Yes, I live here. All prices are per month. If you want to live inside the S-Bahn ring, you will find it difficult nowadays to pay less than 600-700€ a month for a two-bedroom apartment. The low end of €300 is probably only realistic for one-bedroom apartments outside the ring or maybe a two-bedroom apartment in the high-rise buildings in the suburbs.
You can live in Berlin without knowing much German, but services and bureaucracy will be a bit painful. It's not like Scandinavia, where people feel insulted if you ask them if they speak English. Many Germans, even educated ones, are not really confortable speaking English. It's not that they're not willing, many of them actually can't speak it or speak it badly. Of course, everything is easier with younger people.
Average gross salaries for developers range from 45,000€ a year for juniors to 60,000€ for seniors. Expect to earn around 60% to 70% of that after taxes, social security and health insurance.
Not at all! I lived in Atlanta for a while just before the 1996 Olympics. I was paying somewhere in the $300-500 (~200-300 Euros) per month range for a 1 bedroom. It was one of the cheapest big cities in the states.
I moved to Chicago that summer and couldn't find a livable space for less than $800/mo. That was almost 20 years ago. Today I live in Los Angeles, and you could not find anything livable here for EUR 500 ($700US) per month. You could easily find something for $700US/week, though. I'm sure New York is as bad as San Fran and worse than Chicago, too. I'm not saying our rents aren't outrageous, just that it's not specific to some SF bubble. Just about any large city in the US is going to be costly to find decent living.
I think a better choice for startups and tech-minded people would be Amsterdam. I'm currently living in Amsterdam on around 900~eur/month, a room can cost between 300 and 500 eur/month plus you need health insurance and food.
There are a lot of tech opportunities here, plenty of startup and also big companies. VC is getting bigger here as well so it's a thriving hub if you want to found your own startup.
I've been living here since last August, so I'm probably not the best judge for the weather, especially since I'm Italian and I'm used to quite a different weather.
This year, from what I've heard, has been warmer than usual (pretty much no snow in winter). It is very windy all over the year but we've been getting really warm and nice days since the middle of March and it's only going to get better. Winter is dark and cold, but I'd say this is true for any place you go to in central-northern Europe (and even Italy or Spain as well).
- Is it 500EUR per week or per month? What apt and in what place (good, bad) you live on this kind of money?
- What happens if you don't know German (are willing to lean, but have no lang. skills whatsoever)
- What is medium (after tax) income for programmers there per month?