I didn't spend much time in Germany, but you will have a very difficult
time if you only speak English. Larger cities have a high percentage of
English speaking people, but more rural areas have very few bilingual
residents. Also, in eastern Germany older adults (35+) are less likely
to know English, since it wasn't taught in schools in that region until
a few decades ago. If you plan on staying there for a while, then you
will probably find yourself in situations where you need to know German.
The good news is that the language isn't terribly hard to learn (though
I'm far from fluent). Many words are easily identifiable to English
counter-parts. I found Rosetta Stone extremely helpful as an
introduction to the language. I would invest in a grammar book or a
formal class, though. German grammar rules are very hard to intuit from
an English-speaking perspective (separable prefixes were a mind-blow for
me), which is how Rosetta teaches.
I'm afraid I can't offer much insight into the IT job situation. I've
been told that there is a dearth of engineers in the country, so that
might extend to other technical professions, like IT.
I hope that helps.
On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 22:20 -0700, Brian Weaver wrote:
> Anyone know the ins and outs of landing an IT job in Europe.
> Specifically interested in Germany. Anyone here done it? Is knowing
> German a must ?
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