In my experience the Elterngeld usually replaces one income in a double income family. Of course one will "loose" money if the cap hits, but hey its 1800 EUR per month for up to 14 months just for being a parent. I think it is awesome even if it is just 30% of your regular salary.
The problem just is that it's often infeasible to replace the higher income. And since women in their early 30s are (unfortunately) often paid worse on average than men (due to many factors), women stay out longer and lose out even more.
I am a software engineer with 20 years of industry experience based in Berlin. I specialize in software development for (Embedded) Linux using C++, Python and Yocto. I also spend a lot of time on native Android code (NDK) and with different container technologies for Linux.
Location: Berlin, Germany
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: C++ (11, 14, 17), Python, Yocto, Linux, Container (Docker, runC, LXC ...), Android/NDK
Résumé/CV: Available upon request :)
Email: [email protected]
I am a software engineer with 20 years of industry experience based in Berlin. I specialize in software development for (Embedded) Linux using C++, Python and Yocto. I also spend a lot of time on native Android code (NDK) and with different container technologies for Linux.
I am looking for permanent as well as freelancing/consulting jobs.
I was a junior back then but COM felt like magic to me. I think MS made COM more arcane than necessary. It was not until I read the book Essential COM by Don Box that I understood COM.
"Essential COM" is one of the top computer books ever written and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in object systems even if they don't code for Windows. (e.g. I think better than "The Art of the MetaObject Protocol")
I have my copy from before the days when they tarted it up to add to the Developmentor series. I kinda miss Don Box doing his thing, quite an entertaining showman (who remembers Box sitting in a bath on stage talking about SOAP?) and tremendous technical writer.
Where in the EU are you? I'm 43, living in Berlin and working as a software engineer. From what I can tell there is not much age bias here. Some German companies I know have an average age beyond 45 in dev teams.
I even interviewed with a FAANG for a Berlin-based engineering position 2 years ago but canceled the process myself. Being over 40 did not seem to be an issue at all.
I'm in Dublin but I'm looking to either move up to a FAANG (well that plan went the Titanic way) and/or relocate to Germany. My impression too is that German IT companies don't care so much about age but there are other handicaps for me there (e.g. not speaking German).
Not much age bias in Berlin IT job market? Weird. I mostly see start-ups there. That might be interesting.
According to the German Wikipedia article every Dutch person is required by law to have a "legally defined" healthcare contract. Sounds quite different to the US system.
private health insurance in the US is (even under Obamacare) expensive, and the deductibles are high if you're on those cheap plans.
Under an Obamacare cheapest possible insurance option you're not going to be bankrupted by (for example) a heart attack, but you'll still be paying the bill for a long time. That ignores hospitals like SF general that charge you directly (and are out of network) so you can still be trivially bankrupted.
At face value, this is almost exactly what Obama did. It killed most of the cheap options for people who just want emergency coverage and was essentially a tax in disguise which many Americans objected to.
This is false. "Catastrophic coverage" was ended because of the sheer wealth of data that these insurance policies did not in fact provide their customers with what the customers were expecting. That is: a person with such a policy who unfortunately suffered a major accident or severe illness would find the insurance company wriggling out of any financial responsibility.
The rules were tightened up, and without any explict legal language banning them, insurance companies dropped such policies because they knew they could not satisfy the new rules requiring actual coverage.
