8 ms·

Why German companies fail at digital innovation

99 points by imartin2k 9y ago

amriksohata 9y ago
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.
goldenkey 9y ago
Historically, Germany has outsourced most of its technical innovations [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
adventured 9y ago
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?
- mpfundstein 9y ago
  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.
- endymi0n 9y ago
  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.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Take a look at this list, as one small example: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358 https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?i... 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.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    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.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Yeah, US companies are much better at socializing the cost of research and privatizing the rewards.
franzjoy 9y ago
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.
- jernfrost 9y ago
  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.
  - rjsw 9y ago
    I think that TV has a big role in this. German TV dubs everything into German, Dutch TV just adds subtitles to foreign programmes.
  - lispm 9y ago
    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.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sbruny 9y ago
  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...
sleavey 9y ago
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. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-13019777 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-13019777
- carlmr 9y ago
  >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.
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
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.
- oger 9y ago
  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.
- m00dy 9y ago
  Can you share with me your contact information ? thanks
stewbrew 9y ago
"Some of my clients haven’t even found a single applicant for positions in ..." I wonder if this doesn't have to do with pay. I often get the impression they want Mr/Mrs Houdini know-it-all of ML but offer entry level pay.
- bushin 9y ago
  They want Dr Houdini, no less.
- carlmr 9y ago
  Yep, I see these ads every day on stackoverflow and LinkedIn. They want to pay 50K€ (roughly entry level salary for many engineers) for a PhD in ML.
- adamhepner 9y ago
  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".
  - maddening 9y ago
    Well, recently I saw this: http://praca.antyweb.pl/job/junior-java-developer http://praca.antyweb.pl/job/junior-java-developer Most relevant parts for English speakers: * junior Java developer * min. 2 years of experience * knowledge about Java 8, Spring 4+, Spring Boot, microservices Salary typical for advanced mid/senior. I don't even ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ar0 9y ago
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.
- isolli 9y ago
  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. [0] http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/reuters-says-german-employers-don-t-understand-labor-markets-don-t-raise-wages-in-spite-of-labor-shortage http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/reuters-says-german-emp...
- carlmr 9y ago
  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.
- ealexhudson 9y ago
  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.
symphom 9y ago
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.
- adventured 9y ago
  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.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    With all the taxes in Germany together you're also paying around 42.5% of your 80K salary on taxes. Income tax is not the only tax we have.
    - adventured 9y ago
      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.
- gregw134 9y ago
kekimusmaximus 9y ago
Germans are obsesed with hierarchy. Management is what counts for a business, a developer is just a cost. You can see incentives in salaries. As a senior software developer you would be lucky to get 70k, but in the same company if you went the management route double that is common.
mindjiver 9y ago
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.
- adrianN 9y ago
  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?
  - expertentipp 9y ago
    > Are 50Mbit/s not enough to learn how to code or deploy your stuff to the cloud? Oh! Found a Deutsche Telekom representative!
    - vk23 9y ago
      He has a point though. I guess you are even more productive if your connection does not allow you to stream netflix all day ;)
      - expertentipp 9y ago
        Netflix is an evil invention of privacy-violating Americans (an probably operating in copyright grayzone). There, am I doing it correctly?
      - thunfischbrot 9y ago
blt 9y ago
> 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.
- theNewMicrosoft 9y ago
  So much for Value Of Privacy [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/nsa-tapped-german-chancellery-decades-wikileaks-claims-merkel https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/nsa-tapped-g... [2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/gchq-and-nsa-targeted-private-german-companies-a-961444.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/gchq-and-nsa-tar...
- VladTheImplier 9y ago
  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.
  - thunfischbrot 9y ago
    Was it really the BKA? I was under the impression that it had been the BND, which should be scrapped as far as I'm concerned.
drinchev 9y ago
IMHO Germany also lacks the culture of paying for talent. Employee options doesn't really work here and nobody will give 100k for an employee. They will gladly pay : - 10k for missed opportunities ( I've seen companies looking for devs for more than half an year ) - 10k for a recruiter - 80k for the employee Not to mention I've seen consulting companies "renting" good freelancers to conglomerates, for double the price of what they are paid.
- carlmr 9y ago
  True, they even often pay more than that for missed opportunities and recruiters. I think your estimates are on the low end. And the consulting companies business is huge here. They're paying more even than for internal employees.
- lispm 9y ago
  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.
  - thunfischbrot 9y ago
    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.
lordnacho 9y ago
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?
- carlmr 9y ago
  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.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    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.
- adgulacti 9y ago
  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?".
FuckOffNeemo 9y ago
I found an appalling number of comparisons with the Australian Public Service in this article. Email. MS Project. The number of hoops we jumped through to get a white board...
Herbert2 9y ago
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.
alexandrerond 9y ago
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.
- expertentipp 9y ago
  > 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).
  - jcbrand 9y ago
    > see number of homeless and mental people on the streets There aren't that many in Germany, comparatively speaking.
  - _s 9y ago
    Yes; from a predominantly English speaking individual who lived in Berlin and had to traverse said bureaucracy.
    - pluma 9y ago
      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.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    The number of homeless and mentally ill in the streets is much smaller in any German city than in San Francisco or New York.
darklajid 9y ago
(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.
- larrykwg 9y ago
  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.
  - darklajid 9y ago
    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. :)
deltron3030 9y ago
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.
- tobilg 9y ago
  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_of_Industry_and_Commerce 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.
MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
Its slowly starting to change, the Silicon Valley scare crow works to some extend. But the reason is always either a) they are being out-competed by US companies and need to step up their game b) their core business is eroding and they _have_ to change Source: this is our daily business.
krylon 9y ago
"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?
- coinerone 9y ago
  Thanks krylon, that`s exactly what i thought too!
- ILikeConemowk 9y ago
  > 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.
  - thunfischbrot 9y ago
    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...
tapia 9y ago
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!
- lnsru 9y ago
  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.
eafkuor 9y ago
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
xstartup 9y ago
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.
- expertentipp 9y ago
  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.
singularity2001 9y ago
How relevant is the factor of German companies systematically being spied upon and suppressed by American Monopolies and government?
nnq 9y ago
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.
- adventured 9y ago
  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? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-korea-tops-global-innovation-ranking-again-as-u-s-falls https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-kor...
oger 9y ago
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.
Lapsa 9y ago
oh the germans... got outsourced to them some time ago. wasn't pleasant experience whatsoever. sadly I have built bad stereotypes over time :(
PeOe 9y ago
"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 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.
- Emeb 9y ago
  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.
- schuellerpa 9y ago
  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.
shapiro92 9y ago
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.
- thunfischbrot 9y ago
  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.
sbruny 9y ago
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)?
julienfr112 9y ago
SAP is german, is it not ?

99 points by imartin2k 9y ago

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.

goldenkey 9y ago

Historically, Germany has outsourced most of its technical innovations [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

adventured 9y ago

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?

mpfundstein 9y ago
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.
endymi0n 9y ago
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.
- adventured 9y ago
  Take a look at this list, as one small example: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358 https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?i... 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.
- icebraining 9y ago
  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.
icebraining 9y ago
Yeah, US companies are much better at socializing the cost of research and privatizing the rewards.

franzjoy 9y ago

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.

jernfrost 9y ago
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.
- rjsw 9y ago
  I think that TV has a big role in this. German TV dubs everything into German, Dutch TV just adds subtitles to foreign programmes.
- lispm 9y ago
  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.
deleted 9y ago
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sbruny 9y ago
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...

sleavey 9y ago

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. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-13019777 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-13019777

carlmr 9y ago
>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.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago

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.

oger 9y ago
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.
m00dy 9y ago
Can you share with me your contact information ? thanks

stewbrew 9y ago

"Some of my clients haven’t even found a single applicant for positions in ..." I wonder if this doesn't have to do with pay. I often get the impression they want Mr/Mrs Houdini know-it-all of ML but offer entry level pay.

bushin 9y ago
They want Dr Houdini, no less.
carlmr 9y ago
Yep, I see these ads every day on stackoverflow and LinkedIn. They want to pay 50K€ (roughly entry level salary for many engineers) for a PhD in ML.
adamhepner 9y ago
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".
- maddening 9y ago
  Well, recently I saw this: http://praca.antyweb.pl/job/junior-java-developer http://praca.antyweb.pl/job/junior-java-developer Most relevant parts for English speakers: * junior Java developer * min. 2 years of experience * knowledge about Java 8, Spring 4+, Spring Boot, microservices Salary typical for advanced mid/senior. I don't even ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ar0 9y ago

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.

isolli 9y ago
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. [0] http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/reuters-says-german-employers-don-t-understand-labor-markets-don-t-raise-wages-in-spite-of-labor-shortage http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/reuters-says-german-emp...
carlmr 9y ago
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.
ealexhudson 9y ago
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.

symphom 9y ago

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.

adventured 9y ago
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.
- carlmr 9y ago
  With all the taxes in Germany together you're also paying around 42.5% of your 80K salary on taxes. Income tax is not the only tax we have.
  - adventured 9y ago
    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.
gregw134 9y ago

kekimusmaximus 9y ago

Germans are obsesed with hierarchy. Management is what counts for a business, a developer is just a cost. You can see incentives in salaries. As a senior software developer you would be lucky to get 70k, but in the same company if you went the management route double that is common.

mindjiver 9y ago

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.

adrianN 9y ago
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?
- expertentipp 9y ago
  > Are 50Mbit/s not enough to learn how to code or deploy your stuff to the cloud? Oh! Found a Deutsche Telekom representative!
  - vk23 9y ago
    He has a point though. I guess you are even more productive if your connection does not allow you to stream netflix all day ;)
    - expertentipp 9y ago
      Netflix is an evil invention of privacy-violating Americans (an probably operating in copyright grayzone). There, am I doing it correctly?
    - thunfischbrot 9y ago

blt 9y ago

> 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.

theNewMicrosoft 9y ago
So much for Value Of Privacy [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/nsa-tapped-german-chancellery-decades-wikileaks-claims-merkel https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/nsa-tapped-g... [2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/gchq-and-nsa-targeted-private-german-companies-a-961444.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/gchq-and-nsa-tar...
VladTheImplier 9y ago
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.
- thunfischbrot 9y ago
  Was it really the BKA? I was under the impression that it had been the BND, which should be scrapped as far as I'm concerned.

drinchev 9y ago

IMHO Germany also lacks the culture of paying for talent. Employee options doesn't really work here and nobody will give 100k for an employee. They will gladly pay : - 10k for missed opportunities ( I've seen companies looking for devs for more than half an year ) - 10k for a recruiter - 80k for the employee Not to mention I've seen consulting companies "renting" good freelancers to conglomerates, for double the price of what they are paid.

carlmr 9y ago
True, they even often pay more than that for missed opportunities and recruiters. I think your estimates are on the low end. And the consulting companies business is huge here. They're paying more even than for internal employees.
lispm 9y ago
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.
- thunfischbrot 9y ago
  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.

lordnacho 9y ago

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?

carlmr 9y ago
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.
- majewsky 9y ago
  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.
adgulacti 9y ago
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?".

FuckOffNeemo 9y ago

I found an appalling number of comparisons with the Australian Public Service in this article. Email. MS Project. The number of hoops we jumped through to get a white board...

Herbert2 9y ago

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.

alexandrerond 9y ago

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.

expertentipp 9y ago
> 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).
- jcbrand 9y ago
  > see number of homeless and mental people on the streets There aren't that many in Germany, comparatively speaking.
- _s 9y ago
  Yes; from a predominantly English speaking individual who lived in Berlin and had to traverse said bureaucracy.
  - pluma 9y ago
    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.
- pavlov 9y ago
  The number of homeless and mentally ill in the streets is much smaller in any German city than in San Francisco or New York.

darklajid 9y ago

(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.

larrykwg 9y ago
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.
- darklajid 9y ago
  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. :)

deltron3030 9y ago

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.

tobilg 9y ago
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_of_Industry_and_Commerce 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.

MrBuddyCasino 9y ago

Its slowly starting to change, the Silicon Valley scare crow works to some extend. But the reason is always either a) they are being out-competed by US companies and need to step up their game b) their core business is eroding and they _have_ to change Source: this is our daily business.

krylon 9y ago

"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?

coinerone 9y ago
Thanks krylon, that`s exactly what i thought too!
ILikeConemowk 9y ago
> 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.
- thunfischbrot 9y ago
  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...

tapia 9y ago

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!

lnsru 9y ago
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.

eafkuor 9y ago

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

xstartup 9y ago

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.

expertentipp 9y ago
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.

singularity2001 9y ago

How relevant is the factor of German companies systematically being spied upon and suppressed by American Monopolies and government?

nnq 9y ago

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.

adventured 9y ago
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? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-korea-tops-global-innovation-ranking-again-as-u-s-falls https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-kor...

oger 9y ago

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.

Lapsa 9y ago

oh the germans... got outsourced to them some time ago. wasn't pleasant experience whatsoever. sadly I have built bad stereotypes over time :(

PeOe 9y ago

"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 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.

Emeb 9y ago
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.
schuellerpa 9y ago
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.

shapiro92 9y ago

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.

thunfischbrot 9y ago
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.

sbruny 9y ago

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)?

julienfr112 9y ago

SAP is german, is it not ?