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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
by cntlzw 10y ago
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.
- Mo3 10y agoThanks! Couldn't have expressed it better.
- harryf 10y agoThe 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
- kuschku 10y agoDeutsche 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.
- kleiba 10y agoThe 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!
- m_fayer 10y agoHere 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.
- yitchelle 10y agoFucked 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.
- odiroot 10y agoMoving Kabel Deutschland (now Vodafone unfortunately) takes 3-4 days if your new building has the cabling done.
- kleiba 10y agoGood to hear! The experience I described above was indeed a number of years ago, but also compare your comment to the one by m_fayer.
- ci5er 10y agoHow do you work if you have no Internet? Coffee shops? (Or, heaven forfend, you go to an office for 16 hours/day?)
- shortsightedsid 10y agoNot 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.
- preetish 10y agoSurprising! In Bangalore, it's a matter of a day or two.
- mindentropy 10y agoNo 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. I really hope it improves though.
- mschuster91 10y agoIMHO, 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)
- no_wave 10y agoYo got 1.5 million dollars fwiw.
- m_fayer 10y agoAlso, 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.
- ykler 10y agoI 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.
- 10y ago
- josefx 10y ago> 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?
- louisswiss 10y agoChip on your shoulder? 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.
- josefx 10y ago> 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.
- louisswiss 10y agoAll true and all reasons why venture capital/startup investing in general requires experience, insight, time and 'losable' capital to do properly... These are the basic risks you need to control for before investing.
- wrinkl3 10y agoWhich European country has the best atmosphere for startups, in your opinion?
- gadelhas 10y agoIf 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.
- mrlinx 10y agoActually, at the moment, its not really possible to create a bank account without visiting the country.
- preetish 10y agoIsn't the UK (London to be specific) right after the U.S. and somewhat similar to Israel in terms of startups?
- kintamanimatt 10y agoHistorically 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.
- ed_balls 10y agoLaw written in English is a huge advantage.
- literallycancer 10y ago
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoI 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?
- chmln 10y ago> The work culture in America is toxic for the workers, requiring job hopping, long hours, and relatively little gain These are quite the sweeping claims you're making for all ~125 million american workers. There are so many factors to consider, yet you make such broad assumptions without a trace of evidence or logic to backup your narrow-minded claims.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoThe 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: http://www.businessinsider.com/difference-swedish-american-work-culture-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/difference-swedish-american-w... http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-usa-business-culture http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-usa-business-culture https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/americas-workers-stressed-out-overwhelmed-totally-exhausted/284615/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/america... 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.
- 10y ago
- PSeitz 10y agoAnd Germans really like to complain.
- discordianfish 10y agoVery 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.
- diminish 10y agoSome 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.
- Matthias247 10y agoI 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).
- otheotheothe 10y agoAhh wat.... 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.
- hellofunk 10y ago> 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. This is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on any web page in years.