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So much in German work culture - and also culture in general - is about covering your own arse. If you follow the procedure, even if the outcome is disaster, yo

So much in German work culture - and also culture in general - is about covering your own arse. If you follow the procedure, even if the outcome is disaster, you are not at fault; you were just implementing the rules, and you cannot be held accountable. It's the fault of whoever came up with the rules, except that is usually not a single person, but some amorphous entity that ran through some decision making process years in the past. So, no one is really at fault or can be held accountable. It's always some magical higher power preventing you from doing the sensible thing. One favourite excuse is insurance liability. We can't do the sensible thing, because the insurance wouldn't pay if something bad were to happen, even though the odds of something bad happening are virtually nil. You can also observe this in German politics. "Oh, we absolutely cannot do <common sense thing> because the rules won't allow it." Well, you could change the rules, but then you would have to take some actual responsibility, and we can't have that.

stingraycharles 9mo ago
My favorite part of German work culture is watching an excel sheet together and going over the numbers. My actual favorite part of German work culture is that meetings always have an agenda, that part is a delight when doing business with German customers.
- TheTxT 9mo ago
  As a German I envy your meetings with Germans
- sunaookami 9mo ago
  Your meetings have an agenda? We just debate something and are stuck on some minor unimportant point that doesn't matter and the meeting goes into overtime and then we schedule 2-3 follow-up meetings where everything we said is now completely irrelevant because our assumptions were incorrect from the start. And then you finally get to work and you can't implement it like it was specified since everyone forgot that you can't really do X so you have to it some other way making everything that was discussed completely moot.
- otikik 9mo ago
  Sorry, the zoom meeting link has changed so now the meeting will take 4 hours and you must get the agenda by FAX. (this is what happened to OP)
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  I toured a German Siemens factory and was startled by the unfamiliar safely culture. Big bits of equipment moving around fast and limited guard rails. The culture of taking personal responsibility is vastly different to where I’m from.
scotty79 9mo ago
> you were just implementing the rules, and you cannot be held accountable That kind of explains why they tried to pull it of at Nuremberg. And why some nazis that weren't sentenced internationally got good jobs in post-war Germany. For Germans they weren't really at fault if they were just following procedures.
- tempest_ 9mo ago
  They got good jobs because the Allies did not really care about punishing the Nazis. At the end of WW2 a strong West Germany to oppose the USSR was more important than punishing some middle manager and the quickest way to get the West German state together was to use a lot of the existing bureaucracy.
  - scotty79 9mo ago
    > They got good jobs because the Allies did not really care about punishing the Nazis. And the fact that Germans did not really care about punishing nazis didn't matter at all?
- this_user 9mo ago
  "I was just following orders," is a bit of a meme, but it's also true, and even more so in the context of Prussian-style military discipline. Disobeying an order was not an option. You carry it out no matter what, but the responsibility lies with the commander. It gets more murky for the civilians who theoretically could have walked away, but a lot of them had a similar mindset that they were just doing their jobs. And you have to keep in mind that all of the Nazi's racial ideology had been codified into law at the time. So you were once again just implementing the rules, even if those rules were actually harmful. But what this episode also highlights is the opposite of this in the form of the American approach that is much more flexible and willing to bend the rules if necessary. Rightfully, the Allies could and probably should have brought everyone to justice, but they realised that a lot of the Nazi scientists were extremely valuable assets that they needed to get a leg up on the Soviets. So rather than execute them or put them in prison and throw away the key, they recruited them.
Telemakhos 9mo ago
That sounds a lot like industrial safety culture: blame the process, not the worker, so we can iterate on the safety built into the process if there is a failure, because doing so lessens the chance of future failures. It’s a great way to build airplanes.
- frenchy 9mo ago
  Sort of, but the difference here is that it's really "blame the person who created the process, not the person following it". The people with the authority to alter faulty processes don't want to change it, even if it's clearly bad, because then they become "the person who created the process".
- ploxiln 9mo ago
  Theoretically ... in practice, Boeing's most rigorous days in the 80s and 90s were directed by empowered individuals in the manufacturing org, and when it went full "strict process only" in the 2000s and 2010s the quality fell.
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    I don't think that's due to following the process but rather systemic cultural issues. The process doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's a good faith meta process that needs to be followed to incrementally fix issues as they arise. Bad faith actors and cultural dysfunction can break pretty much anything no matter how well thought out it might be.
    - actionfromafar 9mo ago
      McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997. Timeline checks out.
    - macintux 9mo ago
      > Bad faith actors and cultural dysfunction can break pretty much anything no matter how well thought out it might be. U.S. politics today in a nutshell.
cyberpunk 9mo ago
... I had to take out a special insurance when working from home as a freelancer, and share evidence I had done so with my client as -- if someone slipped outside my house because I'd not swept up the snow somehow the company who was paying me would be liable for the insurance claim... ... Yep. It's for similar reasons why everyone is up at the crack of dawn frantically shovelling snow outside their homes. Rather spoils the fun of towing the kids to school on a sled when every 5 meters there's a perfectly swept bit you have to drag it across.
- Aeolun 9mo ago
  Don’t worry. You can drag them on the street! Safety first and all that.
potato3732842 9mo ago
>If you follow the procedure, even if the outcome is disaster, you are not at fault; you were just implementing the rules, and you cannot be held accountable. It's the fault of whoever came up with the rules, except that is usually not a single person, but some amorphous entity that ran through some decision making process years in the past. So, no one is really at fault or can be held accountable. Worse. You can't even take responsibility even if you want to, that's usually against the rules too.
NoMoreNicksLeft 9mo ago
Didn't the Germans get in trouble for "just following the rules" back in the mid-20th century?
- N19PEDL2 9mo ago
  "I was just following orders." --Any German soldier after 1945
  - pqtyw 9mo ago
    It's interesting considering that based on the German military doctrine at the time low ranking officers on the ground had a huge amount of independence while the French ones were stuck doing nothing and waiting for orders to be signed and approved.. Of course maybe that didn't apply to committing atrocities to the same degree.
duxup 9mo ago
Reminds me of the "we can only send helmets" to Ukraine thing ... that apparently wasn't a real hard and fast rule but when originally presented you would have thought it was some magical rule set in stone.
moffkalast 9mo ago
TIL the entire German work culture is literally the Nuremberg defense. A bit on the nose.

stingraycharles 9mo ago

My favorite part of German work culture is watching an excel sheet together and going over the numbers. My actual favorite part of German work culture is that meetings always have an agenda, that part is a delight when doing business with German customers.

TheTxT 9mo ago
As a German I envy your meetings with Germans
sunaookami 9mo ago
Your meetings have an agenda? We just debate something and are stuck on some minor unimportant point that doesn't matter and the meeting goes into overtime and then we schedule 2-3 follow-up meetings where everything we said is now completely irrelevant because our assumptions were incorrect from the start. And then you finally get to work and you can't implement it like it was specified since everyone forgot that you can't really do X so you have to it some other way making everything that was discussed completely moot.
otikik 9mo ago
Sorry, the zoom meeting link has changed so now the meeting will take 4 hours and you must get the agenda by FAX. (this is what happened to OP)
lostlogin 9mo ago
I toured a German Siemens factory and was startled by the unfamiliar safely culture. Big bits of equipment moving around fast and limited guard rails. The culture of taking personal responsibility is vastly different to where I’m from.

scotty79 9mo ago

> you were just implementing the rules, and you cannot be held accountable That kind of explains why they tried to pull it of at Nuremberg. And why some nazis that weren't sentenced internationally got good jobs in post-war Germany. For Germans they weren't really at fault if they were just following procedures.

tempest_ 9mo ago
They got good jobs because the Allies did not really care about punishing the Nazis. At the end of WW2 a strong West Germany to oppose the USSR was more important than punishing some middle manager and the quickest way to get the West German state together was to use a lot of the existing bureaucracy.
- scotty79 9mo ago
  > They got good jobs because the Allies did not really care about punishing the Nazis. And the fact that Germans did not really care about punishing nazis didn't matter at all?
this_user 9mo ago
"I was just following orders," is a bit of a meme, but it's also true, and even more so in the context of Prussian-style military discipline. Disobeying an order was not an option. You carry it out no matter what, but the responsibility lies with the commander. It gets more murky for the civilians who theoretically could have walked away, but a lot of them had a similar mindset that they were just doing their jobs. And you have to keep in mind that all of the Nazi's racial ideology had been codified into law at the time. So you were once again just implementing the rules, even if those rules were actually harmful. But what this episode also highlights is the opposite of this in the form of the American approach that is much more flexible and willing to bend the rules if necessary. Rightfully, the Allies could and probably should have brought everyone to justice, but they realised that a lot of the Nazi scientists were extremely valuable assets that they needed to get a leg up on the Soviets. So rather than execute them or put them in prison and throw away the key, they recruited them.

Telemakhos 9mo ago

That sounds a lot like industrial safety culture: blame the process, not the worker, so we can iterate on the safety built into the process if there is a failure, because doing so lessens the chance of future failures. It’s a great way to build airplanes.

frenchy 9mo ago
Sort of, but the difference here is that it's really "blame the person who created the process, not the person following it". The people with the authority to alter faulty processes don't want to change it, even if it's clearly bad, because then they become "the person who created the process".
ploxiln 9mo ago
Theoretically ... in practice, Boeing's most rigorous days in the 80s and 90s were directed by empowered individuals in the manufacturing org, and when it went full "strict process only" in the 2000s and 2010s the quality fell.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  I don't think that's due to following the process but rather systemic cultural issues. The process doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's a good faith meta process that needs to be followed to incrementally fix issues as they arise. Bad faith actors and cultural dysfunction can break pretty much anything no matter how well thought out it might be.
  - actionfromafar 9mo ago
    McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997. Timeline checks out.
  - macintux 9mo ago
    > Bad faith actors and cultural dysfunction can break pretty much anything no matter how well thought out it might be. U.S. politics today in a nutshell.

cyberpunk 9mo ago

... I had to take out a special insurance when working from home as a freelancer, and share evidence I had done so with my client as -- if someone slipped outside my house because I'd not swept up the snow somehow the company who was paying me would be liable for the insurance claim... ... Yep. It's for similar reasons why everyone is up at the crack of dawn frantically shovelling snow outside their homes. Rather spoils the fun of towing the kids to school on a sled when every 5 meters there's a perfectly swept bit you have to drag it across.

Aeolun 9mo ago
Don’t worry. You can drag them on the street! Safety first and all that.

potato3732842 9mo ago

>If you follow the procedure, even if the outcome is disaster, you are not at fault; you were just implementing the rules, and you cannot be held accountable. It's the fault of whoever came up with the rules, except that is usually not a single person, but some amorphous entity that ran through some decision making process years in the past. So, no one is really at fault or can be held accountable. Worse. You can't even take responsibility even if you want to, that's usually against the rules too.

NoMoreNicksLeft 9mo ago

Didn't the Germans get in trouble for "just following the rules" back in the mid-20th century?

N19PEDL2 9mo ago
"I was just following orders." --Any German soldier after 1945
- pqtyw 9mo ago
  It's interesting considering that based on the German military doctrine at the time low ranking officers on the ground had a huge amount of independence while the French ones were stuck doing nothing and waiting for orders to be signed and approved.. Of course maybe that didn't apply to committing atrocities to the same degree.

duxup 9mo ago

Reminds me of the "we can only send helmets" to Ukraine thing ... that apparently wasn't a real hard and fast rule but when originally presented you would have thought it was some magical rule set in stone.

moffkalast 9mo ago

TIL the entire German work culture is literally the Nuremberg defense. A bit on the nose.