Probably explains why Germany is such a powerhouse in software development NOT.
I do wonder about the effect of all the bright kids who would do CS/Computing in the USA/Uk instead want to work for Audi.
Rigid hierarchies do have down sides until recently get put on the vocational track in the German school system that was it you where on it for life and it was almost impossible to go from Aprentice-> Technician to Engineer.
I think the title is less of a problem. It's more of a mental problem what software engineering (or developing or whatever) is about. In Germany there seems to a dominant opinion that sw development is easy and can be done by everyone. And therefore it can easily be outsourced. You will never get a big reputation (and a big salary) as a sw developer in most german companies - because thoughts are that working on requirements and coordinating projects are the more important things. Quite sad this situation. Especially when you consider the horrible quality of the SW developed in such (outsourcing) models.
I'm sure if you really want to sw development you would probably be better of working in USA/Uk than at Audi. Working on a direct competitor in germany, and I'm knowing the situation of the industry in the meantime quite well.
It might not be a powerhouse but it's fairly stable/good.
There's at least one major player (SAP) there's plenty of companies in future fields (Metaio for AR for example) and there's a lot of in house stuff. There's also sort of an "alternative OS" tradition (Suse, yellowTAB).
There's also more of a focus on business software (SAP influence might shine through) imo (the difference between Wirtschaftsinformatik and Information Systems has been discussed at length in journals)
Berlin is one of the better non-SV startup locations from what I hear.
Ah SAP one of those products that promises the moon on a stick and requires expensive SAP consultants to configure - worse than Oracle from what I am told
I've worked for a competitor. Independent of the quality of their products SAP is still a big software company and the German software marked makes up roughly 50% of the entire European market. At least that was the case around 2012 haven't checked since (SAP alone is responsible for most of it).
My point is merely that Germany is hardly a software wasteland and the assertion that "the talented people flock to traditional engineering" is somewhat dubious (imo).
There's some cultural indicators that programming is a topic of interest as well (the existence and size of the CCC for example).
I do wonder about the effect of all the bright kids who would do CS/Computing in the USA/Uk instead want to work for Audi.
Rigid hierarchies do have down sides until recently get put on the vocational track in the German school system that was it you where on it for life and it was almost impossible to go from Aprentice-> Technician to Engineer.