Software Engineering is definitely on par with what you'd expect from a standard, non-tech Fortune 500 company in the US or elsewhere. We just don't have any tech startups, because our investment culture is fundamentally different than that from the US. We lack both the public, private and military financing that would allow a culture like it exists in the valley. That goes not only for Germany but Europe as a whole.
Though I don't consider this to be a bad thing. There's a considerable amount of startups advertising their seed funding on here with products that I don't think would have a market fit outside the valley right now.