I don't know where in germany you worked at but most offices here are not nearly as english friendly, in my experience it's quite rare and more than half the IT jobs still expect you to know some German otherwise it's a non starter.

>I don't know where in germany

Frankfurt, non-IT job. I guess the mileage varies.

hope you enjoyed your stay, I've been meaning to visit that part of the country for a while, never got the chance to see Saalburg north of Frankfurt.

Frankfurt is the finance capital, so IME it'll tend more English-speaking than the average.

Yes, but many Chinese engineers have such a low level of proficiency that they genuinely struggle to communicate in spoken English. Pronunciation/accent can also be a major barrier to comprehension.

how can they write code ? real question

Do you seriously believe nobody in the non English speaking world can write code?

My guess is that he's talking about commenting code, not actually writing it.

I've had multiple coworkers remove comments or reject CRs because there were too many comments. If you foster a culture where comments are discouraged then it's less of an impediment

I mean you still have to comment on issues, and even within the code itself you need to name things in ways that make sense to others.

It's not that English specifically is required to do this, but if the organization is American it does seem like English would be the default and proficiency would be pretty important.

Is that a culture you want to foster, though?

I can say that I didn't agree with it. But that's what lead devs were pushing. The common mentality among devs is that releasing is more important than building something sustainable.

> there were too many comments

I didn't even knew this was a thing. I write tons of comments thinking they could be appreciated in case somebody has to glance at the code.

for example, if they need to create a class or a function, how do they name it ? I live in the non English speaking world, I had to learn a minimum of English to be able understand, reason about and write code.

Tell them to use chatgpt to translate their broken English

Yes, many German and French multi-national companies have English as the official language.

If there is at least one non-local participant in a meeting, or on an email list, then the discourse has to be popped up to English.

This often happens when none of them are native English speakers, e.g. German & Spanish.

There are specific English proficiency tests bound to levels of management - bad English, no promotion.

I’m European, Dutchman specifically, and I find it mentally difficult, almost impossible sometimes, to not converse in English with a person I know does speak English. I used to work at a Dutch company with ~35 nationalities and me and my Dutch colleagues where often reminded by our non Dutch coworkers that they prefer us to continue water cooler conversation in Dutch and not switched to English when they joined in. For them this was a great way to learn more Dutch. Right now there is also a parent at my kids school who is Welsh, and even though he understands Dutch very well and prefers to speak it, everytime I approach him for a conversation the first sentence in my head is formed in English. I have to consciously switch to Dutch before starting the conversation. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s some genetic heritage from when our country was a big international trading nation?