4 ms·

It's not, and that's perfectly fine from a societal standpoint, but people who are worried about working 22% fewer hours and are fine getting a "decent" salary

It's not, and that's perfectly fine from a societal standpoint, but people who are worried about working 22% fewer hours and are fine getting a "decent" salary are not the engineers you want to hire when trying to bootstrap a new enterprise. They can run your company steady-state, but they are not going to build anything internationally competitive.

helloguillecl 5y ago
This is simply not true, as German tech companies have built more than just a few success examples. Why do you think you need people who don't care about having a life outside the workplace to build something competitive?
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Germany has 80 million people. The US has 330 million. Can you really tell me with a straight face that Germany has 25% of the success examples that the US tech industry has?
  - wasmitnetzen 5y ago
    Not in IT, but Germany has quite a few market leaders in "old tech": Cars, logistics (DHL, Schenker), retail (Aldi, Lidl), and a whole lot of B2B niche products. IT isn't a fair comparison, no country in the world can compete with FAANG right now, that's hardly Germany's fault. And still, there's SAP and Deutsche Telekom. Telekom has 50% of Google's revenue. Sure, the market cap is another story, but still.
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
      China is 100% competing with FAANG. India has a lot of close-second competition. Most of the companies you listed were founded before 1950. That's not at odds with my thesis -- these engineers can continue to drive an already-successful business but will not be able to start something genuinely new.
nicbou 5y ago
I'm fine with that. I value employees having balanced lives more than GDP bragging rights. For the record, yes they're the sort of engineers I'd want to hire. If we're making broad assumptions about a country's workforce, I'd want a happy, well-rested workforce that's not held hostage by their company's health insurance plan. You say that as if valuing your free time is a sort of moral weakness in an employee.
- volta83 5y ago
  This might also help explain why so few startups survive in Germany. If a German startup has a nice idea and start working towards it with 4 ppl 30h/week each, at say 50k$/year/employee, a US startup: - has access to most VC funds - the German startup might have proven that there is money there, which helps getting VC funds - has access to (0) a lot of (1) top and (2) absurdly hard-working talent that will put as much time as necessary for the startup to out-compete everybody else, - has access to an ecosystems of startups around that might help them, - has access to better way to compensate these employers, like almost tax-free equity, etc. - has access to better ways to cash out, IPO, SPACs, etc. Once these startups outcompete and survive the competition, then and only then they can and do switch to 35h/week, etc. Some of my friends from MSc. in Germany work there at startup incubators. They have 50k$/year salaries for 40-50h/week, and B2B startups get funded for 2 years, die, and they just move to the next one. Most of them are trying to switch to bigger German companies like car manufacturers to get a 35h/week job that's higher paid, and are pretty burned out of the life of attempting to build stuff that ends up in nothing because they get outcompeted by the US, China, etc. every single time. This type of international competition didn't exist 100 years ago at this level, and many DAX companies are that old. AFAICT the youngest company in the DAX is delivery hero which is 10 years old. The most valued company is SAP which is 40 years old. Compare that with the 30 most valued companies in the S&P500....
  - nicbou 5y ago
    The question is "what values are we willing to abandon to stay competitive?" If America can compete by squeezing more out of their labour and operating in a deregulated environment, do we really want to walk down that path?

helloguillecl 5y ago

This is simply not true, as German tech companies have built more than just a few success examples. Why do you think you need people who don't care about having a life outside the workplace to build something competitive?

bpodgursky 5y ago
Germany has 80 million people. The US has 330 million. Can you really tell me with a straight face that Germany has 25% of the success examples that the US tech industry has?
- wasmitnetzen 5y ago
  Not in IT, but Germany has quite a few market leaders in "old tech": Cars, logistics (DHL, Schenker), retail (Aldi, Lidl), and a whole lot of B2B niche products. IT isn't a fair comparison, no country in the world can compete with FAANG right now, that's hardly Germany's fault. And still, there's SAP and Deutsche Telekom. Telekom has 50% of Google's revenue. Sure, the market cap is another story, but still.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    China is 100% competing with FAANG. India has a lot of close-second competition. Most of the companies you listed were founded before 1950. That's not at odds with my thesis -- these engineers can continue to drive an already-successful business but will not be able to start something genuinely new.

nicbou 5y ago

I'm fine with that. I value employees having balanced lives more than GDP bragging rights. For the record, yes they're the sort of engineers I'd want to hire. If we're making broad assumptions about a country's workforce, I'd want a happy, well-rested workforce that's not held hostage by their company's health insurance plan. You say that as if valuing your free time is a sort of moral weakness in an employee.

volta83 5y ago
This might also help explain why so few startups survive in Germany. If a German startup has a nice idea and start working towards it with 4 ppl 30h/week each, at say 50k$/year/employee, a US startup: - has access to most VC funds - the German startup might have proven that there is money there, which helps getting VC funds - has access to (0) a lot of (1) top and (2) absurdly hard-working talent that will put as much time as necessary for the startup to out-compete everybody else, - has access to an ecosystems of startups around that might help them, - has access to better way to compensate these employers, like almost tax-free equity, etc. - has access to better ways to cash out, IPO, SPACs, etc. Once these startups outcompete and survive the competition, then and only then they can and do switch to 35h/week, etc. Some of my friends from MSc. in Germany work there at startup incubators. They have 50k$/year salaries for 40-50h/week, and B2B startups get funded for 2 years, die, and they just move to the next one. Most of them are trying to switch to bigger German companies like car manufacturers to get a 35h/week job that's higher paid, and are pretty burned out of the life of attempting to build stuff that ends up in nothing because they get outcompeted by the US, China, etc. every single time. This type of international competition didn't exist 100 years ago at this level, and many DAX companies are that old. AFAICT the youngest company in the DAX is delivery hero which is 10 years old. The most valued company is SAP which is 40 years old. Compare that with the 30 most valued companies in the S&P500....
- nicbou 5y ago
  The question is "what values are we willing to abandon to stay competitive?" If America can compete by squeezing more out of their labour and operating in a deregulated environment, do we really want to walk down that path?