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Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important In ma

by lacker 4y ago

Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important In many ways this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. An organization thinks software engineers aren't very important. And it doesn't pay the sort of salaries you need to get the top talent. So it doesn't have any top-tier software engineers, and their software team struggles to deliver valuable projects. Later management changes their mind and decides to pay better salaries. They go to hire software engineers, and how do they even tell who the great software engineers are? Often they end up just paying more to the same not-so-great team, and watching as what they thought was an investment in software quality does not pay off. I don't think this is specific to Europe, either - it can happen to any organization that hires a lot of inexpensive software engineers, in the US too. It's hard to get out of the "cheap software engineers" trap.

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
> In many ways this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. An organization thinks software engineers aren't very important. And it doesn't pay the sort of salaries you need to get the top talent. So it doesn't have any top-tier software engineers, and their software team struggles to deliver valuable projects. And you can see this in their hiring. All full of interns. I remember when VW was advertising a “software school”. They were bragging about teaching dozens of “software engineers”. The people who run these businesses think that writing software is like being a mechanic. That there’s some “end state” in software. These companies have no software culture. All that matters to them, and especially in Germany, is phds. They don’t care about software, they care that they employ a high number of phds. Funny story. I remember attending an event at Telekom some years back. People from Fraunhofer ISST were on the panel discussing how to bring quality to a major European software initiative that is currently often on the news. Another point was to come up with an idea how to run an org that can maintain said sovereign platform in a transparent manner. I asked them a question: why not to hand it over to the universities? Why not set up a number of working groups and use it as a platform to teach competent people on a real world, high profile system. You know: r&d, devops, monitoring, service, bug fixing, new features. Sounds like a great opportunity to teach future software generations, no? You know what was the reaction of the ceo of Fraunhofer, the said man who was running that panel? He laughed and replied: “do you know how bad German universities are?” He said that in public in front of dozens of attendees. I was left speechless. So if add 2 and 2, you understand what is happening. Everybody is happy with the status quo.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  And the US will continue to eat their lunch. How many high impact software companies are coming out of Germany?
  - petre 4y ago
    SAP. But you wouldn't want to work with SAP anyway. Death by a thousand cuts.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Pay and benefits are good, 40 h/w + extra when overtime happens, 30 day vacation,....
      - martin8412 4y ago
        That's the default for everyone working in Europe
        ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        It's not. Most jobs in most countries get less than 30 days vacation. Germany's German speaking neighbors it's 25 days.
        rolisz 4y ago
        Europe is composed of a lot of countries, which all have different laws. In Romania, minimum vacation days are 20 days and very few companies give more than that, except maybe for seniority.
        PicassoCTs 4y ago
        Is it really though? I ve been going around european companies and its all work till you drop 80h culture and no holiday, cause we need a guy on standbye. That stuff only ever exists on paper.
Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
I’ve seen big telco not having any internal dev - only bad management. When their partner do not deliver, or very slowly because they’re cheap, they make “escalation”… So it’s even worse than not valuing the work. It’s destroying it. (By the way, it’s not only telco, but also food distribution, small business…)
- PicassoCTs 4y ago
  Nothing more ridiculous, then a tribe of MBAs dancing around the one software engineer whos project they run into the ground - making "pressure"
  - ls15 4y ago
    There is a meme for that: https://devmynd-production-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/photos/0f511762-2fdd-4c6b-adc5-2316b4ae9ddb.png https://devmynd-production-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/...
Bombthecat 4y ago
Or they hire top notch developers, just for them to run away. Because the culture and processes didn't change. Seen it several times.
tsss 4y ago
The salaries at the big car companies are not bad actually (compared to other German companies... compared to the US they are pitiful, of course). The problem is the company culture. If you look at the recruitment material you will immediately notice this attitude of infantilization they have towards IT. They don't attract that kind of talent who's in it for the thrill of problem solving. They end up getting all the morons who like the brand and IT salary but have no passion for technology and it really shows in the product. Zalando is exactly the opposite: They sell extremely uncool shoes and are 1000 times as innovative as BMW with their sports cars. MOIA is also much better than their parent corporation Volkswagen.

by lacker 4y ago

rad_gruchalski 4y ago

> In many ways this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. An organization thinks software engineers aren't very important. And it doesn't pay the sort of salaries you need to get the top talent. So it doesn't have any top-tier software engineers, and their software team struggles to deliver valuable projects. And you can see this in their hiring. All full of interns. I remember when VW was advertising a “software school”. They were bragging about teaching dozens of “software engineers”. The people who run these businesses think that writing software is like being a mechanic. That there’s some “end state” in software. These companies have no software culture. All that matters to them, and especially in Germany, is phds. They don’t care about software, they care that they employ a high number of phds. Funny story. I remember attending an event at Telekom some years back. People from Fraunhofer ISST were on the panel discussing how to bring quality to a major European software initiative that is currently often on the news. Another point was to come up with an idea how to run an org that can maintain said sovereign platform in a transparent manner. I asked them a question: why not to hand it over to the universities? Why not set up a number of working groups and use it as a platform to teach competent people on a real world, high profile system. You know: r&d, devops, monitoring, service, bug fixing, new features. Sounds like a great opportunity to teach future software generations, no? You know what was the reaction of the ceo of Fraunhofer, the said man who was running that panel? He laughed and replied: “do you know how bad German universities are?” He said that in public in front of dozens of attendees. I was left speechless. So if add 2 and 2, you understand what is happening. Everybody is happy with the status quo.

brianwawok 4y ago
And the US will continue to eat their lunch. How many high impact software companies are coming out of Germany?
- petre 4y ago
  SAP. But you wouldn't want to work with SAP anyway. Death by a thousand cuts.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Pay and benefits are good, 40 h/w + extra when overtime happens, 30 day vacation,....
    - martin8412 4y ago
      That's the default for everyone working in Europe
      - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        It's not. Most jobs in most countries get less than 30 days vacation. Germany's German speaking neighbors it's 25 days.
      - rolisz 4y ago
        Europe is composed of a lot of countries, which all have different laws. In Romania, minimum vacation days are 20 days and very few companies give more than that, except maybe for seniority.
      - PicassoCTs 4y ago
        Is it really though? I ve been going around european companies and its all work till you drop 80h culture and no holiday, cause we need a guy on standbye. That stuff only ever exists on paper.

Arcanum-XIII 4y ago

I’ve seen big telco not having any internal dev - only bad management. When their partner do not deliver, or very slowly because they’re cheap, they make “escalation”… So it’s even worse than not valuing the work. It’s destroying it. (By the way, it’s not only telco, but also food distribution, small business…)

PicassoCTs 4y ago
Nothing more ridiculous, then a tribe of MBAs dancing around the one software engineer whos project they run into the ground - making "pressure"
- ls15 4y ago
  There is a meme for that: https://devmynd-production-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/photos/0f511762-2fdd-4c6b-adc5-2316b4ae9ddb.png https://devmynd-production-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/...

Bombthecat 4y ago

Or they hire top notch developers, just for them to run away. Because the culture and processes didn't change. Seen it several times.

tsss 4y ago

The salaries at the big car companies are not bad actually (compared to other German companies... compared to the US they are pitiful, of course). The problem is the company culture. If you look at the recruitment material you will immediately notice this attitude of infantilization they have towards IT. They don't attract that kind of talent who's in it for the thrill of problem solving. They end up getting all the morons who like the brand and IT salary but have no passion for technology and it really shows in the product. Zalando is exactly the opposite: They sell extremely uncool shoes and are 1000 times as innovative as BMW with their sports cars. MOIA is also much better than their parent corporation Volkswagen.