5 ms·

I used to work for the US side of a German multinational (one of the largest in the world) and discovered the same thing when it came to software. The German s

by wenc 7mo ago

I used to work for the US side of a German multinational (one of the largest in the world) and discovered the same thing when it came to software. The German side always had slick presentations (they always had good visual marketing) and impressive claims, but whenever I tried to work with their products, I always found the claims overstated and that they hadn't really executed deeply. This despite my German counterparts working hard (I visited HQ in Germany and when they work, they really work and clock the hours, no idle chitchat)... yet it doesn't translate to impact. A lot of their products had impressive front-ends but half-baked back-ends (on the American side, it's the reverse -- our interfaces looked like crap, but our stuff actually worked and often delivered in less time). A lot of their designs were also non-human friendly (if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users -- weird little user-hostile features pop up everywhere). I don't understand why this is -- this is a nation that produced Dieter Rams. Tobi Lutke (CEO Shopify) likes to talk about how Germans grew up surrounded by good design, yet that design culture never permeated many German products. I own a Bosch in-unit washer/dryer and it's frustratingly unintuitive and has a "my (the engineer's) way or the highway" philosophy. I went to a BMW talk once about the infotainment system (it was built on the latest Azure tech), but came away feeling that the work was not deep. It was skin deep. I wonder what has happened to the German builder/tinkerer culture that made German manufacturing great. In the 1980s and 1990s, Germany was synonymous with excellence. But in the 2000s-present, not so much (except maybe in very narrow mittelstand verticals, e.g. Zeiss).

vjvjvjvjghv 7mo ago
I think Germany got infected by the shareholder value and privatization virus but doesn't really understand it.
- RobRivera 7mo ago
  Whats funny is when its privatized by publicly traded companies it becomes this weird nationalized-kinda but not really thing that turns the economy into a bifercated class of first class citizens and second class citizens.
- notTooFarGone 7mo ago
  Working for german medium-sized companies: It's really that the upper management does not appreciate change over departments if it's not their idea. There is always the mentality that "why fix it if it works" where you actually have to wait for people to go to their pension to really grab a process and drive change. You then get partially digitalized processes where digital native departments are concerned but they always have to solve the problem of interacting with a bunch of legacy systems and workflows, which in itself is so much harder and more inefficient.
analog31 7mo ago
I wonder if anybody's manufacturing was great before the Japanese quality revolution. It took Germany longer than the US to adopt modern quality control. Granted, Germany did a lot of it, for instance their chemical industries were staggering. I've formed the impression that every country's engineering and design cultures are essentially aesthetics.
- servo_sausage 7mo ago
  History of manafacturing philosophy is a pretty interesting lens; I once had the chance to chatt with an old German colleague about the change in mentality over multiple decades. One thing he highlighted was the change from "lower error rate equals less waste, and higher final sale price" to "customer complaints or defect rates should be above a threshold, otherwise we are investing too much in the process control". Particularly due to the desire to derisk the process; design by collaboration with the end user, and contracts with quality requirements, rather than the design being owned by the manufacturer.
jarek83 7mo ago
BMW's most recent infotainment is a big step backwards to me in both areas - aesthetics and UX. Its previous generation was one of the best in the market also in both. I literally don't consider buying the newest 4-series just because of it, especially of the ultrawide driver's "monitor" - it's just so ugly, and I regret it, since on the outside the car appeals me so much more. I'd rather spend the same on previous year model with better specs.
- pcurve 7mo ago
  agreed. IMHO, last good BMWs were E90 and F10s. That's when they still cared about craftsmanship even in areas not visible to customers.
  - tirant 7mo ago
    I strongly disagree. The step from the F series to the G vehicles was big, quality improved a lot, specially for the 3 series (F30, F31 vs G20, G21) and the X3 (the G01 feels like a 5 series). The materials, assembly, noises during driving, but specially the driving dynamics and robustness are incredibly high. It’s also true though that the last wave of G models has improved driving dynamics but cheapened out in interior materials. Peak BMW interiors happened between 2019-2022 with the G01, G30, G05 and iX, i4. Being my favorites the iX and the G01. BMW also has the best infotainment system after Tesla. And it still integrates well with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
    - stephencanon 7mo ago
      Mechanically, you're probably right, but the screen-centric controls of the newer generation are _awful_ by comparison to the F generation's physical buttons and dials (this isn't BMW though, it's the whole industry). My wife and I both have F31s, which we will drive until we can no longer source replacement parts unless the industry comes to its senses first (unlikely). Any time we've ever looked at plausible replacements, the screen-based controls are an immediate hard no.
- speeder 7mo ago
pcurve 7mo ago
"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users " cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions. Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many interesting stories to share, but one that has always stayed with me is, his disdain for how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals. This was in the 90s, so definitely passed the West Germany glory days. My take is, in the era of global competition, Germans didn't know how to strike the right balance and effective allocate resources. Where to compromise, and where not to. I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.
- joe_mamba 7mo ago
  >how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals I think most people(Americans mostly) don't have the faintest idea how true that is right now. Here's a comment of mine from a few weeks ago giving such a present-day example that will blow your brains of how cheap german companies are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023 I feel like German companies know they lost the innovation race (I mean companies that aren't Zeiss), they lost the cheap manufacturing race "thanks" to Russian gas dependence and ideological denuclearisation before enough renewables were built, so all that's left for them now to stay afloat is reducing labor and operating costs by offshoring and pinching all the pennies they can find, but even that it not enough since from where I stand there's weekly corporate bankruptcies and layoffs and that's including the fact that the government has been speeding like crazy the last 3+ years to make sure the private sector industry doesn't completely collapse.
  - twoodfin 7mo ago
    I’m told that Germans in general are “cheap” and that this is an expected consequence of their economic policies designed to reinforce their industrial base. I wish I could find the reference I’m thinking of, but the idea was that Germans buying absurdly cheap wine and their constantly underfunded trains were part of a pattern of deliberate domestic under-investment to keep exports competitive. Someone ITT surely knows more.
Lio 7mo ago
> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users -- weird little user-hostile features pop up everywhere I drive a German car, all be it one from 2015, I don’t recognise this statement at all. I find it quite well designed. This sounds more like over generalised FUD to me.
- gregorygoc 7mo ago
  I agree. Parent comment is making extremely generalized statements, about German cars with overconfidence. There’s not a single “German” car, it’s a huge ecosystem of brands like VW (Audi, Porsche), BMW, Mercedes. I’m quite sure they don’t have the single “user-hostile” interface.
  - menaerus 7mo ago
    They all look the same, e.g. like sh*t IMO, so although the above statement sounds overgeneralized it doesn't meant that it doesn't generalize well. IME it does.
Geof25 7mo ago
> I wonder what has happened to the German builder/tinkerer culture that made German manufacturing great. Over engineered stuff which hate the user is staple of German manufacturing. Look on tanks during WW2. Impressive on the surface but unreliable crap for everyone who used it.
- nicbou 7mo ago
  Not just tanks but the entire economy and railways in the same time period.
- bob1029 7mo ago
  I've learned my lesson about German engineering after buying one of their vacuum cleaners. The ergonomics of the machine seem bad on purpose.
  - aix1 7mo ago
    I have a Metabo vacuum (ASA 30 H PC) and absolutely love it. What's bad about the ergonomics of yours?
    - bob1029 7mo ago
      I have a Sebo. The primary thing I dislike is the weight. You'd think something this heavy would have some kind of performance advantage, but it doesn't. I've seen battery powered shit from Walmart suck harder than this machine does.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 7mo ago
    Anecdotally, I disagree. The ergonomics on my Miele are very good. It is clear that attention was paid to many details of using it.
    - marceldegraaf 7mo ago
      I recently replaced the shock dampers on our Miele washing machine (~10 years old) and I was amazed how well designed and ergonomic the inside of the machine is. Parts are very easy to get at, all screws are Torx of identical size, and there's one very obvious way to take the machine apart and put it back together again. Made the replacement a breeze.
omega3 7mo ago
> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users Perhaps they were built for engineers designing the car not for the actual people repairing or maintaining them - they are notorious for requiring a cascade of disassembly for repairs of simple components, require specialist tools, overengineering of components etc.
bikesharing 7mo ago
[dead]
samiv 7mo ago
As a non German but someone who has lived there for 10 years my take is that its cultural part of being Germans. They always seem to gravitate towards making things just a little bit more difficult. Sthe keyboards are not QWERTY. They're QWERTZ. Traffic lights are in excessive combinations of green/yellow/red. Sometimes you might have yellow/red light sometimes only red. Roads often have "end of speed limit" sign. But the speed limit might have been temporary for construction. So now you have to remember the original speed limit. Why not post the actual speed limit again? Stuff like this is absolutely everywhere in the German society for apparently no reason. EDIT: Adding the best for last.. in Germany when you have an IBAN bank account (you know the I stands for international) you must have German international bank account, or else it will be rejected by everyone and everything.
- earthnail 7mo ago
  German here. Some of it I can agree with. The traffic light though is very simple. Yellow means “it was green and will turn red”. Red+yellow means “it was red and will turn green”. It’s this way in the entire country. There are many things I can get upset with in Germany (I moved abroad 10y ago and have an outsider’s perspective by now) but the traffic light example to me just indicates you didn’t ask why certain things were the way they were.
  - dogemaster2025 7mo ago
    It’s so German to blame the user!
  - samiv 7mo ago
    "The traffic light though is very simple. Yellow means “it was green and will turn red”. Red+yellow means “it was red and will turn green”." That was not the point, that's the standard way the lights will work. The point is that sometimes you have a light combination where actual light post only has yellow/red for example (no green light). Sometimes you have a light post that has red only (on, off).
    - shizzor 7mo ago
FeloniousHam 7mo ago
I have a engineer relative who worked for German companies for 20 years in the US and Europe: "You can tell a German nothing." (He loved his time there and the people of course).
wwosik 7mo ago
My experience is totally to the contrary. That American software is overpromoted crap - see you there Salesforce. I have an (admittedly) older BMW. It just works. At first I thought that the cruise control lever is worse than buttons on the weel. After spending a lot of time in the car - no it isn't, it's much better.
vladvasiliu 7mo ago
I don't know about culture in German companies, but my experience with end-user products is the opposite of yours. I used to have a 2005 c-class mercedes, and that was a great car. Everything was well thought-out and had some very nice touches I didn't even know I needed and haven't seen in any other car my dad has had since then. It was very reliable and even had a recall some 3 years ago for a minor issue with the sunroof – which didn't manifest in my specific car. I also have a Siemens dishwasher that is absolutely great. It has direct buttons on the front for direct selection of the different washing cycles it has, plus delayed start, extra rinse, and half load. It has an app, but you'd never know if you didn't read the manual – everything is accessible through the front panel and intelligible icons. The drawers are adjustable with the latches you need to pull on falling right under your fingers when you hold them. In contrast, my LG washer + dryer is much more of a PITA to operate, with indicators that don't fall in front of the labels. I have to count the programs and the wheel clicks just to be sure which one is actually selected, even though I've had it for two years now. The thing doesn't even have a dedicated spin cycle! You can only select it as part of some other, larger cycle, or by using the app to upload a "custom" program. But without the app, there's no way of knowing what the currently loaded 'custom' program does until you actually start it.
raspasov 7mo ago
I’ve rented many different brands and the BMW interface is by far the best and quite consistent across generations. It hasn’t changed all that much since early 2000s. What exactly do you think was “user-hostile”? If you want to see bad UI/UX, try a Range Rover. Unfortunately all brands collectively (even BMW) have taken a step back with the latest generation of cars and the touch-screen-all-the-things craze.

by wenc 7mo ago

vjvjvjvjghv 7mo ago

I think Germany got infected by the shareholder value and privatization virus but doesn't really understand it.

RobRivera 7mo ago
Whats funny is when its privatized by publicly traded companies it becomes this weird nationalized-kinda but not really thing that turns the economy into a bifercated class of first class citizens and second class citizens.
notTooFarGone 7mo ago
Working for german medium-sized companies: It's really that the upper management does not appreciate change over departments if it's not their idea. There is always the mentality that "why fix it if it works" where you actually have to wait for people to go to their pension to really grab a process and drive change. You then get partially digitalized processes where digital native departments are concerned but they always have to solve the problem of interacting with a bunch of legacy systems and workflows, which in itself is so much harder and more inefficient.

analog31 7mo ago

I wonder if anybody's manufacturing was great before the Japanese quality revolution. It took Germany longer than the US to adopt modern quality control. Granted, Germany did a lot of it, for instance their chemical industries were staggering. I've formed the impression that every country's engineering and design cultures are essentially aesthetics.

servo_sausage 7mo ago
History of manafacturing philosophy is a pretty interesting lens; I once had the chance to chatt with an old German colleague about the change in mentality over multiple decades. One thing he highlighted was the change from "lower error rate equals less waste, and higher final sale price" to "customer complaints or defect rates should be above a threshold, otherwise we are investing too much in the process control". Particularly due to the desire to derisk the process; design by collaboration with the end user, and contracts with quality requirements, rather than the design being owned by the manufacturer.

jarek83 7mo ago

BMW's most recent infotainment is a big step backwards to me in both areas - aesthetics and UX. Its previous generation was one of the best in the market also in both. I literally don't consider buying the newest 4-series just because of it, especially of the ultrawide driver's "monitor" - it's just so ugly, and I regret it, since on the outside the car appeals me so much more. I'd rather spend the same on previous year model with better specs.

pcurve 7mo ago
agreed. IMHO, last good BMWs were E90 and F10s. That's when they still cared about craftsmanship even in areas not visible to customers.
- tirant 7mo ago
  I strongly disagree. The step from the F series to the G vehicles was big, quality improved a lot, specially for the 3 series (F30, F31 vs G20, G21) and the X3 (the G01 feels like a 5 series). The materials, assembly, noises during driving, but specially the driving dynamics and robustness are incredibly high. It’s also true though that the last wave of G models has improved driving dynamics but cheapened out in interior materials. Peak BMW interiors happened between 2019-2022 with the G01, G30, G05 and iX, i4. Being my favorites the iX and the G01. BMW also has the best infotainment system after Tesla. And it still integrates well with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
  - stephencanon 7mo ago
    Mechanically, you're probably right, but the screen-centric controls of the newer generation are _awful_ by comparison to the F generation's physical buttons and dials (this isn't BMW though, it's the whole industry). My wife and I both have F31s, which we will drive until we can no longer source replacement parts unless the industry comes to its senses first (unlikely). Any time we've ever looked at plausible replacements, the screen-based controls are an immediate hard no.
speeder 7mo ago

pcurve 7mo ago

"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users " cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions. Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many interesting stories to share, but one that has always stayed with me is, his disdain for how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals. This was in the 90s, so definitely passed the West Germany glory days. My take is, in the era of global competition, Germans didn't know how to strike the right balance and effective allocate resources. Where to compromise, and where not to. I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

joe_mamba 7mo ago
>how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals I think most people(Americans mostly) don't have the faintest idea how true that is right now. Here's a comment of mine from a few weeks ago giving such a present-day example that will blow your brains of how cheap german companies are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023 I feel like German companies know they lost the innovation race (I mean companies that aren't Zeiss), they lost the cheap manufacturing race "thanks" to Russian gas dependence and ideological denuclearisation before enough renewables were built, so all that's left for them now to stay afloat is reducing labor and operating costs by offshoring and pinching all the pennies they can find, but even that it not enough since from where I stand there's weekly corporate bankruptcies and layoffs and that's including the fact that the government has been speeding like crazy the last 3+ years to make sure the private sector industry doesn't completely collapse.
- twoodfin 7mo ago
  I’m told that Germans in general are “cheap” and that this is an expected consequence of their economic policies designed to reinforce their industrial base. I wish I could find the reference I’m thinking of, but the idea was that Germans buying absurdly cheap wine and their constantly underfunded trains were part of a pattern of deliberate domestic under-investment to keep exports competitive. Someone ITT surely knows more.

Lio 7mo ago

> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users -- weird little user-hostile features pop up everywhere I drive a German car, all be it one from 2015, I don’t recognise this statement at all. I find it quite well designed. This sounds more like over generalised FUD to me.

gregorygoc 7mo ago
I agree. Parent comment is making extremely generalized statements, about German cars with overconfidence. There’s not a single “German” car, it’s a huge ecosystem of brands like VW (Audi, Porsche), BMW, Mercedes. I’m quite sure they don’t have the single “user-hostile” interface.
- menaerus 7mo ago
  They all look the same, e.g. like sh*t IMO, so although the above statement sounds overgeneralized it doesn't meant that it doesn't generalize well. IME it does.

Geof25 7mo ago

> I wonder what has happened to the German builder/tinkerer culture that made German manufacturing great. Over engineered stuff which hate the user is staple of German manufacturing. Look on tanks during WW2. Impressive on the surface but unreliable crap for everyone who used it.

nicbou 7mo ago
Not just tanks but the entire economy and railways in the same time period.
bob1029 7mo ago
I've learned my lesson about German engineering after buying one of their vacuum cleaners. The ergonomics of the machine seem bad on purpose.
- aix1 7mo ago
  I have a Metabo vacuum (ASA 30 H PC) and absolutely love it. What's bad about the ergonomics of yours?
  - bob1029 7mo ago
    I have a Sebo. The primary thing I dislike is the weight. You'd think something this heavy would have some kind of performance advantage, but it doesn't. I've seen battery powered shit from Walmart suck harder than this machine does.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7mo ago
  Anecdotally, I disagree. The ergonomics on my Miele are very good. It is clear that attention was paid to many details of using it.
  - marceldegraaf 7mo ago
    I recently replaced the shock dampers on our Miele washing machine (~10 years old) and I was amazed how well designed and ergonomic the inside of the machine is. Parts are very easy to get at, all screws are Torx of identical size, and there's one very obvious way to take the machine apart and put it back together again. Made the replacement a breeze.

omega3 7mo ago

> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users Perhaps they were built for engineers designing the car not for the actual people repairing or maintaining them - they are notorious for requiring a cascade of disassembly for repairs of simple components, require specialist tools, overengineering of components etc.

bikesharing 7mo ago

[dead]

samiv 7mo ago

As a non German but someone who has lived there for 10 years my take is that its cultural part of being Germans. They always seem to gravitate towards making things just a little bit more difficult. Sthe keyboards are not QWERTY. They're QWERTZ. Traffic lights are in excessive combinations of green/yellow/red. Sometimes you might have yellow/red light sometimes only red. Roads often have "end of speed limit" sign. But the speed limit might have been temporary for construction. So now you have to remember the original speed limit. Why not post the actual speed limit again? Stuff like this is absolutely everywhere in the German society for apparently no reason. EDIT: Adding the best for last.. in Germany when you have an IBAN bank account (you know the I stands for international) you must have German international bank account, or else it will be rejected by everyone and everything.

earthnail 7mo ago
German here. Some of it I can agree with. The traffic light though is very simple. Yellow means “it was green and will turn red”. Red+yellow means “it was red and will turn green”. It’s this way in the entire country. There are many things I can get upset with in Germany (I moved abroad 10y ago and have an outsider’s perspective by now) but the traffic light example to me just indicates you didn’t ask why certain things were the way they were.
- dogemaster2025 7mo ago
  It’s so German to blame the user!
- samiv 7mo ago
  "The traffic light though is very simple. Yellow means “it was green and will turn red”. Red+yellow means “it was red and will turn green”." That was not the point, that's the standard way the lights will work. The point is that sometimes you have a light combination where actual light post only has yellow/red for example (no green light). Sometimes you have a light post that has red only (on, off).
  - shizzor 7mo ago

FeloniousHam 7mo ago

I have a engineer relative who worked for German companies for 20 years in the US and Europe: "You can tell a German nothing." (He loved his time there and the people of course).

wwosik 7mo ago

My experience is totally to the contrary. That American software is overpromoted crap - see you there Salesforce. I have an (admittedly) older BMW. It just works. At first I thought that the cruise control lever is worse than buttons on the weel. After spending a lot of time in the car - no it isn't, it's much better.

vladvasiliu 7mo ago

I don't know about culture in German companies, but my experience with end-user products is the opposite of yours. I used to have a 2005 c-class mercedes, and that was a great car. Everything was well thought-out and had some very nice touches I didn't even know I needed and haven't seen in any other car my dad has had since then. It was very reliable and even had a recall some 3 years ago for a minor issue with the sunroof – which didn't manifest in my specific car. I also have a Siemens dishwasher that is absolutely great. It has direct buttons on the front for direct selection of the different washing cycles it has, plus delayed start, extra rinse, and half load. It has an app, but you'd never know if you didn't read the manual – everything is accessible through the front panel and intelligible icons. The drawers are adjustable with the latches you need to pull on falling right under your fingers when you hold them. In contrast, my LG washer + dryer is much more of a PITA to operate, with indicators that don't fall in front of the labels. I have to count the programs and the wheel clicks just to be sure which one is actually selected, even though I've had it for two years now. The thing doesn't even have a dedicated spin cycle! You can only select it as part of some other, larger cycle, or by using the app to upload a "custom" program. But without the app, there's no way of knowing what the currently loaded 'custom' program does until you actually start it.

raspasov 7mo ago

I’ve rented many different brands and the BMW interface is by far the best and quite consistent across generations. It hasn’t changed all that much since early 2000s. What exactly do you think was “user-hostile”? If you want to see bad UI/UX, try a Range Rover. Unfortunately all brands collectively (even BMW) have taken a step back with the latest generation of cars and the touch-screen-all-the-things craze.