Switch mode power supply jobs in Germany

[ocset]

Five of us electronics engineers here in UK have gotten together and intend to form a company which works with other companies to give them power supply designs.
However, three of our group have  now decided to ditch the idea, saying that they are going to seek work individually in Germany instead , where they believe there is loads of work for this.
I cant believe this, I have heard that Germany already has loads of engineers to take care of its work requirement……and there are no jobs out there in this kind of thing…is this true?

[ddavidebor]

Working for a german-owned company active in the power electronics business I can confirm there is good demand for this kind of positions as products push towards higher efficiency in stuff like battery chargers, power inverters as motor drives, power inverters for solar, UPS.

Where I don't think you will find good demand are smaller power supplies of the kind found in consumer products.

[ocset]

I must admit i've never had an interview offer for a German job, other than for an Apps Engineer job in Munich.
I've had interview offers for Elec eng jobs from Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, but never Germany or France.
I also had an interview with Huawei in Sweden.....but i got a job before they offered a 2nd interview so didnt progress.

A very competent brit elec  engineer friend was seeking an elec eng job in germany because his wife had got an offer for a medical doctors job in Germany (multiple offers from german hospitals from almost anywhere in Germany that she wanted) …but  my friend had six  interviews  for German elec eng jobs and didn’t get any of them….so they had to stay in UK….much to his disgust.

Yanks don’t like brits going to the states, because they fear the whole 70 million of us will tip up  at kennedy airport, wanting to settle in.
Dare I say it, Germans don’t  like us brits going to Germany, and seem to like every other European country before uk…..dare I say it, because of the war…even though most brits actually believe that Germany was forced into military action in 1939 due to the unfair Versailles treaty, and the threat  (whether rational or not) of Russian invasion.

[coppice]

British engineers have been working in Germany in considerable numbers since the 1960s, and have generally been welcomed. Most have gone there for a while, rather than settling permanently in Germany, although that may be changing as there is less and less engineering work to return to in the UK. Large numbers of British engineers have also moved to the US, and do well there. A lot of them used to return to the UK when their kids reached school age, rather than face the US school system. Again, the shrinking market for engineers in the UK probably means fewer return these days. A key problem many engineers face is they would really like to try working abroad when they are young and inexperienced. However, an employer doesn't have a great incentive to hire a foreigner unless it gets them some deep skills in a relevant topic. When you can offer that, all kinds of opportunities may be open to you. Getting that initial experience in the UK used to be a lot easier.

There is a lot of heavy duty power electronics activity in Germany - wind and solar renewable energy systems, and electric cars being the more obvious areas. I am not sure about smaller scale power design.

[ebastler]

Dare I say it, Germans don’t  like us brits going to Germany, and seem to like every other European country before uk…..dare I say it, because of the war…

Dare I say it, that's a bunch of bias and prejudice. I don't personally know any German who is concerned about the Brits due to the war. It may be different in Britain? (But then again, I may be biased -- watched too much "Fawlty Towers" maybe...)

Hey, why don't you try on an alternative set of prejudices for size? Germans actually like Brits, considering them a bit cranky but mild-mannered and good sports. But they don't respect British engineering much at all, with their perception still tainted by impossible-to-maintain British cars. 

Just kidding. Sort of. 

EDIT: To clarify -- the "alternative prejudices" I suggest above are just that, prejudices or stereotypes. I don't claim they are true or are my personal opinion. I just think they are much more widely held stereotypes among Germans than the one treez had suggested.

[coppice]

Dare I say it, Germans don’t  like us brits going to Germany, and seem to like every other European country before uk…..dare I say it, because of the war…

Dare I say it, that's a bunch of bias and prejudice. I'm in my mid-fifties, and even in my generation don't know any German who is concerned about the Brits due to the war. It may be different in Britain? (But then again, I may be biased -- watched too much "Fawlty Towers" maybe...)

Hey, why don't you try on an alternative set of prejudices for size? Germans actually like Brits, considering them a bit cranky but mild-mannered and good sports. But they don't respect British engineering much at all, with their perception still tainted by impossible-to-maintain British cars. 

Just kidding. Sort of. 

I had an odd experience on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt once. A very drunk German was seated next to me, and when I spoke he replied something like "Ah. Your British, so you hate me.". He was in quite a state, I suspect due to a fear of flying. A flight attendant took pity on me, and moved me to business class, so it all ended well.

[dmills]

Germany is probably quite a bit culturally closer to Britain then say France, certainly my experience is that is has tended to be much easier to get things done in Germany as a brit then in France.

The war thing is a complete irreverence to 95% of the people you will interact with, and the 5% are just tossers anyway, you get them everywhere.

Cannot really speak to power jobs as that is not really my bag,  but generally there is just not a problem working there, big companies have some strange (to UK eyes) paperwork expectations like the Arbeitszeugnis a sort of formal reference letter that really does not translate well to anything we have for example, but smaller firms will often ignore that, especially if you are contracting rather then going for full time employee.

Seriously, the place is just a foreign country, and one actually quite close to the UK in a lot of ways, you want properly foreign you need to go way further afield.

Regards, Dan.

[Sumesh579]

Germany is probably quite a bit culturally closer to Britain then say France, certainly my experience is that is has tended to be much easier to get things done in Germany as a brit then in France.

The war thing is a complete irreverence to 95% of the people you will interact with, and the 5% are just tossers anyway, you get them everywhere.

Cannot really speak to power jobs as that is not really my bag,  but generally there is just not a problem working there, big companies have some strange (to UK eyes) paperwork expectations like the Arbeitszeugnis a sort of formal reference letter that really does not translate well to anything we have for example, but smaller firms will often ignore that, especially if you are contracting rather then going for full time employee.

Seriously, the place is just a foreign country, and one actually quite close to the UK in a lot of ways, you want properly foreign you need to go way further afield.

Regards, Dan.

Thanks for such a great information.

[Kjelt]

My probably also biased opinion  :

Compared to dutch companies, the german companies are much stricter in hierarchy.
The boss is the boss and senior engineers are addressed to their title (Herr Professor, or Herr doktor) something you will never see on the dutch workfloor where you adress your boss with his first name and colleagues are colleagues no matter if their last title was  BS, MS, PhD or even professor.

On our tv news a month ago they claimed that the native german workforce was decreasing due to large waves of older employees retiring and that the car industry alone the coming years needed hundreds of thousands of new foreigners to keep it all running.
Curious what the real numbers are per year, but it sounds like there is enough work for the coming years.

[ebastler]

Compared to dutch companies, the german companies are much stricter in hierarchy. The boss is the boss and senior engineers are addressed to their title (Herr Professor, or Herr doktor)

I'm sure those companies exist -- mostly either very large and established ones, or smaller, traditional, owner-managed ones.

But you certainly can't generalize. I work at a company with approx. 100 employees which has been around for >20 years, and all of us are on a first-name basis. From what I have seen in technology-oriented companies, that's not uncommon.

[Kjelt]

That is why I said, probably biased, based on coffee talk with two german friends and three previous german colleagues.