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martneumann

I once heard that Americans motivate themselves positively:

If I manage to finish this work today, great things will happen!

... while Germans motivate themselves negatively:

If I don't finish this work today, I'll lose my job, home, family and cat.

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That’s questionable. Germany is social state. It has great protections for ordinary people. It’s really hard to lose everything because of bad work. Sounds more like US where you could be fired any minute without warnings.

Often, these thoughts are about worst cases, and imagined outcomes so much more than realistic ones. Germans do have a word for that: "Kopfkino" (literally translated to "cinema in the head"), a state of worrying about things that becomes more darkly fantastical with every second spent on it, playing through all the imaginable adverse outcomes.

Not entirely true. Outside of government workers who are set for life, getting fired in Germany is definitely possible for various reasons, I know many cases. There are legal processes the employer must follow in order to fire employees but nearly all companies have lawyers that take care of that process to let employees go without getting sued.

And you can fall on financial hardship if for example, you took massive loan for a house and you lost your job which happens to be in a low demand filed, making it hard to find another job quickly. You usually have your 1-3 months notice period as a buffer, but the unemployment you get after that might not cover your full expenses as that's usually around the 60% mark of your pay.

Sure, like in most of Europe, it's more difficult to become poor and homeless than in the US, but Germany doesn't give you some magic immunity talisman to never loosing your job.

Yes, you can loose your job in Germany. But definitely not as easy as for example in the US. Companies need valid reasons for letting people go. And then it doesn't work like: You are fired - this is your last paycheck (only in really, really extreme cases like you stealing from your employer or punching him in the face kind of reasons).

Then there is the fact that for a time after being let go you receive a relevant share of your average salary for the last 12 months from the state while you keep looking for work.

Does it suck to be let go? Sure. Is it the end of the world in Germany? In more cases than not - it isn't.

I work in a company with even stronger employee protection as we have a so called works council. A body representing the workers towards upper management and standing in for their rights. Additionally there are strong unions in some industries in Germany that also help a lot.

Ar there areas where companies sometimes already on the side of illegalities abuse the system and workers - for sure. Esp. in the low wage sector.

What many outsiders don't know is that those protections you talk about don't apply much to your average Berlin startup where expats come exiting to kick back and relax and get shocked when they get ground up to a pulp in overtime.

How does that work? Are there weaker protections for foreign labor, or is it something startup-related?

The great employee protection are for those unionized German megacorps in the IG Metall brach, basically the traditional 100 year old German companies, like Mercedes, Siemens, Bosch, VW, Audi, etc. Those have the best employee protections and working conditions, albeit at the cost of usually archaic and crusty management, compensation schemes, heavy, slow and bureaucratic processes, etc.

Your average modern "move fast and break things" SW company or mobile focused startup doesn't enjoy any of those benefits and usually come with overtime expectations and pressure to ship, ship, ship.

Germans tend to rent, and overstretched mortgages aren't a thing over there. If you are fired you still have access to healthcare and unless your professional qualifications are in terribly low demand you will find work for adequate salary (unions in Germany sit on the boards). If everything else fails, you will get social security subsidies, albeit much to keep you out of poverty.

You're right. It's a societal, imagined instability.

In the US, if you lose your job, you're "between jobs". In Germany, you're "arbeitslos" (jobless), which some people use as an insult. There are entire TV channels that make fun of jobless people - think TLC type shows, but strictly about poverty and joblessness.

There is also the term "arbeitssuchen" (= "looking for work"). It depends a little bit on the way one looks at it.

But being "arbeitslos" ("jobless") is really a stigma in Germany. At least I feel a significant share of people see it that way.

It has protection, but that doesn't mean the company will respect them and you will be compensated 18 months later after a trial. And during that time, you won't have a lot a money coming to help you.

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