thejdude
I do enjoy a good hotel breakfast with baked beans, crisp bacon and hash potatoes (plus the normal continental bread/jam/cheese selection), but I wouldn't dream of preparing food myself in the morning when I'm still asleep.
What technologies do you do, do you cover the whole tech spectrum in that area, how many years experience, are you in Bavaria (where rates are a bit higher than elsewhere)?
Most advertised job offers seem to be only through agencies, and over here hardly any freelancers work without agencies. Plus 100€/hr is pretty high (for a non-company rate), so you must be doing something right.
But for a while Germany had StudiVZ and MeinVZ. After a while FB became more popular, people with some international friends joined at first, and after a while everyone else did and the other networks basically starved. It was sad to watch, especially since many (local) groups there and parts of the UI were IMHO much nicer than what's on FB today.
A few years later I switched back to Linux. Much better Java support. Better window manager. Multiple desktops (yes, I had something like that on the Mac, but it was weird). Much better file manager. Much faster (than either Windows or Mac OS).
I still love Apple hardware and their attention to detail regarding battery life, but you can pry my Gnome, I mean MATE, desktop from my cold dead hands. And Linux Mint at least has the Windows battery life (seems to be the only distro that does), so that's kind of ok.
I've also had other classes, though (languages, marketing ...), and those were really easy as well.
The early separation isn't the greatest thing (although there have also been people switching, or a friend of mine who changed from Gymnasium to Realschule and after 10th grade when Realschule finished he continued on the Gym and actually got his Abitur), but I actually think it helps because different students can learn at different levels and speeds.
Your criticism stands, though, and more recent attempts to reform the school system have introduced "Gesamtschulen", where all students learn together in one school, but pick different courses at different levels. The results are mixed (not as easy as black+white), but AFAIK not that bad.
I observe the same problem in Germany - more and more people attend school/university for more and more years, but don't turn out any brighter overall.
Just to give a perspective. I think the more expensive US states aren't that much better, but the cheaper ones are (much better).
Among younger (20-30) Germans, I think almost everybody is on FB (and even more are on What's App).
In Germany, tuition is almost non-existent (usually some fees of maybe 150€/semester, although a few years back there was a phase of actual student fees of - still laughable - 500€/semester), and if your parents don't make much money, or if you have many siblings, you can even get a half-credit/half-scholarship from the government (AFAIK even without interest, called "Bafög"), so especially for poor kids it's as easy as nowhere else in the world to go study. In smaller towns you can also get a student dorm room for under 200€, and overall living (esp. groceries) in Germany is quite cheap.
Yet Germany has a very low number of working-class students, for whatever reasons. Usually I think it's the parents' influence (but don't ask me why).
We also now have student credit now, in case you don't qualify for Bafög money, but unlike consumer credit which has become quite common, student credit doesn't seem to find many friends. People don't want to go borrow 10-30k for a college degree, but they'll happily finance their 25k cars or their 300k+ condos/houses.
If you want a more school-like experience, there are Fachhochschulen (more technical schools, "FH") instead of universities. Even in Germany many students complain that unis are too technical and don't provide enough handholding, and I always think WTH don't they just go to an FH then?
Often the FH offers very similar degrees, and while some employers care about the difference, many don't mind (many even don't care if you have a BSc or a MSc/Diploma, at least in IT). So there is a "Diploma in computer science" and a "diploma in computer science (FH)", in addition to the nowadays more common BSc/MSc.
I was surprised how freaking EASY everything was in the US university, compared to Germany. Multiple-choice tests, not much background knowledge assumed. Very school-like system (instead of assuming students will learn some of the necessary background at home).
I've seen different German universities, and indeed some of them might not offer a gym or on-campus dorms. In fact, often at least a few university buildings are spread out throughout the city, instead of being in a single connected campus area.
My German university had some subsidized housing though, and there were also private student dorms and they were very cheap, unlike the US dorm which was IMHO quite expensive. I also had a small but nice gym at my German uni.
Probably every German uni has a restaurant ("Mensa") which is often very cheap because of subsidies. Again, in the USA we had to buy expensive meal plans and overall it wasn't cheap at all.
But I loved the connectedness of the US campus, the atmosphere, the greens. The whole campus culture gives you the opportunity to either have a great partying time or a great studying time - I've had a bit of both. But overall, in Germany I learned MUCH more of the technical stuff.
I like to be notified, but if I'm reeeeally busy I don't go look at the emails. When I do, it's mostly notifications of something (delete immediately), simple requests (answer in 30 secs - 2 minutes) or stuff to get back to later (flag and/or put on my TODO list to schedule for later).
It doesn't really interrupt my work, as my actual work is still what and when I schedule it. Since most tasks have cleary communicated priorities anyway, this works nicely.
(recommendation: listen to Porcupine Tree - The Sound of Muzak)
The "nerd" idea is a myth, a prejudice I myself had back in college. But it's not the reality. Most engineers are very very boring family men, not the enthusiastic hipster type in funky colored pants.
Maybe it's the business (consulting) where they only care about the hourly margin, not about your performance (although I did an internal fixed-price project back then; probably saved the company's ass on that botched POS they had built). Generally, my impression is that salaries in Germany are very homogenous, and affected largely by age/experience and rank. You'd have to be a well-marketed freelancer to achieve high hourly rates (only a few people - relatively speaking - can do that).
By working ~40h I maintain my strength and keep delivering really good results. But when I sometimes do 1-2h overtime I notice that others (who come to work at 9:30-10) also leave at 5:50-6, so generally in Germany I'd say regular work hours are a given thing and most people don't do that much overtime, at least in IT. I've heard bad things about creative industries like ad agencies, or IT companies with lots of young engineers w/o kids.
I mean why would I work more - for more money, sure, but not for free. My employer doesn't pay me "overmoney" for the same amount of work, does he? I at least get an overtime account and this year I managed to reduce it by ~10 hours. With different overtime policies I definitely would NOT have taken the job - NOT good for the company ;-)
I'm surprised by the (low) 50-90k salaries you mention. I've always read much higher numbers. Probably due to the bias on blogs/news sites to West Coast companies.
But developer salaries - definitely not.