r/cscareerquestionsEU

Hi everyone,

I recently started studying Computer Science in Germany, and lately I've been seeing a lot of posts from people saying they can't find jobs, even with years of experience.

Is Reddit giving a biased picture, or is the market genuinely this difficult right now? How do you see the future of the CS job market in Germany over the next few years?

I'd really appreciate hearing from people who are currently working in the industry or have been job hunting recently.

Hello everyone. I am a 4th year CS student and I was considering my options for a cybersecurity master's education in EU. The reason for EU is that I want to move to Europe and I think getting a master's degree would make it easier for me.

The problem is, the more research I do, the more apparent it seems that the market is not doing well for juniors and I am worried about not being able to land a job there. So I wanted to get general opinions from everyone on this decision. Does it make sense to apply for cybersecurity masters in EU, if so, which universities should I aim for, and are there other things I should do or consider? How is the market right now?

I would really appreciate some wisdom as it is not really easy to get a grasp of how things really are over there without living there.

27M, based in Italy.

Some context for non-Italians: Italy has a special tax regime for freelancers called "regime forfettario". It's a flat ~15% tax (5% for the first 5 years) with almost no bureaucracy, but there's a hard cap: €85k revenue/year. Go above it and you fall into the ordinary regime, where the effective tax burden (income tax + mandatory social security) can eat 45-50%+ of everything above the threshold.

Last year I had a €65k salary at an Italian company. This year I work as a contractor for a foreign company on this flat-tax regime. My contract is worth €90k + variable bonus (realistically another €10k), but I'll only invoice €85k to stay under the cap (~€5k net/month) and push the remaining invoices to next year.

Here's my problem: I'm operating at maybe 60% of my capacity, because there's zero incentive to do more. The company likes me and a raise at the May 2027 review is very likely. But under the ordinary regime, they'd have to pay me ~€120k just for me to break even with my current net (vs ~€85k now), and even more for an actual raise. That also makes me less competitive internally. First layoff round, I'm the expensive guy who gets cut.

Options I've considered:

• Relocating to a low-tax country with no revenue caps. I paid for a consultation and got the usual suspects: Cyprus, Malta, or more complex setups (US LLC + foreign residency). Anyone with first-hand experience?
• Moving to Spain, asking the company to hire me through an EOR and using the Beckham Law (~24% flat tax), then coming back to Italy after 3 years under the "impatriati" regime (a tax break for returning residents). Downside: I'd cost the company much more, and I'd have to leave everything behind.
• Opening an Italian LLC (SRL) and doing "tax optimization", which in practice means spending money on stuff I don't actually need just to lower the tax bill.

I know there's no definitive answer and it ultimately depends on what I want. But any experience or advice from people who've been through this would help me.

I’ve been working as a developer for around 4 years and lately I feel kind of stuck.
I’m doing fine at work. My manager is usually happy, I work fast, and I get my tickets done. But I know I have some gaps because I’ve used AI a lot from the beginning. I can understand, review and improve the code, but I rarely build bigger things completely from scratch anymore.

I’ve become pretty good at turning vague bugs or tickets into clear requirements and giving AI the right context. That has honestly worked really well so far. But it also feels weird, because I sometimes feel like I don’t retain as much knowledge as I should.
Part of me wants to spend a lot of private time improving, learning deeper fundamentals and becoming a better developer. But I’m struggling to find motivation.
The job market feels awful, especially in Europe. I also see coworkers with similar experience applying everywhere and not finding anything better. And then there is AI: it may not directly replace developers, but it clearly makes people faster, which probably means companies will need fewer developers.

So I keep wondering: is it really worth investing hundreds of hours into getting better if some of that knowledge may become less relevant soon anyway? Or if fewer devs are needed, salaries and career opportunities could get worse?
I still want to grow, become more senior and build a proper career. But right now I just don’t know what I’m working towards.

Does anyone else feel like this? How do you stay motivated to improve when the future of the profession feels so uncertain?

I might soon get accepted as an ML engineer with Adyen in Amsterdam, Europe. I read a lot that people complain about the work/life balance and overall culture at Adyen. I just wanted to hear honest thoughts about whether this is a bit overblown or if it's true specifically with the AI and Engineering departments. I don't want to join a company with a good salary but sacrifice my wellbeing.

I'm 29 years old and currently have about 3 years of professional experience as a C++ software engineer in robotics.

I’m currently working at a company in Amsterdam, and my current compensation is around €70k/year. One of my goals is to reach €100k+ before I turn 30. I understand that will likely require switching companies at some point, but I’m trying to understand whether I’m on the right trajectory.

Recently I've been getting a lot more responsibility at work. Some examples:

I'm involved in our migration from a monolithic application toward a more distributed architecture.

I'm owning the development of a new service.

I'll be physically deploying that service on our robotic system for a live demo.

I'm mentoring a junior engineer.

I'm increasingly involved in technical discussions rather than just implementing tickets.

Outside of work, I'm trying to improve in distributed systems, system design, and interview preparation. I also keep hearing that I should grind LeetCode if I want to get into higher-paying companies.

My questions are:

Given my experience level, does this sound like I'm progressing at a good pace?

If your goal were to reach €100k+ in the next 1–2 years, what would you prioritize?

Would you spend more time on LeetCode, distributed systems, or building deeper expertise in C++ and system design?

At what point would you start interviewing if you were in my position?

I'd especially appreciate advice from people who made a similar jump in Europe or moved into companies like Booking, Adyen, trading firms, or US tech.

what’s zalando’s tea everyday i hear about someone new either starting or finishing working there, somehow the whole club also works at zalando

Hey everyone,

I’m currently prepping to enter the job market for junior/entry-level Front-End roles, and I’m trying to prioritize my time effectively.

I already have a well-organized GitHub profile with clean repos, good READMEs, and live deployment links (via Vercel/Netlify) for all my individual projects.

My question is about having a dedicated personal portfolio website (like a custom myname.dev site that showcases who I am, my stack, and my projects in one place).

A few things I'd love your input on:

Do recruiters actually take the time to browse a candidate's personal portfolio website, or do they jump straight to the resume and live project links?

Does an impressive, custom-built portfolio site move the needle for a junior candidate, or is it a "nice-to-have" that rarely gets clicked?

If I skip the personal portfolio site and just focus on building more complex, well-architected apps with direct live demos, will I be at a disadvantage?

Hi everyone,

I recently passed Google's L4 SWE Hiring Committee and am now in the team matching stage, targeting Zürich.

I know Zürich is one of Google's most sought-after locations and that many candidates prefer it, so I'd love to understand what I can realistically do from my end to maximize my chances of matching there.

I'd especially appreciate hearing from people who successfully matched with a team in Zürich (or elsewhere):

- What ultimately helped you get matched?

- Did you mainly rely on recruiter-introduced matches, networking, or reaching out to hiring managers directly?

- How long did team matching take for you?

- Any mistakes you made or things you wish you'd done differently?

- Are there particular orgs that tend to hire more L4 engineers?

- Given the competition for Zürich, what actions would you recommend I take proactively?

Even if your experience wasn't in Zürich, I'd still love to hear what worked (or didn't work) during team matching.

Thanks in advance for any advice or experiences you're willing to share!

I work in tech and came here during COVID. At that time, I couldn't get any flatmate and thus, I started living alone in a studio. Also, is it better to live far from office if flatmate wants and then commute daily?

Does living with a flatmate prevents depression?

I'm looking for some advice on a salary discussion.

I [M30] joined a German engineering company one year ago as a software engineer. At the time, I had only 6 months of full-time experience (plus ~ 2 years as a working student) and a CS bachelor's from a well-known German technical university. My starting salary was €63k plus the standard holiday bonus everyone gets.

During the interview, I was told I'd have mentorship, code reviews, and the chance to learn. Instead, I ended up as the only developer responsible for an entirely new application for one of our devices. I pretty much own everything, architecture, implementation, CI/CD, testing, requirements analysis and maintenance.

In general I don't have anyone reviewing my code or supervising my work. Recently, another team helped implement two features because they had capacity. I reviewed their code, and it was possible for three people to work in parallel without conflicts, which gave me some confidence that I'm doing things reasonably well. Apart from that, I feel like almost nobody sees the technical side of my work. My PO mostly handles tickets and planning. The requirements I receive are often vague, so I either write the concept myself (if it is something new or specific to our device) or reverse-engineer similar products that have the same feature to figure out what needs to be done. My manager mainly sees that sprints are completed but not how the work is actually done within the team.

When I signed my contract, my manager also signed a document stating that my salary would be reviewed after the first year. That year has now passed, but nobody has brought it up yet. According to Kununu, software developers at my company average around €71k (there are only 12 entries).

My questions are:

1. Should I bring up the salary review myself now, or wait?
2. Given my responsibilities, what salary would be reasonable to ask for?
3. Am I overestimating the scope of my role, or is this beyond what would normally be expected from someone who joined with my level of experience?

I'm not planning to leave immediately because I'm finishing my M.Sc. over the next year.

Hi everyone! I’d love to hear from those who have landed jobs at international IT companies where English is the primary language of communication: how did you brush up on your English before getting hired, and what was the interview process like? I’m 20 years old and currently transitioning from freelancing to a Python developer role (Django/Flask) at a Slovak company; fortunately, the interview was conducted in Russian. I can read B1-level texts without issues (understanding 95–100% of the content), but my conversational ability outside of programming topics is roughly A2+. I constantly see requirements for B2 proficiency, which scares me a lot, though I’m not afraid of learning new IT skills. Fellow programmers, please give me some advice—I really want to work for major companies.

In the past 8 months, I just got laid off twice and now I am on this job search again in Germany. I have 10+ years of experience as a full-stack software engineer and speak German B2 and it's getting tiring to find a job in this market situation. I lived in Germany for 6 years and the current market is so hostile it makes me even question if I should exit software engineering altogether.

Besides the latest government changes today would just make matters worse as permanent contracts are one of the conditions to get citizenship (at least for us people from brown and black countries). Besides the pension that we will never get and health insurance that almost eats fifth of my salary.

Am I the only one experiencing this situation? am I too pessimistic? What are the alternatives did you do or take if you have experienced similar situation?

fyi; I am applying for average 20-30 relevant jobs daily and some now offering shitty salaries as low as 45k for senior devs!

İ am cpp backend engineer for a year, many people coding c and cpp mostly embedded think aı cannot replace them bcs its harder than web and mobil but i think they r just staying to calm but i can do the whole job or ai does fhe whole coding by just a little help. And i fear about staying the same job at the end of my career. İ consider to switch another tech stack devops, security because of this reason.

People who have advice pls tell, if we are very lucky to find the first job and its is nearly imposibble to move abroad considering my stack and is there any stack still popular in the market.

Thanks

Hi,
I’ll be relocating to Barcelona later this year for a Data Engineering role, and I’ve spent the last few weeks reading this subreddit, watching YouTube videos, and browsing apartment listings.
The more I read, the more I realize that there’s a big difference between visiting Barcelona and actually building a life there.
I’m curious about a few things from people who live and work there:

What’s something newcomers almost always underestimate about living in Barcelona?

How’s the work culture in tech? Is it generally relaxed, or does it depend entirely on the company?

For those in data engineering, data platforms, or software engineering, how would you describe the local job market?
Is Barcelona somewhere people build long-term careers, or do many eventually move to other European tech hubs?

Finally, what monthly budget/income do you think is needed to live comfortably, save consistently, and still enjoy travelling around Europe from time to time for a couple?
I’m not looking for perfect numbers and just honest experiences from people who’ve lived it. Thanks!!!

I have done everything people told me to do. I went to the Job Centre. They said I needed more keywords to get through the sift. I went to the university careers office. They said my CV was strong. I paid £500 for a professional CV review. They said it was basically perfect. I ran it through ATS scanners. It scores 9.2, 9.4 and sometimes 9.7 depending on the website.

I have tailored it for every role. I have added action verbs. I have added measurable impact. I have added stakeholder management. I have added cloud. I have added AI. I have added data. I have added delivery. I have added strategy. I have added resilience.

I have added every keyword I can think of because everyone keeps saying this is how you get through the first sift.

My background is:

2018 2020 Retail Assistant / Warehouse Operative

Worked in a fast-paced customer-facing environment. Built transferable skills across stock control, logistics, customer service, communication, teamwork, time management, problem solving, process improvement and working to KPIs.

2020 Python Bootcamp

Completed an 8-week Python bootcamp covering Python, data analysis, machine learning, APIs, Flask, SQL, Git, Docker, pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, basic cloud, automation and software engineering fundamentals.

2021 Junior Data Analyst

Worked on dashboards, reporting, Excel, SQL, Python, Power BI, data cleaning, KPI tracking, business intelligence, stakeholder reporting and automation.

2022 AI Engineer AI Gym Trainer Enabled App

Worked at a startup building an AI-enabled gym trainer app. The product used computer vision and machine learning to help users improve form during workouts. I worked across Python, APIs, data processing, model testing, basic cloud deployment, user feedback, analytics and product iteration.

The startup later went under and I was made redundant.

2023 2024 AI/ML Engineer

Worked on machine learning and generative AI projects using Python, OpenAI APIs, LangChain, embeddings, vector search, RAG, FastAPI, Docker, AWS, SQL, GitHub, CI/CD, model evaluation and internal tooling.

I did fail my review at the second company. To be fair, I did not fully understand how Git worked at the time, especially branching, rebasing, pull requests and resolving merge conflicts. I was learning, but I know now that I should have understood the basics better before going into that role.

2024 2025 Senior AI/ML Engineer

Worked across generative AI, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, LLM evaluation, data pipelines, API integrations, cloud deployment, stakeholder demos, internal automation, documentation, model monitoring and AI strategy.

My skills section now includes Python, SQL, JavaScript, Bash, AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Linux, Git, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, DevOps, MLOps, LLMOps, Agile, Scrum, Jira, Confluence, Power BI, Tableau, Excel, Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Airflow, TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, Hugging Face, OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma, FAISS, FastAPI, Flask, Django, REST APIs, microservices, Lambda, RAG, embeddings, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, model governance, responsible AI, data engineering, data science, machine learning, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, generative AI, stakeholder management and commercial awareness.

I have also added Python packages because I was told recruiters search for specific tools: pandas, NumPy, SciPy, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, XGBoost, LightGBM, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly, Streamlit, FastAPI, Flask, Django, SQLAlchemy, Pydantic, Requests, BeautifulSoup, Selenium, Pytest, Jupyter, Dask, PySpark, boto3, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Transformers, SentenceTransformers, spaCy, NLTK, OpenCV, Pillow, MLflow, Airflow, Prefect, ChromaDB, Pinecone, Weaviate and FAISS.

I added networking as well because some AI roles mention infrastructure: TCP, UDP, IP, DNS, DHCP, HTTP, HTTPS, TLS, SSH, SFTP, SMTP, IMAP, WebSockets, gRPC, MQTT, VPNs, VLANs, NAT, load balancing, reverse proxies, API gateways, firewalls, OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, JWT and Zero Trust.

I added cloud because every job seems to want cloud now: EC2, S3, IAM, Lambda, ECS, EKS, CloudWatch, VPC, Route 53, RDS, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, API Gateway, SageMaker, Bedrock, Azure Functions, Azure ML, Azure DevOps, Blob Storage, Cosmos DB, GCP Cloud Run, BigQuery, Vertex AI, Pub/Sub and Cloud Storage.

I added soft skills because I was told technical skills are not enough: communication, collaboration, adaptability, resilience, curiosity, problem solving, critical thinking, ownership, accountability, mentoring, stakeholder management, leadership potential, working at pace and being a self-starter.

I keep being told my CV is excellent. I keep being told it is ATS optimized. I keep being told I have all the right keywords. I keep being told I need to network more. I keep being told I need more projects. I keep being told I need to post more on LinkedIn. I keep being told I need to build a personal brand. I have done all of this and I am still not getting interviews.

I am now thinking about doing a Project Manager course as well, but I am not sure if that is worth it because I think a lot of those jobs will probably be automated within a year. I am trying to stay positive, but every entry-level AI role seems to want five years of production machine learning experience, Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS, stakeholder management, LLMOps, MLOps, commercial delivery, system design and the ability to explain business value to senior leadership.

I do not know what more employers want. The economy has made everything worse. Thanks Liz Truss.

If I'm comparing an offer for entry-level (0-1+ YOE) for both, which has better WLB? Axon has 9-5.30 in contract and Amazon has 9-6 BUT I know contracted hours are often very different to worked hours. Does anyone have experience of either or both? My research is saying Amazon would be intense but not as intense as Axon, i.e. better WLB at Amazon.

I was recently shortlisted for a working student position at Atari. The interviewer, whom I stalked on LinkedIn, was also a working student, sent me a typical HR email saying that I had been shortlisted and needed to choose a date and time for the HR screening interview. I selected a slot, and he then confirmed it.

On the day of the interview, I was fully prepared. I had researched common HR questions and read up on the company. However, just 20 minutes before the interview, I received a notification saying that he had to cancel the meeting because of some urgent work. He apologized for the late notice and said he would contact me in the first half of the following week.

Since then, it has been around three weeks, and I still have not heard back from him. I have emailed him twice, but I have not received any response. The only interaction I noticed was that he viewed my LinkedIn profile.

Is this normal? Has anyone else had a similar experience with Atari?

Hello,

I have an interview scheduled at Zalando for Senior Java Developer position in Berlin.

There are three phases, I will have to go through and I look for advice for each step and how to prepare for it?

1. Coding challenge on Codility
2. System design
3. Technical depth interview

Please guide me how to prepare?
Thanks!

I have ~1 year of experience as a Java backend engineer at Goldman Sachs and recently received an offer from Nasdaq. Current compensation is similar, but I think Goldman has higher long-term compensation and promotion potential.

At Goldman I’m working on an internal Java backend platform. At Nasdaq I’d be working on the core infrastructure behind the Nordic exchange (low-latency Java/Linux).

Goldman seems better for long-term earnings and brand, while Nasdaq seems more engineering-focused with better WLB, flexibility, and job security.

If you were early in your career, which would you choose and why?