7 ms·

Germany has a pretty awesome computer security base already. Look at CCC. The government may need to better align their values with the people's to harness that

Germany has a pretty awesome computer security base already. Look at CCC. The government may need to better align their values with the people's to harness that talent though.

ur-whale 8y ago
This, a 1000 time. Germany's (and western Europe's in general) biggest problem is not lousy compensation and sky-high taxes (although these are a huge problem as well). The biggest thing that prevents Europe from innovating is culture. Risk-taking, innovation, doing crazy "unthinkable" things is something that has simply deserted the European DNA a long time ago (probably over a century by now). Almost all the important technical inventions of the 19th century happened in Europe. Almost all the important technical inventions of the 20th century happened outside Europe. If you've ever worked in Germany in a tech company you will very likely know what I am talking about here: when you throw a new and crazy idea on the table, the immediate reaction of the crowd is to carefully explain to you the myriad of ways in which your idea is just "not possible" and "will fail". Getting a brainstorm-type session going with a group German engineers is darn near impossible. And much less so with management.
- qznc 8y ago
  I think you are somewhat correct with your brainstorming scenario, but Germany was still plenty innovative in the last century. Software technologies like MP3 came out of Germany. Companies like SAP and Hetzner are successful and german. Berlin has a healthy startup scene. Green technologies and automotive is dominated by Germany. Overall I think Germany has plenty of risk taking engineers but the capital is more risk averse than in the US. Capital includes angel investors and pension funds and everything in between.
  - ur-whale 8y ago
    >Software technologies like MP3 came out of Germany. With one of the most restrictive IP licensing scheme I've encountered in my professional life. Way to promote innovation indeed. >Companies like SAP At the risk of sounding sarcastic, I have a very hard time putting SAP and innovation in the same sentence. They're basically the Oracle of Germany. > Green technologies and automotive is dominated by Germany. I do not know enough about green tech to comment, but for automotive, I strongly disagree: incremental improvement, yes. Innovation? certainly not. Case in point: how many German company dominate in self-driving cars? All the German car makers are buying the tech. from elsewhere. As a matter of fact, thanks for picking that example: where did Sebastian Thrun have to go in order for his ideas to take flight? Why did he not choose to do his thing in Germany? >Overall I think Germany has plenty of risk taking engineers but the capital is more risk averse than in the US. Capital includes angel investors and pension funds and everything in between. You are correct that Venture cap in Western Europe is risk averse. All they invest in is European versions of stuff that's already been proven successful in the US. But what you're not seeing is that the aversion to risk from European VC is a symptom of a larger/deeper problem: statistically speaking, there is no appetite for risk and innovation in Europe. VC risk-averseness is just one facet of that. And why should there be? Given the regulatory and tax burden you're going to be subjected to when you try to do anything over there, why even effing try?
    - throwawayjava 8y ago
      > With one of the most restrictive IP licensing scheme I've encountered in my professional life. Way to promote innovation indeed. Different business models are different, and things tend to get ugly when you find a way to print money. I'll take the "restrictive licensing/patents" model over the Google/Facebook "private sector surveillance" model any day of the week... > At the risk of sounding sarcastic, I have a very hard time putting SAP and innovation in the same sentence. They're basically the Oracle of Germany. I think IBM might be a better comparison. Certainly the scale of the past century, both SAP and IBM did plenty of innovation.
    - whyever 8y ago
      > With one of the most restrictive IP licensing scheme I've encountered in my professional life. Way to promote innovation indeed. I feel like you are moving goal posts. Also, do you think IP in the US software industry is any better?
      - ur-whale 8y ago
        No, I am not moving the goal posts. Patents, while they were invented to promote it, end up being a major drag on innovation, which bears to my point: innovating in Europe is a major PITA. >Also, do you think IP in the US software industry is any better The way IP is managed in the US is terrible, granted. But I would say that these days, and specifically for software, things are way better than they used to - say - in the 80's and 90's. A number of tech. companies are starting to recognize that sharing IP is actually making them more money in the long run and are actually publishing a lot of what they invent. For example, and while I am no fan of Google, they tend to open source a ton of non-obvious stuff (e.g. the recently discussed s2 library). On the flipside, and as an experiment: if you work in a German tech. company, try and ask their legal dept how they'd feel about open-sourcing some of their stack. See what they say.
        qznc 8y ago
        How much a tech company open sources their stuff depends much more on their industry sector. The web industry makes a lot Open Source. The embedded industry does not. Do General Motors, Boeing, or Tesla open source a lot? My employer, Bosch, does open source a few things. For example: http://www.amalthea-project.org/ http://www.amalthea-project.org/
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  I think you need to experience more European tech companies. Crazy and new ideas are very much appreciated here, but they also have to be funded, you can't just go hog wild and worry about the budget later. >"Risk-taking, innovation, doing crazy "unthinkable" things is something that has simply deserted the European DNA a long time ago" I dunno, just off the top of my head, I'm thinking about Spotify, Skype, Sitecore, Endomondo, Just-Eat, Unity, Tradeshift, Trustpilot, GoMore, Zendesk, TC Electronic, Soundboks, Navision, Vivino, and that's just Scandinavian and primarily Danish(-started) companies off the top of my head. Perhaps your beef is more with German corporate/startup culture, and not European culture in general? We're very different from North to South, East to West :-)
  - ur-whale 8y ago
    >you can't just go hog wild and worry about the budget later. Thank you for proving my point. A perfect example of why Europe is lagging in tech. >Spotify, Skype, Sitecore, Endomondo, Just-Eat, Unity, Tradeshift, Trustpilot, GoMore, Zendesk, TC Electronic, Soundboks, Navision, Vivino Leaving aside those that have already been bought out by a US-based corp, pray tell me: where in that list are the European Google, FB, Amazon, Apple, NVidia, Intel, TripAdvisor, etc... ? Where are the European cell phone, CPU, memory, or for that matter computer manufacturers? Of the list above, only - maybe - Spotify comes close to being able to play in the big boy's club. Given the size of the European population, the amazing level of education of the population and the concentration of potential, the state of European innovation is nothing short of pitiful. The root cause is Europeans live and a deeply arthritic societies where change is very rarely welcome.
    - joelbluminator 8y ago
      Europe has less big tech companies but also less people shooting each other in the street or being homeless. I think the two are connected but that's a debate for another time...
      - ur-whale 8y ago
        > Europe has less big tech companies but also less people shooting each other in the street or being homeless. Non sequitur of the century, bravo.
- growlist 8y ago
  > Almost all the important technical inventions of the 20th century happened outside Europe. Evidence please?
  - ur-whale 8y ago
    To name a few minor ones: - The transistor - The computer - Atomic energy - The search engine - The internet Shall I go on?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Those had many Europeans on their teams, specially German researchers, while Europe was busy recovering from WW II.
      - ur-whale 8y ago
        >Those had many Europeans on their teams, specially German researchers Thank you for proving my point. I never said Europeans were bad engineers, far from it. I'm saying they leave because it's just impossible to innovate in Europe, and that's a major problem.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        You skipped over > while Europe was busy recovering from WW II. Many of those inventions started here during WW II. Also innovation is not only IT stuff, I bet many in US enjoy being treated with Bayer medicine, stuffing their house with IKEA furniture, doing games in Unity, talking with their friends over Skype, having a mobile phone that one can easily swap out a SIM card, ....
        ur-whale 8y ago
        None of the stuff you list is in any way a "major" tech innovation. That's all Europe has produced in tech. in the last 70 years: crumbs off the table. And it's not going to get any better: whatever WW-II based explanation you may provide to justify the current state of affairs, it's not a solution to the problem. The problem is that European innovators operate in a hostile environment. If they stay, it cripples them. If they're smart enough to realize this, they leave and go to a place where they can be successful.
endymi0n 8y ago
500 times this. They have no clue how to evaluate talent and build culture. If they organize this similar to the BSI, they‘ll take PhDs fresh from Uni, take them on a career path that starts nicely above entry level market salary — but ends there pretty much already (never remotely reaching industry levels). Hackers with some psychological/social issues but great potentials like often found in top Infosec won‘t have a fighting chance, same goes for industry veterans without a degree like me.
- Swinx43 8y ago
  +1 As someone that moved to Germany 8 months ago the biggest shock is the sort of culture being cultivated in the work place. German culture in the work place is hierarchical and extremely "old school" in my experience. Yes I know you hear about all the "cool" startups in Berlin but they are the exception and need to conform at some point if they want to do business with larger organizations that actually have money. There is a wealth of talent here but this talent simply does not fit the "desired" culture. I would go as far as saying that hacker culture is the complete opposite of what the average German company wants to deal with. You are in for a shock when you start dealing with the government departments here. They make the private companies look like bastions of liberalism. I could write a book about my experiences dealing with different government departments and agencies. If Germany wants to attract talent (or start making use of home grown talent) they need to start accepting that these people do not want to fit the mould.
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    Well, there are corporations that can and do hire people with the hacker's mindset and corporations that don't. If you take the highest paying jobs, you usually get the latter. That is a problem.
  - flohofwoe 8y ago
    The last thing Germany needs is more Berlin-style startups though. There's has to be a good middle ground between the encrusted industry giants that have all been founded in the late 19th century, and the all-bullshitting-no-substance world of "startups".

Germany has a pretty awesome computer security base already. Look at CCC. The government may need to better align their values with the people's to harness that talent though.

ur-whale 8y ago

This, a 1000 time. Germany's (and western Europe's in general) biggest problem is not lousy compensation and sky-high taxes (although these are a huge problem as well). The biggest thing that prevents Europe from innovating is culture. Risk-taking, innovation, doing crazy "unthinkable" things is something that has simply deserted the European DNA a long time ago (probably over a century by now). Almost all the important technical inventions of the 19th century happened in Europe. Almost all the important technical inventions of the 20th century happened outside Europe. If you've ever worked in Germany in a tech company you will very likely know what I am talking about here: when you throw a new and crazy idea on the table, the immediate reaction of the crowd is to carefully explain to you the myriad of ways in which your idea is just "not possible" and "will fail". Getting a brainstorm-type session going with a group German engineers is darn near impossible. And much less so with management.

qznc 8y ago
I think you are somewhat correct with your brainstorming scenario, but Germany was still plenty innovative in the last century. Software technologies like MP3 came out of Germany. Companies like SAP and Hetzner are successful and german. Berlin has a healthy startup scene. Green technologies and automotive is dominated by Germany. Overall I think Germany has plenty of risk taking engineers but the capital is more risk averse than in the US. Capital includes angel investors and pension funds and everything in between.
- ur-whale 8y ago
  >Software technologies like MP3 came out of Germany. With one of the most restrictive IP licensing scheme I've encountered in my professional life. Way to promote innovation indeed. >Companies like SAP At the risk of sounding sarcastic, I have a very hard time putting SAP and innovation in the same sentence. They're basically the Oracle of Germany. > Green technologies and automotive is dominated by Germany. I do not know enough about green tech to comment, but for automotive, I strongly disagree: incremental improvement, yes. Innovation? certainly not. Case in point: how many German company dominate in self-driving cars? All the German car makers are buying the tech. from elsewhere. As a matter of fact, thanks for picking that example: where did Sebastian Thrun have to go in order for his ideas to take flight? Why did he not choose to do his thing in Germany? >Overall I think Germany has plenty of risk taking engineers but the capital is more risk averse than in the US. Capital includes angel investors and pension funds and everything in between. You are correct that Venture cap in Western Europe is risk averse. All they invest in is European versions of stuff that's already been proven successful in the US. But what you're not seeing is that the aversion to risk from European VC is a symptom of a larger/deeper problem: statistically speaking, there is no appetite for risk and innovation in Europe. VC risk-averseness is just one facet of that. And why should there be? Given the regulatory and tax burden you're going to be subjected to when you try to do anything over there, why even effing try?
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > With one of the most restrictive IP licensing scheme I've encountered in my professional life. Way to promote innovation indeed. Different business models are different, and things tend to get ugly when you find a way to print money. I'll take the "restrictive licensing/patents" model over the Google/Facebook "private sector surveillance" model any day of the week... > At the risk of sounding sarcastic, I have a very hard time putting SAP and innovation in the same sentence. They're basically the Oracle of Germany. I think IBM might be a better comparison. Certainly the scale of the past century, both SAP and IBM did plenty of innovation.
  - whyever 8y ago
    > With one of the most restrictive IP licensing scheme I've encountered in my professional life. Way to promote innovation indeed. I feel like you are moving goal posts. Also, do you think IP in the US software industry is any better?
    - ur-whale 8y ago
      No, I am not moving the goal posts. Patents, while they were invented to promote it, end up being a major drag on innovation, which bears to my point: innovating in Europe is a major PITA. >Also, do you think IP in the US software industry is any better The way IP is managed in the US is terrible, granted. But I would say that these days, and specifically for software, things are way better than they used to - say - in the 80's and 90's. A number of tech. companies are starting to recognize that sharing IP is actually making them more money in the long run and are actually publishing a lot of what they invent. For example, and while I am no fan of Google, they tend to open source a ton of non-obvious stuff (e.g. the recently discussed s2 library). On the flipside, and as an experiment: if you work in a German tech. company, try and ask their legal dept how they'd feel about open-sourcing some of their stack. See what they say.
      - qznc 8y ago
        How much a tech company open sources their stuff depends much more on their industry sector. The web industry makes a lot Open Source. The embedded industry does not. Do General Motors, Boeing, or Tesla open source a lot? My employer, Bosch, does open source a few things. For example: http://www.amalthea-project.org/ http://www.amalthea-project.org/
KozmoNau7 8y ago
I think you need to experience more European tech companies. Crazy and new ideas are very much appreciated here, but they also have to be funded, you can't just go hog wild and worry about the budget later. >"Risk-taking, innovation, doing crazy "unthinkable" things is something that has simply deserted the European DNA a long time ago" I dunno, just off the top of my head, I'm thinking about Spotify, Skype, Sitecore, Endomondo, Just-Eat, Unity, Tradeshift, Trustpilot, GoMore, Zendesk, TC Electronic, Soundboks, Navision, Vivino, and that's just Scandinavian and primarily Danish(-started) companies off the top of my head. Perhaps your beef is more with German corporate/startup culture, and not European culture in general? We're very different from North to South, East to West :-)
- ur-whale 8y ago
  >you can't just go hog wild and worry about the budget later. Thank you for proving my point. A perfect example of why Europe is lagging in tech. >Spotify, Skype, Sitecore, Endomondo, Just-Eat, Unity, Tradeshift, Trustpilot, GoMore, Zendesk, TC Electronic, Soundboks, Navision, Vivino Leaving aside those that have already been bought out by a US-based corp, pray tell me: where in that list are the European Google, FB, Amazon, Apple, NVidia, Intel, TripAdvisor, etc... ? Where are the European cell phone, CPU, memory, or for that matter computer manufacturers? Of the list above, only - maybe - Spotify comes close to being able to play in the big boy's club. Given the size of the European population, the amazing level of education of the population and the concentration of potential, the state of European innovation is nothing short of pitiful. The root cause is Europeans live and a deeply arthritic societies where change is very rarely welcome.
  - joelbluminator 8y ago
    Europe has less big tech companies but also less people shooting each other in the street or being homeless. I think the two are connected but that's a debate for another time...
    - ur-whale 8y ago
      > Europe has less big tech companies but also less people shooting each other in the street or being homeless. Non sequitur of the century, bravo.
growlist 8y ago
> Almost all the important technical inventions of the 20th century happened outside Europe. Evidence please?
- ur-whale 8y ago
  To name a few minor ones: - The transistor - The computer - Atomic energy - The search engine - The internet Shall I go on?
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Those had many Europeans on their teams, specially German researchers, while Europe was busy recovering from WW II.
    - ur-whale 8y ago
      >Those had many Europeans on their teams, specially German researchers Thank you for proving my point. I never said Europeans were bad engineers, far from it. I'm saying they leave because it's just impossible to innovate in Europe, and that's a major problem.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        You skipped over > while Europe was busy recovering from WW II. Many of those inventions started here during WW II. Also innovation is not only IT stuff, I bet many in US enjoy being treated with Bayer medicine, stuffing their house with IKEA furniture, doing games in Unity, talking with their friends over Skype, having a mobile phone that one can easily swap out a SIM card, ....
        ur-whale 8y ago
        None of the stuff you list is in any way a "major" tech innovation. That's all Europe has produced in tech. in the last 70 years: crumbs off the table. And it's not going to get any better: whatever WW-II based explanation you may provide to justify the current state of affairs, it's not a solution to the problem. The problem is that European innovators operate in a hostile environment. If they stay, it cripples them. If they're smart enough to realize this, they leave and go to a place where they can be successful.

endymi0n 8y ago

500 times this. They have no clue how to evaluate talent and build culture. If they organize this similar to the BSI, they‘ll take PhDs fresh from Uni, take them on a career path that starts nicely above entry level market salary — but ends there pretty much already (never remotely reaching industry levels). Hackers with some psychological/social issues but great potentials like often found in top Infosec won‘t have a fighting chance, same goes for industry veterans without a degree like me.

Swinx43 8y ago
+1 As someone that moved to Germany 8 months ago the biggest shock is the sort of culture being cultivated in the work place. German culture in the work place is hierarchical and extremely "old school" in my experience. Yes I know you hear about all the "cool" startups in Berlin but they are the exception and need to conform at some point if they want to do business with larger organizations that actually have money. There is a wealth of talent here but this talent simply does not fit the "desired" culture. I would go as far as saying that hacker culture is the complete opposite of what the average German company wants to deal with. You are in for a shock when you start dealing with the government departments here. They make the private companies look like bastions of liberalism. I could write a book about my experiences dealing with different government departments and agencies. If Germany wants to attract talent (or start making use of home grown talent) they need to start accepting that these people do not want to fit the mould.
- ahartmetz 8y ago
  Well, there are corporations that can and do hire people with the hacker's mindset and corporations that don't. If you take the highest paying jobs, you usually get the latter. That is a problem.
- flohofwoe 8y ago
  The last thing Germany needs is more Berlin-style startups though. There's has to be a good middle ground between the encrusted industry giants that have all been founded in the late 19th century, and the all-bullshitting-no-substance world of "startups".