Did you all apply for a job directly right after the end of college or did you do an apprenticeship first and then really started working for a company?
On a side note: Are apprenticeships even common and relevant anymore? Or are apprenticeships only a thing in Germany?

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By apprenticeship do you mean an unpaid internship? In Canada an apprenticeship is really only done in the trades (carpentry etc) and it's a paid job that you do in between "semesters" of trade school.

I did paid internships during college and then got a paid non-internship position after I graduated. I don't think unpaid internships are good for society because they're really only accessible to people who can afford not to work. Students from low-income backgrounds or students who are estranged from their parents end up getting locked out of careers where unpaid internships are necessary to get ahead.

Nah, I wandered around for quite a long time, looking for something •I wanted• to do.

It's been 6 interim jobs before my first long-term contract, and have my 4th contract right now.

@HollowKitty an apprenticeship is not an unpaid internship.
More like a paid educational "phase" which consists of still going to college (theory) for a week and then going to the company (practice) and repeating this for 2.5 to 3 or 3.5 years (depending on how long the apprenticeship you apply for lasts-you can shorten it to 2.5 years, if you can show them that you already know that type of stuff).
After these years, you get a certifcate which qualifies you for the role you applied for in the first place, when you also successfully pass the final exams.

@-ANGRY-CLIENT- Oh ok, we definitely don't have that here, but it is fairly common for students to have some kind of part-time development job while going to school full-time (so sort of the opposite). Sometimes an older student who's been in the industry for awhile and currently has a full-time dev job will come back to school part-time but that's rarer. For programming, if you need to learn new things after you've already gotten a full-time job, usually you just use informal resources to learn it (books, tutorials, side projects, or private courses not attached to a university).

@xewl @HollowKitty seems like both of you did not do an apprenticeship. I see.

First six months is kinda a paid internship. Then they can still decide to keep or let you go. Within those six, it's without consequences.

I did an unpaid one in high-school though

@xewl I did unpaid ones in High school, as well. But I am not sure if German companies only Stick to the apprenticeship model.

@rutee07 that must have been a very odd situation

I've just talked with someone who got a job at a big German IT company, got offered a position in their "training" program with a payment of 35k€/year (for a B.Sc that's fairly low) but they say they'll "pay" you with all the conferences you'll go to... I don't know what to think of that.

@Qwby that's a very cheap excuse imho

I dropped my master thesis to apply for a paid 10 week apprenticeship. Best decision ever.

@Qwby choose the most expensive confs with last-minute hotel bookings (cheaper hotels get completely booked months in advance, on a few days notice only the most expensive hotels are an option) that are far away (such as Defcon in Las Vegas).. that way you may be able to get back your losses in salary and attend interesting speeches at the same time 😋