8 ms·

Instead of a 4-day workweek how about setting reasonable hiring standards so that hundreds of thousands of people out of work, especially non-native German spea

Instead of a 4-day workweek how about setting reasonable hiring standards so that hundreds of thousands of people out of work, especially non-native German speakers, have a chance of getting past the job application screen. Most jobs, even in tech, in DE currently require good knowledge of German, and "good" is being interpreted as near-native.

HellDunkel 3y ago
That is not true. Not in germany, not from my experience. If you speak english you are good. Your colleagues will be happy to pratice their english too.
- askonomm 3y ago
  Big Berlin start-ups probably are fine in English, but from most of the browsing on LinkedIn, I'd say if you venture out of the big start-up scene, you won't find English there, and that's the vast majority of tech jobs.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Not for all jobs like traditional industrial German companies where everyone speaks German and have little foreigners.
lm28469 3y ago
How dare people from a country mandate colleagues to speak the country's language! I guess that's what happens when digital nomad ideology collides with the real world...
hotpotamus 3y ago
I always assumed that if I moved to a different country and took a job there, I'd need to learn the language. It's part of what makes emigrating seem difficult actually.
shasts 3y ago
Can confirm this. My wife has a master's degree in engineering from a TU9(top 9 universities in Germany).And a B2 language certificate. She has not found a job so far. Been more than a year and half since she started actively applying. At times she ticks all the requirements in the job description, and still no luck. She is planning to go to a bakery starting next week. The guy at the bakery was so surprised to see someone with master's degree in engineering ready to work at a bakery. So the perception and reality is different. Unless you are in IT/software development, it is hard to get a job. Traditional engineering disciplines are hard to break into.
- yoyoinbog 3y ago
  TU means Institute of Technology. Says nothing about being a good university. Your wife is likely bound to your location what limits her options and like has a degree that is not very in demand, at least not where she lives. Engineering could be everything. And if she has a degree in, let's say food technology and is willing to work somewhere deep in east Germany for a very low amount of money then she would find a job.
  - shasts 3y ago
    "TU9 German Universities of Technology e. V. is the alliance of nine leading Technical Universities in Germany" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TU9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TU9 And I have a remote job and we almost have no location restrictions. If there is no demand, how could she see the job advertisements and apply for them?
    - yoyoinbog 3y ago
      Well,ho many technical universities are the in Germany, not taking into account polytechnical universities? What is her degree? And would you be willing to disclose her origin? Not all advertised jobs exists. And in a blue chip company there are only three ways to get hired. 1. You have family contacts 2. Your professor has contacts 3. You work for a start up that gets bought by such a company
- 3y ago
Czarcasm 3y ago
Flawless communication between team members is important when developing complex products. If my team was primarily comprised of people who only fluently speak German, and we are located in Germany, is it not reasonable for me to set a requirement that new candidates must speak fluent German? Why are you entitled to have people speak your language, when you are the immigrant?
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  They can speak German, the just can't speak it to a level that would fool a life-long speaker. I work with plenty of engineers who speak English as a second (or even third) language. It's not really an issue.
  - JAlexoid 3y ago
    That's quite a stretch. I have experienced breakdown in communications due to English not being good enough many, many times. There's plenty of stories in comments here, about how bad offshore teams are. In most cases it's just a result of poor communications(due to lack of English proficiency). I've had to switch to other languages to explain some basic things about "what the client actually wanted", because of breakdown in communications.
- MrGilbert 3y ago
  Because it's equally hard to find good workforce here in Germany. Besides, I expect every IT worker to be able to at least understand, if not speak English in a way that two foreigners can understand each other pretty well. How else did you acquire your knowledge? By only falling back to literature in your language? That seems kind of limiting if you are working in IT. Your "entitlement" argument sounds a bit harsh for me, to be honest.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Because it's equally hard to find good workforce here in Germany. 1) There's no shortage of developers just a shortage of pay. 2) It's also hard to find doctors, that doesn't mean hospitals should compromise and let everyone practice who doesn't speak the language practice medicine just because there's a shortage. Similarly, a lot of companies don't want to compromise on the language skillset, especially if most of their products are only for the local market that will be used mainly by other German speakers. So having devs not fluent in the local language and not understand the little details and semantics in requirements written in German, means a lot of time wasted with translations and clarifications. It's the first argument HN brings against offshoring, saying it doesn't work because foreign devs don't understand the business and semantics of a foreign language or culture. Why do you think it suddenly doesn't also apply with foreign workers on-shore? >How else did you acquire your knowledge? By only falling back to literature in your language? That seems kind of limiting if you are working in IT. The limiting factor is not other developers, although it could be sometimes. It's the managers who don't use English on a regular basis like IT workers do, especially if like I said before, their company mostly caters to the German speaking market, and they wish to address developers directly for questions and feedback in meetings without only reaching out to the German speakers in the team to have to transalte further. If you have a company meeting in the US or UK, is it not in the local language ? Why would any other country be different?
Barrin92 3y ago
As a native speaker my experience isn't that you require near native skills, I've worked with plenty of expats/immigrants who speak 'just' good German, but I'd rather increase language learning opportunities if necessary mandatory rather than lower standards. This is still a country, not a back office for multinationals, people who talk to a German business should be able to have a conversation in German. This can be expected from immigrants. I've lived abroad myself and made sure I was proficient enough to be able to integrate. It's culturally vital as well.
ysofunny 3y ago
because Americans have the unfortunate habit of going to other countries and not bothering to learn the local languages
dustedcodes 3y ago
> Most jobs, even in tech, in DE currently require good knowledge of German I mean of course, d'oh!? You say "even" in tech, I'd say especially in tech (or really any job that requires communication in high performing fields) should have high standards for the native language, because good communication is key. Call me old fashioned, but the jobs for people who don't speak the native language (well) are reserved to be: cleaners, putting tins into shelves, scrubbing toilets, warehouse work, sorting foul carrots from good carrots on a production line, etc. I'd say you need a decent level of being able to communicate with your colleagues and stakeholders. If someone struggles then they can drive an Uber and practice until they are better.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  Except that in the nascent EU single market, the native language is English. Of course you should be fluent in the language of the country in which you work/live, but increasingly this will be less important - assuming that the EU wants any chance of competing with US/China that is.
  - dustedcodes 3y ago
    > assuming that the EU wants any chance of competing with US/China that is Germany can import/export and trade with everyone outside of Germany without dumbing down their population to people with a vocabulary of 100 words. Cross border trade language may be English, but domestic business language is German.
    - somewhereoutth 3y ago
      My understanding is that trade in goods within the Single Market has worked very well, but trade in services not so much - not least due to language barriers. This becomes an issue because service based businesses (which includes law, finance, and creative industries, as well as hairdressing) also benefit from economies of scale - witness the relative success of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, with an immediate market of ~350MM people.
  - 3y ago
enasterosophes 3y ago
As someone in an English-speaking country, I expect my colleagues to have good English. We operate a helpdesk where clear communication is essential. Internally, we need to be able to quickly coordinate with each other on highly technical problems. If someone from another country came in with a bad attitude about "why do I need good English?" we would be more than a little hesitant about hiring them. It doesn't matter how good you are in tech, English literacy and fluency are foundational to everything else. It would surprise me if Germans see this very differently.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  It IS different in non-English speaking countries. I live in Japan and work in an English workplace. The harsh reality is, if you want to hire talented in-demand people from outside your country, and your country's language isn't English, then you have to accommodate English in your workplace. If you insist on using your local language only, then you will only have applicants from your own country: very few qualified candidates living outside Germany(/Austria) or Japan can speak those languages at a highly proficient level. If you have no need of importing professionals from abroad, that's OK; obviously it's easier to recruit people in your own country if you stick to your country's native language. But if you have a big talent shortage (as is typically the case for the tech sector), then not accommodating English will mean you can't compete against companies that are more international (i.e., they use English). Like it or not, English is the most commonly-spoken 2nd language in the world; it's the international language of business and trade. College-educated professionals mostly all speak it these days. So if you want an international company, English it is.
JAlexoid 3y ago
> DE currently require good knowledge of German That's quite reasonable. No matter how good you're at a certain skill, most jobs will require an advanced level of communication. Imagine if you hired a builder and the person wouldn't be able to understand the intricacies of the job you need performed? Having teams that are exclusively English speaking in Germany would make sense, but Germany is large enough to not have them yet.
mgraupner 3y ago
As a German, my personal experience does not correspond with this. I know a lot of companies here where people from India or Eastern European countries work and their knowledge of the German language varies widely. But as long as you speak English you get along very well here. And they work at large companies, mid sized companies or startups. Most people in Tech/Engineering speak English nowadays.
- missedthecue 3y ago
  Surprisingly the CEO of Bayer, one of Germany's biggest companies, does not speak German despite living and working near Cologne. Apparently the board meetings are conducted in German... No idea how he manages to participate.

HellDunkel 3y ago

That is not true. Not in germany, not from my experience. If you speak english you are good. Your colleagues will be happy to pratice their english too.

askonomm 3y ago
Big Berlin start-ups probably are fine in English, but from most of the browsing on LinkedIn, I'd say if you venture out of the big start-up scene, you won't find English there, and that's the vast majority of tech jobs.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Not for all jobs like traditional industrial German companies where everyone speaks German and have little foreigners.

lm28469 3y ago

How dare people from a country mandate colleagues to speak the country's language! I guess that's what happens when digital nomad ideology collides with the real world...

hotpotamus 3y ago

I always assumed that if I moved to a different country and took a job there, I'd need to learn the language. It's part of what makes emigrating seem difficult actually.

shasts 3y ago

Can confirm this. My wife has a master's degree in engineering from a TU9(top 9 universities in Germany).And a B2 language certificate. She has not found a job so far. Been more than a year and half since she started actively applying. At times she ticks all the requirements in the job description, and still no luck. She is planning to go to a bakery starting next week. The guy at the bakery was so surprised to see someone with master's degree in engineering ready to work at a bakery. So the perception and reality is different. Unless you are in IT/software development, it is hard to get a job. Traditional engineering disciplines are hard to break into.

yoyoinbog 3y ago
TU means Institute of Technology. Says nothing about being a good university. Your wife is likely bound to your location what limits her options and like has a degree that is not very in demand, at least not where she lives. Engineering could be everything. And if she has a degree in, let's say food technology and is willing to work somewhere deep in east Germany for a very low amount of money then she would find a job.
- shasts 3y ago
  "TU9 German Universities of Technology e. V. is the alliance of nine leading Technical Universities in Germany" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TU9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TU9 And I have a remote job and we almost have no location restrictions. If there is no demand, how could she see the job advertisements and apply for them?
  - yoyoinbog 3y ago
    Well,ho many technical universities are the in Germany, not taking into account polytechnical universities? What is her degree? And would you be willing to disclose her origin? Not all advertised jobs exists. And in a blue chip company there are only three ways to get hired. 1. You have family contacts 2. Your professor has contacts 3. You work for a start up that gets bought by such a company
3y ago

Czarcasm 3y ago

Flawless communication between team members is important when developing complex products. If my team was primarily comprised of people who only fluently speak German, and we are located in Germany, is it not reasonable for me to set a requirement that new candidates must speak fluent German? Why are you entitled to have people speak your language, when you are the immigrant?

Workaccount2 3y ago
They can speak German, the just can't speak it to a level that would fool a life-long speaker. I work with plenty of engineers who speak English as a second (or even third) language. It's not really an issue.
- JAlexoid 3y ago
  That's quite a stretch. I have experienced breakdown in communications due to English not being good enough many, many times. There's plenty of stories in comments here, about how bad offshore teams are. In most cases it's just a result of poor communications(due to lack of English proficiency). I've had to switch to other languages to explain some basic things about "what the client actually wanted", because of breakdown in communications.
MrGilbert 3y ago
Because it's equally hard to find good workforce here in Germany. Besides, I expect every IT worker to be able to at least understand, if not speak English in a way that two foreigners can understand each other pretty well. How else did you acquire your knowledge? By only falling back to literature in your language? That seems kind of limiting if you are working in IT. Your "entitlement" argument sounds a bit harsh for me, to be honest.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Because it's equally hard to find good workforce here in Germany. 1) There's no shortage of developers just a shortage of pay. 2) It's also hard to find doctors, that doesn't mean hospitals should compromise and let everyone practice who doesn't speak the language practice medicine just because there's a shortage. Similarly, a lot of companies don't want to compromise on the language skillset, especially if most of their products are only for the local market that will be used mainly by other German speakers. So having devs not fluent in the local language and not understand the little details and semantics in requirements written in German, means a lot of time wasted with translations and clarifications. It's the first argument HN brings against offshoring, saying it doesn't work because foreign devs don't understand the business and semantics of a foreign language or culture. Why do you think it suddenly doesn't also apply with foreign workers on-shore? >How else did you acquire your knowledge? By only falling back to literature in your language? That seems kind of limiting if you are working in IT. The limiting factor is not other developers, although it could be sometimes. It's the managers who don't use English on a regular basis like IT workers do, especially if like I said before, their company mostly caters to the German speaking market, and they wish to address developers directly for questions and feedback in meetings without only reaching out to the German speakers in the team to have to transalte further. If you have a company meeting in the US or UK, is it not in the local language ? Why would any other country be different?

Barrin92 3y ago

As a native speaker my experience isn't that you require near native skills, I've worked with plenty of expats/immigrants who speak 'just' good German, but I'd rather increase language learning opportunities if necessary mandatory rather than lower standards. This is still a country, not a back office for multinationals, people who talk to a German business should be able to have a conversation in German. This can be expected from immigrants. I've lived abroad myself and made sure I was proficient enough to be able to integrate. It's culturally vital as well.

ysofunny 3y ago

because Americans have the unfortunate habit of going to other countries and not bothering to learn the local languages

dustedcodes 3y ago

> Most jobs, even in tech, in DE currently require good knowledge of German I mean of course, d'oh!? You say "even" in tech, I'd say especially in tech (or really any job that requires communication in high performing fields) should have high standards for the native language, because good communication is key. Call me old fashioned, but the jobs for people who don't speak the native language (well) are reserved to be: cleaners, putting tins into shelves, scrubbing toilets, warehouse work, sorting foul carrots from good carrots on a production line, etc. I'd say you need a decent level of being able to communicate with your colleagues and stakeholders. If someone struggles then they can drive an Uber and practice until they are better.

somewhereoutth 3y ago
Except that in the nascent EU single market, the native language is English. Of course you should be fluent in the language of the country in which you work/live, but increasingly this will be less important - assuming that the EU wants any chance of competing with US/China that is.
- dustedcodes 3y ago
  > assuming that the EU wants any chance of competing with US/China that is Germany can import/export and trade with everyone outside of Germany without dumbing down their population to people with a vocabulary of 100 words. Cross border trade language may be English, but domestic business language is German.
  - somewhereoutth 3y ago
    My understanding is that trade in goods within the Single Market has worked very well, but trade in services not so much - not least due to language barriers. This becomes an issue because service based businesses (which includes law, finance, and creative industries, as well as hairdressing) also benefit from economies of scale - witness the relative success of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, with an immediate market of ~350MM people.
- 3y ago

enasterosophes 3y ago

As someone in an English-speaking country, I expect my colleagues to have good English. We operate a helpdesk where clear communication is essential. Internally, we need to be able to quickly coordinate with each other on highly technical problems. If someone from another country came in with a bad attitude about "why do I need good English?" we would be more than a little hesitant about hiring them. It doesn't matter how good you are in tech, English literacy and fluency are foundational to everything else. It would surprise me if Germans see this very differently.

shiroiuma 3y ago
It IS different in non-English speaking countries. I live in Japan and work in an English workplace. The harsh reality is, if you want to hire talented in-demand people from outside your country, and your country's language isn't English, then you have to accommodate English in your workplace. If you insist on using your local language only, then you will only have applicants from your own country: very few qualified candidates living outside Germany(/Austria) or Japan can speak those languages at a highly proficient level. If you have no need of importing professionals from abroad, that's OK; obviously it's easier to recruit people in your own country if you stick to your country's native language. But if you have a big talent shortage (as is typically the case for the tech sector), then not accommodating English will mean you can't compete against companies that are more international (i.e., they use English). Like it or not, English is the most commonly-spoken 2nd language in the world; it's the international language of business and trade. College-educated professionals mostly all speak it these days. So if you want an international company, English it is.

JAlexoid 3y ago

> DE currently require good knowledge of German That's quite reasonable. No matter how good you're at a certain skill, most jobs will require an advanced level of communication. Imagine if you hired a builder and the person wouldn't be able to understand the intricacies of the job you need performed? Having teams that are exclusively English speaking in Germany would make sense, but Germany is large enough to not have them yet.

mgraupner 3y ago

As a German, my personal experience does not correspond with this. I know a lot of companies here where people from India or Eastern European countries work and their knowledge of the German language varies widely. But as long as you speak English you get along very well here. And they work at large companies, mid sized companies or startups. Most people in Tech/Engineering speak English nowadays.

missedthecue 3y ago
Surprisingly the CEO of Bayer, one of Germany's biggest companies, does not speak German despite living and working near Cologne. Apparently the board meetings are conducted in German... No idea how he manages to participate.