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Comment by edem | Hacker News Reader

About time. I had the "luck" of working for multiple German companies (including Volkswagen) and I'm surprised how these behemoths still function.

As a grunt programmer, it was painful to see how the upper management made decisions based on politics which made no technological sense whatsoever. In my years of working for German companies I saw multiple project reboots, millions of $s thrown out of the window on failed projects and the worst thing is that there is literally no flow of information from bottom to top. No matter how smart you are if someone is above you in the hierarchy you are nothing, no one.

I hope they will fail spectacularly and learn this hard lesson finally.

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They won't learn. I work for another euro behemoth and it's exactly the situation you describe. As long as they pay me and support my lifestyle I have no problem, but Im already tired of trying to fight the nonsense.

Sadly Im not a programmer so finding other companies with the same conditions is hard.

Exact my situation. Working for a company with roots in Siemens. The culture is terrible, must fight the nonsense to get some meaningful task. Getting insane money for doing nothing, loosing skills every month, mental health suffers, but family depends on my income. Finding other companies in Germany with similar conditions is hard, looking now in Switzerland.

What are you doing exactly? Come to Berlin :)

I am reminded of a Tom Lehrer lyric/song:

"As long as They, give me my pay, I'll do it Their way!"

There are many ways to live for and against this. These days I'm not sure if there's a wrong or correct answer for most things, though I do still have a rather mobile and grey line that can be crossed.

I'd really like to be able to just sit and do the work and don't care about these things (I'm not talking about you but the ability in general).

I just can't help myself. I'm always trying to fix things but with a company like this it feels like as if I was trying to climb the Mount Everest.

Well, I got to a point that I had to decide. If I hop to another job I'll work more hours, for less money, and I won't be able to stay here, which is nice because I have both my job and the beach on a 5 minutes distance walk.

You're describing all large organisations, pretty much.

I'm not sure. I think this hierarchical nonsense is a German thing. I've worked for IBM and it was a different experience. Still dysfunctional, but in a different way. I never felt at IBM that I was not heard. I also see how Microsoft fixed itself and turned itself around which is an admirable achievement.

That’s surprising about IBM but good to hear - was your experience there before or after Lou Gerstner’s turnaround?

After!

In most corpos your good idea will be stolen, in EU it has equal if not greater chance of being ignored.

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