4 ms·

Interesting idea - I've always associated germany with startups for some reason.

by JonRB 10y ago

Mo3 10y ago
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.
- herbst 10y ago
  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
  - Mo3 10y ago
    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.
- bambax 10y ago
  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. People do seem very conservative there.
  - Mo3 10y ago
    Munich is less bavarian than anything else in Bavaria. Go figure.
  - quonn 10y ago
    > which only offers traditional food 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).
- kfk 10y ago
  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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- JTenerife 10y ago
  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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GDP
  - Mo3 10y ago
    Because of stuff like BMW, not because of thousands of hipster IT startups. It's not really stereotyping after 20+ years of concious examination.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    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.
- eclipsetheworld 10y ago
  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.
  - Mo3 10y ago
    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.
- cat199 10y ago
  > 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..
- JonRB 10y ago
  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.
whazor 10y ago
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.

Interesting idea - I've always associated germany with startups for some reason.

by JonRB 10y ago

Interesting idea - I've always associated germany with startups for some reason.

Mo3 10y ago

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.

herbst 10y ago
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
- Mo3 10y ago
  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.
bambax 10y ago
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. People do seem very conservative there.
- Mo3 10y ago
  Munich is less bavarian than anything else in Bavaria. Go figure.
- quonn 10y ago
  > which only offers traditional food 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).
kfk 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
JTenerife 10y ago
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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GDP
- Mo3 10y ago
  Because of stuff like BMW, not because of thousands of hipster IT startups. It's not really stereotyping after 20+ years of concious examination.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  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.
eclipsetheworld 10y ago
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.
- Mo3 10y ago
  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.
cat199 10y ago
> 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..
JonRB 10y ago
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.

whazor 10y ago

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.