a better job earlier, but probably not with all working conditions I have over here.

So, after roughly 1,5 year on this position and altogether 3,5 years of working in Germany, I feel that there is a time for something more. I feel that I am with every new day more ready to get what I came for...