Hi to the Camphire Community!
I am going to share my story - for those of you who don't know how the Camphire forum works (and for everyone who wants to understand: "who is Clemens and why did he message me?")
We have to start in August 2024:
At this time, is was a working student. It is a concept in Germany where you are generally exempt from paying social security contributions and unemployment insurance. This exemption helps keep your net income higher. Net, I earned between 1k € and 1,5k € a month by working up to 20h/week.
What was I studying you may wonder? It's called cultural geography. Don't want to bore you with the details - you basically learn a lot about how cities, the economy and society prosper together - or why not. There is a lot of different topics to it. Most of them will make you unemployed if you focused too much on it. So yeah - I did my bachelors and masters between 2019 and 2025 in a city called Erlangen in Germany.
For me it never felt like I was going towards unemployment. I selcted great trendy topics with upcoming need. But I never found a job in the industry I was interested in as a working student. It would have been "public transportation". I was (still am I guess?) a nerd for urban cable cars. You can check it out - it is quite cool. Very sustainable and quite form of getting people from A to B.
Let me take a short detour on how to use the forum:
I selected "Engineering & Construction" as the primary tag - this is the industry this story is related to. For the secondary tag I chose "Salary Spyglass". This group is about salary - as the name might indicate. This is where we collect stories from people from different industries about salary, pay & more. You will now see why I selected those tags.
We write the 6th September of 2024:
In August of 2024, the company I was a working student for, asked me if we should proceed to talk about a full-time job once I graduated. I was honored. I worked with them (let's be real: only for them) since November 2023. I commited myself a lot ever since.
They are a company in the construction industry with a clear focus on project management. (It sounds way more exciting than it actually is guys.)
So I had 4 weeks to prepare myself for a salary negotiation. My first one. I was really excited and nervous.
So my bosses were only 5 years older than me. We had a great connection. They were to me what Michael Scott from The Office was to Oscar, Jim & Kelly. Lol. A regional manager. The thing is - I made great connections with them. We had lunch together everyday. We went for drinks on friday evening and so on.
But I had to negociate my salary with them. I knew this would be umcomfortable. I prepared pretty well regarding the circumstances. I listed what I've contributed, what I would like to do in the future and so on. And I really wanted a high paying income instantly. I thought I deserved it. But the truth is, it was more than that. This job was no fun to me. I basically had to attend meetings, click through excel lists & use templates for documentation. I had to remind other people in large project what they have to do until when. It was soooooo boring. I can't even describe how boring now that I found my passion. This was sucha BS Job. How could anyone there be happy with a job like this I wondered? I figured out that this isn't what I wanted to do in life so I demanded a high entrance salary. 68k.
Of course I had a strategy why I should earn that much. I knew they offered a coworker of mine 52k. And I knew I did way more during my time there. I stepped forward when no one else was around, I showed interest in all kind of subjects and I wanted to really move ahead fast. But I didn't know the company's mission on how to pay young professionals: AS LOW AS POSSIBLE. So my bosses instantly told me that 55k is the limit.
Their was no friendly connection anymore. One of them even said: "We don't need you for our projects" - so it was clear for me. I had to leave this toxic environment where bosses want to have a beer with you but not your best interest at heart.
So I left. This was the beginning of Camphire. But it took me 4 more months until I graduated to persue this dream.
February 2025:
I just finished my masters with the best possible grade. Nobody cared. Neither did I. It proved nothing. Going to university didn't prepare me for the job market. I had a few other job offers at the time - but they all turned out to be not a fit. I never had a place to talk about this with people - not on LinkedIn, not on Reddit. So I knew I had a mission. I have to create a new platform for employees - and we are just getting started.
