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"Yeah and it's obnoxious as hell. When I moved to Munich from the bay area, suddenly having to actively manage cash and coins on a daily basis felt like I'd ste

"Yeah and it's obnoxious as hell. When I moved to Munich from the bay area, suddenly having to actively manage cash and coins on a daily basis felt like I'd stepped through a portal to a few decades ago. So many places being cash-only is very much "WHAT YEAR IS IT??" " We wonder the same thing about US credit cards, that just now switched to Chip & Signature It's not exactly a new concept, considering that the first smart cards for banking purposes were issued in France in 1986[1] Those that sit in glass houses... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV

TulliusCicero 8y ago
> We wonder the same thing about US credit cards, that just now switched to Chip & Signature Absolutely the US is backwards in some ways when it comes to tech (bank transfers are another point where Germany is much better). Germany is just more backwards overall. That Germany has no major internationally successful consumer tech companies became a lot more understandable once I moved here, the country is designed for stability over innovation. The other thing I noticed is that Germans are much more prickly/defensive than Americans when it comes to criticism. Liberal Americans, at least, will eagerly nod their heads and agree when someone foreign points out how dumb it is that college and healthcare are absurdly expensive in the US, or other American problems like too many guns, too little public transit, etc. But any equivalent criticism seems to have even left-leaning Germans circling the wagons.
- craigsmansion 8y ago
  > That Germany has no major internationally successful consumer tech companies ... What?! > more defensive [..] when it comes to criticism Maybe it's the special air of ignorance combined with assumed superiority that sets them off, eager nodding not-withstanding.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    > ... > What?! Well, do you have any examples? Anything like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, etc.? Because I'm looking at this list(1) and not seeing anything on that level, or even very close to it really. Or look at the Fortune Global 500, no German tech companies there, only car or manufacturing companies. > Maybe it's the special air of ignorance What ignorance? Nothing I've said is wrong, shit my one friend I had in Munich before moving here said more or less the same thing to me before I had even come to this conclusion (granted, he works at Amazon). > combined with assumed superiority that sets them off, eager nodding not-withstanding. That's just your own sensitivities at play. If I thought the US was flatly superior to Germany, I wouldn't have moved to the latter. I could go on and on about areas where Germany is clearly superior to the US -- land use, transportation, social safety nets, egalitarian policies, etc. -- but none of those are the topic of this thread. Perhaps you should be asking yourself why you responded to accurate criticism by lashing out. Again, I've seen plenty of threads on, say, healthcare, where Europeans will comment on how outrageous and stupid the US system is, and Americans will upvote their comments and reply with how much they agree. When particular European countries are singled out though, and particularly some of them like Germany, you don't see the same behavior. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Technology_companies_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Technology_companies_...
    - craigsmansion 8y ago
      > do you have any examples? Look around in the kitchen: Bosch, Miele, Siemens... > Anything like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox Mainly retail, marketing, and electronic services, not a lot of consumer electronics. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding of what a "consumer tech company" is. Still, calling an entire country backwards--"So many places being cash-only is very much "WHAT YEAR IS IT??"--because some aspect of life there doesn't conform to your Bay-area-informed sensibilities and assumed life-style is bound to raise some hackles.
      - TulliusCicero 8y ago
        > Bosch, Miele, Siemens... These are "tech companies" the same way General Electric or Maytag or KitchenAid are tech companies. They're not, at least going by the standard definition. I suppose it's possible the definitions differ specifically because Germany has few significant tech companies of the software-and-services variety. > calling an entire country backwards I never did this. I said Germany was specifically backwards when it came to consumer-facing technology, not that Germany was backwards in general. You seem to be reading in my comments what you want to see there. And I used more examples than just the cash-only bit, and I have plenty to spare. The average UX for German websites and apps, for example, is significantly behind the US standard, from what I've seen. Although of course this is a generalization, there's tons of individual variance.

TulliusCicero 8y ago

> We wonder the same thing about US credit cards, that just now switched to Chip & Signature Absolutely the US is backwards in some ways when it comes to tech (bank transfers are another point where Germany is much better). Germany is just more backwards overall. That Germany has no major internationally successful consumer tech companies became a lot more understandable once I moved here, the country is designed for stability over innovation. The other thing I noticed is that Germans are much more prickly/defensive than Americans when it comes to criticism. Liberal Americans, at least, will eagerly nod their heads and agree when someone foreign points out how dumb it is that college and healthcare are absurdly expensive in the US, or other American problems like too many guns, too little public transit, etc. But any equivalent criticism seems to have even left-leaning Germans circling the wagons.

craigsmansion 8y ago
> That Germany has no major internationally successful consumer tech companies ... What?! > more defensive [..] when it comes to criticism Maybe it's the special air of ignorance combined with assumed superiority that sets them off, eager nodding not-withstanding.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > ... > What?! Well, do you have any examples? Anything like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, etc.? Because I'm looking at this list(1) and not seeing anything on that level, or even very close to it really. Or look at the Fortune Global 500, no German tech companies there, only car or manufacturing companies. > Maybe it's the special air of ignorance What ignorance? Nothing I've said is wrong, shit my one friend I had in Munich before moving here said more or less the same thing to me before I had even come to this conclusion (granted, he works at Amazon). > combined with assumed superiority that sets them off, eager nodding not-withstanding. That's just your own sensitivities at play. If I thought the US was flatly superior to Germany, I wouldn't have moved to the latter. I could go on and on about areas where Germany is clearly superior to the US -- land use, transportation, social safety nets, egalitarian policies, etc. -- but none of those are the topic of this thread. Perhaps you should be asking yourself why you responded to accurate criticism by lashing out. Again, I've seen plenty of threads on, say, healthcare, where Europeans will comment on how outrageous and stupid the US system is, and Americans will upvote their comments and reply with how much they agree. When particular European countries are singled out though, and particularly some of them like Germany, you don't see the same behavior. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Technology_companies_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Technology_companies_...
  - craigsmansion 8y ago
    > do you have any examples? Look around in the kitchen: Bosch, Miele, Siemens... > Anything like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox Mainly retail, marketing, and electronic services, not a lot of consumer electronics. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding of what a "consumer tech company" is. Still, calling an entire country backwards--"So many places being cash-only is very much "WHAT YEAR IS IT??"--because some aspect of life there doesn't conform to your Bay-area-informed sensibilities and assumed life-style is bound to raise some hackles.
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      > Bosch, Miele, Siemens... These are "tech companies" the same way General Electric or Maytag or KitchenAid are tech companies. They're not, at least going by the standard definition. I suppose it's possible the definitions differ specifically because Germany has few significant tech companies of the software-and-services variety. > calling an entire country backwards I never did this. I said Germany was specifically backwards when it came to consumer-facing technology, not that Germany was backwards in general. You seem to be reading in my comments what you want to see there. And I used more examples than just the cash-only bit, and I have plenty to spare. The average UX for German websites and apps, for example, is significantly behind the US standard, from what I've seen. Although of course this is a generalization, there's tons of individual variance.