Comparing German and U.S. telecoms job markets

Hi,

I am an expat telecom Consultant from India and I have been working in Germany for around 3 years. I have got an opportunity to move to US and I am somewhat confused.

Can anyone help me in answering the following questions.

• How different is the US work enivronment as compared to the German one ?
• Has the US mortage problem affected IT job market. Are we standing on the verge of another IT burst like the one of 2000
• How expensive is New Jersy in comparison to Berlin ? I am single and I my total monthly expenditure is € 1000 here. How much would I need in New Jersy to have a similar standard of living ?
• How would you compare US Telecom job market vs German Telecom Job market in the long run ?

I am somewhat confused because I am going on a Consultant job and that is very vulnerable to the economic down turns.

I would really appreciate your help.

Kind Regards,
EJ

Hallo Berliner!

Ich bin Nürnberger and I dont eat Hamburger or Frankfurter coz I dont eat meat. But here's some meat for you:

Your job prospect might be good for you in terms of maintaining balance in your life and living a bit comfortably (as you would find many fellaz from your country - NRI's and also you wouldnt have much of the language problem). When you compare the software business and other standards with countries like US or India, Germany aint that great, but innovation is happening here and also good ideas are coming through. The telecom and other software markets are defintely better in the US than here. It all depends on your choice (based on your personal and financial demands) of where to work. Also, check the Euro-US dollar exchange rate (check the thread on TT too).

Because of the not-quite-24x7 working week in Germany, a lot of the telecomms positions involving shift based work is outsourced to other countries where it is cheaper. A lot of the NOCs for example may be surveilled outside of Germany. AT&T for example don't even touch Germany - last I heard they did their voice and IP NOCs out of Holland.

I wouldn't be surprised if you went to the US and found NOCs which were taking over surveillance for Europe (follow the sun / time zones out of hours) The big players such as AT&T, Verizon, Worldcom etc... are bound to have openings.

I'm not so sure how US visa requirements work - a lot of the job postings are very specific on residence criteria - even upfront when applying on line.

Thanks for your advice.

Actually my biggest reason for thinking about moving out is long-term growth. I cant help noticing the virtual absence of non-Europeans in top management posts in Germany. There are some rare execptions but overall one does not find so many Indians, Pakistanis or Chinese on top jobs (espacially if we comapre to US). I cant believe that no talented people from our homeland came to Germany in the last 20 years and all went to US. So I fear that in some years my growth here would be stopped and I wont be able to go past a certain point.

Is it only my feeling ? Or others have also felt the same as well.

I think the euro-dollar difference is a short term loss. This gap is non-sustainable. In the long-term this high Euro will hurt the German economy and force more companies to move jobs out of Germany, which will further effect long-term job prospects. Can we agree on this ?

As for the US visa requirement question, the company has agreed to sponsor H1b. They will apply for this in April and the processing will take some months. As per rules, the earliest you can start is Oct and it can normally go to November or Januray. So if anyone of you is planning to move to US, it probably almost the last seconds remaining.