"Companies operating in Germany have to make sure that data is anonymized and stored in accordance with the law. These data rules are a big reasons why German companies have to stick with their old tools."
Pardon my German, but that is utter and complete Büffelscheiße on multiple levels. Firstly, how does data protection and privacy law prevent you from using those tools? Secondly, the German law in these matters is not a hindrance to innovation, that is a lame excuse: If the only business model you can come up with is grabbing as much data as you can and then sell it to advertisers, that is not innovative at all.
I think the problem more has to do with a general resistance to change that is very common in German companies and public institutions. "Was der Bauer nicht kennt, frisst er nicht", as we say in Germany ("What the farmer doesn't know, he won't eat"). Large institutions and bureaucracies develop a huge inertia as they grow. The three rules why things do not change: 1. We have always done it like this; 2. We have never done it like that; 3. Once we change this one thing, where does it lead to?
As a German I'd say it's especially larger enterprise companies that are averse to change. For example having worked for clients in the medical sector in the past it was widely held wisdom that if you were observing a new trend in technology it'd take at least five to ten years before you could even think about convincing those companies to adopt them. They were the ultimate late adopters.
Smaller companies experiment more, but investors are equally risk-averse so they tend to prefer startups that are cashflow positive (as opposed to Silicon Valley's growth mindset) or that follow tried and true business models. So a lot of innovation has to be bootstrapped or rides on the back of existing companies -- the product company spun out of an agency seems to be a fairly common.
But all in all I'd say if something is holding German companies back from innovating it's the risk aversion, not the privacy laws. The strict privacy laws actually creates a market for domestic solutions to problems solved by US companies with no regard for privacy (i.e. nearly all of them). Sure, it makes certain business models impossible but many would say that's for the better -- many problems actually end up not being impossible but simply requiring less obvious solutions than blatantly violating your customers' rights.
And looking at the German economy, especially in contrast to other European countries, I'd say calling it a failure is incredibly dishonest. Risk aversion may limit innovation but it also creates a strong healthy economy that is incredibly stable because it rests on a large number of medium sized companies rather than a small number of unicorns and a constant Cambrian explosion and mass extinction.
> Once we change this one thing, where does it lead to?
I can definitely confirm this! Being a foreigner in Germany, a country I've come to love very much, has been eye-opening in this regard.
Never in my adult life have I observed such an obvious, visceral, inexplicable, omnipresent fear to change. It's awe-inducing, really.
Alas, it is perhaps the only thing keeping one of the things I love about Germany: it's café culture.
However, I can also understand those who are highly skeptical of "innovation" and "change" in general. Some of us just plain suck at explaining our ideas and creating the kind of logical, reality-based enthusiasm that gets Germans on-board.
I like to think that Germans have learned to question change beforehand, wanting to scrutinize policies before they are implemented. This is only half the truth, but one can only dream...
Depends. Some companies are rather paranoid about privacy issues and using services like Slack or GMail is a clear liability risk, especially when discussing customer data or confidential information. I'm not sure what the GDPR has to say about this but my understanding is that some privacy experts consider services like Slack problematic.
However this depends on the scale and type of company. In practice many smaller companies don't even have a Betriebsrat despite fitting the requirements. I'm also sure not everyone is aware of the details of legal requirements around privacy if it isn't the core of their business and some are even blatantly unaware of basic labor rights.
Some companies do use Slack but I know several examples where the introduction of Slack was prevented for compliance reasons. If these reasons are sound I cannot tell, but dismissing this argument as laughable doesn’t hold either.
I'm at SAP (and in Germany, too), and our team was migrated to Slack Enterprise Grid just this week. We migrated to Slack (from internal IRC) a bit over a year ago and because a lot of other teams did as well, corporate IT was pushed into investigating company-wide Slack as an option, which now became available in January.
Compared to other tech companies, it took us longer to adopt Slack on the company scale, but mostly because Slack was lacking an on-premise solution until recently.
Doesn't the SEC take a dim view of chat programs being used on Wall street? My understanding is that they have to use chat programs with builtin compliance regimes to avoid insider trading and such...
Digital innovation is happening in a lot of sectors. Healthcare and others have privacy concerns that turn a lot of 'efficiency' dreams on their heads.
I think the author misses a key ingredient when he talks about the “lack of skills”: German companies are notoriously stingy (or frugal, however you want to call it) when paying their engineers. Combined with a hesitation to greatly differentiate pay between great and average staff (due to culture and also the “Gesamtarbeitsverträge” between employers and unions), this means that really great and innovative employees will be able to earn far more in nearby Switzerland or far Silicon Valley. I’m always a bit sceptical when (allegedly free-market loving) managers talk about a skill shortage: remember, economic theory states that in a free market there will be no shortage, because prices will rise to accommodate supply and demand.
As a freelancer in Germany, I can add to that: it's not only that companies are stingy with employees. From what I had observed, a growing number of software engineers found out how tax calculations work, and decide to go freelance by the numbers. In my current team of less than 10 software developers, 2 has just recently decided to take the plunge.
This comes however with increased risk, as the contracts are usually limited to 6 months, and because of "Scheinselbstständigkeit" (appearing to be employed, even though you are contracted out to your own company, or DBA) companies are prohibitted from prolonging those contracts, unless they want to pay horrendous penalties.
All is good and great, I understand why those laws were put into place (mostly to protect unskilled workers, like drivers or manufacturing line workers from being forced to sign more beneficial - to the company - contracts instead of work agreements), but the software engineers, with the employment gap will in most cases easily find a replacement job somewhere near, yet the companies necessarily undergo a brain drain, and the know how gets leaked out.
Just imagine, you need a couple of weeks to be able to actually productively add features to the product, then take a bit time off, some workshop, a ton of meetings, and basically your 6 months are off, and unless your client is willing to take the risk, your starting your offboarding - just mabye transferring all that you had learned in the meantime to somebody else.
I'm a freelancer, too. But, I don't think this leads to massive "brain-drain" within a company, when working with lots of freelancers.
Let's take a look at our jobs and how we treat our clients.
Mostly we'll be (somehow) integrated into a team of developers.
As a freelancer, I'm hired, because I'm an expert in my field of profession. So while working with the team, I'll share my knowlegde with them, so they can profit from my expertise in longer terms.
What I miss in germany, is developers of ability, sharing their experience in public.
Whenever I look for inspiration/learning/ressources, it's guys like Robert C. Martin, Martin Fowler or Kent Beck with the best material.
I can't believe that our country doesn't have a few of such minds, too.
I was a freelancer and became a contractor for my own company a few years ago (only German kids will get this).
I've been in situations like the one you describe, where I'm one of many developers and share my knowledge. I've also been "the developer" in companies that have no permanently employed developers or no interest in sharing knowledge. I've also interviewed at companies that had effectively outsourced their entire development to another company (with the team working on-site full time but being employed by another company who would rent them out for jobs like these).
These companies often relied on their code as a critical part of being able to do business. Some of them were literally software companies. Yes, it's shortsighted and obviously a bad idea but companies operate like this, especially smaller companies that think they can reduce financial risks by hiring freelancers even if they effectively overpay compared to what a salaried developer would cost them.
Yes, I share those experiences.
Lots of business-decisions are counter-productive to us software-people.
Maybe it's because software is a kind of craft, with art and engeneering qualities, that is hard to reason about correctly, if you are not "into it".
Short term business decisions, like outsourcing, may indicate a need for higher liquidity within an accute financial situation (which is common for small companies).
I think most managers know the longer term risks, but are somehow forced to do so.
However, I see us "software people" in charge to change the situation, by insiting on disciplines, like knowlegde-sharing, proper testing, etc.
Maybe germany needs a better IT-community...
Also freelance taxes are not so much better than regular ones. Usually at the end of the year I take holidays, just because I know that if I earn more, my profit will be deducted by the taxes.
This is a double-penalty. First you "take the risk" of being on your own and second after around 60k [1] income 1/3 of what you earn goes for taxes, so you can't "save money for rainy days". At this point is becoming demotivating and you better take some months off.
I'm not a CDU[1] voter by far but the Schröder government really screwed this one up by trying to "modernize" labor laws.
When I started out freelancing I thought consulting agencies were actually viable so I applied to various projects posted by them. Every single time I ended up turning them down because the contracts they'd send me would effectively mean I'd no longer be able to seek clients myself out of the fear of violating the non-compete clause (unless I'd always ask every client "have you recently signed a contract with this consulting agency") yet I'd have no guarantee of actually winning the contract, they'd take a massive cut of my hourly rate, they'd force me to accept payment deadlines of up to three months (my normal limit was 14 days) but I'd effectively get none of the benefits of a regular employee other than having them as a mediator (assuming they'd ever not side with the client).
Being a software developer I was able to reject those offers and instead seek out clients myself. But for many people in less fortunate skillsets this is the kind of crap they have to put up with, especially with companies offloading more and more of their workforce into these agencies to make it easier to hire & fire people as needed. Because they're not regular employees and union contracts and salary laws don't apply, many of them earn well below minimum wage (if they can find contracts at all) and need welfare to "top up" to the same level as someone without a job at all.
A lot of the laws at the time needed fixing but this was a blatant attempt to reduce the unemployment stats without actually helping people. I'd say because it actively obscures the issue without solving it it has actually things worse for the people affected.
[1]: The two major parties in Germany are the left-of-center SPD and the conservative centrist/right party CDU. The current chancellor, Merkel, is a member of the CDU and the government consists of a coalition between the CDU and SPD. The government that passed the labor and welfare reforms consisted of a coalition between the SPD and the Greens, with the chancellor Schröder being a member of the SPD. Many had voted for the SPD at the time hoping for a more left-leaning government, which eventually resulted in a mass exodus of SPD members forming their own minor party which eventually joined the far left party "Die Linke" (the left).
I'm totally with you that "Leiharbeit" needs to go. Its about exploiting the weakest for the financial gain of morally rotten middlemen. I'm just saying the law could have been passed with less collateral damage.
Ha, your [1] sounds pretty much exactly like what happened with the PvdA (labor) and VVD (center-right) coalition. It's like all the leftist parties that aren't 'properly' so don't even try anymore.
Absolutely spot-on. Companies here usually hire the best people for their budget, not for their bottom-line.
The positive side of this comes to my mind too however, which is also a very German trait. There ARE a lot of very successful digital companies in their niches (even global players) - just right now Adjust, Remerge, Sociomantic and others come to my mind. However, German companies often times for a lot of cultural reasons stop growing at some point and lacking the ambition for total world domination, explaining the lack of showing up at the very top of the list, as measured by the OP. I do observe a lot of the tradition of the German Mittelstand continuing in the mindset of current start-ups. Through the usually frugal, social and grounded approach that Germans are taking, you rather get a lot of successful medium sized companies, rather than a few A players. What you need for those is usually a single, ultra-ambitioned founder investing decades of their life. The American make-or-break mentality and winner-takes-it-all attitude is much better at producing those - but also at the cost of leaving lots of smaller companies and lesser skilled people behind.
What would you guess explains the difference between the world domination pursuit in eg the luxury auto market, versus technology companies? Or with a company like Bayer (which just ate Monsanto) and other industrial giants like Siemens?
American companies lead digital innovation, building on a lead that was established way back, with Fairfield Semiconductors...German industries build on their lead in many traditional industries, including the car industry.
As someone working in Germany, yes, this is a serious problem. I don't think German managers don't understand economics, but instead they pay journalists to write about skills shortages to get cheaper immigrants here.
The drive to cheap instead of good is what's holding a lot of us back though. Engineers are still seen as a cost instead of something which can (and does) earn money. But bad (and cheap) engineers cost money.
Dean Baker often complains about this, most recently here [0]
> Apparently German employers don't understand basic economics. Their ignorance is jeopardizing the whole economy, according to the DIHK Chambers of Industry and Commerce.
I'm German and I work in Silicon Valley and we get plenty of visitors from the German legislature. One of them always tends to ask me about what it would "to get people like me to come back to Germany". I usually just tell them my approximate salary and ask them if I could earn even half of that as an Engineer in Germany. Usually I don't get an answer.
Other things I often hear:
- "They probably monitor how often you go to the arcade!" (usually followed about how they were in the opposition in the former East)
- "So who usually tells you what to do?" (they don't get self organizing teams or lack of hierarchies)
- "So how many hours a week do you usually work?" (they vastly over-estimate that)
- "This is all nice, but they just want to stay at work longer!" (after I told them my usual hours)
They are all reasonably nice people, but it's somewhat demotivating to see who actually runs Germany and how little they understand about other parts of the world. Maybe the visits help.
The "supply and demand will equilibriate" position only works in an entirely elastic scenario. It rarely works out that cleanly. London is a good example; wages are already extremely high in tech - to the point that many companies cannot hire. But supply is still not there, for a bunch of different reasons - e.g. people unwilling to continue/make a new life in the UK due to Brexit. Wages would have to rise _even further_ to offset that, way beyond the point it makes economic sense for a company to do that.
You can have very high prices and still insufficient supply. The prices are supposed to attract supply; but e.g. when a country is not seen as being welcoming to immigrants (or, in fact, has legal restrictions in place) the only flex is in people training/retraining, which is a many-years response to an immediate problem.
What are those 'extremely high salaries in tech' you speak of, outside of a select few Canary Wharf positions? UK salaries in tech are abysmal from what I see - and just last year I heard a UK 'entrepreneur' brag about how cheap engineers are in the UK at a software business conference. Also keeping in mind CoL - who wants to take a London job when it means 2 hour commutes one way in order to have some disposable income left?
If you are making north of 100k, a two hours commute (each way) is not attractive. I would deem this a more limiting factor and is one reason I'd never would move to a company in Munich (I am living in Germany).
There's no way to have a 2 hour commute in Munich unless you live in Salzburg, Austria. The problem with Munich is the lack of good tech companies here.
If you think there are no good tech companies in Munich, what's then left in Germany? :P
I do agree the more hip ones are in Berlin, and maybe Hamburg - but I'd still say your statement is unfair, if not taken in the context of lack of "good tech companies" in Germany overall.
My personal limit is more 45 min. Within that radius I'd have to find a home which is comparable to my current one. I don't think any employer would pay that much more to afford it.
Some people here seems not to realize that German salaries come with 30 days paid vacation, a year of parental leaves, first grade medical coverage in a relatively cheap country to live in.
If your life goes wrong, due to illnesses, unforeseen circumstances or unemployment, or if you plan to have a family, you're better off in Germany than in silicon valley with 160k.
Pretty sure I have to pay for health insurance with my actual salary in Germany, the employer does however cover half the cost of it. It does not come included (e.g. 100% payed by the employer) like with the national insurance system in Sweden. Also, I might be mistaken but only 20 vacation days are required by law and I have 24 days currently.
I do agree with the first grade medical card and the general cheapness of the country.
The point is, that in US the second you stop paying your medical insurance as a result of financial problems caused by job loss/illness/family issues/whatever, you don't have health insurance anymore. Sure, you can go to an emergency room and will be helped, but you are still going to get a bill for it. In Germany(and most of EU) even if you are paying nil towards the national health insurance, you are still fully covered for everything - no bill will ever be produced for any treatment that you receive. Various EU countries have the payments for national insurance structured in different ways - so in Sweden, the employer pays 100% - maybe in Germany it's split in half. It doesn't matter - the point is, you are covered regardless of your personal situation.
COBRA covers your health insurance if you're fired, for up to 18 months or so. You do generally have to pay premiums on it.
The US has free healthcare for people without an income. If you're making the federal minimum wage, you qualify for free healthcare via Medicaid in every state (someone correct me if there's an exception).
The US has numerous government healthcare assistance programs for people that are in some kind of bad position.
Nearly half of all healthcare coverage in the US is public healthcare at this point, not employer sponsored.
Your 50% number is false. That derives from a 2009 study that goosed the numbers by including some odd qualifications such as if you missed work due to illness at any point in the year you declared bankruptcy.
The numbers are bad enough to not need pushed higher artificially frankly. It's closer to 1/4 of all bankruptcies having been impacted by medical bills (2011 Northwestern study indicating 26% of all bankruptcies are partially - not solely - caused by out of pocket medical costs).
There are roughly 288 million people in the US that have health coverage.
The medical bankruptcies you're referring to affect less than 1% of the adult US population across ten years. Among that 1% are common repeat medical bankruptcies, so the number is in fact even smaller.
If you look at the total number of bankruptcies in 2016 - 770,000 - and the share of those that were entirely caused by medical bills, you're probably talking about 100,000 to 150,000 (out of ~250 million adults). The ACA, it is speculated, has improved the medical bankruptcy numbers since its 2010 passage, and the economy has improved dramatically since 2010-11.
Is it terrible? Yes it is. Did you expect me to say otherwise? However it does in fact affect a small portion of the US population. It's obvious that if you could pick a few things to change about the US financial system, one would be to be able to more easily discharge medical debts.
True, it causes problems with recruitment since it is very hard to get people to drop up to a week of holiday to join us. I would love to have 28 or 30 days..
For these rights people literally kill themselves to come to Germany.
Unfortunately with the decentralised IT industry, having the same benefits it's just a matter of negotiation. On top of that the amount of taxes that you pay for having "cheap" country to live in always averages those benefits.
Having a family here would be great as well, if they don't charge me a percentage of my income for kindergarten [1], a percentage of my income for health insurance, a percentage of my income for religion tax ( happily I'm an atheist ). Those all sound fair for low-skilled jobs, but not so much when you are heavily in demand IT-person ( the tax-bracket is too steep ).
Actually you can opt out of the tax without leaving your church (though they might consider this grounds to exclude you from services -- in practice however the only punishment is heartfelt disapproval).
Also it's important to point out that if you are a faithful member of one of the religions that enacts a church tax, that money goes to that church rather than to the state (who just collect it for the church, free of charge). So presumably you actually want them to get that money and are fine with the tax (although in practice most "believers" in Germany either opt out of the tax or complain about it because they're unhappy with the institutions of their religion).
AFAIK it's only the Catholic church and the Evangelical church who've done the necessary paper work and formed public bodies on the national level to be eligible to receive these taxes from self-declared members of their church. There's a small Muslim group that has managed to do this in two states but they're a minority sect (in Germany anyway). I guess for most religious groups it's just too much of a hassle compared to collecting money directly from church-goers (or mosque-goers for that matter).
No it is not 30 it is minimum 25.
Parental leave with a 60% paycheck than normal.
Medical is not first grade, it is notoriously horrible to get a doctor appointment for specific things as you hope to hop from practitioner to practitioner while they refer you.
Dental is not even considered.
I was under impression that in SV 160k barely covers your expenses, including insanely expensive rent. is it really possible to save 60k out of such salary?
health is yes cheap and problematic. it is not a full "health heaven" when you can't get any specialist appointment within 4 weeks. at least in berlin. same "termin" bulls* is valid for almost all services. i would rather pay more and get faster service.
and if you are not german or eu citizen, second part is also not valid. so qualified immigrants can't feel secure here. so berlin is a stop for me until i find some better place, not a city to settle in with my family and future kids.
30 days? I got 25 and something in the range of 25 to 28 is the most common. 30 is unusual, if you're not in a unionized job, older, negotiated hard for it etc.
I got 26 days at the local IT company where I started after university, and I now have 30 days at a big IT company (SAP). However, this is an IT worker's privilege. Among my friends in the manufacturing industry, the minimum 24 days seem to be common.
I'm pretty sure your friends in the manufacturing industry are bound by union contracts (Tarifverträge) which tend to define these things in ways that are meant to be difficult to adjust on a per-person (or per-company) basis to protect every worker equally.
I have friends working at agencies where unpaid overtime is the norm. I also have friends working in industrial jobs where they complain when they have to work 40 hours (rather than the normal 35) and every hour of overtime is merely compensated at 200%. Oh and he made a pretty decent wage straight out of school.
Talking about "privilege" in this context creates the false impression that all IT workers automatically have it better than traditional industrial workers in every aspect.
> If your life goes wrong, due to illnesses, unforeseen circumstances or unemployment, or if you plan to have a family, you're better off in Germany than in silicon valley with 160k.
Am I going to benefit from these as a foreigner not fluent in German language and having trouble navigating the bureaucratic maze of public healthcare and social support? My impression is that even the natives can get confused (see number of homeless and mental people on the streets or occupying the transport infrastructure).
It is a good idea. Not necessary though in order to access health care. If you are in an environment with lots of expats or generally mixed backgrounds you'll likely survive without speaking much more than a handful of German words per week if you really want to (Heidelberg, Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, ...). It does help you though, as finding doctors and especially employees in public office who are able and willing to discuss with you in English is not a given.
It's possible, but it severely limits you if you don't speak German. I've been working with large companies - either international branches or German multinationals - and they don't like to speak English at work. They can, but it is dumb to have ten German engineers to discuss a topic in slightly broken or less than perfect English, just because there is one guy in the room not able to speak German. Documents or code might be English, but the whole conversation around it is preferred in German.
This means when you don't speak German, you are mostly limited to work in projects where English is possible or the default - there are jobs like this, but this is actually limited.
I've met persons who were ten years in Germany and were not able to do a general conversation in a job interview in German. I would not hire them - other than for specific projects/tasks where that would not be a problem.
Bureaucratic it can be at times. Public healthcare though is very different from social support. Public healthcare is really simple compared to anything I've seen abroad, you sign up once and that's it. You only need to contact your (public) health care provider if your address changes or you marry, have children etc. At the doctor you present your health care ID, you usually don't have any interaction with your health care provider aside from that. Your monthly payment is automatically deducted from your salary (50%)/paid by your employer(50%).
There are many edge cases which _do_ get more complicated, as (public) health insurance premiums depend on your reported salary. Let's say you have different income streams from different countries, have to pay alimony but also support your parent financially.
> At the doctor you present your health care ID, you usually don't have any interaction with your health care provider aside from that.
Well, one thing. When your doctor writes you off sick, you get three copies of the sick note: One is for you, one is for your employer, and one is for your insurer. You get all three copies (they're carbon copies of the same form), so you have to mail the latter two. (The version for the employer has all the medical details blanked out.)
Minor caveat: Berlin is not Germany. Berlin is fairly international so a lot of the infrastructure adapts to that, including public services. You'll still run into plenty public service workers speaking only German (and maybe rudimentary English) outside Berlin.
"If I move to the US will I be able to navigate the bureaucratic maze of healthcare costs and private health services that cover only every other thing?"
Isn't part of Germany's success in manufacturing their conservatism when it comes to large changes in the way we do business? To take an example, there are still companies that make pencils profitably in Germany (the two biggest, Faber-Castell and Staedtler, are local rivals that have been recently arguing in court over who is older [1]; both are at least 250 years old). Both companies are examples of Mittelstand, small-medium sized German manufacturing businesses that grow organically over decades instead of undergoing explosive growth (and explosive failure). This is in part probably due to managers not fearing missing out on The Next Big Thing and trusting in their capital, intellectual property and people. Maybe they think the same about digital innovation right now - let's wait and see where it goes, and when the time comes, throw everything we have at it.
>managers not fearing missing out on The Next Big Thing and trusting in their capital
From an inside perspective I can assure you they're shitting their pants. But they also don't know why they want digital innovation. It's pure buzzword bingo.
One thing about having people who are trained is that the Germans are probably a bit more strict than the Anglos about whom they consider trained in a given field.
I've worked in the UK, where a history graduate can learn to be a derivatives trader. An engineering grad can with little problem get a job coding software (I did both of those jobs with a MEng).
Contrast that with my experience in the Germanic world, and I found the only place that ever asked for my degree certificate. My German friends have degree titles that are pretty much their job titles. I met people who were out of work, and when asked what job they wanted, they responded with a pretty narrow range of jobs fitting their degree.
Recruiters also seemed to take buzzword bingo more seriously, whereas London recruiters seem to be happy to put forward someone who says c# is like c++. Not without its own issues, but if you have a skills shortage, maybe take someone who is close enough?
Yeah, I just applied for a job in Germany where I tick 90% of the boxes. Yet the one box I didn't have they immediately excluded me on, even if it was skills I could learn easily given my previous experience.
That job has been open for almost a year now, I wonder why.
Not every employer is like that. When I started at my first developer job, I only had a degree in physics. (I've since completed a part-time B.Sc. in CS.) They hired me because of my open-source portfolio. Now I'm at SAP, which according to a common joke is an abbreviation for "Sammelplatz arbeitsloser Physiker" (assembly area for unemployed physicists), and one of my friends from university (with a doctorate in laser physics) now also works as an SAP consultant.
i second this. having finished my studies in 2009 and worked at corporate + startup, I couldn't help but laugh when an HR lady asked for my diploma scan. she took a step back when i simply emailed "are you sure you need this?".
I can tell you that I have seen people working in software for automotive companies, who earn that much for very little work that I still wonder how this is possible.
I have seen that as well. The automotive industry (in IT in the few companies I've seen) though seems to move at glacial pace, yet in the right direction. Contrasting that with experience in telecommunication providers I've worked with, where the pay was similar, most worked under a lot more stress, but effectively accomplished less as projects were much more based on the manager's career goals than company goals.
As recent transplant to Germany from Sweden (moved here about 2 years ago) I observe these things daily. Cable connection being 'state-of-art' for Internet access and bad phone reception more or less everywhere. Not being able to count on good speed LTE walking around in the second biggest city in the country, is weird.
I would say large parts of this is cultural. Germans are not so quick to hop onto new things and are suspicious what problems new technology brings, especially with regards to privacy and 'Datenschutz' / data protection. Swedes on the other hand love new things and with a national number given out by birth privacy is not that big of a deal.
German companies also have a large accessible market of German speakers (~100 million) so the need to go global is not as acute as for companies from smaller economies.
I'm not sure how the speed of home internet connections relates to being innovative. Are 50Mbit/s not enough to learn how to code or deploy your stuff to the cloud?
The problem isn't that 50Mbit/s might be enough. The problem is, that 50Mbit/s isn't everywhere.
Germany is a country which spoutes aloud, that it wants to be one of the leading countries in IT, but in reality, Germany is a developing country in that regard.
Most of the time, only city centers have access to higher bandwidth, the outskirts, smaller cities and most of the country side have very low or no bandwidth at all. The last decades Telekom hat the monopoly with providing connectivity to homes and everyone else was a reseller. But Telekom didn't see the need to modernize their old DSL infrastructure and were happy to let you pay 50 euros per month to provide you 16Mbit/s.
The TV companies could provide higher bandwidth with their newer infrastructure with up to 100Mbit/s, but the country is split between them. So when you were in a bad area, you might have Primacom as a provider and they did stop at 25Mbit/s for a long time.
Now the situation is, that Telekom with all their money is asking the Government to pay for the renovation and they got away with it until the beginning of the year, when they finally said, that DSL will not be supported anymore. Only the fiber will now be supported. But this comes years after some villages got couple 100k Euro together to get at least 50Mbit/s and they still pay a monthly fee of 50Euros.
And the Telekom is not alone with wanting support money from everyone. The southern Rheinland saw multiple providers wanting to connect villages for huge prices, which leads to the weird situation, that southern Rhineland now gets support from a Swiss company. That company doesn't need any money and is still laying fiber through the woods to long forgotten villages.
Compare that with most other European countries, where you can get a fiber connection for the same money with synchronous 100Mbit/s or more. The northern countries with their hard rock grounds did get it working in a much better way than Germany.
And don't rely on LTE, as the LTE tarif were bound to lower GB/month traffic limits and huge costs, as the LTE frequencies were auctioned of between the providers. And the winners couldn't build where they wanted, they had to provide LTE at first where there was no mobile internet available at all, which means on the acres.
Germany is in a sad state in regards to connectivity. And this has nothing to do with people being afraid. If you let the monopolist do whatever it wants and not enforce the modernization, then this is what you can expect.
To me it's about latency more than bandwidth. Unfortunately providers do not advertise in milliseconds. They used to for a short while to have "gamers" pay extra around 2000 I believe.
I agree. Especially cheaper german providers like UnityMedia have huge issues with latency because they overload their network in order to reduce cost.
- ability, willingness, etc to tweak and upgrade your infrastructure
- how competition-friendly and pro-consumer your market is
- the type of grants, contracts and industry ties your environment has (think special, prototype, maybe even government subsidized hardware, for example)
- reflects the amount of mastery over geography or nature itself - this is what successful countries pull
- is the economy market-driven or just a pocket bubble?
There might be others, but this is already quite damning imo. Also I need gigabit because that determines the size of my erection and i'd go to lengths such as paying FAIR prices for it.
Sure, that should be enough for home user. But even in my part of the woods (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) which is quite rural with smaller villages lacking even these type of connections. There was a story in the local newspaper of a stonemasonry in a smaller village which was having problems perform work for clients in Berlin and Hamburg since the upload speed to the companies machines was to slow. So it's not only "innovate" companies suffering from the lack of infrastructure.
no, but I was on a uni network for a year (basically gbit with good IX connectivity in the UK) and being able to fling around data to the cloud like it's your local network really cuts down on things you think/worry about - making it easier to work and try new things.
Is it wasteful? sure, but who cares if it allows you to try random stuff you would hesitate about otherwise?
I'm not saying its not nice - I'd like 1Gb! But the US has terrible connectivity as well, see HN discussions about how evil Comcast is. Hasn't prevented them from starting successful companies.
Its like "we need more car companies, lets build more roads". True to an extend, but there are so many other factors.
How about, say, 20-30Mbit/s upstream and long-lasting IP addresses? A couple of people on WebRTC conferences can easily use >10Mbit/s and the conferences work best if noone's IP address changes in the middle.
Most users are dreaming of 50Mbit/s. In small villages 2Mbit/s are the norm. For me the bad internet in rural areas is one reason that I wouldn't move my business back to Germany.
> Companies operating in Germany have to make sure that data is anonymized and stored in accordance with the law. These data rules are a big reasons why German companies have to stick with their old tools. But every day that we Germans obsess about data, thousands of businesses elsewhere merrily and creatively forge ahead without us.
As a citizen of the United States, I wish my country valued privacy 1/4 as much as Germany.
In the wakes of Edward Snowden's revelations (where Merkel's phone was tapped, they lied to the public that it was not and the next day it was confirmed that it was indeed being tapped) it was shown, that the BKA and other parts of German government gladly sent over all the data they have collected to our "friends" over the pond.
Whilst I and many truly appreciate the data protection, there are other laws, that force you to save data over a certain period of time, see the
"Voratsdatenspeicherung" debate.
There are so many beyond retarded laws, that make an internet based startup in Germany a very bad gamble.
One of those retarded laws was "Störerhaft", which up until the end of 2017 made offering free WiFi basically illegal. Now you are required to identify and collect every real name within a Network. Now offering WiFi isn't straight up a guarantee for trouble, but you are forced to use a login page, which saves the name of the user.
Yes, I'm fairly certain that the BKA being involved would have been a far greater scandal. The BND is well known to act above the law because of a total lack of accountability. The BKA is just the federal police.
To put it in terms foreigners might be able to relate to:
BND = CIA
BKA = FBI
BfV (Verfassungsschutz) = NSA
The BND is the German intelligence service and primarily tracks threats outside Germany. The BKA mostly just coordinates investigations at the national level (it's a lot more hands-off than the FBI). The Verfassungsschutz monitors domestic threats.
The Verfassungsschutz also infamously completely missed the existence of the far-right NSU terrorists who happily comitted a number of attacks and bombings which went unnoticed because of victim-blaming ("A Turkish fast food joint was bombed? Must have gotten involved with the Turkish mafia."). The Verfassungsschutz also later interfered in an investigation against itself by accidentally destroying evidence.
So if you still have difficulties telling them apart:
BND = unaccountable spies
BKA = federal police that doesn't really do much policing
Working as a consultant on digitization with some of the largest German companies, the main problem is their success in one field.
Everyone wants to innovate, I've got orders directly from the board on these topics, everyone in top and middle management is on board, wants to innovate, there is a lot of tailwind, but in the field they are squashed by the success of their main products and by time constraints maintaining their cash cows.
Many expect ROI much too early. I tell them look at startups, VCs and exits, these are the time frames to expect success (up to 10 years). But if a new project doesn't make enough money in 2 years it is often killed or seen as a career killer being on board.
I can absolutely agree having seen this happening much too often. It’s like someone took the bad stories from Clayton Christensen‘s „Innovators Dilemma“ and implemented them down to the word. Protecting revenue pools and managing innovation by line managers are stereotypical examples here. However while not being brilliant at true innovation many larger corporates are doung a decent job in managing strategies to protect their business longer than you would expect. This may not be as fancy as the startup world but nevertheless pays their bills.
(Had to open this in Chrome, because Fx Nightly says Error code: MOZILLA_PKIX_ERROR_ADDITIONAL_POLICY_CONSTRAINT_FAILED)
I have to disagree with all points.
1) Maybe true - but lots of exceptions exist as far as I'm aware (based on friends/social circle). Yes, there's some overhead, but not staggeringly so.
2) Oh my god.. Sure.. That would _certainly_ increase productivity. Give me Mail over Something-Like-IRC-But-Worse any day. Yammer seems popular around here right now and is shit, plain and simple. Slack has no value for me. If these tools are missing I'd say that's something Germany does right?
3) Fiber optics are uncommon unless you're lucky (say, Cologne has decent options). But broadband is very common. Falling at innovation seems a tad exaggerated.
4) We have good CS programs. Schools tend to be worse (sometimes far so) as far as I experienced and heard, but universities are quite okay. Otherwise .. this is basically the general "big market, not enough people" problem that HN confirms for more or less any country as soon as the "Working in $country" comes up.
Seems .. not just an opinion piece, it seems wildly inaccurate to me. Or to put it more politely: The author's and my ideas of digital innovation or failure thereof don't quiiiite align.
Which I think is the major point the author missed, the german IT industry itself is in denial for a long time now. Its not even the question why can't Germany create any major internet company like Facebook or Slack, its: "Slack has no value to me", I don't understand why people use Facebook/Whatsapp at all... These are the majority in the industry and block any real innovation at the earliest possible moment.
Only if you buy into the idea that Slack (or Facebook) have any value in the first place. You can say "You're wrong to disagree", but ..
I do believe that Germany has issues, mostly governmental (setting up a company, taxes, bureaucracy) and there _is_ a certain lack of cultural support for moving fast / start-up culture. Having lived in Germany for most of my life, a year in Tel Aviv and being in Singapore now: Tel Aviv and Singapore have a thriving scene of people that want to start their own company. The places in Germany I've called home never felt that way.
But this article? It seems rather pointless to me. Just like Slack. Or Facebook. :)
As a comparison - a "senior test automation engineer" in Poland has usually 3-5 years experience in automation in the rob ad. I've never really seen anything more than 5.
In Germany, I recently got "junior test automation engineer" job offer, that required at least 3 years of automation experience. Upon my joking remark to the recruited, he just smirked and said "that's how the customer sees it".
As a foreigner in Germany, I'd add to that list bureaucracy & the German language, a duet that does little to bolster the willingness of non-native speakers founding companies here.
So I am an expat in Germany for the past 3 years, worked in 3 companies startup, corporate and other big company who started outside of Germany. These are my 2 cents.
The digital innovation is being killed by
1) the people who hold the money.
Venture capital in Germany and in Europe (excluding London) is totally different that in the US. In Germany for your seed round they want you to show them MRR, churn, thousands of users, forget it if you are 1 founder etc. The barrier is way higher than in US.
Furthermore, only recently (2-3 years) have we seen been seed rounds in Germany but these being lead by non-german funds or by global funds that base in Germany.
The limit of funds also limits how much companies can pay.
2) the obsession with titles PhD, MD, Lead etc.
3) do things that dont scale, is literally translated into, keep getting interns till the university doesnt have any more students to copy data from excel1 to excel2.
4) the still monolithic approach of hierarchies. (The MD (CEO) of one of the companies I worked for literally said that you should listen to X person because he has been in the company longer, even though that was for 2 months.
Sorry but there is no shortage of talent. really big names in their field have grown and live in Germany but there is no way that Deutsche telekom would hire them, as their contracts are low paying, have restrictions in terms of employment and most people know that when you go in there its kind of the public sector, you wont get out.
There is a little bit of truth around the "tools" part but this is not due to law. Noone cares about the law when you are 5 man team with 10 users. The problem is that they insist on using shitty tools just because they are from another Germany company. Personio is one of them.
I hope everything I said is clear enough and doesnt cause any missconceptions.
I agree on many points. Wanted to add that in my view using "shitty tools" is not "just" because they are from another German company. In my experience in two DAX companies as well as startups, European and often times German providers especially of SaaS are picked due to not wanting to send customer, employee and company secret data off to jurisdictions which have been shown to be weak on data privacy, as well as the general feeling that there are fewer data leaks especially from U.S.-American companies.
One can certainly debate whether that feeling is based on solid ground, given the larger amount of SaaS companies in the US, and the fact that larger companies may attract more attention.
I guess I should clarify, by no means did I want to offend german software engineering. Ofcourse there are great products made from german software company or any companies (cars duh.)
Further that, I understand your point but I do not believe it is an issue in new companies. Yes Deutsche telekom might have such issue, but if you dont use Slack you can use HipChat you can use Microsoft Teams, you can use Google hangouts chat.
All with different policies, data centers etc. Hell you can even roll your own with open source projects.
There is always a way out and hiding behind the law for not adapting is bad for them.
BTW I believe DAX companies are more sensitive in terms of data than most companies, lets say soundcloud.
I think Germany's problem is that it is a lot more bureaucratic and it offers little to no incentive.
a) It has not offered any tax advantage unlike the Netherlands, where many foreigners own IP, holding companies etc...
b) Low-cost labor like Poland, so you'll have a hard time setting up an offshore office.
d) I felt people are bit rigid there. Neither, you can push them around like in many outsourcing hubs, nor you can use the money to drain talent away from competitors. The employees are not particularly noob, unlike many other other outsourcing hubs. If you are planning to do something unethical, most you can expect from your employees is <inaction>. They won't leave, they won't help.
b) and d) are the reasons why many specialists emigrate PL --> DE. Getting payed more and not being pushed around? Sign me in. The middle management in Poland -- timid towards management abroad and despotic towards locals -- is just soul-sucking. Many thrive in such chicken-farm environment though.
I think that it's a religious problem, originating within the protestant/prussian work ethic, and the holiness of work.
Full employment is the ideal for the politicians in Germany, and they get there also with the help of the church and the social system, "prettifying" unemployment statistics by funneling unemployed people into often nonsensical bureaucratic jobs.
But technology and innovation really means less work for humans, and the fight against technology and innovation then becomes just the natural outcome prioritizing full employment and work, it's the natural enemy of a system like that.
As a German, I highly doubt that nowadays "protestant/prussian work ethic, and the holiness of work" still play a role. While there might be "prettifying" in the unemployment stats, the churches play very little to no role in that IMO (I'd be interested in references otherwise).
I rather think that trade unions, as well as crude structures like the "IHKs" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_Chambers...) play a much bigger role in keeping things as they are, and general risk-avoiding tendencies in higher management levels.
The reason is simple. If you were a top developer, would you like to make 80k€ at a German software company, paying 33% income tax, or 160k$ at a US company paying 9.3%. And in the German company, the non-technical management is traditionally payed a high salary than the engineer.
Of course things are changing, but German developers will have to learn to ask for more. And until that happens, the trend to leave for greener fields will stay.
Edit: 9.3% was off a google search. see below for more knowledgeable numbers.
Well, you might have to pay higher taxes in Germany than in the U.S., but please don't perform a "Milchmädchenrechnung" (naive fallacy) to just compare the tax rates...
In Germany, the education system from kindergarten to university is basically free (although schools could be much better funded), you have a public health care system that (mostly) works, public transportation, a welfare system that makes sure that everyone can at least survive, etc. etc....
I spend some time in SF, and even with a much higher income and potentially lower taxes, I'd never be able to afford the same quality of living there, especially if you have kids.
> If you were a top developer, would you like to make 80k€ at a German software company, paying 33% income tax, or 160k$ at a US company paying 9.3%.
Well, that depends. If I have to put more than half of that 160k$ (which is obviously a Silicon Valley example) into the measly place that I live in because rents and house prices are through the roof (like in...Silicon Valley!), the seemingly high salary can easily become very misleading.
> Of course things are changing, but German developers will have to learn to ask for more.
That is true, but I can also see this happening right now due to the relative shortage of personnel. It just takes a while, because the management people can't easily justify sudden salary raises in the upper double-digit percentage area. People need time to build a higher general level of salaries in the area, but it is definitely something that's going on right now.
Silicon Valley is not even close to that expensive.
A 2 bedroom apartment in Pacific Heights, San Francisco's most expensive neighborhood, can be had for 6k in rent per month, which is $72k per year, which is still less than 80k.
I lived in US for 6 years and always paid %40 for tax. Add that very high living expenses, expensive insurance policies where you pay lots of money and still get poor health service.
Besides, US immigration system is not based on your skills. As an engineer you sign a slavery visa (h1b) and can not quit your employer until getting greencard. They give greencard to random people with lottery, not a joke. Your wife can not work, too.
In Europe tho, you get blue card right away. This is why I left US and choose Berlin as my next city. I'll make less but more valuable income here.
You'd have to make an incredible salary to pay 40%.
You nearly have to make $750,000 per year in Boston to pay 40% between Federal + State + FICA.
Per a new study by the Journal of the American Medical Association comparing 11 developed nations on cost vs results, the US doesn't have poor health service. It's a lot closer to a lower-median rating among top developed nations than a grade of poor. The US scores very poorly on accessibility (10% of the population doesn't have coverage), and it scores very poorly on cost.
"One of the more notable findings in this report is that, at least in some areas, the quality of health care in the U.S. fared comparably to other countries. Long wait times for treatment, for example, are not as much of an issue for Americans as they are elsewhere. In treating heart attacks and strokes, the U.S. actually had the best record of any country. So, contrary to past findings, the quality of care may not be much worse in the U.S. than elsewhere. But the nation's was still shown to be the least accessible health care system."
Your premise is correct in regards to the salary. However, you're going to pay a fair bit on that $160k in the US. The US has one of the most progressive income tax policies in the developed world. The median full-time income in the US is about $50,000; at that level, you'll pay a 8.7% (2018) effective federal income tax rate (2018), however FICA (Social Security etc) and state taxes will typically get you for another 12-14% or so. At $160,000 your effective federal income rate jumps to 18.6% (for 2018).
This is Federal + State + FICA, on $160,000:
Boston: $48,000; Los Angeles & San Francisco: $52,000; Boise, Idaho: $51,000; Seattle: $40,000 (Washington has no state income tax); Miami FL: $40,000; New York: $55,000
Basically you're looking at 25% to 34% total. Your healthcare will also likely be covered by your employer, external to the salary, and obviously we're not counting any stock compensation.
I have no doubt about that. I'm merely pointing out in response to the parent, that you're going to pay a fair bit on a $160,000 style income in the US, not 10% style rates.
"Modern tools are the foundation of ideation and innovation. How can you expect your employees to be nimble with their ideas, when their infrastructure is clunky? If employees aren’t allowed to use any top-notch digital products at work, how on earth should they know how to create them?" This is absolutely true and applies completely to the German work culture.
Not up-to-date tools and data silos are a huge topic in Germany and in fact all over the world. Companies use tools because they fullfil a certain, necessary task like CRM, ERP and others, but they don't care about the integration of the different systems at all. And so it turns out, that different employees in different departments use different tools - although working in the same company. We at https://zenkit.com are planning to change this, by integrating many different tools in one. With seemless switching and collaboration features, to enable employees to work together productively.
I think German companies are a lot more conservative when it comes to taking risk. That also goes for customers. Customers look at long evaluation periods before adopting a technology. This causes most tech companies to over engineer a solution before bringing it to market.
Meh. When you're in a country where most things "just work" (eg. France, Germany etc.), and you see so many broken systems around you, of course you want to focus on keeping your existing special advantages. When most of the solutions you have work quite well, randomly picking new stuff from the space of possible solutions results on average in worse things than what you already have. "Undirected innovation" doesn't make things better for you, and "directed innovation" is something nobody has figure out how to do yet (and I'd be that nobody ever will!).
So most innovation will tend to come from somewhat-broken economies and somewhat-broken societies! For them sampling even randomly from the space of new solutions makes sense.
The magic though is how to "stabilize" an economy or society in the "half-broken" state, how to prevent it from going downhill from here to actually-failed-state and actually-failed-economy and then even further to (civil-)war. Only the U.S.A. seems to have managed to nourish this "always half-broken society and economy" that truly accelerates innovation. Even the "Trump thing" seems like a good example of getting this right, fertilizing society with some fresh stinky yummy chaos, even if nobody puts it in words.
Europe could imho get the same "magic sauce" by keeping afloat and integrated, and occasionally half-fixing, its "peripheral" zones (think Greece, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria etc.) and allowing free migration of money and people. From the half-broken places innovation will come. Or instability will propagate to the more mature/efficient societies and make these more innovative too. The trick is just to not let them get fully-broken or let them drag the rest downhill. (Or not do other exceedingly stupid shit like Brexit, bad deals with Russia etc.) Outside the tech-bubble Germany seems to have had a good idea with the "take in all refugees to stir some blood and agitate people a bit" move... I'm sure it will grow their economy long-term, though not sure if it would be relevant to innovation in tech.
That's blatantly incorrect. Innovation historically overwhelmingly tends to come from the least broken societies/countries. If you were right, countries near the median on income and corruption, would be vast producers of innovation (they are not).
Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland are routinely ranked as among the most innovative countries. If they're somewhat broken, who are the non-broken countries?
Innovation doesn't "happen" where you actually measure it, where a company gets founded, or where a patent gets registered...
It happens inside the head of a random Russian dude that studies in Germany and then moves to Zurich. Or in the head of a second generation Syrian immigrant to the U.S. People are like blood, they need to be pumped, squished, occasionally crushed etc.
Sure, the company that eventually makes profit from an innovative idea ends up being registered in a developed country, the article describing an innovative technique ends up being published while someone works for a prestigious western university etc. Switzerland is like the "fake news" of every socio-economical statistic since it's a weird "magnet country" for money and ideas from anywhere else.
> Sweden, Finland, Denmark
Agree, they do something right, though not sure what. There's genuine innovation coming from there, but I'm really not familiar with these countries. And I'd bet they're also good at extracting valiue, registering, patenting etc. Or maybe they've managed to get the same benefits of a half-broken society (basically "tons of unemployed/unsatisfactory-employed smart people" kept "motivated enough" but not beyond their "breaking points") without the "broken" part by managing to simply not "overwork the innovativeness out of smart people"? It would be awesome to know this strategy works...
Just to add two unrelated points to this interesting discussion:
(1) the biggest lobbying groups in Germany are telcos and manufacturing. No wonder poltliticians dont‘t get the ‚digital‘ (btw. I hate that word) message. Just look at the amounts FB and Google are spending to ‚explain‘ their business in the US. Especially telcos are not really helpful here as their natural agenda is not improving innovation but keeping costs low due to limited (oligopolistic) competition.
(2) let’s add China to this discussion. Against public perception they are innovating at an enormous rate. The days where they succeeded due to inferior quality and blatant IP theft are long gone.
Following this thread now for I while, I need to give my few cents:
1. Management - I've worked in lots of german companies from all sizes. I'd say the bigger the company is, the more hierarchical is the structure. I think this is a natural thing to happen. But, saying "most German organizations are shaped like a pyramid" is not completely correct.
Every company has it's individual shape. And I can tell, I've worked in rather large companies following fairly modern approaches (sattelite-structures, flat-democratic structures, etc.).
The claim of "the pyramid" sounds like a biased conception to me, but I'd be interested in studies about german company structures (anyone?).
2. missing tools - this is just untrue. Of course email is still important, but we're using Git/Slack/Jira/Whatever-is-cool-right-now, in germany, too.
Also, there is nothing wrong with Excel or MS Project.
3. outdated infrastructure - TRUE!
We have a big problem with infrastructure, especially in rural areas (where rent is cheap and overall life quality quiet good). The goverment decided to invest in fibre-technology, though. Maybe a bit late.
LTE/Mobile is still lacking and more expensive than in other european countries.
If we don't improve this, it will be a big risk for our economy in the future.
4. lack of talent - now this is very interesting.
Personally, I think talent is passion compared with experience over time.
Our educational system is (not great, but...) good enough.
However, I've never seen a great programmer popping out of college/univeristy. The most "talented" folks, I met, often are in their late 30s, 40s and above.
They mostly understand business, programming and people-work better than younger collegues.
Yet, german companies are suffering from age-discrimination like in other nations, too.
For this point, I'd like to refer to Robert C. Martin, by saying we need more discipline in our craft.
Instead of hiring 10 graduates, better hire 3 veterans. Because the mess, unexperienced programmers leave behind, will make companies want to hire even more of them, producing even worse software, so managent gets an impression of having not enough people. (get my point)?
I came 4 years ago to Germany to do my PhD at a University and even here I can feel the rigidity in the integration of new technologies. You might expect that at least in universities they would be more flexible about which tools you use, but it took me 3 years to get Linux installed in my computer! Who could tell how many hours I lost because I had to use windows?! (an OS I just cannot work as efficiently as in Linux.) They love to give excuses about security concerns, but they don't even try!
You must be very patient. I bought own 600€ computer an der Uni and installed the tools I needed to get things done. Many did the same. Zero hours lost, 100% productivity at home on weekends. Your PhD is definitely not Germany’s problem.
As a german, I see a problem within our culture.
We are a people of envy and jellousy.
Great people often get discriminated...a brilliant developer?...no he's an arrogant academic...a smart manager?...just a renegade not playing by the rules.
This is the typical german mindset. You better be avarage, following the german mediocrity.
That's too simple.
What you are describing, may be a symptom, but not the cause of issues withing germany's IT-industry.
As the article states, 'hierarchical' structures are still a common thing in german companies. On the other hand, lots of those companies are much older than Google for example.
They've been successful with their model for decades.
Also germany is a big enough market for itself; the need to compete internationally is not strong (yet).
And: conservatism isn't bad per se. For many people it means a kind of safety and familarity.
Maybe for most folks, it's more important to have a good dayjob that supports their families, than to follow the "arrogant academic" into unkown waters...
Such thinking is all over Europe. Sweden and the Netherlands as well, yet both do much better in the digital economy.
I think as the article points out the problem is more of the rigid and hierarchical business culture of Germany.
Also Germans are much less international. The dutch and nordics are much much more tuned into the anglo-saxon world were the majority of software innovation happens.
That is a function of being small countries who always had to look outwards and learn other languages and cultures. Germans seem far more insular to me.
Less international? I live in north germany. A few kilometers away we have Airbus (which makes it the third largest aircraft manufacturing plant in the world), one of the largest ports in the world, ... there are even weekly cargo trains going to China. Just recently a 1 billion research laser has begun operation - only possible to build with international cooperation.
If you look at the German Mittelstand, you can find 1000+ small and medium enterprises who have world wide business from rural areas.
I find the management and politician problem true in the UK too, however there is a younger breed that takes tech more seriously. I see a lot of 40+ non technical people that see technology as a nuisance and don't really respect developers. I think in another twenty years dthe geek will truly inherit the earth.
I wonder if the German federal government could play a larger role as an innovation facilitator, that then hands breakthroughs off to the private sector for commercialization. It produced a $44 billion budget surplus last year. Does Germany have an equivalent of DARPA?
Fraunhofer insititute for one. But its tiny compared to DARPA.
Solution shouldn’t be more government (we have enough crooks already in Brussel).
We need more private sector investment, less regulations, more entrepreuneurial spirit, less scrutiny of failures, more guts to take risk.
Give me just one example where that ever worked to create a viable company. Whoops, there aren‘t any. Separating research and development never really worked for anything. What do you expect, if you have a two class employment hierarchy: First, people who have all the freedom, but no responsibility or constraints, giving semi-good solutions to people who aren’t motivated to let other peoples ideas succeed with all the responsibility to make them successful but no freedom to pivot or iterate. Even if you separate them inside the same company, very rarely does something usable come out of it. Proof in case: Some of the worst, most uninnovative companies in Germany (SAP, T-Mobile, etc.) have some of the most stellar research results, papers and sought-after positions, yet they never result in successful products in practice.
DARPA funded the seed for the Internet, GPS, self-driving cars, plus all the work that went into The Mother of All Demos.
Bell Labs: its researchers are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the operating systems Unix, Plan 9, and Inferno, and the programming languages C, C++, and S.
Plenty of viable companies have been created from these research results.
Commercialization hand-offs have been extremely successful. It doesn't have to be for starting one specific company, it can be for sparking large broad technology adoption such as the Internet or technology in the aerospace industry. SpaceX exists overwhelmingly due to NASA. Tesla solely exists because of the US Government. Self-driving technology has been dramatically pushed forward by numerous government initiatives over decades. The iPhone exists because of numerous technologies invented by or funded by the US military. GPS exists because of the US Government. Silicon Valley owes a ton of its success to the US Government funding progress on microchips. The entire computer industry owes an epic thank you to the US Government supporting it.
Maybe it works very differently in Germany. In the US, the federal government has handed off vast technology to the private sector.
From the comments here, Germany looks like Italy way more than I thought. Weirdly enough, I had to emigrate to Poland to find more "flexibility" in salary negotiations and meritocracy
Pardon my German, but that is utter and complete Büffelscheiße on multiple levels. Firstly, how does data protection and privacy law prevent you from using those tools? Secondly, the German law in these matters is not a hindrance to innovation, that is a lame excuse: If the only business model you can come up with is grabbing as much data as you can and then sell it to advertisers, that is not innovative at all.
I think the problem more has to do with a general resistance to change that is very common in German companies and public institutions. "Was der Bauer nicht kennt, frisst er nicht", as we say in Germany ("What the farmer doesn't know, he won't eat"). Large institutions and bureaucracies develop a huge inertia as they grow. The three rules why things do not change: 1. We have always done it like this; 2. We have never done it like that; 3. Once we change this one thing, where does it lead to?