In this post today I would like to share how the job market in Germany feels like after 2 months of active job searching as a Software Engineer.

I don’t consider myself as a unique incredible specialist, influencer or somebody who makes a huge impact on the industry or the society in general. I am just a guy that uses Ruby on Rails as the main tool to grow as an Engineer and to have a job to feed a family.

It was true for me till summer 2023.

I am a blue card visa holder in Germany. It turned out that the values of the company that I was working with are slightly different that they were claiming in the first place. Nothing really special, everybody lies, this is how this industry works. Candidates lie about their experience and unique qualities just to get a better paycheck, but companies in turn lie about how cool it is to work there and that all the the employees are the 1% of the brightest population. And not to forget about fruits and coffee in the kitchen as one of the benefits.

Anyway, I quitted my job at the end of May. At my last working place I was working quite hard, spending time on the product to be well implemented and delivered in the best way possible. I think this mindset helped me to show off and be promoted just before my leave. I wanted to spend my spare time with the family rather than interviewing, so I decided to quit first and then search for a new role.

I was actually sure that everything is fine with me and I am a good professional and employee.

As soon as I left my job I started another one - interviewing full time with companies to find the best match. I was really enthusiastic about my new position and was even applying for the Engineering Manager and Team Lead positions despite not having that much of experience in those fields. I didn’t know back then how far from the market situation I was.

There are not so many open positions at the moment. However, I was invited to the most opened ones to have an interview. After a few for each company it happens differently but with the same result - rejection. Some disappear, others write that they decided to move forward with another better suited to the role candidates.

My personal favourites are - there are soft skills problems and overqualification. In one of the positions I was told that it was hard to follow what I am saying despite the spending 2-3 weeks already on coding challenge and architecture design that was successfully done.

After more than 8 years of production experince I am struggling to find a job. I am sure that it’s not salary related because for the last month my salary negotiation strategy was - I am in need of an offer for any money, please make your evaluation based on my skills and knowledge.

I am interested in 2 questions - Why and How.