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I have yet to find the mythical efficiency everyone was talking about. Trains, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, this. It's rules and adherence to rules, more than

by earcar 4mo ago

I have yet to find the mythical efficiency everyone was talking about. Trains, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, this. It's rules and adherence to rules, more than efficiency, that I've found in my experience.

odiroot 4mo ago
There is no efficiency to be found. It's a "cover your ass" mentality that resists any changes.
ExpertAdvisor01 4mo ago
Another recent example : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/06/10/germanys-hs2-delayed-five-years-engineering-blunder/#comment https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/06/10/germanys-h... They laid 600+km of cables wrong ultimately delaying the project by 6 years.
Medowar 4mo ago
The efficiency is a thing of the past, an mainly when dealing with manufacturing, which we were really good at. The world got faster, but german industries and politics never got the memo.
leokennis 4mo ago
My experience with German colleagues is not efficiency; but they do have a remarkable ability (in my field) to read a 400 page regulator rulebook and overlay it on a 200 page design document and pinpoint the rulebook edge cases not covered by the design...
moooo99 4mo ago
> I have yet to find the mythical efficiency everyone was talking about. Comes down to a misrepresentation of history. Germans were never known to be efficient, they were known to be precise with everything, including bureaucracy. This happens to be handy with machinery, but not much else.
- WarmWash 4mo ago
  ...but their machinery (or cars and motorcycles at least) are needlessly complex and unbelievably frustrating to work on. Really I think that they just landed on some really successful marketing.
  - moooo99 4mo ago
    > Really I think that they just landed on some really successful marketing. It depends. For some machinery the complexity is inherent, this makes German machines very good at what they do. But this approach does not tend to scale well, which is part of the reason the German economy tends to be fairly specialized with „hidden champion“ SMEs. Made in Germany has (had?) a very positive connotation to it, but for historic reasons.
    - WarmWash 4mo ago
      Japanese engineers seem to have figured out the "inherent complexity".
- selfmodruntime 4mo ago
  This was an advantage when bureaucracy was still young. It's a beast that only grows though.
sevenzero 4mo ago
Germans a rule based and were really precise which came in handy like 50 years ago. The modern German is not flexible enough for the modern job market. German companies are also not flexible enough to compete. Germany goes downhill for a reason.
Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
It's a mistake to think Germany is efficient, I don't know where they got that stereotype. Germans are thorough, not efficient.
dgellow 4mo ago
It’s from >50y ago, then became a meme detached from reality. And for some reasons people are still repeating it even if they know literally nothing about the country

by earcar 4mo ago

odiroot 4mo ago

There is no efficiency to be found. It's a "cover your ass" mentality that resists any changes.

ExpertAdvisor01 4mo ago

Another recent example : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/06/10/germanys-hs2-delayed-five-years-engineering-blunder/#comment https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/06/10/germanys-h... They laid 600+km of cables wrong ultimately delaying the project by 6 years.

Medowar 4mo ago

The efficiency is a thing of the past, an mainly when dealing with manufacturing, which we were really good at. The world got faster, but german industries and politics never got the memo.

leokennis 4mo ago

My experience with German colleagues is not efficiency; but they do have a remarkable ability (in my field) to read a 400 page regulator rulebook and overlay it on a 200 page design document and pinpoint the rulebook edge cases not covered by the design...

moooo99 4mo ago

> I have yet to find the mythical efficiency everyone was talking about. Comes down to a misrepresentation of history. Germans were never known to be efficient, they were known to be precise with everything, including bureaucracy. This happens to be handy with machinery, but not much else.

WarmWash 4mo ago
...but their machinery (or cars and motorcycles at least) are needlessly complex and unbelievably frustrating to work on. Really I think that they just landed on some really successful marketing.
- moooo99 4mo ago
  > Really I think that they just landed on some really successful marketing. It depends. For some machinery the complexity is inherent, this makes German machines very good at what they do. But this approach does not tend to scale well, which is part of the reason the German economy tends to be fairly specialized with „hidden champion“ SMEs. Made in Germany has (had?) a very positive connotation to it, but for historic reasons.
  - WarmWash 4mo ago
    Japanese engineers seem to have figured out the "inherent complexity".
selfmodruntime 4mo ago
This was an advantage when bureaucracy was still young. It's a beast that only grows though.

sevenzero 4mo ago

Germans a rule based and were really precise which came in handy like 50 years ago. The modern German is not flexible enough for the modern job market. German companies are also not flexible enough to compete. Germany goes downhill for a reason.

Schlagbohrer 4mo ago

It's a mistake to think Germany is efficient, I don't know where they got that stereotype. Germans are thorough, not efficient.

dgellow 4mo ago

It’s from >50y ago, then became a meme detached from reality. And for some reasons people are still repeating it even if they know literally nothing about the country