© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A nearly full moon is seen behind the quadriga of the Brandenburg Gate, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Berlin, Germany, April 7, 2020. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo
By René Wagner and Jan Schwartz
BERLIN (Reuters) – Faced with a tight job market and a shortage of workers with key skills in software engineering, some German companies are looking at the thousands of layoffs in Silicon Valley as an opportunity to hire top talent.
The US West Coast has always been the top destination for ambitious software engineers looking to work in the highest-paying and most elite corner of their profession, but the mass layoffs have created a pool of job seekers than Germany. is eager to take advantage.
“They fire, we hire,” said Rainer Zugehoer, personnel director at Cariad, the software subsidiary of automaker Volkswagen (ETR:). “We have several hundred open positions in the United States, Europe and China.”
Spooked by inflation and the prospect of a recession, the owner of Google, Alphabet (NASDAQ:), Microsoft (NASDAQ:) and Facebook (NASDAQ:), Meta, has announced a combined cut of nearly 40,000 jobs.
While Germany is also teetering on the brink of recession, its businesses have grown more slowly in recent years and, in a country known for running businesses by fax, there are great technological advances to be made.
Germany, with one of the world’s oldest populations, has huge gaps in its workforce: According to IT industry group Bitkom, 137,000 IT jobs are vacant.
The government is simplifying immigration rules and offering the prospect of easy-to-acquire citizenship to tempt would-be skilled immigrants, and regional authorities are forging ahead.
“I would like to cordially invite you to move to Bavaria,” Judith Gerlach, minister for digitization in Germany’s richest region, wrote on LinkedIn in a post aimed at the recently laid off.
Especially with the euro at par with the dollar, few European companies pay rates that compete with the hundreds of thousands of dollars offered at California’s most successful companies, but some expect cheaper health care and lower costs in comparison. with hotspots like San Francisco can help.
“And did I mention Oktoberfest?” Gerlach added, adding Munich’s famous beer festival to strong job protections that could appeal to the newly unemployed.
Some are skeptical, with Bitkom’s Bernhard Rohleder noting that Germany is competing not only with other countries for the most talented, but also with the home countries of potential recruits.
Germany’s penchant for red tape could be another challenge: Companies are already reporting months-long delays in securing appointments for their new hires to get work permits.
“The bureaucracy in Germany is completely paralyzing for most highly-skilled workers when they first encounter it, especially if they don’t speak German,” said Diana Stoleru of Berlin startup Lendis.
