Berlin is a pretty excellent place if you're after a compromise b/w QoL and business. The tech scene is 50%+ expats and the mixture does wonders for company culture. It's also quite easy to connect with people and do freelancing, and I know many people fluidly joining and leaving different teams – doing freelancing for some, joining for equity at others, and sometimes groups form for exciting ad-hoc collaborations without an immediate profit motive.

Berlin doesn't have an much of an industrial base, though. It was an enclave during the 40 years where most of the large manufacturing companies grew and it was impossible to do so from here. Siemens, for example, moved to Munich after 1945. So it may depend on the industry you're targeting. For some (mobility, politics, web, environment) Berlin has gotten more attractive in the last years, with companies sometimes opening offices to connect with the tech scene.

Large companies are obviously more conservative, but the differences are minor compared to their international peers. Bureaucracy tends to be much less of a hassle as people make it out to be.

I'm curious what this wild side is like. "letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering" sounds like working remotely from a beach is common. Yet almost all job postings I see from companies in London are on site. Or does it mean I can leave work after six hours on very productive days?

Well, as it goes, as often as I'm able to (sometimes it takes a while to change the culture/gain enough trust to be left alone) I don't put any requirements at all on attendance/appearence/sanity/whatever as long as everything is being done and the team is performing. Nailed all the work for the day before 12:00 and want to hit up the pub -- how could any sane person stop you? Working remote makes you more productive and no one else on the team feels you're just slacking, then go for it.

It's not some intentional psychological ploy or anything, but I've found that people generally don't take the absolute piss if you let them manage themselves totally (we are all adults, after all, and who the hell am I to tell anyone how to handle themselves professionally as long as our obligations are being met)

Sure, everyone has to get together sometimes, but being onsite and having a normal lifestyle doesn't work for everyone, especially some of the 'top tier' engineers I've had who tend to be a bit wild.. Pushing 'school rules' on people just leads to them exiting, and it's no use kidding yourself that they need you more than you need them.

One of the best engineers I ever had had some sort of really insane drink/drugs lifestyle, he would drop commits in between 2-7am and they'd be brilliant, then he'd vanish for a few days, and repeat. Did I depend on this person completely for the whole project? No. But why should I care as long as no one else is annoyed by this behaviour on the team, and the work was solid?

I've never had someone actually emigrate during a role, but often people would go away for a few weeks and it wasn't a problem, again, as long as work is being done.

I'm not really sure why this isn't the case everywhere, but as long as my staff act like adults then they'll be treated as such. Onsite requirements are usually a symptom of a lack of trust or an insecure lead.

That's when you are running a team, right? But it's not the norm to walk into any corp in London as a devops/dev/whatever contractor and work like this. There is no reason why you couldn't run a team that way in Berlin or anywhere else in the world.

Depends on your attitude really.

If you rock up to a client and immediately let them set any kind of requirements on your life instead of having a "this is our goal, make it so!" relationship then a subtle kind of power relationship has been created, where they'll think it's acceptible to mandate employee rules on you like this.

If you're a contractor, then the corp you're whoring out to is NOT your employer and you must not let them act as such (this makes it worse for all of us, not just you).

They're paying your buisness to do something for theirs, how you do that is your business and yours alone. There's no need to be a total weirdo about the whole thing and go off on one because they want you at a meeting at 10 some day or whatever -- you have to be diplomatic and be mindful of the way you're being percieved by the perm staff -- but generally I will not tolerate requests from clients w/r/t anything like attendance outside of meetings, dress code, general sobriety or whatever else which isn't impacting the deliberables we're providing, and wouldn't attempt to push them on my staff either (contract or not).

I've walked away from several really lucrative contracts because of this sort of client behaviour and I don't regret that at all. Your clients aren't, and never will be in control of you, you're there because they need you and they should treat you with the respect an engineer with your day rate has earned.. shrug

Generally, this sort of attitude has been accepted in every contract I've had in london in the last 5 years or so..

The secret is to get this point across very soon after, or even before, starting the gig. Absolute confidence is probably rq too tho...

edit: butterfingers

Makes perfect sense, thanks. I think the situation here is very similar. Telling a contractor when and where to work can get the client in legal trouble ("Scheinselbstständigkeit", one of those lovely german words ;). How that works out in practice probably depends on the company. If you work a gig at Siemens it might be different than at a startup (that is funded well enough to afford freelancers).

I only have experience with two big corps so far (keep coming back to the second one ;), but I've seen quite a few contractors at both and some of them were just plain flaky. That of course makes it worse for all of us as well, wrt to clients tolerance for things like remote work, etc.

Hmm.

I'll be in Berlin next week (I missed Nikolaus and I have some belated shoes to fill; failing that though definately again around silvester)

If you're up for a beer or sixteen on me, I'd really find the insider scoop useful on a more personal medium; I'm sure we could probably both get something from it, at least the worst would be a lot of free beer!

You can find me on freenode as 'cyb3rpunk' (inside a shiny new irssi in some tmux somewhere so might take me a while to respond) if you're up for it -- otherwise, prost!

Totally up for it! Will ping you on irc.

It is not what you are asking for, but as I repeatedly hear is that The Netherlands is closer to the UK with regards to the business practice. Less strict, less formal, no hierarchies. But VC isn't big in The Netherlands as well. Salaries are still a joke compared to the US.

I worked in NL a few years ago and the corp culture there was good generally. I'll never acknowledge frikandellen as fit for human consumption however..

I'm not sure about the money argument still though -- a joke? How much more money do you think your avg dev is getting paid in the US vs what we get here in Europe? A regular employee/salaried dev is looking at at least 90k euro/year in nl, which is a very very comfortable living before bonus/benefits and NL also has the 13'th month thing which allows for easy laptop buying every year... Senior/Lead folks are looking at more plus options and whatever..

It's obviously a hard thing to measure, but I think the quality of life argument for your typical european is somewhat higher than your generic american worker (25 days holiday, employee-biased employment laws, various lifestyle protections (e.g in holland if you're a fully 'paid up' taxpayer and you lose your job then the govt will give you some 75% of your last salary while you find another role)).

I guess there's no way to really compare all these things, there are too many other factors -- I'm really curious on how much more money you're talking about here though...

> A regular employee/salaried dev is looking at at least 90k euro/year in nl

According Payscale, the average salary for a developer in Netherlands is 41k Euro/Year (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...), and in Amsterdam, the capital, 53k (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Senior_Software_Engi...).

In Copenhagen and Barcelona (the two Euro cities where I have worked) 90k is totally off the market.

What company in NL pays 90k for new grads?

or senior devs

90k is attainable at Booking.com for a senior dev, but you have to be into Perl :) And I imagine that your total comp is pretty big at Uber too (at least on paper). Clearly not the norm in NL though.

It might be easier in hardware, I don't know how well ASML pays.

Not really into Perl or into moving anywhere, but good to know. :)