Germany plans €3B in AI investments | Hacker News Reader

Germany plans €3B in AI investments

reuters.com

142 pointsjonbaer156 comments

The problem is not a lack of funds. The problem is bureaucracy and a lack of startup infrastructure. My feeling is that the people in charge have absolutely no effing clue about how to most efficiently deploy this money so they will do what sounds good on paper but will have 0 effect in reality.

If it goes how it usually goes the largest part of this money will likely to to universities and other research institutions where it will be spent financing open-ended research projects that, in virtually all cases, go exactly nowhere, due to lack of proper incentives to produce something that works.

The rest of the money will be "up for grabs" by companies who have perfected the crafts and arts of getting grant money from the German or EU government. The bureaucratic hurdles and time frames are typically way too large for most capital constrained nimble startups who need to move fast. So it's mostly established and/or zombie companies that take advantage of this.

A typical Berlin startup:

- hires devs with extremely low salaries

- gives 0.004% equity at best

- is run by people that are "better than anybody else"

- expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability

- has managers with issues saying "thank you"

- hires friends/family to higher echelons of company

Does this sound like a recipe for success?

>expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability

Doesn't that conflict with German labor law?

Edit: Definitely agree about credentialism ("people that are better than anyone else"). Germany takes that to the extreme. Career change in your 30s? Not possible.

> Doesn't that conflict with German labor law?

I doubt it, Germans rank high in terms of unpaid overtime.

https://www.dw.com/en/unpaid-overtime-a-common-phenomenon-in...

They also have some of the lowest wages combined with the rather high social security expenses.

https://www.learngermanonline.org/salaries-and-living-costs-...

Given that, I think Germany doesn't deserve its good reputation.

Unpaid overtime definitely conflicts with labour law. There is also a maximum amount of hours you are technically allowed to work on a day, which is ten. Sixty hours also is the absolute weekly maximum with 48 hours being the regular maximum. However, if you do not report these hours no one will ever know.

> Unpaid overtime definitely conflicts with labour law.

I can't find any evidence that it does. It seems to be common practice:

https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/342740-unpaid-ove...

If you receive a salary, you don't get paid by the hour. If your contract says you don't have a right for compensation (monetary or otherwise) for extra hours, then you don't. Negotiating such terms is up to the employee (or the unions).

> There is also a maximum amount of hours you are technically allowed to work on a day, which is ten.

That's a different thing from not being paid for hours you work extra.

https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/45108/is-overt...

I think this is a good summary of the law in practice. Any overtime has to be compensated by the employer. Obviously, there are ways people work around it if the employee is fine with it...

However, if you go to court about unpaid overtime you are sure to win. This has obviously implications on your hireability though. On paper you are protected.

Use German resources if you want to learn about Germany. This is no offense but it's an annoying fact.

https://www.arbeitsrecht.org/arbeitnehmer/arbeitszeit/so-lan...

Tldr; employees and employers have to make sure that no-one oversteps the 10 hour maximum.

Basically I could get fired if I do, because my employer could get into trouble.

> Use German resources if you want to learn about Germany.

This is an English speaking forum. Unless you have evidence that the English resources contradict the german ones, calling me out on this is pointless.

> Tldr; employees and employers have to make sure that no-one oversteps the 10 hour maximum.

That's not the point. The point is do you have a right to get compensated for extra hours. Let's say you're hired for 36hrs/week but the reality is closer to 40. The contract says you're not entitled to compensation for overtime. As far as the law is concerned, I see no problem here whatsoever.

> The contract says you're not entitled to compensation for overtime. As far as the law is concerned, I see no problem here whatsoever.

You don't. The Bundesarbeitsgericht (the highest court for labor disputes) does: https://juris.bundesarbeitsgericht.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung...

You can include clauses that allow limited unpaid overtime, for example "36 hours per week and up to 16 hours of unpaid overtime per month", but then, as an employee, you should treat that as a 40 hours contract. Unpaid overtime cannot be agreed upon retroactively, it must be in the initial contract. Unlimited overtime is not permissible except for people in certain positions (Managing Directors or other people with full control over their time are generally exempt from that, people with sufficiently high compensation might be [the usual threshold is the Beitragsbemessungsgrenze der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung which increases yearly and is currently at about 80k EUR/year])

However, the legal situation differs from the situation on the ground. Companies still offer contracts with invalid and unenforceable rules and employees are still afraid to sue, even though you can sue for unpaid overtime after you leave.

If you actually look at the court case, the guy won because the contract was unclear on its terms, not because such terms are inadmissable in general. That's why the lower court didn't decide in his favor. The decision doesn't generalize across all contracts.

> You can include clauses that allow limited unpaid overtime, for example "36 hours per week and up to 16 hours of unpaid overtime per month", but then, as an employee, you should treat that as a 40 hours contract.

That's besides the point. The question is, is that paid overtime? If you ask me, it isn't because any extra hour worked doesn't translate into extra money.

> Unpaid overtime cannot be agreed upon retroactively, it must be in the initial contract.

It didn't claim otherwise, I explicitly said it has to be in the contract and from what I read in other places, it seems commonplace.

> If you actually look at the court case, the guy won because the contract was unclear on its terms, not because such terms are inadmissable in general.

They are. Quote from the courts press release:

> Der vertragliche Ausschluss jeder zusätzlichen Vergütung von Mehrarbeit war wegen Intransparenz nach § 307 Abs. 1 Satz 2 BGB unwirksam.

§307 Abs. 1 Satz 2 is "Unangemessene Benachteiligung" (see https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__307.html), a lopsided clause that favors one party of the contract, usually the stronger party.

The court ruled that the terms are unclear because it is not known to the employee how many hours he might have to work for his wage. A clause stipulating unlimited unoaid overtime can never fulfill that requirement. Thus unlimited overtime is inadmissible in the general case, except for the cases I listed previously.

The relevant quote from the ruling (which is linked from the courts press release) is:

"a) Die Parteien haben zwar in Tz. 4.4. des Arbeitsvertrags bestimmt, dass der Kläger für Über- und Mehrarbeit keine gesonderte Vergütung erhalte. Diese Regelung ist jedoch nach § 307 Abs. 1 Satz 1 BGB unwirksam, weil sie nicht klar und verständlich ist, § 307 Abs. 1 Satz 2 BGB."

and

"Eine die pauschale Vergütung von Überstunden regelnde Klausel ist nur dann klar und verständlich, wenn sich aus dem Arbeitsvertrag selbst ergibt, welche Arbeitsleistungen in welchem zeitlichen Umfang von ihr erfasst werden sollen. Der Arbeitnehmer muss bereits bei Vertragsschluss erkennen können, was gegebenenfalls „auf ihn zukommt“ und welche Leistung er für die vereinbarte Vergütung maximal erbringen muss (BAG 1. September 2010 - 5 AZR 517/09 - Rn. 15 mwN, BAGE 135, 250; 17. August 2011 - 5 AZR 406/10 - Rn. 14 mwN, EzA BGB 2002 § 612 Nr. 10)."

> > You can include clauses that allow limited unpaid overtime, for example "36 hours per week and up to 16 hours of unpaid overtime per month", but then, as an employee, you should treat that as a 40 hours contract.

> That's besides the point. The question is, is that paid overtime? If you ask me, it isn't because any extra hour worked doesn't translate into extra money.

That's why I said "if your contract stipulates unpaid overtime, treat is as part of your regular work time." If you get to work less, fine, but assume you have to work the maximum time stipulated in the contract. (weekly time plus max overtime)

> from what I read in other places, it seems commonplace.

I'd not call it commonplace, but in some areas it's not uncommon. It's still inadmissible in most cases, but as I said before, people don't sue so companies don't learn their lesson.

I don't understand what you're disagreeing with exactly. I say "unpaid overtime" appears to be legal. I didn't say "unlimited unpaid overtime".

From everything you quoted, "unpaid overtime" is legal as long as it's clearly transparent from the contract and it's within other laws restricting the amount of hours total. Unpaid overtime is statistically common as per the other sources I linked to.

Obviously, if unpaid overtime clauses were clearly and entirely illegal, the lowest court would've immediately ruled in favor of the plaintiff, not against him.

Drug trade is a common practice yet it is illegal. My employers would not risk to be caught and punished for unpaid overtime or more than 10 hours / day work on average. It was explicitly told us that we cannot work more than 8 hours on average and everybody is pretty serious about that. Not sure what industry or what companies are you talking about and referring to it as common practice.

I actually changed careers three times in my 30s. No issues whatsoever. Sounds like the proverbial Germans downtalking Germany And all the Germans agreeing.

Then again, why would a society change for the better if there would not be all the internet and Stammtisch complaining and moaning about all that could be better?

As a foreigner living in Germany, this was one of the first things that I noticed and was a bit of a culture shock.

Germans love to complain and seem to think that this is how you improve things. I believe there's some truth to that, and it seems to work for them, but it can cause chronic dissatisfaction and can cause intercultural issues when living or traveling abroad (where people aren't used to fielding so many complaints about poor service).

Officially there are regulations about maximum working times of 10 hours/day. That however doesn't prevent expectations from being higher. It however prevents tracking on the employer side for a higher amount of hours.

It does. But here is the hint: If you have a token you stamp out and work continues.

Oh...I was thinking of trying out my luck in Berlin...

You still can. Biggest marker to avoid those problems is to avoid first-time founders. While repeat founders are quite rare in Berlin, most of their startups are compareatively healthy from what I've seen.

Of course that's just a rule of thumb.

That sounds like a degenerate organisation. But if we're sharing anecdata: My pay in this Berlin startup is very decent, I have respectable equity and it's a friendly & rational environment. I'm scared of US startup work culture, rather.

I remember one Deep Learning startup in Berlin ran by ex-Googlers that was offering 85k salary, minuscule equity, and expected a Stanford top-graduate with interview that had to demonstrate complete mastery of all Stanford Deep Learning courses and probabilistic graphical models... I hope it's not your employer, you are likely undervaluing yourself 10x otherwise.

For a graduate that would be a huge salary in germany. Most engineers with 10years of experience won't receive that. Therefore having high expectations around those candidates seems right.

(That still does't mean I find the salary situation for engineers great in germany. Just that it seems to fit into the general scheme)

You probably need to factor healthcare, rent etc for a fair comparison to, say, the Bay area -- 85k affords a nice upper-upper middle class lifestyle (it scratches the 99th gross income percentile in germany). So 10x sounds like a stretch. What profile would you suggest someone who takes 200-800k € might have? (Tangentially, out of curiosity: Are you in a position to share what the ex-googlers worked on?)

Don't know about the rest of the points, but I looked into several job opportunities at Berlin, and was shocked by how low their offered salaries were. That was the end of my interest in looking for jobs at Berlin...

I live in Denmark currently, and can attest that to some extent, salaries cannot be compared because of different social structures & expenses. Getting paid 50% of what I used to make in the US did not mean standard of living went to 50%. But, for a comp.engineer, US wins out by a huge margin in terms of money.

It's not 50%, it's more like 30%. German salaries are totally anti-engineering and pro-management.

I think this applies to all of Europe though. London salaries are a bit higher, but of course not at the US levels.

UK and Germany are also the countries with highest salaries if you don't count Scandinavia. Try to go to Poland or Czechia thats german border countries where the salaries are even much lower.

Then again salaries in europe just work in very different way.

UK and Switzerland only. Germany is traditionally a low-wage country.

You mean London and Switzerland. Excepting London, the UK on average is even more low wage than Germany, to reuse your expression. But London, just like Switzerland has an impossible property market if you want o buy something no matter how well you're paid.

Well, I was saying 50% referring to my current pay in Denmark, not that of Germany. In Germany, I was offered lower than in Denmark, which would have been, like you said - 30 ish %.

Sure, salaries in Berlin are smaller then in the Scandinavian capitals but let's talk about the cost of living. Isn't beer like 8 euros in CPH vs 2-4 in BER? I'm not even going to open the real estate can of worms.

man DK has another level of social welfare ... I are comparing apples with bananas

I worked for a German startup, whenever i asked for a raise they threatened to import labor from Romania or Poland to replace me.

So you got fooled. It is a free market, supply and demand. If you are outstanding you can earn more. If you are mediocre you can be more easily replaced. I would quit on the spot if any company would threat me like that. I would just tell them "Please do" and walk out from meeting, getting back to my computer to print out my resignation.

It's sooo weird here on HN, even for sharing incident, victim gets downvoted.

While that's a accurate generalization of Berlin startups, from what I can tell it's pretty much the same for startups anywhere (maybe with the exception of salary in contrast to SF, but the cost of living is absurd in comparision).

It's different if you have a shot at being rich in the Bay Area via a successful exit as an early employee, or if you, as in case of Berlin, get a laughable equity and instead are motivated by the "coolness" of startups and Berlin being a city for "hipsters", trading your peak effort/prime years for literally nothing. Of course, start up is a lottery in SF as well, but the potential wins are orders of magnitude higher than e.g. an amount of one-time mid-tier car purchase like it is with German startups.

I value equity at 0, so that's why might be seeing them as not that different.

If you are a bit of a startup veteran you can also make good bank at German startups, probably even more so if you come from SF. There are sadly (but also understandably) few software engineers that stay in the startup ecosystem for long, and those that do can be quite valued. That combined with the low cost of living, actually makes it very realistic to build up some wealth and achieve financial independence, no startup equity lottery needed. From everything I read on HN, that looks very different in SF.

In the Bay Area you now pay $3k/month for a room with 2 roommates ;-) Similar situation is going on around Seattle and Boston/Cambridge as well, though it's not as bad yet. Of course, more distant locations have lower rents, but one also wastes too much time by commuting.

That's the way it is in all European countries.

Sorry but why Berlin? Munich has several very successful startups and excellent engineering community with serious investors and companies who can be either clients or potential purchasers of these startups. Why do you chose Berlin as a representative of German startup scene? I know they had some success but there is so much more in Germany.

goo.gl/uPLVMy

https://www.eu-startups.com/tag/munich/

Do you think that Munich has generally better culture in this industry? I don't even mean startups, just asking in general.

Munich is generally not as open to foreigners as Berlin. Even more foreigners are in Frankfurt, but most hate living there, despite getting a funding is much easier than in Berlin/Munich - it's fun to see ICOs popping up there 1 year after they were relevant, so if you follow US trends, you can apply them without much effort over there a year later and be celebrated for copying some already well-known idea.

I disagree. The companies in my network (anecdotal evidence) are full with international people. In our office we have nationals from 13 countries. This is the most diverse environment that I have ever seen (including San Francisco). There are some companies however who are hiring strictly Germans, just like with anything else the market will correct these mistakes. This is not the norm but the exception though. I am not sure what you are talking about when saying it is not as open. Renting an apartment is the most difficult part of moving to Munich. It is really bad. There are scammers, people do not want to deal with you if you don't speak German, etc, but this the downside. Getting registered, sorting out bank accounts, internet, mobile phone, socialising and any other aspect of being an ex-pat in Munich is average. The housing situation is the the result of supply and demand imbalance. I have had similar experience in San Francisco when people do not even reply to my email when I was using my Central European name but they were more than happy to reply to Steve. There are several options to mitigate that, you can just move to a smaller town around Munich the train connection is pretty good. Were you referring to the housing situation?

> The companies in my network (anecdotal evidence) are full with international people. In our office we have nationals from 13 countries. This is the most diverse environment that I have ever seen (including San Francisco)

I'll probably get downvoted for saying this, but it's important enough that I need to: country of origin is a completely meaningless way to measure diversity. Especially in Europe, where most countries are comparable to the size of individual states in the US and are relatively racially homogeneous, national origin doesn't measure anything meaningful.

The problem with Munich is that, like Bavaria as a whole[0], it is incredibly racist. Specifically, if you look Muslim, Arab, or Middle Eastern, you're in for a really rough time. This shouldn't be too surprising if you look at recent trends in German politics, and specifically in Bavarian politics.

I wouldn't hold Berlin up as a gold standard here by any means, but it's far better than either Frankfurt or Munich in this regard.

[0] less so than the rest of Bavaria, but more so than any other comparable city in Germany

>Especially in Europe, where most countries are comparable to the size of individual states in the US

I understand what you are saying, but having travelled around the US, mostly for business but some for pleasure, there are remarkable and under-appreciated differences among the states. I would go so far as to say that my state, Washington, and its neighboring Canadian province of British Columbia, have more in common culturally, socially, and economically than say, Washington state and Florida. Within Germany itself, which is approximately the size of Oregon, I found that there are also significant religious, cultural, and linguistic differences even still today. So I'm not sure that we can easily discard the differences that come from borders or geography, even within a small area.

Silly case in point - it's been a few years, but you go to Frankfurt and ask for an alt beer, you get served. You ask for an alt beer in Munich, you get funny looks.

People will hate you if you ask for an Alt Bier in Munich...

Seriously, though. I think you make a very strong point, which I’d like to call “resolution effect”. If you look at that something like the US from far away things look petty similar. However, once you zoom in patches appear and suddenly homogenity is replaced by heterogeneity. People tend to forget that easily. Conversely, I never felt more European than during my two years in the States

> Silly case in point - it's been a few years, but you go to Frankfurt and ask for an alt beer, you get served. You ask for an alt beer in Munich, you get funny looks.

If this is what you think is remotely relevant in a conversation about a "diverse environment", I'm not sure what more can be said.

My point was that diversity is more than race - it can be language, religion, politics, gender, and yes even cuisine.

Case in point the old joke about the biggest divide between Israelis and Palestinians being the way they pronounce “hummus.”

> Case in point the old joke about the biggest divide between Israelis and Palestinians being the way they pronounce “hummus.”

Yeah, so... that's a really offensive thing to say.

I know you don't live there, but if you're trying to prove that Munich is both ethnically diverse and not a place where Arab and Muslim people experience significant racism (which are two separate points), you really could not be hurting your own case any more.

Look, my own experiences are that Bavaria is like the American South - politically conservative, racist, xenophobic. Even as a white, straight, German-speaking male I have had some scary experiences there. By your commentary, I gather perhaps you have perhaps been a target of racism, which is of course incredibly disappointing. The rise of right-wing, xenophobic groups with the obvious history of 20th century Germany is shocking.

That said, none of my previous comments above were commentary on Munich. If you'd read carefully, my original statement was that there can be remarkable diversity even in a small geographic area, where I attempted to give examples of diversity than extend beyond race. The world is a richer place when we have a mix of gender, religion, language, culture, politics, and thought, and yes too, the wonderful spectrum of skin tones, eye color, hair, etc.

I also pointed out that lumping the United States together is a common fallacy. Case in point - you live in New York, I live on the West coast, and these two areas have very different cultural practices in the large, before we start talking about sub-cultures. I'd tell a great joke about the difference between the west coast and east coast, but you'd likely find reason to take offense at it as well, which ironically is the gist of the joke.

My quote about hummus came from a documentary on the history of the middle east conflict, where I have also heard similar statements made by Israelis I have known personally. One of the wonderful things about diversity is that for open minded people, we can seek areas of common ground in our diversity, and frankly food has been a way to break down barriers between people, for like, centuries perhaps millennia.

So hey, you want to take offense because you like being offended, enjoy.

> Bavaria as a whole, it is incredibly racist

Do you mind stating some sources for that (and no, the conservative party ruling there for the last 70 years doesn't count)?

Personal experiences. Trust this middle eastern right here.

Great anecdotal experience. Now have a look at the wikipedia facts:

In July 2017, Munich had 1.42 million inhabitants; 421,832 foreign nationals resided in the city as of 31.12.2017 with 50.7% of these residents being citizens of EU member states, and 25.2% citizens in European states not in the EU (including Russia and Turkey).[16] The largest groups of foreign nationals were Turks (39,204), Croats (33,177), Italians (27,340), Greeks (27,117), Poles (27,945), Austrians (21,944), and Romanians (18,085).

The largest foreign resident groups by 31.12.2017[17]

Turkey 37,998

Croatia 36,655

Italy 27,060

Greece 26,360

Austria 20,990

Poland 19,456

Bosnia and Herzegovina 18,987

Romania 17,415

Serbia 13,758

Iraq 12,124

Bulgaria 12,035

Kosovo 11,114

France 9,983

Hungary 8,621

Spain 8,614

Russia 8,603

China 7,624

India 7,440

Afghanistan 7,234

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich#Demographics

I'm not sure what you think you're trying to prove with those numbers. Aside from the fact that nationality and race are not the same thing and cannot be conflated in this context, those numbers don't mean anything.

40% of people from Mississippi are black. That doesn't mean that they don't face serious racism in Mississippi, from everyday life to their own elected officials.

The amount of immigrants in any environment is a great indication if people are racist or not.

Blacks are not immigrants in Mississippi, they did not need to make a decision to move to a new country. If Bavarians are so racist how come we have so many immigrants in Munich?

> The amount of immigrants in any environment is a great indication if people are racist or not.

No, it's not at all. There are plenty of highly racist and toxic places where people still immigrate despite the racism, for other reasons. That doesn't negate the racism.

> If Bavarians are so racist how come we have so many immigrants in Munich?

"If Bavarians are so racist against Arabs and so Islamophobic, why are there so many Turks, Croatians, Italians, Greeks, Poles, and Romanians in Munich?"

Totally, people from Romania are the same that people from Netherlands. Only minor differences like history, culture, language, life expectancy, religion, etc. are different. :)

Btw. I did not say that all 13 nationals are from Europe, in fact they are from: India, Pakistan, Algeria, South Africa, Australia and United States. They did not have a rough time to come to Munich and they love it here, have kids, speak German and integrated into the society more than I am (I am from Europe). I am not sure how they managed to dodge the racist Bavarians.

This is complete BS. I live in Munich and work for a company with a high share of internationals. None of them wants to move to Berlin

I guess that would be survivorship bias? There are at least twice as many people living and "everyone here hates Munich and doesn't want to live there". I even know someone who works in Munich, but lives in Berlin. Jedem das seine ;)

Or, maybe, just maybe, Berlin is twice as big as Munich?

> Munich is generally not as open to foreigners as Berlin

I'm sorry you're getting downvoted, because you're completely right.

Munich is generally nicer then Berlin. Probably a bavarian trait.

Oh not even close

Hardware startups => Munich

Software startups => Berlin

As this thread is (mostly) about investments in AI, which in the German startup scene has been happening more in Berlin than in Munich AFAIK, it's not a understandable choice. Also as Munichs startup scene is younger, there have been less exits, so "success" is something the jury is still out on.

Engineering Startup => Karlsruhe

Let me compare with my "list" over nearly 5 years working here:

1. `Extremely` is an overstatement but yes.

2. Yep.

3. Yep, very common. Big egos everywhere.

4. Not really, never experienced myself.

5. That's hit and miss.

6. Yep, super common.

Throw enormous tax burden on top of that (you don't really see your taxes working for you in this city).

> (you don't really see your taxes working for you in this city).

Or the tax-paid are even actively slowing down your work and success due to difficulties and mental barriers about understanding technology and its culture, ref. #GoogleCampus.

OK, so let's talk about what we, a Berlin startup that I co-founded, do offer:

- fair salaries for the experience and attitude

- no equity, because we believe that a fair salary is better than a lottery equity

- we don't expect people to work overtime and value work-life balance a lot

- we say thank you A LOT

- we hire people who are the best fit for the job

And since we're talking about this: we're hiring a software engineer in Berlin. We are a podcast hosting company, are profitable, have +1k paying customers, some really high-profile. Ruby on Rails, Angular, VueJS, Go, Nodejs, AWS, Heroku. Office in Kreuzberg, 60-65k €. Both founders are software engineers themselves and value solid, healthy codebases. Let's talk if you're interested.

Thanks for including the actual salary. It annoys me when companies say “extremely competitive compensation” but then you realize it’s like 50k (in London).

In my experience, not including the salary is a sign of weakness of a company. Why would you not include it, if it wasn't that you're afraid your salary is not fair? Or is it that people at your company would want to get a raise (they probably deserve) if they saw what you're willing to pay?

In any case: I'm huge fan of transparent job postings and believe that they are a net positive for both sides.

I think most commonly it’s just a game, they don’t want to be the first to say a number because that sets a minimum salary, otherwise they might get someone clueless who’d be willing to take the job for less.. Unfortunately that’s like 99% of the companies!

"is run by people that are "better than anybody else" -> This is the same experience I made. A lot of founders in Berlin are narcissistic life artists with zero execution skills. They're good at producing pitch decks while having fancy Coffee Chai Latte at a hipster cafe in Berlin Mitte. In between making unmistakable phone calls so everyone would know after a minute that he/she calls him/herself CTO, CEO, CSO, COO or whatever and him/her is working on the next big thing of course. And it's all about global domination.

To cut a long story short: we agree. ;-)

I would wait next spring European election before deciding to move to Germany .... my friends

From the point of AI safety, slow progress seems to be beneficial.

> The bureaucratic hurdles and time frames are typically way too large for most capital constrained nimble startups who need to move fast.

Nailed it. Canada has wasted hundreds of millions investing in "startups" and it all ends up going to ex-corporate suits from some megacorp (IBM, Blackberry/RIM, etc, or even non-tech etc) who know how to game the system. That and wasted on over priced real estate projects like MARs in Toronto.

One could call it cute or funny, if it was not to the detriment of actually needed digital technology in the country, like broadband or support of IT startups.

But I am sure Deutsche Telekom will be quite happy about more state money, which is probably why they whispered this AI nonsense into the politicians ears. We can just write it up as another German success story, IT made in Germany. When has that ever not worked out in our favor?

>> When has that ever not worked out in our favor?

Would you explain a little more?

I'm ignorant about the history of German government investment in IT. But here in America, federal investment has helped ignite new industries.

And as a data science engineer, I'd love to see more German code.

"Investments in IT" by the german government means we somehow funnel money to the big companies to make sure they dont fire people. Deutsche Telekom daughter T-Systems decided in september to cut 6000 jobs in germany (10k worldwide) to save 600mio €/year. Now the Government spents 3B on "AI". Coincidence?

seems a bit of a stretch in correlation ...

what does it mean if Angela Merkel wears green underwear on tuesday?

Consider this: approximately 32% of Deutsche Telekom is owned by the german state[0]. Its in their interest, that the money goes to the "right" company.

[0]: https://www.telekom.com/en/investor-relations/company/shareh...

T systems. Do not think I have ever worked with people more incompetent than the 'senior consultants' from that place. No surprise it is not going well with them.

German firms (like Deutsche Telekom) have a ton of redundant jobs because of their inability to make needed structural changes because of the work councils and labor laws.

This is why firms like Google are hiring in Switzerland and the United Kingdom instead of France and Germany.

I don't see why one relates with the other, unless you're saying Google doesn't hire in those countries because of Labour Laws

Yes - it is because of labour laws.

> have a ton of redundant jobs because of their inability to make needed structural changes because of the work councils and labor laws.

How will they able to adapt to truly focus on electric cars then? Especially when that means many of their suppliers become redundant.

Labor protection laws limit options with direct employees, they do not interfere at all with a company's relation to suppliers. That's why subcontracting exists, it's employer-side redundancy insurance.

Google in Germany is hiring quite alright.

A lot of you are dissing German industry --- because they don't have FAANGs or other unicorns?

They still have a large high-tech industrial base and many world-recognized brand names. These German exporters must spend a good deal on R&D, and now they'll have another grant to apply for - even if a large chunk of this goes to BMW or Siemens, is that any different from NYC granding amazon 1 billion dollars to build an office in Queens?

And they do produce good research (and good researchers), some of whom don't go to work for US companies / institutes --- and this gives them another potential grant too...

Here's the offical strategy (in German): https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Downloads/...

While I'm very skeptical of this initiative for a number of reasons, I appreciate that they explicitly mention the need for Open Data and seem to commit to improving accessibility of governmental data sources.

Indeed. The way they describe what they want, it looks like all the money will be spent on endless meetings or conferences and producing policy and strategy documents.

Maybe 1% will flow into a real research project which will generate some value.

I have read the basis of this provided in (1). Unfortunately, like many other “strategies”, this so called AI strategy is completely missing a good (root cause) analysis. It jumps to conclusions and “activity areas”.

With no good analysis, there can’t be a good strategy (2). This money won’t change anything.

(1) https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Downloads/...

(2) https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/...

At least it's not blockchain.

Why is everyone talking about startups? It sounds to me like this is talking about research. The problem with publicly funded science projects in Europe: Salaries/Hourly Rates are set at very low levels and the rulebooks make zero allowance for being able to pay better people more money.

Over the decades of doing this type of funding they've created a caste of technology workers who wouldn't even have jobs in technology if it weren't for the fact that they can go from one government-funded project to the next, where the quality of your work means little and the willingness to work for little money means everything. Every couple of years they slap a new label on what kind of technology it is that they want created, but the people doing the work stay the same people, and the output remains nonexistent because no one is even asking for any in a meaningful way.

Plus 3B over 6 years for such a huge economy isn't really an impressive sum of money at all.

The amount doesn't matter. If this money will exist, they will be distributed in the most buerocratic way, making them irrelevant in a such a fast moving field.

You are right, but I was wondering how an alternative could look like. Probably just giving it to universities to create more and better paid PhD possitions?!

That, and maybe instead of giving the money to a big, inefficient corporation that's going to spend it on low quality bullshit and snake oil, spreading the money along multiple established companies and startups, seeding them all with some money and offering additional incentives for achieving milestones/whatever.

Imagine if those 3B were used to seed 3000 startups with 1M each. Even if only one third of these worked out, what an incredible golden age of productivity would that mean for the country.

One third is next to impossible. Anecdotally, startup survival rate should be around 5-10%. However, that should still yield better results than distributing the money amongst SAP and Deutsche Telekom.

> giving the money to a big, inefficient corporation that's going to spend it on low quality bullshit

Like T systems.

They'd probably get more return by 'encouraging' Google and American tech companies to open bigger offices.

Why favor big companies that already have resources?

It's an interesting thought. Does German really have a prayer in this space? Making breakthroughs in this space isn't something just any trained student can do. The best all work for American tech companies... German co's don't believe in paying well. This can be extended to most European nations.

Those are really ignorant statements. Bosch, Siemens, BMW etc. definitely pay well and employ plenty of talented people.

Ignorant? It's a well known fact that European tech salaries (especially SWE salaries) are dwarfed by American/SV salaries. Just look up the difference in what GOOGLE pays its American vs EU employees. This doesn't even take into account taxation rate, which is favorable in US.

Virtually every "How much do you earn?" thread that pops up on HN has loads of comments with Europeans being surprised at the amount of money Americans make in tech.

Further - right now America is close to uncontested in the amount of technology it is producing and exporting. The only widely used European software I can think of is SAP. America is winning the talent war. I've only had a few friends who moved from US to Europe for tech work - and in all cases it had nothing to do with the job. Had more to do with wanting to "explore new places". On the other hand, I know tonnes of Euros, Indians, and Chinese who have come to US to work.

It's going to get even more extreme in the near future. Tesla is embarrassing all of the German auto manufacturers mightily. I think they'll need one or two to go down before they break out of their complacency.

It's forecast that Germany will lose around 1/3 of its auto industry jobs over the next few decades, in the switch to electric vehicles. Areas of auto manufacturing that they are very good at, are simply going to go away when everything is electric.

I would expect BMW to struggle the most among the German giants, if Tesla doesn't stop growing soon. The rise of Mercedes back to top form was a bad enough of a hit for BMW, then Tesla comes along poised to sell $40 billion worth of cars every year in the near future (all of which cost far more than ~$35k, which is a direct shot at all the luxury makers).

Germany is sitting in a great position nationally (epic trade surplus, good national finances, and reasonably fine household finances), now is the time to aggressively invest if you're them, to try to build out a large number of new technology jobs.

Those Europeans surprised at the the amount of money Americans make evidently aren't working in America. Maybe that tautologically makes them not the best, but I doubt it. Sometimes a "good enough" salary at a place you're comfortable beats an astronomical salary that requires moving to Silicon Valley.

That you personally only know few people who moved to Europe from the US but many who moved to the US probably says more about your location than about general trends. I know only few Germans who moved to the US for work, but many Americans, Iranians and Chinese who moved to Berlin. But that's where I live, so it's to be expected.

They pay well indeed but not the devs or engineers. The managers and all the old boy's are riding the gravy train in those companies but your average Dev there is being taken for a ride. If you have no interest of going twards Management, there are better place to work.

The pay well compared to other german companies. However not compared to US/FAANG companies.

As a reference, most of those companies will pay engineers according to the IG Metall Tarif, which can e.g. be found there: https://www.igmetall.de/docs_MuE_ERA_Entgelte_Juni2018_78d3e...

This is per month, and there's 13.26 monthly salaries per year.

Engineers will typically not receive the highest lines which are reserved for managers, but something below (e.g. EG15 in Baden-Württemberg).

There are some company specific and performance bonuses on top of that, which might be up to 30%, but are typically far less (and often not performance but age-based). In the end things top out far below 100kEur for most engineers there, with no chances to get higher without moving into people management.

I worked at one of those companies (not the listed ones, but a similar one) for a couple of years, and found these things pretty frustrating after a few years.

So EG15 at 13.26 monthly salaries works out to about 70000, which is roughly a Assistenzarzt (medical doctor) makes after 4 years of work. If that is indeed true it is pretty pathetic. From what I've heard of people moving into industry with doctorates in physics, some of them make significantly more. One is a director of research at Bosch, the other works at IBM in Germany. Both had starting salaries north of 100k. Same is true of compensation at Siemens, I guess the key is to not be payed according to some Tarif.

Yes, if you get outside of Tarif things might look better. But at the company I worked this was reserved for >= senior manager positions.

Technically there existed individual contributor levels on that level. However they were only given to senior managers who failed at their job of leading people, instead of ICs that had been really good at what they were doing.

Sure, but they are smart at the industries of the past. Will bureaucratic Germany be able to adapt? I don't think so. Take electric cars for instance. Much simpler than traditional cars. Will devastate the Mittelstand.

Electric cars are only marginally simpler than traditional cars. The body, interior, suspension, and infotainment system are all the same. Only the drive train changes. Building efficient battery packs, electric motors, and transmissions still requires a lot of precision machining and assembly work.

Because Germmany like most other European countries doesn't really have any local FAANG like companies and you can see than in the job market.

Most dev salaries at local companies are garbage compared to what FAANG companies pay in their EU offices.

News for you: FAANG companies pay garbage salaries in their EU offices (Switzerland is not EU). Source: glassdoor.com

Still they pay more than market. EU salaries are not very high in general, but taxes are. So big tech firms just need to pay a bit more than the market to attract talent.

Funny that you believe Glassdoor salaries as being accurate. People who earn the big bucks don't advertise that on Glassdoor.

The comparison remains valid, even if it only tells you that the people not earning the big bucks in one place make more than their counterparts in another.

Fair point, but even dwarfed by what they pay back home, they still pay more than what the local companies do even though the bar is so low.

L5 SWE in London is ~US$200k total comp. No, not quite as much as SF, but that's still insane money outside of finance.

£160k/year won't allow you to even buy a family home within 1 hour distance to the office over 10 years that is around maximum you'd spend @ FAANG as a SWE. It's truly pointless to feel good about it even if it is considered "insane money" due to really low London engineering salaries (worse than Munich on average). For the same work you'd likely get 350k CHF in Zurich (and won't be able to buy apartment either as Swiss aren't selling).

Working near a major station like Kings Cross where Google is gives you a really wide area with a sub 1 hour commute. Plenty of commuter towns in that radius have housing easily affordable on half that salary.

Fraunhofer and MPI will get some of that, so at least some computer scientist will see the money, most of it will end in the pockets of consulting firms and of course surveillance tech.

IT Made in Germany is a disgrace to the brainpower in Germany.

Oh great, more industrial policy. I'm sure the results of this program will be just as spectacular as Japan's fifth-generation computer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer

It has worked great in the US, see the DARPA challenges etc. Plenty of those programs have worked out, it is pointless to point only at failed ones.

It can work out well and it can fail. While experiments like Japan's fifth generation computer may have failed to produce commercial results, it still trained a generation of very able scientists. Without the significant spending of the US government, the Silicon Valley would not exist in its current form either.

During a time when software and hardware applications had no large market, the military and the government where essentially the only large consumers of the American businesses that are now hundreds of billions of dollars large.

Entrepreneurs in the US love this renegade story of somehow being less dependent on government support than anyone else on the planet, but it's revisionist history. A lot of American commercial success in IT has its roots in government funded programs and consumption.

> It can work out well and it can fail.

No, it will fail, as every German project of this kind failed. Someone will get rich, the project will close after some years. The overrated Germany is socialism 2.0.

I am German and I can definitely tell you that I am not living in socialism right now.

Good initiative but unfortunately far too late to the game.

I don't know how this works in Germany, but in China, it usually goes this way: doesn't matter if you are good at or even know it (officials won't care), just scour the internet and produce a PPT, pull some strings to arrange a fancy dinner with relevant local officials, deal done, once you got the money hire someone to do a demo, profit.

One woman bragging about this was vacationing on the Palm Jumeirah island in UAE last year, she was there pitching her block chain projects to Arabs.

I'm German and don't think there are fancy dinners needed, before you get the funding money. It's much more bureaucracy. It can be so much overhead in administrative work that companies which try to find a stable business model may not want to invest into getting research funds and other companies may have specialized in applying and getting research funding.

From what I hear it's not unusual to use the money for paying people who work on other topics, produce a little output and write in the report "we did some research, but more research is needed..."

The people in these countries dont respect programmers, they pay them peanuts. How are they going to innovate?

Since only relative income count, you have to expand your comment by saying that these countries

- Do not respect Bankers and CEOs

- Do not respect academics

- Do not respect managers

- Respect teachers too much

- Respect waiters and delivery drivers too much

etc. It's all relative. It's all trade-offs. In the US, you can get actual rich by working a normal dev job.

On the other hand, many of my US high school teachers literally had to work at Wal-mart on the side. Unthinkable elsewhere. Result: Lots of innovation, but only by importing top tier talent from Asia and Europe, since high school education sucks maaajor balls compared to those countries.

So yeah, all trade-offs.

Not trying to start an argument about country wide wage compensation. But relative to other 'competitive' professional careers, such as doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc, Europe vastly underpays programmers, but also shows them little respect in the workplace. It's not just about the money, the social status of a software engineer in Europe is very low. This is making it difficult for Europe to compete on an international basis to create powerful tech companies. There are other reasons, such as fragmented markets, multiple languages, and the conservatism of the VC industry.

My physician and lawyer friends in Berlin have salaries in the same ballpark as my programmer friends.

In some European countries at least. Poland is next door from Germany, and we have more "american" distribution of wages - programmers are high-earners, teachers are low-earners.

From what I hear, Germany seems relatively unique in having its programmers a part of the lower class.

> On the other hand, many of my US high school teachers literally had to work at Wal-mart on the side. Unthinkable elsewhere.

US teachers are among the best paid teachers on earth. What US teachers are arguing about, is they believe they should be paid something closer to good nurse wages or engineers (ie closer to $80k to $100k, rather than $60k or $70k).

Some facts:

Entry level US high school teachers earn 1/3 more than in Japan or Ireland. They earn more than in Canada. They earn around 40% more than in New Zealand. They earn 80-100% more than in Israel. They earn slightly more than in the Netherlands and Austria, and 20% more than in South Korea (which pays its teachers very well vs their national income).

Entry level elementary school teachers in the US earn about 1/3 more than in South Korea, about 20% more than in Austria, 10-15% more than in Canada, 30-40% more than in Ireland and Japan, and drastically more than in countries like New Zealand or Italy.

At both high school and elementary levels, for both entry level and 10 years of experience, the US outranks Canada, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Austria, New Zealand. It's very comparable to what you see in the Netherlands and Australia for those.

Across each field of education, the US comes in in the top seven or eight for teacher pay, typically closer to the top 5. The one place it lags abnormally is the top end pay scale for teaching, where salaries don't match what you'd expect based on the mid-tier and entry level teacher salaries the US offers.

The US only consistently trails a few countries like Germany and Switzerland, when it comes to teacher pay. Those two pay particularly well for teaching (Switzerland more or less matches what you'd expect given their very high national incomes; and Germany pays an unusually outsized salary for teachers based on their national income level).

Having worked as a programmer for 6 years in an EU country, the salaries are pretty reasonable, in the top tier of office workers, below exec level.

Maybe it's the US programmers, particularly the ones in Sillicon Valley that are being over - paid? The way I understand it, you can only expect six-figure salaries for working in one of the top companies in SV, and that only if you have graduated from one of the top universities in the area.

Also, there are six-figure salaries in the EU for programmers. You just have to know a bit of COBOL and not be afraid of biig scaary mainframes :0

Sorry but this is such bullshit. Not only in the Bay Area, but in Seattle, Boston, NYC etc... 6 figures is definitely NOT expected only from FAANGs. Any startup paying less than 90/100k to juniors, 150/200k to seniors won't find any engineers. FAANGs pay 200 to 300k. My graduating class last May had $105k average salary in the Bay Area and for me finding a 6 figure job wasn't even that hard. It's a bit ridiculous to argue the entire US tech industry is overpaid. Maybe EU still can't see how tech is changing everything and engineers are the most important part of the company. EU is very far behind and is not willing to catch up.

I'm sorry, but comparing just the gross pay between EU and US is superficial at best.

(Taking Germany as an example, single, no kids) If you're offered say 100k in Germany - due to heavy tax-burden and social security costs - you will get less than 60k net. But what is hidden from your paycheck is that the company has to double your social security. So in reality you're getting paid 115k.

If you make more than 250k, that means you get an extra slap on the wrist: "wealthy tax" means every € you make above 250k gets taxed at an excessive 45%. Which is why at that kind of pay employees seek out different kinds of compensation schemes. And because of these schemes those people often aren't count in the employment statistics and thus lower the average pay.

On the plus side: From what I hear from European expats in the US, a lot of your high pay gets eaten by having to pay private enterprises for things that are provided by the government in Europe (getting a degree, good schools or kindergartens, healthcare, using the courts/legal system etc).

Well as I said, in the US if you have an engineering/CS/math etc degree from a reasonably good uni and want to work in tech, finding a 6 figure job in a major city stratight-outta-college is not only easy but also is the norm. Whereas looking at glassdoor expecting a 100k job straight-outta-college in Berlin is pretty much impossible, you better expect half of that compensation, and even then there is a chance to not find a job. So your math is unnecessary. Especially the wealth tax part. I can't even see 250k compensations for engineers, say, in Berlin even for senior engineers.

Like I said, there are a couple of 250k jobs in Germany, they aren’t just part of the statistics of glassdoor et al.

So let’s start with entry level: say 100k at Bay-Faang and 60k at a Berlin startup. Since you’re paid USD, 100k are actually just 88k.

Your cost of living will be a lot higher in say SF than in Berlin so it begs the question: Is 28k more a year worth it? How much of that goes to paying back student debt, housing, healthcare (the big ticket items eventually) and - if you plan on having kids - kindergarten and education?

People fresh out of school are making six figures, its common. Software produces massive value, we arent overpaid, we are underpaid.

Eurocracy will not make that go very far.

Germany is still not allowed to have an offensive army, so it makes a lot of sense to at least stay first class in tech, and in AI, in order to stay relevant as a world leader for the future.

The Kellog-Briand pact prohibits signatories (including the US) from offensive wars anyway. Article 2 of the United Nations Charter states that members shouldn't even use threats of offensive actions. And the Grundgesetz obviously bans offensive wars as well.

Not sure what you're thinking, but you're waaaaaay out there.

They are basically not allowed to have a real army, still just like Japan, "only defence armies".

I'm not talking about offense acts or actions. I'm talking about being allowed to do miletary R&D and actually being allowed to have a real army out there. They don't.

So how far off is it to assume they're assertive with AI to make up for it?

Technically, the GG only bans preparing an offensive war. But what kind of German would improvise that kind of thing?

Everyone in Germany I know who actually made a world-class product had to escape some inept manager at some large German corporation, and those people are automatically excluded from any government subsidies due to a lack of political contacts. So the money will go to people with political skills and buzzword bingo, likely not being able to understand anything they are talking about. Then, in 5 years everyone will look back and wonder why Germany is again 5 years behind and resorts to importing all software from US; then external factors will be found to blame (or some poor scapegoats that didn't cover their backs). And a next gen of clueless managers will step up for another cycle with another hot technology.

German automakers and other heavy industry makes some world-class products and are politically connected up the yin yang

I was talking specifically about SW industry. It's actually an issue that plenty of people think the same approaches that made Germany great in automotive could be applied to software as well...

OK, if you're specifically talking about software. Software has certainly not been Germany's forte... But there's more to the world than software - and those industries will also bake AI into whatever they're making.

Most of the automotive research in AI by German automakers is done in their Silicon Valley research centers. Most of the low-level work to produce cars is done in V4 countries. The rest is done in Germany.

The Bundeswehr ist plenty offensive. Their tacky ads that compare war to computer games ("never fight alone!" -- like, don't just play games alone, join the Bundeswehr) are enough.

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