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I personally hope there won't be a change in attitude. The work culture in America is toxic for the workers, requiring job hopping, long hours, and relatively little gain. There's very little long-term stability, and no assurance that their jobs won't eventually be outsourced. Why would Germans want to adopt that culture? Why should they praise failure? Why should they change bureaucracy to favor the capital owners over the workers?

> The work culture in America is toxic for the workers, requiring job hopping, long hours, and relatively little gain

These are quite the sweeping claims you're making for all ~125 million american workers.

There are so many factors to consider, yet you make such broad assumptions without a trace of evidence or logic to backup your narrow-minded claims.

The same could be said about the post above mine that summarized Germany's work culture. My post was a summation of the culture of an entire country. Of course there will be variation within an entire country.

Also, please don't call my claims narrow-minded without giving me an opportunity to counter your arguments. I googled "america work culture." These are some of the links it sent me to:

http://www.businessinsider.com/difference-swedish-american-w...

http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-usa-business-culture

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/america...

All of the links above describe a culture where the employees feel underappreciated and overworked. This is during a time when inequality is growing to obscene levels, tons of good middle class jobs have been shipped overseas, and most new jobs are forming in only a handful of urban centers across the country. If you have any evidence to counter my broad interpretation of the US work culture, I would appreciate it.

>http://www.businessinsider.com/difference-swedish-american-w...

>1. Practically everyone takes a summer vacation in Sweden

>2. In Sweden, it's somewhat easier to be a working parent

>3. Coffee breaks are serious business in Sweden

1,2 are consequences of semi-socialist policies. Also, coffee breaks?

On the other hand, most Swedes will pay between 49 and 60 per cent through a combination of local government and state income tax. No thanks.

Get back to me when software devs across industry start making six digits in europe.

> http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-usa-business-culture

> Discrimination in the Workplace

What else should the federal govt do, apart from outlawing it? Force employers to hire based on gender, racial quotas?

>There are fewer holidays and in some cases, American companies only allow two weeks a year for holidays. Christmas holidays are fewer with only December 25th being an official day and people do return to work on December 26th.

Depends where you work. If you wash dishes for minimum wage, I wouldn't expect multi-week paid vacations.

> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/america...

tldr

> Why do so many people—particularly women—seem to have so much on their plates?

That's what they wanted

---

> All of the links above describe a culture where the employees feel underappreciated and overworked.

If they're underappreciated, they can switch jobs. If they're overworked, its by choice or a consequence of bad decision making.

Ultimately, there's much more personal freedom. And if some people fail to take advantage of that, its not the system's fault.

Not everyone can just switch jobs, not everyone is in a career in demand like that. Also, the fact that you suggest that dish washers shouldn't get vacation is telling. The lower and middle classes need stability too, yet in America, you've either made it or you haven't. It's way too binary in my opinion. You act like there's no personal freedom in Germany, but with their paid vacation for _everyone_ and socialized healthcare, it seems to me like they have much more freedom than your typical American.

> Not everyone can just switch jobs, not everyone is in a career in demand like that.

Career is a choice. But of course, most people don't have 100% job security.

>Also, the fact that you suggest that dish washers shouldn't get vacation is telling

That's not what I said. They should have all the vacations they want, but not at other taxpayers' expense. Otherwise, you have hard-working people give up to 60% of their income away for vacations of dishwashers. Perhaps this is a great achievement for Swedes, but would be looked down upon in the US.

> The lower and middle classes need stability too, yet in America, you've either made it or you haven't. It's way too binary in my opinion.

Inequality of results is a logical result of capitalism. You can't have the cake and eat it too. If everyone 'made it', no one would truly 'make it'.

> You act like there's no personal freedom in Germany, but with their paid vacation for _everyone_ and socialized healthcare, it seems to me like they have much more freedom than your typical American.

Sure, but the benefits fall largely upon the lower classes. Wealthier individuals don't need so much help from the state, yet they're the ones contributing the most.

By no means I aim to defend everything that goes on in the US - e.g. the healthcare situation is abysmal. But ultimately, there are pros and cons of both approaches to policy.

>Inequality of results is a logical result of capitalism. You can't have the cake and eat it too.

This is absurd. There are people who are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year while tens of thousands of people work minimum wage jobs because that's all they can get, and you're saying that it's their fault for not producing more? You really need to realize that our quality of life isn't because we are so amazing, but because of the opportunities our position in the world and society have given us. And in America, those opportunities are being offered to fewer and fewer people: economic mobility is declining, and has for a while[1]. A person can only pull on their bootstraps so hard.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to...

They're not suggesting Germans adopt an American-style work culture, but an American-style tolerance for risk and failure.

I'm not sure failure should be praised, but it should be accepted without judgment, and entrepreneurs that haven't succeeded should be lauded for trying. Failure is a necessary part of success. It's cliché, but people really do fail their way to success. So why stigmatize it if it'll discourage entrepreneurs from trying a sufficient number of times in order to be successful?

They're not suggesting Germans adopt an American-style work culture, but an American-style tolerance for risk and failure.

I'm increasingly convinced that having the one automatically brings in the other. The hallmark of the American attitude is that you, and only you are responsible for your own success. This means that if you're not succeeding, it's because you're not working hard enough. It leads to a "rat race" culture, where everyone works harder to be labeled as a "go-getter", but all it ends up actually doing is raising the baseline expectation for how much work you're supposed to do.

I'm not sure how tolerance for risk and failure breeds either a Calvinistic work ethic or rugged individualism. These things likely developed in tandem because of America's history, but I'd assert that one can exist without the other. I'd love to be shown why I'm wrong though, if that's the case.

IMHO, it's mainly the lack of any and all venture capital. There just is nowhere near enough cash available to do the classic VC route, much less investing 100 freaking million dollars to an app that does nothing but broadcast "Yo".

And even engineers at BMW or similar don't get paid in stocks, which means that the supply of engineers made rich by big exits is next to zero. Just look who founded all the hot startups in SV - it's mostly ex-Paypal/Google/FB/MS/BigStartup employees who found or invest the boatload of monies into new startups. And regular salaries may be enough to pay off credit on a house, but not enough to save for funding and bootstrapping a company.

Here, basically the only way to fund a company if you don't happen to have rich friends/family is by a line of credit - and thanks to EU banking regulations the banks now require real deposits of securities (eg a house/car) for a credit line; this again reduces the eligible persons to rich people. No way to see a poor immigrant fund a multibillion dollar company like in US... given the more and more xenophobic neonazi appearances (Pegida, AfD) immigrants actually more have to fear for their lives. (Okay, I've exaggerated here, but the xenophobist trend even in government massively worries me)

Yo got 1.5 million dollars fwiw.

Also, you have to work twice as hard to acquire a fraction of the money that you would in SV. Raising a seed round requires one of the founders dedicating months to elaborate spreadsheets mapping out the future of your company for the next 4 years, down to every paperclip you plan to buy.

I have heard the complaint about no VC money before, and I guess it is true, but I don't understand why. What is stopping Calfornian VCs from investing in German startups? I understand that there is a bit more friction in long distance business relationships like this, but we live in a globalized world.

Discovery, dealflow, pattern matching, and ability to check references. It's best when the folks pitching you are 2nd degree connections (and got to you through a warm intro). These connections to SV VCs are most dense in SV.

The other fun part is getting your office connected to the Internet - Deutsche Telekom will happily take 5 weeks to respond to what should be their most simplest of requests

Deutsche Telekom (owner of T-Mobile) is the most expensive piece of shit ever, and they take forever to do anything. But that’s intentional. They want to make it as hard as possible to switch, so you never even attempt it.

The funny thing is that if you live in Germany, you grow up thinking that it's completely normal that Deutsche Telekom takes 4 weeks to get your internet connection hooked up when you move houses.

I was actually completely shocked when I moved to California, signed up with an internet provider, and had a technician come to my house the next day. Crazy!

Here in Neukölln Berlin, 4 weeks is normal for whatever DSL provider you choose, O2 tech support treats you with utter contempt when THEY fuck up, and connection quality is all over the place. Cable is barely available.

Fucked up customer service is not isolated to O2, it is totally the same with Vodafone too. Quality of service is pretty shit as well. In the German market, you just have to choose best of the worst, which is pretty bad if you are in the country side.

Moving Kabel Deutschland (now Vodafone unfortunately) takes 3-4 days if your new building has the cabling done.

Good to hear! The experience I described above was indeed a number of years ago, but also compare your comment to the one by m_fayer.

How do you work if you have no Internet? Coffee shops? (Or, heaven forfend, you go to an office for 16 hours/day?)

Internet availability is not a problem. Just check cable availability and your up and running with 100Mbits+ in a few days.

In Germany you are not allowed to work more than 10 hours/day, only on special cases.

I just switched to Telekom for my Internet connection (private, not business), and while their service isn't perfect, I was still quite impressed with the whole process.

(Other DSL companies can be hell, because they don't own much of the infrastructure, so you'll get stuck in endless finger pointing and shifting of blame. Cable internet providers have their own problems, but are generally a good option, as well.)

DSL is still used in Berlin? Over telephone lines?

Yes, in all German cities. Usually 100Mbps down, 40Mbps up via DSL. That’s what I’m using myself, too.

Currently work is being done to upgrade the phone network to 500/200 in the next years.

I didn't know that it's possible to do 100Mbps on telephone line. Last time I used DSL, there was 8 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, but practically much less.

telephone lines owned by the Government (Telekom, private in theory, owned by the Government on paper), no less!

there is some DOCSIS (cable) service, mostly from Vodafone but also a smaller provider named telecolumbus.

There was versatel, but 1&1 smartly purchased it at what I believe to be an absolute steal. They have what is clearly the widest fiber network reach outside of Telekom, and 1&1 is actually going out there and selling it.

I could, if I really wanted to, get 1Gbps symmetrical for only 500EUR/month. The catch is the ~3000EUR install and minimum 3 year commitment. but, at least the option is there. Telekom, if they have fiber "available" at your address, will offer you 20Mbps for around 700EUR a month, then do this really weird delivery of an STM-1 (155Mbps) circuit, broken out into E3s (45Mbps) to a Cisco ASR1002 (a 5000EUR device, easily), that is converted to a rate limited GigE interface. Oh, and the install fee is about 1200EUR and takes a solid six weeks...but only if you call every day to remind them.

Berlin internet connectivity is a sick and twisted joke.

This reminds me my conversation with a salesperson in a Deutsche Telekom retail shop in Berlin. The fastest DSL in my apartment was 6 Mbit/s. No VDSL available because "all sockets are taken" probably by the neighbours or by the business on the ground floor - the guy was literally blaming their shitty connection on my neighbours. I was this close to killing him with the chair he was sitting on.

xDSL is still used in most places. It generally works well and the infrastructure has been in place for a long time, which is the reason broadband has become so accessible. Fiber is gradually replacing it, but it's a major investment to lay fiber. So xDSL is going to be around for a long time, especially to deliver broadband to customers for whom fiber doesn't make economic sense.

They are the Comcast of Germany.

Not just Germany but I found the same problem in Amsterdam when I tried to set up Internet for my apartment. It took 2 weeks for it to be enabled and it was really surprising since it takes about a day or two to get it setup in AZ.

Surprising! In Bangalore, it's a matter of a day or two.

No it is not. It all depends on the area in Bangalore. Most of the time the sockets would not be available because of high demand and very low supply (because of no interest in expanding the capacity). The government owned BSNL has problem of poor quality (cable cuts and service outage). Please note I am not talking about wireless technologies and only wired.

I really hope it improves though.

Very well sums up my experiences working in the Berlin startup scene.

I'd add that, in my opinion, there is also a lack of appreciation for good engineering in many of the few existing startups. You could almost say even software startups don't consider themself technology companies. The implementation of the product is just something that somebody needs to do and often gets outsourced to some agencies.

In general the focus is on the founders more than it's on the teams. Ultimately that also shows in salaries. Startups are considers something for junior engineers that accept worse pay because they are doing something hip.

Some parts of Germany are more open minded that others but it's wrong to expect the same startup culture in CA to happen in Deutschland. Society , individuals, personality, cultures, traditions, legal context , attitudes and nearly everything is against a startup culture. Yeah some youngsters from Hamburg or Berlin like USA, dress , act and eat like in USA, and make startups like in USA. But startup culture and Germany. no..And there's no need for a German startup boom.

I think that does not only apply to Startups, but lots of german companies. Software is seen as some small thing which is a necessary evil, but which can be done by anyone. It is not seen as something that can be complicated, hard to get right and requires a lot of experience and passion. As a consequence software development is often outsourced - either to cheap contracting engineering companies inside the country or directly in supposed cheaper countries (India, Eastern Europe, etc.). You can also see that in the big automotive industry, where there is also less appreciation for SW engineering roles than for other things (e.g. project managment).

Ahh wat....

Volkswagen Wolfburg has a very big IT devision, VW financials Braunschweig too... Audi and Porsche also do a lot of IT stuff... they work together with the local univeristies on self driving cars etc.

I was doing self driving car stuff 10 years back at tu braunschweig with VW.... I never been in a big german company where they outsourced IT work to india and co.

I worked at one of these OEMs for nearly 10 years - and have contact to the others. Believe me, I know something about the industry. All these companies have big engineering departments - even for mostly software related topics like Infotainment). However most engineers there will be mainly responsible for writing specifications and project management. Implementation is done by suppliers. E.g. Audi Infotainment -> Mainly implemented by E-Solutions. It's similar for VW, Porsche, BMW and Mercedes - I'm aware of their external partners, but as that is partly confidential I won't go into detail. Of course there are also some research projects and departments and cooperations with universities, but they are only a tiny fraction compared to series development efforts. In resarch and predevelopment projects you might find more inhouse engineers, mass production software is however mostly contracted.

And regarding outsourcing to India: If you read through the software related job postings of Bosch you will quite often find the phrase: "You are the Software Architect and are responsible for coordinating our Indian implementation team". When I looked last time there were a lot more of these postings than "we are looking for an excellent software engineer with skills in X/Y/Z".

> Personally I rate the person higher that tries several times, falls, gets up and starts over. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Did they really fail if they still have the money to try again? They certainly managed to con their investors at least once. What is a failure when it gets others to pay your rent for at least a year?

Chip on your shoulder?

If you con your investors then there's no chance of starting over. If you make your investors aware of the risks and it just doesn't work out (but you handled the situation well) then you've failed but are still well ahead of those who never tried.

Also, although investors may pay your rent for the year, as a founder you're expected to take <50% of your market wage in most cases and you'll be working longer hours, so this isn't a great argument.

> If you con your investors then there's no chance of starting over.

A new sucker is born every minute.

> as a founder you're expected to take <50% of your market wage in most cases and you'll be working longer hours

relying on the assumption that the founder is actually doing work he is getting paid for, or that he didn't hire several friends that receive most of the money.

> Chip on your shoulder?

Lets say I have a good reason to no longer trust any sheme that the founder can just kill with little consequence to himself.

All true and all reasons why venture capital/startup investing in general requires experience, insight, time and 'losable' capital to do properly...

These are the basic risks you need to control for before investing.

Which European country has the best atmosphere for startups, in your opinion?

If I'd choose an european country to found my startup, it would be Estonia, they have a system in place, called E-Resident that anyone can apply to, and get "citizenship" so after that you can create your own business along with a bank account there, all online.

If you are European and have a bank account in your homecountry, from what I've read you don't even need to fly over to Estonia to get that bank account, the bank will accept that. If not, that's the only thing you really need to go to Estonia.

Actually, at the moment, its not really possible to create a bank account without visiting the country.

Isn't the UK (London to be specific) right after the U.S. and somewhat similar to Israel in terms of startups?

Historically yes, but the fallout from Brexit may make London a vastly less attractive option, causing it to lose its spot in the years to come. I honestly can't imagine starting something new in London now -- it's very expensive and it has some big political and economic uncertainties hanging over its head at the moment.

Law written in English is a huge advantage.

Many of the EU countries have an English translation of the laws available.

Doesn't matter. It's not the "source code" that runs in courts.

If you're running that close to the edge, you're in risky territory anyways. A courtcase that you win can still easily kill your business.

Thanks! Couldn't have expressed it better.

And Germans really like to complain.

> Nice example if you are from the USA. Over there it is more socially accepted to get married and divorced often than not at all.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I've read on any web page in years.