Why Germany’s happy, successful: Its values are the opposite of Silicon Valley’s
qz.com
qz.com
Apparently it's one baity supplement that hasn't stopped working yet. Probably we should write some code to penalize such submissions a la 'one weird trick' etc.
Silicon Valley does have a particular culture, and it does value certain things more highly than other places. SV is, to some extent, idolized in the US.
Germany's cultural values are different. Germany is doing well, whereas recent surveys have showed that people in SV want to get the hell out.
So what exactly in the article are you arguing against? How is the SV reference not related to the content?
Examples:
- bootstrap capitalism
- work-life balance[1]
- replacing meals with Soylent
These are pretty direct mentions of SV culture, and it even mentions Soylent by name. I think Soylent is an excellent poster-child for what some people think is right with SV and a lot of people think is wrong.
And that's not even an exhaustive list of the ways the article addresses the differences of values.
1. "Moreover, for Germans, a good work-life balance does not involve unlimited massages and free meals on the corporate campus to encourage 90-hour weeks."
I encourage you to be skeptical of the so-called well-known. You're generalizing in ways that are probably an artifact of media narratives. For example, most people in SV, including most in the startup world, have nothing to do with Soylent.
The FDP remains irrelevant and its "politicians" are mostly show-offs nowadays (a trend that started with the ineffable Guido Westerwelle) and some were outright criminal or supportive of white-collar crimes (see the Flick affair for details). The times of the old FDP, with old-style liberals - not "liberal" economists like today - such as Gerhart Baum (who still posts constitutional challenges at the age of 85!) is long gone.
There are also a number of factual errors. For example, the minimum vacation time guaranteed by law is only four weeks, though the average is quite a bit higher. The situation regarding the selection of students is also far more complex than described (speaking as a CE professor coming from a working-class family, I know what I'm talking about).
If you are visiting Germany, try the Ruhr area - e.g., Duisburg-Marxloh, Dortmund-Nordstadt - or any of the small deserted villages in the eastern states and maybe Berlin Kottbusser Tor for some glimpses of a different German reality - poverty, crime, drugs and xenophobia. Munich has the highest cost of living of all German cities, though far cheaper than SFO and Silicon Valley, and is hardly representative.
And don't get me started on these neo-nazi assholes who are in the Bundestag now. Horrible. A well-known saying in some academic circles is "It's a great time to emigrate from Germany - but where to?". That might sum up the current situation here quite well...
Isn't that the consequence of half a century under communism?
It's basically the same problem that you have inside the European Union today: Vastly different economies have been forced into a common currency without a political framework that pushes for a harmonic integration of the constituent economies, resulting in the industry sector of relatively underdeveloped economies like Greece to be utterly crushed by the German industry, degrading them to a source of cheap labor for German (or rather: multinational) corporations.
Also, having some Leberkäse on a pretzel roll with a bit of mustard and a German beer while outside watching people pass by on the town square on a sunny 72 degree (sorry, "22 Grad") day, is just about the most satisfying lunch I've ever had in my life.
As european i had similar impressions when coming to the USA
Here in SF i pass more homeless people daily on my way to work than i see in a year at home.
(I know SF is special b/c they keep them central but at home i'd need to look everywhere to even get to similar impressions - if possible)
I think a large part of this is the focus on collective good and "do not be evil/selfish" ethos pounded on kids since childhood.
Compare that to the US where kids are taught that individualism is all that matters. Your friends don't matter, family doesn't matter, community doesn't matter, environment doesn't matter etc.
With all its wealth, living in America is like living in a super mario game, constantly avoiding obstructions and hassles.
This. The US was similar in this aspect until major retail manufacturers started outsourcing everything to China. I remember reading elsewhere on HN a while back, how Sears Washing Machines, Refridgerators and other house hold appliances would last for decades, then, somewhere along the 70s or 80s, they (and several other major home appliance retailers) switched to manufacturing in China on the cheap and did away with repairing stuff. That just forces you to toss your old appliance and buy a new one every 7 to 10 years when they fall apart.
The same with something like smartphones (I take it readers are thinking about smartphones when they read this article? Very 'ungerman' product IMO). If you buy a new one you end up downcycling the plastic and recycling some of the elements. Yes, you gotta pay again for a phone. But its also presumably better. It wasn't possible to upgrade the old phone because phones are such small, embedded technology (with bad software support being a minor part of the problem) that they've become waste products. We, as tech community, need to solve this problem in order to reduce environmental waste. How? Modular devices. Laptops used to be modular. Now they've gone the smartphone route. Why? Less weight/size, and less durability and the inability to fix it yourself yields more profit. We can stop this by voting with our wallet.
My parents have a Frigidaire Flair double oven from the early 1960s. The thing is amazing, and still works perfectly. I think it cost something like $400 originally, which would be north of $3000 today, however in 1963 the median income was $6200 [1], so that would be closer to $4000 for the median person of today.
For that kind of money, you could definitely get some nicer appliances today. Although the switch from simple analog to complex digital electronics probably puts a more modest ceiling on the lifespan of anything made today.
On the other hand, there is also something to be said for being able to have an oven without taking out a loan!
A) They want them to fail so people buy more.
B) Consumers in North America like change. They want new stuff.
No, Europeans have a great disdain and entrenched negative view of wealth.
(Edit: admittedly, most 'nouveau riche' North Americans are fairly tacky in their expenditures. Some spectacularly so. I do actually find it borderline offensive, some of the Instagram rubbish. Being 'showy' with wealth is a sure sign of lack of real nobility)
In Europe, people's instincts are 'zero sum game' - someone has wealth because they must have 'taken' it, or one of their ancestors had.
In America it's a little more 1+1=3, even though that's often on the case. Particularly in the valley. Bing Gordon had some funny things to say about that - even American East Coast culture (i.e. banking) is very much zero sum.
The Valley, despite it's shades of narcissism is also very social in some ways. Think of open source. It's a hugely important concept. And it's very much 1+1=3, I think. And yet, immensely wealthy Google and others still treats 'any non essential staff' with low pay, like a 'lower caste'. (I find sometimes we think our 'free software' contributions are 'noble and virtuous' and then we forget that it's our actual actions in life that matter as well...)
I like German culture - and yes, it's communitarian, but also very classist. The state decides who goes to uni and not by the time you're a young teen - and it's kids of well off parents. Uni is 'free' but they send fewer kids there.
In Austria - it used to be up until actually quite recently that a CEO who ran his business into the ground could face jail time, not kidding. 'Failure' is something that stuck with your identity forever. 'Failed business' = 'you're finished'. I don't think Germanic culture has yet figured out the art of embracing failure. The 'math' on failure is hard when invariably investors lose money.
Personally disagree here - but i don't know where you have those facts from so i can't really properly dispute.
re Opensource:
A ton of open source actually comes from Europe. In the valley a few large corporates finance developers working on open source (eg facebook, etc) but i wouldn't really consider this charity. It's a hiring and branding pipeline
re Failure => Prison for those who are interested:
The situation this often happens/happened is called `negligence`
When either a) social security of employees is not paid (as in you "risk" their lives) or b) you handle sums that are far beyond your companies size (eg concert promoters have to prepay ticket sales to companies that are N times their own profits)
The laws changed here quite a bit but it's still a possibility.
Please note that in the same country you can go to personal bankruptcy - meaning agreeing on a total sum of max personal damages (not that this is i wish on anyone but it's a (extreme) downside protection)
Re failure overall:
It comes down to game dynamics. Europe doesnt favor "fail fast" because it the upside is smaller compared to the US (fragmented market => slower acceleration). So with the same downside risk but lower upside risk averse strategies are dominated historically. This (thx to Internet => global access) changes.
I don't think this is quite true. If I fail my business, I'm liable to some extend for it. I could loose huge sums of money but I also have the reassurance that the social safety net will prevent the worst.
Plus, if worst comes to worst, I can declare personal bankcruptcy, which allows me to manage my debts without loosing my entire incoming and going out debt free at the end of a couple years (7 if I'm recall correctly)
>The state decides who goes to uni and not by the time you're a young teen
The state does not. The uni does. What counts are your grades when you finish previous schools, ie, you well you did in education and that only when there are more student applications than they have room for.
There are certainly kids of poor families too, many grants, even government ones, allow anyone to go to university without worrying too much about money.
>Uni is 'free' but they send fewer kids there.
It should be noted that the base level compared to the US is higher and the german school system specifically is focused on getting kids into a job as soon as possible and with the lowest failure rate possible.
Prosperity, well being, ideas etc. those are not zero sum games, but ownership of things can be, and money kind of always is. The only way (for normal people and corporations) to "make" money is to transfer it from somewhere else, after all.
> The state decides who goes to uni and not by the time you're a young teen - and it's kids of well off parents.
Yes, you have to finish a certain schooling level first, but evening schools etc. do exist. You can get the qualifications to go to uni as an adult, too. I'm not saying the education shouldn't be a lot better, or that rich parents don't try to get their kids into schools with other rich kids and whatnot. But the way you phrased it kind of sounds like the state picks rich kids for uni, and I'd really like to hear more context. Not saying you're wrong, maybe I'm just not aware.
I have German ancestry and would say it runs deeper.
It's an inherent agri/communitarian mindset. 'Practicality first'. 'Value for the dollar'. 'Frugality'. 'Risk aversion'. 'Moderation'. etc. etc.. look at how different Merkel is from other world leaders ...
Having toured a lot of very ornate castles and palaces and historical buildings, Europeans who built them and furnished them clearly liked to show off their wealth!
And for every 'ostentatious display of power' - there are 100 bits of beyond-the-pale amazing things hidden away.
The most beautiful parts of Venice are inside the houses. Jaw-dropping beauty and extravagance ... not for public display.
There's a lot more to Europe than your (seemingly cartoonish) version of German culture.
B) You know nothing about me. Not that it matters: not only have I lived in Germany, I have lived in France for many years, I earned a Graduate Degree in Europe, worked for the European government (EIB), 'lived in Luxembourg' in all practical reality, speak three European languages, and visited nearly every European country. In addition to having lived in two very different American states for several years, and have visited more than 1/2 of them, and visit the USA regularly.
C) Not only am I entitled to my opinions, in this case they're neither novel nor contentious, and they are more or less correct.
Of course, this also means that the benefits of Germany's roaring performance in international trade have trouble reaching regular Germans.
As for happiness, the recent election results do not look like the choice of a population which is content with the current course.
[1]: https://www.socialeurope.eu/was-german-wage-undercutting-del...
[2]: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/a-share-of-futu...
I think the article misses the main point. Lindner's FDP might have gotten better results than in past elections, but it's not that most other people decry them for their "startup values".
The more common thing is this age-old quip of lumping the conservatives (color: black) and the liberals (color: yellow) together (as they reigned when Kohl was Chancellor) - as "Schwarz-Geld" (Which is a pun on Schwarz-Gelb, i.e. black-yellow)
So yes, my personal standpoint as a well-off software developer is: I can't in good conscience vote for the FDP until my salary improves by like 50% - then I'd see myself in their voters market. (e.g. tax cuts for buying a house, etc.)
There's always been a tiny part of the FDP advocating most of the stuff that the CCC also stands for, i.e. freedom of information, privacy, digital, etc.pp - but it's really miniscule imho.
So much for my monthly FDP bashing - because it's the party I'd love to like, but just can't.
In contrast, Silicon Valley is probably the most immigrant-friendly place I've ever seen. There can be no German Sundar Pichai, nor Sergey Brin, nor Satya Nadella, nor Shantanu Narayen. So I'm quite skeptical to those "Berlin is the new SV" posts that pop up on HN every month or so.
Wonderful, and highly recommend Europe to visit. I think I'm permanently done with the Caribbean.
Why? Crime? Drugs?
Curious, not trolling. Thinking of moving to Jamaica or Trinidad.
I'm not saying it's good or bad, rather, it's not just some policy, but a reflection of cultures.
Thank you for your thought provoking analysis.
Why masturbatory nonsense?
Yes, the article is rose-tinted because it doesn't describe issues in German society; it is one-sided. However, that's obviously clear from reading it. It doesn't pretend to be otherwise. There's already at least 2 comments which nuance the article. Furthermore, the article's purpose appears to be meant as a counter-thought of the "American Dream" (apparently that's now called "Silicon Valley" because very little in the article was about technology).