Hello, I am about to sign for Amazon in Berlin for SDE2. The contract mentions that : - Weekly working time = 40 hours - The compensation includes extra work up to 8 hours / week. This means there won't be an extra pay / off days before 48 hours / week. Is this normal for Germany? I was expecting 35 hours / week
If you work a union job at a factory or for the government, then yes 35 hours are the norm. But for most high end tech jobs, 40+ hours are expected usually.
i think it is "expected" because people keep saying it is, so we just follow each other. if we all just stop doing this overtime for free nonsense, then it wont be "expected". companies wont break this feedback loop because it is in their best interests
I thought the average work week in Germany was 27 - 30 hours and the folks are super productive during those hours.
It’s normal for tech companies to have this stipulation. It’s illegal to work more than 48 hours a week over a period of time (4 months) but EU employees can opt to work more for short periods if they want. More info here: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/working-hours-holiday-leave/working-hours/indexamp_en.htm 48 hours will be a blanket statement in everyone’s contract, but WLB will be team dependant.
TC or GTFO
Anecdotally I've heard the teams in my org in Berlin are very relaxed, take long lunches, etc
TC breakdown?
Depends on the org. If it's mine, you're fucked and you're probably gonna do 55 to 70 hour weeks
Do you get paid overtime?
Depends. If you're oncall you're paid for standby time and even more if you're engaged in an incident. With some managers you can count things like late meetings with Seattle as incident time, since you're engaged (even if it's not an actual incident), though it's bending the rules. Otherwise, nope.
This is slightly off topic but how is WLB in Amazon, Germany (they recently opened a new lab in Tubingen as well)? Is it similar to Amazon in US is it more slow paced in Germany/Europe?
It chiefly depends on your team. You don't often see people being managed out but teams with high ops load still work their asses off. 28 days of paid holidays per year though.
Thanks for the feedback. Any inputs on Amazon’s new lab in Tubingen: https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/amazon-to-open-visually-focused-ai-research-hub-in-germany/amp/ It seems to be primarily focused on computer vision & AI snd has got a couple of eminent researchers in that area working in the Tubingen lab.
When I interned in Germany it was flex time 35 hours a week—culture was really laid back but was for a different company