My time to shine. Where shall I start? First of all there is mentality. In Germany people kinda expect you to get a job and push through with it until you go to pension. Changing jobs a lot is often seen as a personal failure. That poor accountant that hates his job and gets paid because he just sits in the same stinky office day by day gets more honoured than anyone trying to change.
People here get judged if they start a business and fail. If you are successful then fine. If not, people don't give you credit. Personally I rate the person higher that tries several times, falls, gets up and starts over. Unfortunately that is not the case.
Nice example if you are from the USA. Over there it is more socially accepted to get married and divorced often than not at all. In Germany it is quite the opposite. You can't even make a failure in private how could you do that in business?
Many business here have roots and are decades old. That whole "Mittelschicht" is build on family owned business. That is actually a good thing and probably one of the reasons the economy in Germany is so efficient, but it doesn't give anyone the incentive to start something.
And don't forget Germany is all about bureaucracy. Lots of paperwork and money just to get a GmbH. And a GmbH is what you need to gain trust from other companies.
Sorry, there is so much to it. Hopefully there will be some change in attitude. It is already happening.
I personally hope there won't be a change in attitude. The work culture in America is toxic for the workers, requiring job hopping, long hours, and relatively little gain. There's very little long-term stability, and no assurance that their jobs won't eventually be outsourced. Why would Germans want to adopt that culture? Why should they praise failure? Why should they change bureaucracy to favor the capital owners over the workers?
They're not suggesting Germans adopt an American-style work culture, but an American-style tolerance for risk and failure.
I'm not sure failure should be praised, but it should be accepted without judgment, and entrepreneurs that haven't succeeded should be lauded for trying. Failure is a necessary part of success. It's cliché, but people really do fail their way to success. So why stigmatize it if it'll discourage entrepreneurs from trying a sufficient number of times in order to be successful?
They're not suggesting Germans adopt an American-style work culture, but an American-style tolerance for risk and failure.
I'm increasingly convinced that having the one automatically brings in the other. The hallmark of the American attitude is that you, and only you are responsible for your own success. This means that if you're not succeeding, it's because you're not working hard enough. It leads to a "rat race" culture, where everyone works harder to be labeled as a "go-getter", but all it ends up actually doing is raising the baseline expectation for how much work you're supposed to do.
I'm not sure how tolerance for risk and failure breeds either a Calvinistic work ethic or rugged individualism. These things likely developed in tandem because of America's history, but I'd assert that one can exist without the other. I'd love to be shown why I'm wrong though, if that's the case.
The same could be said about the post above mine that summarized Germany's work culture. My post was a summation of the culture of an entire country. Of course there will be variation within an entire country.
Also, please don't call my claims narrow-minded without giving me an opportunity to counter your arguments. I googled "america work culture." These are some of the links it sent me to:
All of the links above describe a culture where the employees feel underappreciated and overworked. This is during a time when inequality is growing to obscene levels, tons of good middle class jobs have been shipped overseas, and most new jobs are forming in only a handful of urban centers across the country. If you have any evidence to counter my broad interpretation of the US work culture, I would appreciate it.
What else should the federal govt do, apart from outlawing it?
Force employers to hire based on gender, racial quotas?
>There are fewer holidays and in some cases, American companies only allow two weeks a year for holidays. Christmas holidays are fewer with only December 25th being an official day and people do return to work on December 26th.
Depends where you work. If you wash dishes for minimum wage, I wouldn't expect multi-week paid vacations.
Not everyone can just switch jobs, not everyone is in a career in demand like that. Also, the fact that you suggest that dish washers shouldn't get vacation is telling. The lower and middle classes need stability too, yet in America, you've either made it or you haven't. It's way too binary in my opinion. You act like there's no personal freedom in Germany, but with their paid vacation for _everyone_ and socialized healthcare, it seems to me like they have much more freedom than your typical American.
> Not everyone can just switch jobs, not everyone is in a career in demand like that.
Career is a choice. But of course, most people don't have 100% job security.
>Also, the fact that you suggest that dish washers shouldn't get vacation is telling
That's not what I said.
They should have all the vacations they want, but not at other taxpayers' expense.
Otherwise, you have hard-working people give up to 60% of their income away for vacations of dishwashers.
Perhaps this is a great achievement for Swedes, but would be looked down upon in the US.
> The lower and middle classes need stability too, yet in America, you've either made it or you haven't. It's way too binary in my opinion.
Inequality of results is a logical result of capitalism.
You can't have the cake and eat it too.
If everyone 'made it', no one would truly 'make it'.
> You act like there's no personal freedom in Germany, but with their paid vacation for _everyone_ and socialized healthcare, it seems to me like they have much more freedom than your typical American.
Sure, but the benefits fall largely upon the lower classes.
Wealthier individuals don't need so much help from the state, yet they're the ones contributing the most.
By no means I aim to defend everything that goes on in the US - e.g. the healthcare situation is abysmal.
But ultimately, there are pros and cons of both approaches to policy.
>Inequality of results is a logical result of capitalism. You can't have the cake and eat it too.
This is absurd. There are people who are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year while tens of thousands of people work minimum wage jobs because that's all they can get, and you're saying that it's their fault for not producing more? You really need to realize that our quality of life isn't because we are so amazing, but because of the opportunities our position in the world and society have given us. And in America, those opportunities are being offered to fewer and fewer people: economic mobility is declining, and has for a while[1]. A person can only pull on their bootstraps so hard.
IMHO, it's mainly the lack of any and all venture capital. There just is nowhere near enough cash available to do the classic VC route, much less investing 100 freaking million dollars to an app that does nothing but broadcast "Yo".
And even engineers at BMW or similar don't get paid in stocks, which means that the supply of engineers made rich by big exits is next to zero. Just look who founded all the hot startups in SV - it's mostly ex-Paypal/Google/FB/MS/BigStartup employees who found or invest the boatload of monies into new startups. And regular salaries may be enough to pay off credit on a house, but not enough to save for funding and bootstrapping a company.
Here, basically the only way to fund a company if you don't happen to have rich friends/family is by a line of credit - and thanks to EU banking regulations the banks now require real deposits of securities (eg a house/car) for a credit line; this again reduces the eligible persons to rich people. No way to see a poor immigrant fund a multibillion dollar company like in US... given the more and more xenophobic neonazi appearances (Pegida, AfD) immigrants actually more have to fear for their lives. (Okay, I've exaggerated here, but the xenophobist trend even in government massively worries me)
Also, you have to work twice as hard to acquire a fraction of the money that you would in SV. Raising a seed round requires one of the founders dedicating months to elaborate spreadsheets mapping out the future of your company for the next 4 years, down to every paperclip you plan to buy.
I have heard the complaint about no VC money before, and I guess it is true, but I don't understand why. What is stopping Calfornian VCs from investing in German startups? I understand that there is a bit more friction in long distance business relationships like this, but we live in a globalized world.
Discovery, dealflow, pattern matching, and ability to check references. It's best when the folks pitching you are 2nd degree connections (and got to you through a warm intro). These connections to SV VCs are most dense in SV.
The other fun part is getting your office connected to the Internet - Deutsche Telekom will happily take 5 weeks to respond to what should be their most simplest of requests
Not just Germany but I found the same problem in Amsterdam when I tried to set up Internet for my apartment. It took 2 weeks for it to be enabled and it was really surprising since it takes about a day or two to get it setup in AZ.
No it is not. It all depends on the area in Bangalore. Most of the time the sockets would not be available because of high demand and very low supply (because of no interest in expanding the capacity). The government owned BSNL has problem of poor quality (cable cuts and service outage). Please note I am not talking about wireless technologies and only wired.
Deutsche Telekom (owner of T-Mobile) is the most expensive piece of shit ever, and they take forever to do anything. But that’s intentional. They want to make it as hard as possible to switch, so you never even attempt it.
The funny thing is that if you live in Germany, you grow up thinking that it's completely normal that Deutsche Telekom takes 4 weeks to get your internet connection hooked up when you move houses.
I was actually completely shocked when I moved to California, signed up with an internet provider, and had a technician come to my house the next day. Crazy!
Here in Neukölln Berlin, 4 weeks is normal for whatever DSL provider you choose, O2 tech support treats you with utter contempt when THEY fuck up, and connection quality is all over the place. Cable is barely available.
Fucked up customer service is not isolated to O2, it is totally the same with Vodafone too. Quality of service is pretty shit as well. In the German market, you just have to choose best of the worst, which is pretty bad if you are in the country side.
I just switched to Telekom for my Internet connection (private, not business), and while their service isn't perfect, I was still quite impressed with the whole process.
(Other DSL companies can be hell, because they don't own much of the infrastructure, so you'll get stuck in endless finger pointing and shifting of blame. Cable internet providers have their own problems, but are generally a good option, as well.)
telephone lines owned by the Government (Telekom, private in theory, owned by the Government on paper), no less!
there is some DOCSIS (cable) service, mostly from Vodafone but also a smaller provider named telecolumbus.
There was versatel, but 1&1 smartly purchased it at what I believe to be an absolute steal. They have what is clearly the widest fiber network reach outside of Telekom, and 1&1 is actually going out there and selling it.
I could, if I really wanted to, get 1Gbps symmetrical for only 500EUR/month. The catch is the ~3000EUR install and minimum 3 year commitment. but, at least the option is there. Telekom, if they have fiber "available" at your address, will offer you 20Mbps for around 700EUR a month, then do this really weird delivery of an STM-1 (155Mbps) circuit, broken out into E3s (45Mbps) to a Cisco ASR1002 (a 5000EUR device, easily), that is converted to a rate limited GigE interface. Oh, and the install fee is about 1200EUR and takes a solid six weeks...but only if you call every day to remind them.
Berlin internet connectivity is a sick and twisted joke.
This reminds me my conversation with a salesperson in a Deutsche Telekom retail shop in Berlin. The fastest DSL in my apartment was 6 Mbit/s. No VDSL available because "all sockets are taken" probably by the neighbours or by the business on the ground floor - the guy was literally blaming their shitty connection on my neighbours. I was this close to killing him with the chair he was sitting on.
I didn't know that it's possible to do 100Mbps on telephone line. Last time I used DSL, there was 8 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, but practically much less.
xDSL is still used in most places. It generally works well and the infrastructure has been in place for a long time, which is the reason broadband has become so accessible. Fiber is gradually replacing it, but it's a major investment to lay fiber. So xDSL is going to be around for a long time, especially to deliver broadband to customers for whom fiber doesn't make economic sense.
Very well sums up my experiences working in the Berlin startup scene.
I'd add that, in my opinion, there is also a lack of appreciation for good engineering in many of the few existing startups. You could almost say even software startups don't consider themself technology companies. The implementation of the product is just something that somebody needs to do and often gets outsourced to some agencies.
In general the focus is on the founders more than it's on the teams. Ultimately that also shows in salaries. Startups are considers something for junior engineers that accept worse pay because they are doing something hip.
I think that does not only apply to Startups, but lots of german companies. Software is seen as some small thing which is a necessary evil, but which can be done by anyone. It is not seen as something that can be complicated, hard to get right and requires a lot of experience and passion. As a consequence software development is often outsourced - either to cheap contracting engineering companies inside the country or directly in supposed cheaper countries (India, Eastern Europe, etc.). You can also see that in the big automotive industry, where there is also less appreciation for SW engineering roles than for other things (e.g. project managment).
Volkswagen Wolfburg has a very big IT devision, VW financials Braunschweig too... Audi and Porsche also do a lot of IT stuff... they work together with the local univeristies on self driving cars etc.
I was doing self driving car stuff 10 years back at tu braunschweig with VW.... I never been in a big german company where they outsourced IT work to india and co.
I worked at one of these OEMs for nearly 10 years - and have contact to the others. Believe me, I know something about the industry. All these companies have big engineering departments - even for mostly software related topics like Infotainment). However most engineers there will be mainly responsible for writing specifications and project management. Implementation is done by suppliers. E.g. Audi Infotainment -> Mainly implemented by E-Solutions. It's similar for VW, Porsche, BMW and Mercedes - I'm aware of their external partners, but as that is partly confidential I won't go into detail. Of course there are also some research projects and departments and cooperations with universities, but they are only a tiny fraction compared to series development efforts. In resarch and predevelopment projects you might find more inhouse engineers, mass production software is however mostly contracted.
And regarding outsourcing to India: If you read through the software related job postings of Bosch you will quite often find the phrase: "You are the Software Architect and are responsible for coordinating our Indian implementation team". When I looked last time there were a lot more of these postings than "we are looking for an excellent software engineer with skills in X/Y/Z".
Some parts of Germany are more open minded that others but it's wrong to expect the same startup culture in CA to happen in Deutschland. Society , individuals, personality, cultures, traditions, legal context , attitudes and nearly everything is against a startup culture. Yeah some youngsters from Hamburg or Berlin like USA, dress , act and eat like in USA, and make startups like in USA. But startup culture and Germany. no..And there's no need for a German startup boom.
> Personally I rate the person higher that tries several times, falls, gets up and starts over. Unfortunately that is not the case.
Did they really fail if they still have the money to try again? They certainly managed to con their investors at least once. What is a failure when it gets others to pay your rent for at least a year?
If you con your investors then there's no chance of starting over. If you make your investors aware of the risks and it just doesn't work out (but you handled the situation well) then you've failed but are still well ahead of those who never tried.
Also, although investors may pay your rent for the year, as a founder you're expected to take <50% of your market wage in most cases and you'll be working longer hours, so this isn't a great argument.
> If you con your investors then there's no chance of starting over.
A new sucker is born every minute.
> as a founder you're expected to take <50% of your market wage in most cases and you'll be working longer hours
relying on the assumption that the founder is actually doing work he is getting paid for, or that he didn't hire several friends that receive most of the money.
> Chip on your shoulder?
Lets say I have a good reason to no longer trust any sheme that the founder can just kill with little consequence to himself.
If I'd choose an european country to found my startup, it would be Estonia, they have a system in place, called E-Resident that anyone can apply to, and get "citizenship" so after that you can create your own business along with a bank account there, all online.
If you are European and have a bank account in your homecountry, from what I've read you don't even need to fly over to Estonia to get that bank account, the bank will accept that. If not, that's the only thing you really need to go to Estonia.
Historically yes, but the fallout from Brexit may make London a vastly less attractive option, causing it to lose its spot in the years to come. I honestly can't imagine starting something new in London now -- it's very expensive and it has some big political and economic uncertainties hanging over its head at the moment.
Cultural issues aside, Germany needs to make it easy and inexpensive to start, run, and close a business if it wants to compete. At the moment it seems to be a bureaucratic burden. Unfortunately Germany isn't an anomaly in this regard in Europe.
I'm currently closing a buisness in germany. It takes about 40hours of work plus 400€ for notary etc. To close a f*cking buisness which had no cashflow for the last 2 years.
Right now the site is down supposedly because of a power outage in a data center. Can't remember the last time spiegel online was offline, the outage is so high profile that #spiegelonline is trending in .de
I did, i can only encourage you to try it. I dropped out of University even because of my self employment. I would never look back and change that. There's not much bureaucracy as a Kleinunternehmer (small business owner), depends on the niche you work in tho but for IT stuff and even importig/exporting electronics i never had big issues.
I am part owner of a US startup now, we have to deal with as much bureaucracy there...The big thing that makes the US different is that it's way easier to get capital, but there are as many weird laws which differ from county to county..
> I have been thinking about going self-employed as a sidejob, boost my student-income a bit.
This costs you 10 minutes and 25 bucks (Gewerbeschein). Then you can file taxes for your side income once per year, which takes another 30 minutes, because at the side-income level the calculation is: income - expenses.
With just a Gewerbeschein for a single person company you're personally liable for all debts/obligations! Been there, done that and nearly went to jail. Never again.
Nobody will give a small limited liability company any serious credit line or similar. In practice you still are liable with your personal belongings to any relevant creditor if you are just starting.
Also, if you think that there is no personal liability for the managing founder in a limited liability company, don't search for "Geschäftsführerhaftung" or you are going to have a bad day.
> Also, if you think that there is no personal liability for the managing founder in a limited liability company, don't search for "Geschäftsführerhaftung" or you are going to have a bad day.
This is not a German exclusive. Managers of a company are nowhere shielded from legal responsibility when they violate the criminal code. (Okay, big banks maybe not, but at least from the letter of the law...)
I'm not well versed in other countries' laws but you are right of course. My comment was intended to be seen in this direction: For small companies (let's say up to a few employees) almost all relevant risks of liability for the founder exist equally in both unlimited and limited liability companies. There are very few cases were the shield of a limited liability company is beneficial. An insurance is ofter a cheaper way of getting that. Also, a significant customer with a competent lawyer will ensure that all contracts with a small just-started business will include a personal liability clause.
That supermarket down the street? Almost surely run by a fully liable merchant. That consulting office next door? A fully liable partnership. This two-person software company? Both owner fully liable. It's a common choice and often better suited than it might sound at first.
My parent poster asked how to do things legally on the side while being a student. You don't get sued right away.
Furthermore, it's better to control risk by getting the proper insurance for your business and NOT relying on "limited" liability of a GmbH (although I heard you have to do pretty dumb shit to really be held liable personally in a GmbH).
So I'm really wondering what you did that you almost ended up in jail. This is certainly not the case for 99.9% of all people who just want to file taxes on their Adsense income once per year or code HTML for a bit of money.
Same applies to the managing director of a GmbH (Germany-style Ltd.), even more so because with a GmbH you can actually be held criminally liable if your company goes bankrupt.
Wow. I remember reading somewhere that an early American innovation (1833 in Federal law) was - no more debtor's prisons, which allowed much more risk-taking in American business. I did not realize this persists today in Germany.
(Note that the US is often criticized for court fines which result in jail time if you're unable to pay, but that's a much later meaning. Originally it meant jail if you were unable to pay someone back.)
There's no debtors' prison in the sense that you have to go to prison if you can't pay your debts. The criminal offence is delayed filing of bankruptcy: If your company can't pay its bills, it can't make payroll or its liabilities exceed its assets you have to file for bankruptcy within 3 weeks.
The problem with this is that often it isn't entirely clear if a company really is bankrupt by that definition. A company can be nominally bankrupt in one moment and solvent again in the next depending on how you look at it from a technical / accounting point of view.
This again unfortunately sometimes is preyed upon by both liquidators, investors and creditors, who might try to sue the managing director in order to recoup their losses from the director's personal funds. A conviction for delayed filing of bankruptcy both applies additional pressure and makes a director personally liable, GmbH or not.
So, in short: No there are no debtors' prisons anymore but the effect you described very much still applies thanks to outdated and misguided German bankruptcy laws.
> You are personally responsible and liable for anything that happens.
So? You are personally responsible and liable for a nearly everything you do in life. Typically, you'll only "go to jail" if you do something seriously wrong, and then the limited liability of a GmbH won't save you (whether you're an owner or an employee).
The limited liability of a GmbH refers mostly to financial liabilities in case of bankruptcy, not to, e.g., criminal negligence.
Go for it! I imagine your sidejob will be some sort of consulting? With your Gewerbeschein it takes little bureaucracy and you don't have much to lose. Just be prepared for taxes and the risk of Scheinselbstständigkeit. Don't make the mistage anyone does and ignore them.
Don't kid yourself. Germany is much less than optimal for startups. I know, I'm German, I had one here. The German mentality and refusal to advance technologically is another huge problem. I live in Bavaria currently, deep into beer county, where the hops for most of the worlds beer come from. People who can reinstall Windows call themselves "specialists" here, their success is largely dependent on social skills and honestly, narcissism. The more narcissistic you are, the more you think you're the shit, people will believe it immediately. Actual skill is not so much important, knowing each other from drinking together, what other people say about you and inflated self-image is much more highly regarded. It makes me wanna puke on a daily basis and I have absolutely no hope for this part of Germany. A few days ago, I found out how incredibly badly the Windows server at our secondary location had been set up by a contractor before my time. No security, no logical file structure, all the good stuff. This contractor was paid 200/hour and selected because he met my boss at the local watering hole and told him about how he is the best technician in a big radius. My boss believes it to this day. I have no hope. Northern Germany is a different topic all together, they have been making some nice advances but yet still the whole foundation around them is stuck in time.
How come Bavaria has the highest GPD per captiva (without counting Hamburg and Bremen which are basically cities, not regions) and the second highest total GPD in Germany [1]?
Your experiences are unfortunate and annoying - no doubt. But even if it might be more likely to happen in one region than another this could happen in other regions as well. In the end it's anecdotical stereotyping.
I'm from Munich. Bavaria is by far the leader due to BMW (Munich) and Audi (Ingolstadt), as well as their boatload of highly specialized suppliers.
Munich also has the German HQ of Microsoft (which is suspected to be the cause of the city of Munich to drop Limux, according to some conspiracy theories)... and EADS Astrium has a huge complex near Ottobrunn.
Hey, where in Bavaria? I am an Italian living in Munich, funny, but I reached your same conclusions. I think Bavaria depends scarily too much on automotive and "traditional" industries. Said that, I have been able to make a dent on analytics in my company towards modern (non Excel) solutions. It's a mixed bag, it's true what you say, but then again, the cool part is that IT here can charge up to 2,000 eur per day.
You need a change of scenery and I am not talking geographically.
As someone who is active in Munich's and Berlin's startup scene I can tell you that so far most people I've met are entrepreneurial minds that focus on getting stuff done. You will always have some lifestyle startup whose founders only care about their status or a business executive making a tech decision that he shouldn't be making. However, in saying that success depends on narcissism you are generalizing your personal experience which I cannot corroborate.
I do realize that, of course! However I was only talking about parts of Bavaria and not Germany as a whole. I also meet people like this, also mostly in Munich but never really in deeper parts of Bavaria - there are hardly any startups and if so they are of exactly the lifestyle type you mentioned. That's not subjective also, a lot of Bavarians start to realize themselves. Munich can not be regarded in this way, Munich is much more similar to Berlin as it is to the rest of Bavaria.
Northern Germany is a different topic all together, they have been making some nice advances but yet still the whole foundation around them is stuck in time.
> People who can reinstall Windows call themselves "specialists" here, their success is largely dependent on social skills and honestly, narcissism. The more narcissistic you are, the more you think you're the shit, people will believe it immediately. Actual skill is not so much important, knowing each other from drinking together, what other people say about you and inflated self-image is much more highly regarded.
Sounds like the only thing needed to transform it into a US-Style tech hub is VC money then..
Ha! I don't know if any of what you say is true, but I was in Munich a few months ago and had lunch in a traditional restaurant, where waiters and waitresses wear old Bavarian costumes, which only offers traditional food of sausage and such, etc.
At first glance I thought this was a restaurant for tourists, like there are in all major cities. But what surprised me a lot was that the restaurant was full of locals, who seemed to go there often, if not every day.
Bavarian restaurants are just one of many other options and they "only" offer traditional food, just like an Italian restaurant only offers Italian food, for example. It's quite delicious, too.
Waiters rarely wear costumes (certainly less than 10% of them).
Glad you made this conclusion for yourself. You can not compare bavaria to the rest of Germany. Even thought it is my favorite part people are generally a lot more stubborn
Not a conclusion, quite obvious. However I have worked in Berlin also and while of course vastly different in regards to mentality, I cannot see how small startups without a lot of funding could even possibly succeed there as well, save a few special ones. Regulatory and tax hell is everywhere and even though local politicans there at least seem to understand the internet most laws still do not.
I haven't been to many places in Germany admittedly, but the seeming young freedom of Berlin certainly seemed like it would be perfect for a startup atmosphere.
One of the biggest problems for startups in Germany is that Germans are reluctant to change. The prefer a complicated but reliable process over a new but simplified one. I guess you could call it risk averse.
I work for Volkswagen Financial Services and we actually opened up a completely new department in Berlin (VWFS is usually in Braunschweig) mostly to get closer to the world of startups and interact with them. So it _is_ reaching the big companies here, the Volkswagen Group is starting to have a lot of new departments here in Berlin. It's awesome to see because there are a lot of motivated people within the brand that want to work like this. It also seems like the minds of our managers are changing on the topic and they quite enjoy what we're doing here so far.
Looks like the whole of Spiegel.de is down currently (503), even the front page isn't working for me, and on desktop the AMP version is redirecting straight back to spiegel.de.
Over 16 mio of germans/people living in germany have a migrant background, its the second most popular immigration country after the USA according to the OECD.
Let's also not forget that lots of Germans today actually have a fair percentage of Russian blood following WW2. I'll leave the cause to the imagination.
I don't know a single person in the german tech industry who gives a shit about where you are from, did you ever live there at all?
It doesn't seem to me that immigrants are welcome in the USA either as a whole (disclaimer: i am german working for a NYC company), but the tech community is different there, more open and interested in what you can offer instead of how you look.
It's basically the same from my very own experience, your whole argument seems non sense to me, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne for example are one of the most diverse cities i have ever been to especially when i compare it to South East Asia where i currently life.
Did you ever visit the SV to say that immigrants aren't welcome there?
Diversity does not mean mixing. You can put a lot of different fluids in a pot and they won't mix. I see a lot of different people here, but except for business (aka money) reasons, there is few mixing.
You lack reading comprehension, i said in the tech hubs immigrants are welcome more than in other parts especially rural areas.
So yes, of course SV and NYC are more open to immigration then the countryside, same as in germany.
Compared to SEA both countries (DE and USA) are super welcoming, here in Thailand as a foreigner it's damn hard, i cannot even own a business as a majority owner. Nor can i buy land, it's also next to impossible to ever get a permant residency. Other SEA countries are the same, its pretty discouraging.
I work in the Berlin startup world and i can tell you that probably the majority of people are not german. Lots of new people coming from all over the world, english is the most dominant language.
I myself am the only german in a company that has employees from Brazil, US, Canada, India and Spain.
Same here, the startup I work for has ~100 employees less than a 1/5 are native German speakers. Though some team (e.g. operations, HR) are obviously more biased to people who speak the language well.
Actually immigration was desperately needed by them to rebuild the country devastated by the ww2, that's was the only reason, we all know.
But children born there from those people who immigrated to reconstruct their country weren't considered German until jus soli citizenship be adopted (with caveats) only in 2000.
It is very normal to see in Berlin for example, German born people who aren't considered Germans, neither have citizenship, only because they are children of foreigners.
The country has been mostly rebuild by germans itself with a lot of financial aid of course. The 60s immigration wave was caused by the west german Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), due to the eastern german wall it was not possible for east germans and other eastern europeans to migrate to western germany. Thus they invited turkish citizens as a lot of manufacturing jobs in the automobile industry and co. needed workers.
Which financial aid have you got in mind? East Germany was basically cleared by the Soviet Union. The Marshall Plan went mostly to the UK and France, only a small part (11%) went to West Germany.
Thanks for the explanation. Can you also explain why the children of those turkish citizens as the example that you pick, aren't considered German citizens and neither were able to get the German citizenship even after being born and growing up as adults in Germany?
Yes, there are 2 old concepts which are used by most countries.
1) Jus sanguinis (latin for blood ties or right of blood), this means u get citizenship if one of your parents is a citizen of country X.
2) Jus soli (latin for right of the soil), which means u get citizenship by the territory you are born on.
Both countries the USA and Germany nowadays have a mix of those, Germany had 1. back in the day and then introduced 2. over time, also special foreigner laws like getting a permant residency permit quiet eaily after you have been there for 8 years.
SEA especially Thailand has still only 1. so it's quiet impossible to get permant residencies till today - but fear not, you can bribe urself in paying money and its called the thai elite card -.-
I suppose you could say it goes both ways. On one hand they traditionally weren't easily accepted as a natural part of German society. On the other hand (perhaps also as a reaction towards that kind of rejection), many people with a Turkish background didn't and to some extent still don't want to become part of German society.
It's not just Germany. My Austrian born son didn't automatically qualify for Austrian citizenship at birth. He could only initially obtain the nationality of parents (fortunately he has three to choose from).
Startups don't require diversity. The first and second wave of Silicon Valley startups were by and large run by white middle class men.
In a way diversity can perhaps even be detrimental to a developing startup community. Coming back to the example of Germany, citizens with a Turkish background very often are entrepreneurs and run their own businesses, much more so than citizens with a German background. However, those businesses are hardly ever what you'd consider startups: Fast food shops, food stores, import / export businesses, travel agencies. In summary: Tried and proven business ideas.
There's definitely a trend towards fetishing diversity, as if all you have to do is have a diverse workforce, and success will follow. I halted a hiring process recently because the diversity propaganda was such a turn off. The colour of someone's skin, their accent and the contents of their pants are about the least important things I care about in a colleague.
A lot of israelis come to Berlin btw. and vice versa - there's a whole kind of exchange from .il and .de tech workers, not too ure why but i think both sides find the other side interesting.
A lot of people in Berlin i know are tech guys from tel aviv.
A lot of young Israeli artists and designers are in Berlin too. When I go outside here, what I hear is a mix of German, English, Turkish, Italian, and Hebrew - not a mix I ever thought I'd encounter.
On my team, we have 3 Americans, 1 Ukrainian, 1 Italian and 1 German. The whole company was/is like that, though less US-centric (got purchased by a large US company, can't speak for the rest).
People here get judged if they start a business and fail. If you are successful then fine. If not, people don't give you credit. Personally I rate the person higher that tries several times, falls, gets up and starts over. Unfortunately that is not the case.
Nice example if you are from the USA. Over there it is more socially accepted to get married and divorced often than not at all. In Germany it is quite the opposite. You can't even make a failure in private how could you do that in business?
Many business here have roots and are decades old. That whole "Mittelschicht" is build on family owned business. That is actually a good thing and probably one of the reasons the economy in Germany is so efficient, but it doesn't give anyone the incentive to start something.
And don't forget Germany is all about bureaucracy. Lots of paperwork and money just to get a GmbH. And a GmbH is what you need to gain trust from other companies.
Sorry, there is so much to it. Hopefully there will be some change in attitude. It is already happening.