exactly. I made that as a Junior in my first full-time job in Munich in 2000 already. Then moved on to freelancing and for the next decade never invoiced less than EUR 12K/month (average was actually EUR ~16K). I did a lot of hours and paid a lot of tax but it also got me fast cars, holidays in Italy, Austria or Switzerland (just for the weekends) and a nanny to help look after my kids. And I wasn't even an outlier since anyone who I worked with (often via places like Hays or Allgeier Group etc) was on pretty much the same.

What I've noticed in the recent years (I moved around 2009) is there has been a push to "Arbeitnehmerüberlassung", which is basically a racket where the outsourcing agency hires you out to their clients, they skim the margins and leave the employees with a crap salary. They sit in their clients office and are second class employees. When the project ends they're moved on to the next company if they're lucky or are asked to come in to the office (not on the client site but the place where they organize this type of slavery), then they get to call prospective clients and beg for jobs that they themselves have to do. It's surreal and idiotic but it's peoples fault for putting up with it instead of just freelancing and writing their own invoices.

25 vacation days per year and 40h plus overtime included sometimes are more the current norm for most dev positions on the market now.

Maybe you can show me where I can find these 40h/week no-overtime with 30 days/year vacation jobs so I know where to move next.

Overtime is perhaps more about the company and oneself, but in my experience is something you decide to do it or not. If you do it companies pay for overtime. I never done overtime (because companies pay pennies for it :) )

Well that was my point. There's no EU law that prevents you from having to do overtime.

Also agreements with trade unions etc. take care of a sane base-level of holidays and payment.

Germany is also "heavy regulated" in the sense that good people will just choose a job with a competitor who gives you 30 days of free time and paid overtime, although he might pay less.

I think work-life-balance tips slightly over to the worker in a welfare state, because you can choose to earn 100 Euro/month a less but have more holidays AND still have not to worry about paying doctor bills.

That describes every job I've had in Sweden over last 6-7 years or so. But then again I've made a conscious effort to void some of the 'crunchier' industries (like game studios and certain startups), which admittedly does mean getting paid a bit less.

Overtime does happen but French law requires I be able to recover my time (RTT). In my experience there is a mad rush to use up that time before 31/12 so you'll see an additional holiday season around Nov-Dec. Else, it goes away and that time is lost to the fiscal year.

You can do it in Berlin if you go the freelancer route but that comes with it's own complications in Germany.

like what? being able to do your own tax and get refunds for all your expenses the way you should? an accountant who does once a year your "EkSt Erklaerung" costs you anywhere between 600-1000 (once a year) and it saves you anywhere between 5K - 25K depending on what your year was like and the expenses you had.