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Well let me rant a bit. I have been living in Germany 9 years. My gut feeling is that here if technology is not about diesel engines then it is considered more

by kfk 7y ago

Well let me rant a bit. I have been living in Germany 9 years. My gut feeling is that here if technology is not about diesel engines then it is considered more of a problem than a resource. Something to be worried about in a world that is getting more and more competitive and automated. One example? People still prefer to pay in cash here, many stores don't accept cards. You might be tempted to think if it works... it's ok. But this attitude impacts all things tech. Programmers salaries are low, data analytics jobs very hard to find, BI is still done in SAP/Oracle, etc.. So if you want to make a good salary in Germany you need to go into the more traditional stuff like finance or engineering management, which is what eventually will hurt the country as the talent either is not well used or just flat out leaves the country.

ricc 7y ago
What's wrong with SAP? :-P But yeah, I agree. For an engineering country, Germany is a bit more "conservative" when it comes to IT. The slow internet is another good example of this. I also just bought a Fitbit and I am still thinking twice if I should try out Fitbit Pay in the wild...
seoirsewalker 7y ago
This article is a little dated but I found the conclusion in German distrust of cashless payments interesting. From https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/08/11/emptying-the-tills https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/08/11/e... Culture plays a role, too. Digitally sophisticated Scandinavians may be comfortable buying groceries on their smartphones but a deep-rooted aversion to being tracked—a scar left by the Stasi—lies behind German distrust. A recent survey by PWC revealed that two in five Germans don’t use mobile payments because of concerns about data security (and nearly nine in ten worry about it). When the German finance ministry recently proposed capping cash payments at €5,000, as in some other countries, Bild, a daily newspaper, organised a reader protest. Isn't Berlin quite different to other parts of Germany? When I was in Munich last year they seemed to have a more progressive view.
- neuronic 7y ago
  On another note, as a German, I think the acceptability of mobile payments is slowly but surely increasing. In my town, all of the shops and restaurants I use take NFC payments and I pay with Apple Pay multiple times a day. An exception are typical money laundering and tax evasion businesses such as many Vietnamese restaurants.

by kfk 7y ago

ricc 7y ago

What's wrong with SAP? :-P But yeah, I agree. For an engineering country, Germany is a bit more "conservative" when it comes to IT. The slow internet is another good example of this. I also just bought a Fitbit and I am still thinking twice if I should try out Fitbit Pay in the wild...

seoirsewalker 7y ago

This article is a little dated but I found the conclusion in German distrust of cashless payments interesting. From https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/08/11/emptying-the-tills https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/08/11/e... Culture plays a role, too. Digitally sophisticated Scandinavians may be comfortable buying groceries on their smartphones but a deep-rooted aversion to being tracked—a scar left by the Stasi—lies behind German distrust. A recent survey by PWC revealed that two in five Germans don’t use mobile payments because of concerns about data security (and nearly nine in ten worry about it). When the German finance ministry recently proposed capping cash payments at €5,000, as in some other countries, Bild, a daily newspaper, organised a reader protest. Isn't Berlin quite different to other parts of Germany? When I was in Munich last year they seemed to have a more progressive view.

neuronic 7y ago
On another note, as a German, I think the acceptability of mobile payments is slowly but surely increasing. In my town, all of the shops and restaurants I use take NFC payments and I pay with Apple Pay multiple times a day. An exception are typical money laundering and tax evasion businesses such as many Vietnamese restaurants.