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The main reason middle managers hire ineffective developers in Germany and elsewhere is that the job market is in a state of permanent crisis: the demand is so

The main reason middle managers hire ineffective developers in Germany and elsewhere is that the job market is in a state of permanent crisis: the demand is so high that now everyone calls "senior" the people who cannot even estimate the performance of an algorithm or didn't bother to learn something new in the last 5 years. This applies both to developers and to managers and is complicated by the fact, that large and medium corporations usually don't speak English (so cannot benefit from European open labor market) and thus cannot easily import talent from abroad. Another part of the problem is that in many industries there's a strong lobby of local companies which like medieval guilds block any new competitors from entering the markets. APIs and open standards still barely exist - you cannot simply plug in your new fancy service into an enterprise environment, but you have to pay plenty of money to some Verband to get some crazy XML specification for file exchange. After all I've seen in IT in Eastern Europe (most of all in Russia) and USA, I'm feeling like I'm still in XX century.

ahartmetz 8y ago
There are quite a few good German developers who know enough about the car industry to stay far away from it because it's so broken. As a lowly developer, you can't fix it - you'll just get chewed up.
- jeena 8y ago
  I've been working in the car industry for 5 years and the last 2 with a big German car manufacturer which gave us a lot of money to set up something on the side which would work better. Once we showed that we probably can do it (after 1,5 years) they started getting interested in the project and that's where the problems started. Long story short they are forcing us to do things as they always been done even though they asked us to change them in the first place.
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    That happens all the time. German car companies are buying working companies and messing them up or starting new daughter companies to "do it right this time" but the contagious rot always kills those attempts surprisingly quickly. I guess that is what another poster mentioned as the changes that are currently happening. But it's not helping yet.
    - LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
      EAitis at its finest.
- iamctobitch 8y ago
  There isn't a job which strictly requires expertise from a "German developer" which a Romanian or Polish or Crotaian Developer can't do.
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    The problem with those Eastern European developers is not that they are bad developers - they are pretty good value for money in and of themselves. The problem is that they are wrapped up in the structures that are killing German automotive software. They are probably the ones that get hired to implement the crap that architects made up and that """only""" needs implementation, no questions asked. Just write the code. Good software development just isn't structured like that at all.
    - jeena 8y ago
      I can second that.
    - iamctobitch2 8y ago
      German companies have been claiming labor shortage forever now. All around the world it's done in order to drive down the wage and get government to invest in employee education/training which is then skimmed off by these companies. It's almost a meme now that there is labor shortage in everything. Pretty sure, restaurants and bars also claim labor shortage.
    - expertentipp 8y ago
      Can confirm - in many industries regardless whether one works in Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, or Poland, the directory will be German. The difference being in Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland the cost-cutting will be more aggressive and the decision making will be more strictly top-down. Something among the lines "just write this bloody thing, you C/Java/Angular whore".
  - AdrianB1 8y ago
    No, there is. At least the jobs the Romanian gets are the cheap versions of the ones Germans have and the demand is so great that people with no IT knowledge get employed in projects where they do more wrong than right. The good developers are rare these days (most have already emigrated, the rest are in process) and the "cheap by the dozen" ones are not worth considering.
iamctobitch 8y ago
No sorry this is wrong. You can import East European labor very easily in Germany, so there is no shortage of developers in German market and there never will be in foreseable future. Labor comes from outside, this is precisely why the things are kept at the top so that external people don't get the required information to rival the mothership.
- ivan_gammel 8y ago
  The shortage of developers in Germany is exactly the reason why people from Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa are hired in the first place. There's plenty of reports and publications discussing this shortage from last 10-15 years - it's not new and it has never been solved. Just an example: https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/wirtschaftswunder-worry-the-flip-side-of-germanys-economic-boom-skills-shortage/23580536.html?ticket=ST-2255392-vudwurkgSy4QHWBeIVSK-ap1 https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/wirtschaftswund... I don't know what kind of CTO you are (I'm CTO too), but if you were hiring recently in Germany, you should be able to notice the average time to fill a senior software engineer position is several months. This is the reality in which we live.
  - _visgean 8y ago
    is that not the case everywhere?
  - AdrianB1 8y ago
    Completely wrong: there is no shortage of developers, there is a shortage of competent people. Huge difference. Not a CxO myself, but high enough to feel the pain of hiring good people, especially when HR does not allow to pay them properly - for them all developers are the same, so they all get about the same salary.
    - iamctobitch2 8y ago
      You make it seem like the competent people can't be from other parts of EU, why? There are many competent engineers in whole EU to hire from? I work with some incredibly talented Polish and Romanian engineers, I never felt there is shortage of labor in German market. Perhaps some companies need to offer more incentive, network better and open up more to employees.

ahartmetz 8y ago

There are quite a few good German developers who know enough about the car industry to stay far away from it because it's so broken. As a lowly developer, you can't fix it - you'll just get chewed up.

jeena 8y ago
I've been working in the car industry for 5 years and the last 2 with a big German car manufacturer which gave us a lot of money to set up something on the side which would work better. Once we showed that we probably can do it (after 1,5 years) they started getting interested in the project and that's where the problems started. Long story short they are forcing us to do things as they always been done even though they asked us to change them in the first place.
- ahartmetz 8y ago
  That happens all the time. German car companies are buying working companies and messing them up or starting new daughter companies to "do it right this time" but the contagious rot always kills those attempts surprisingly quickly. I guess that is what another poster mentioned as the changes that are currently happening. But it's not helping yet.
  - LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
    EAitis at its finest.
iamctobitch 8y ago
There isn't a job which strictly requires expertise from a "German developer" which a Romanian or Polish or Crotaian Developer can't do.
- ahartmetz 8y ago
  The problem with those Eastern European developers is not that they are bad developers - they are pretty good value for money in and of themselves. The problem is that they are wrapped up in the structures that are killing German automotive software. They are probably the ones that get hired to implement the crap that architects made up and that """only""" needs implementation, no questions asked. Just write the code. Good software development just isn't structured like that at all.
  - jeena 8y ago
    I can second that.
  - iamctobitch2 8y ago
    German companies have been claiming labor shortage forever now. All around the world it's done in order to drive down the wage and get government to invest in employee education/training which is then skimmed off by these companies. It's almost a meme now that there is labor shortage in everything. Pretty sure, restaurants and bars also claim labor shortage.
  - expertentipp 8y ago
    Can confirm - in many industries regardless whether one works in Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, or Poland, the directory will be German. The difference being in Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland the cost-cutting will be more aggressive and the decision making will be more strictly top-down. Something among the lines "just write this bloody thing, you C/Java/Angular whore".
- AdrianB1 8y ago
  No, there is. At least the jobs the Romanian gets are the cheap versions of the ones Germans have and the demand is so great that people with no IT knowledge get employed in projects where they do more wrong than right. The good developers are rare these days (most have already emigrated, the rest are in process) and the "cheap by the dozen" ones are not worth considering.

iamctobitch 8y ago

No sorry this is wrong. You can import East European labor very easily in Germany, so there is no shortage of developers in German market and there never will be in foreseable future. Labor comes from outside, this is precisely why the things are kept at the top so that external people don't get the required information to rival the mothership.

ivan_gammel 8y ago
The shortage of developers in Germany is exactly the reason why people from Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa are hired in the first place. There's plenty of reports and publications discussing this shortage from last 10-15 years - it's not new and it has never been solved. Just an example: https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/wirtschaftswunder-worry-the-flip-side-of-germanys-economic-boom-skills-shortage/23580536.html?ticket=ST-2255392-vudwurkgSy4QHWBeIVSK-ap1 https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/wirtschaftswund... I don't know what kind of CTO you are (I'm CTO too), but if you were hiring recently in Germany, you should be able to notice the average time to fill a senior software engineer position is several months. This is the reality in which we live.
- _visgean 8y ago
  is that not the case everywhere?
- AdrianB1 8y ago
  Completely wrong: there is no shortage of developers, there is a shortage of competent people. Huge difference. Not a CxO myself, but high enough to feel the pain of hiring good people, especially when HR does not allow to pay them properly - for them all developers are the same, so they all get about the same salary.
  - iamctobitch2 8y ago
    You make it seem like the competent people can't be from other parts of EU, why? There are many competent engineers in whole EU to hire from? I work with some incredibly talented Polish and Romanian engineers, I never felt there is shortage of labor in German market. Perhaps some companies need to offer more incentive, network better and open up more to employees.