aleph_minus_one

> Most people didn’t go to college to eat canned beans. We went to college so we could stop eating canned beans.

Dreaming of something does not make it real.

Even in Germany, where going to university is very cheap, people have such dreams of social ascent by getting a degree. Here is a German article about how this does not always go well:

> https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2016/august/exzellente-entqu...

> https://archiv.telepolis.de/features/Exzellente-Entqualifizi...

> Then it's no wonder if skilled workers want to leave.

I am not so sure whether it's about "skilled":

If you want a fast career, Germany is likely not for you. On the other hand, if you simply want to apply your great skills in a job, I wouldn't say that Germany is a bad place: I would even claim because the skills are much more appreciated by companies in Germany, the system is rather centered around that you tend to stay in a position where your skills are of a lot of use.

So, I am certain that it is not about "skilled", but about "having the expectation to rise up in some arbitrarily set up career ladder". This is something very different from being skilled!

> or move to other ventures where your skills have better use.

Switching the job too often is a red flag for many companies in Germany.

The system in Germany is based on the idea that it should both not be so easy to quit your position at the company and for the company to fire you (cancellation periods hold for both sides).

> which european country doest start teaching [English] from elementary school?

I never had English lessons in primary school (Germany), and as far as I am aware, English lessons in primary school are still not that common.

> You are exposed to english a lot.

This is not my experience.

> And on top of that it's a simple lanuge.

Getting some elementary, broken knowledge of English is not very hard (English is more forgiving here than German or Russian). Getting good in English is insanely hard (much harder than for many other languages like French).

> Try to lean polish, or chinese. [...] Won't be that easy.

For me, finding a (near-)native speaker for widespread languages would be rather easy:

Option 1: I work for an international company. Thus finding someone who is either native speaker or at least very good in the respective language would not be hard.

Option 2: You are aware of "superconnectors", i.e. the persons who know "everybody"? Well, I know a few of these people. Just give one of them a call: "Hey, do you know someone cool who speaks language X well and is willing to serve as a teacher for Y hours/week? For this, I am willing, for example, to teach this person programming or whatever this person wants."

The non-easy part is just finding the necessary time for learning the respective language.

> Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

The kind of people that I know and have in mind are not this way. They often rather compete for the most complicated and different language families. :-)

> In software, if you don't speak English, you don't really exist. Same for pilots and some other industries. Spanish programmers will need to learn English even for jobs in Spain. I have no idea what you are talking about.

I know from programmers from Russia that in this country, you can pretty much do software development without knowing any English, Russian suffices (to the surprise of programmers from other countries). This is also why it cannot taken for granted that a programmer who comes from Russia knows English (at least more than minimal, shallow knowledge from school).

I heard similar things about programmers in China.

> It's very strange to see you simultaneously say that that friendships take longer to develop but also that I'm supposed to avoid shallow talk the entire time even when my friendship is very shallow.

I don't get your point:

- Avoiding shallow talking means not wasting the other person's time - this is politeness.

- You can also talk about deep topics with people who are outside of your friendzone.

> Yeah and honestly, it shouldn't be. It was really strange going back to the U.S and having family members suggest we drive to get ice cream. It's incredibly wasteful.

Side remark: In Germany "drive" (in this case: to get ice cream) can often also mean "go by bike" (in Germany, the word "fahren" is both used for cars (Auto fahren) and bicycles (Rad/Fahrrad fahren), leaving it open which vehicle is meant, because both choices are plausible, even though I would claim that for getting ice cream, a bicycle is the more natural choice.

> Where do the German coders go though?

Currently the market for software developers is very complicated in Germany.

Basically, the answer is: if you have a job, you stay there (at least until hopefully in a few years the job market situation for software developers in Germany improves).

> I think what she meant that even if you live in Germany/work with German colleagues, basically you will enternally made to be felt that you are not one of them by all but the most liberally minded Germans (and even those are rare even in the big international cities). So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.

Thanks for your interesting point.

Nevertheless, I think the situation is a little bit different:

Many Germans indeed also have the feeling "that [they] are not one of them", but I would say it is part of the German mentality to worry much less about that than in other countries.

A lot of connections at work are rather "communities of purpose" [English translation of "Zweckgemeinschaft(en)"], i.e. you work together because of a common goal/hobby/... which makes collaborations a really good idea.

I read somewhere that in the USA a lot more of the social life is centered around the work/company than in Germany. So, it is not untypical to get social connections at work, but this is only one way among many. I would even claim that the social connections from work are often not the most important ones.

Immigrants who are used to the US mentality that work is much more important for social connections than in Germany thus feel that "[they] are not one of them", when in reality this is not the case.

I am very certain that typically German colleagues treat immigrants colleagues as they would treat their German work colleagues (as far as possible). The misunderstanding is rather that many people from other cultures want to be treated quite differently.

> So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.

In my observation the reason for this is rather because many migrants have very different wishes on their surrounding group than what is common in Germany (also and in particular for Germans).

> Are you suggesting launching into deep conversation when you meet someone?

I am strongly suggesting not to start with shallow smalltalk, as it is common in the USA.

I would start with serious conversations when I meet someone to get a feeling. But if the "vibe" is right, you can indeed get deep rather soon.

> None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German.

I am very certain this is not true. The "just learn the language" people are typically rather people who are very talented in learning new languages (and often indeed to this as adults as a personal hobby - often even with languages from very different families), and thus are often not easy to convince that not everybody is as talented in language learning as they are.

Believe me, I know this kind of people:

I just want to quote some polyglot person who very casually said: "Being fluent in five languages is not something to be proud of - this is rather minimum standard." (she had the opinion that rather keeping fluent in 10 [!] languages is something that takes steady learning efforts to retain the obtained level in all of the 10 languages).

Berlin is a completely different world than the rest of Germany. Never make the mistake of generalizing anything that you observed in Berlin to Germany outside of Berlin.

> I've heard it said that the idea that Germans are efficient is a myth.

I wouldn't say this either. Many people in Germany do care about efficiency, but they have nearly completely resignated about systemic problems where they can change nothing.

> Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English.

For sure not in France and Spain (outside of tourist areas).

From my observations about Germany and what I read about the USA, there was historically much less internal movement in Germany than in the USA. But over the last decades, shifts occured: internal movement increased in Germany and decreased in the USA.

> and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?

I would say the topic is more multilayered:

Traditionally, Germany was not an immigration country (yes, there exist exceptions in history: migrations of big groups from other countries, but let's ignore them for the sake of the argument), so there barely exist any traditionally grown structures for immigrants from other countries or cultures; they are much more on their own.

I wouldn't say that this bare existence of immigration structures is a bad thing per se, or that such people are unwelcome etc. It's just that there exist no really structured way for immigrants from other countries or cultures to set foot in Germany's society.

On the other hand, the increased internal movement over the last decades in Germany has not lead to the situation that incoming (German) people have an easier way to get into the existing structures, but I would rather say that this lead to a more tolerance of new incoming people doing their own thing separately.

In other words: it lead to the situation that people living next to each other often having few common things in their ways of living.

So, the increased internal movement rather lead to a loss of "common grounding" of people living in some place, without anything new appearing that replaces this loss of common grounding.

> I don’t think that she means it as literally as you are interpreting her. It’s a _feeling_ of not belonging to or probably feeling welcomed to join the culture that surrounds her daily life

I wrote something about a related point in my parallel post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48824800

With this in mind, I think that

> This experience is usually invisible to the people who are part of the in-group, in this case Germans, but if someone lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and tries to make it their home, I think they understand what that woman was saying.

is not a feeling that is felt as strongly by people from Germany as for people from other countries.

1. As I have hinted in my original post, there simply is not that much of a feeling of "belonging" also for Germans who live in Germany.

2. I wrote in the linked post

"I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around 'if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own'. There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it."

So, people from Germany are often much more used to the situation that they do things alone on their own, and thus in my opinion indeed have much more internal tolerance to the situation what people from other cultures would call "a feeling of not belonging".

This is exactly why I wrote further above:

"This woman should [...] learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life."

The reason is not knowing the laws and rules can get her into trouble, but living your life on your own (without a sense of "belonging") is something that is easily doable (as I hinted: quite some Germans feel this about their life in Germany) - if you don't "belong" or have few contacts, you can still live.

> I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.

Concerning "part of the in-group": It is very usual that in Germany, you don't become a "friend" fast (the German translation of "friend", [der] Freund, has a much deeper meaning than the US-American understanding of the English word). Friendship is much deeper and takes much longer to establish, but is also there to stay.

The same is said about Nordic countries.

If you come from a country where you become a friend much faster, but in a much more shallow sense, you will indeed likely be disappointed.

My advice based on my feelings/observations:

- If you do shallow smalltalk (as it is very common in the USA), you signal that you only want a shallow relationship. If you want a deep friendship, better bring something deep to the table.

- In particular referring to the point "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them": I would really say that life in Germany is much more "live your own life" (which is also what I wrote in my post above: "Otherwise, she should live her life."), i.e. you do much more things on your own. For me, for example, a very common evening is filled with learning (which I do on my own).

I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around "if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own". There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it.

With this in mind, I think that "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them" is not something that you will commonly experience (and people likely would consider this to be unfair), it's rather "people not throwing parties, so you are not invited to a (non-existing :-) ) party".

> Outside of Germany, what exact benefit does the German language get you?

German is also official language in Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. In many neighbouring countries it is also often well-understood and/or there exist language minorities.

> English is the global lingua franca

From my professional experience I can tell that depending on the countries or persons from countries that you deal with, Spanish, French, Russian or Chinese can be much more important than English.

So, calling English the global lingua franca is in my opinion rather based on a selection bias on specific countries.

> Germany is a remarkably rural and insular country compared to the Netherlands whose foundational myth comes from bankers and merchants.

There existed no "Germany" before the second half of the 19th century, only a list of various sovereign states.

> Someone wearing a hijab looks out of place in the land of the Döner?

The history with the Turkish gastarbeiters is a complicated one. Please don't twist the knife in the wound.

> If we put a northen German, a Swiss German and a Spaniard in a room, how long will it take for the two germans to realize they have more in common with eath other than the spaniard?

Switzerland is actually quite different from Germany.

> If you are not an engineer you must have an almost excellent level of local language --> an excellent level of a language is only possible if you are immersed daily over a long time and have the time to study

I disagree: for many jobs, it is expected that you have a decent level of English, but at least in Germany, you are often not immersed a lot in English. So you have to get decent in English with barely any immersion.

I thus have a feeling that because many Germans had to learn hard to get somewhat decent in English on their own, they have the same expectation on immigrants to learn really hard on their own to get good in German fast (without demanding immersion).

> that you can pay by card at market vendors

When I (German) was on vacation in the Netherlands, I found it dystopic that you could often not pay cash, but had to use card. This "I don't want to be tracked" mentality is deeply ingrained into the feeling of many Germans.

So, I would rather call this not a bug, but a feature.

> hey need to do 10x more than someone who is simply "a native" to the country (or... you'll stay in a position and just rot until you move on).

Staying in a position for a long part of one's life is a very common situation for many Germans, too. The whole concept of that you must have a career seems to be deeply ingrained in US mentality.

So, I have a strong feeling that a lot of immigrants who feel they hit a glass ceiling are rather used to the USA understanding how a career works, and think because they are not promoted, they are discriminated against, when in reality it's rather that a promotion to a completely new role/title is much more uncommon in Germany than in the USA.

> she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one

As a native German, I actually have difficulties with concepts like "identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]" or "naturalization". I really would say these are concepts that US-Americans (or people who were "shaped" by US mentality) seem to deeply care about, but Germans very typically don't.

So, my opinion/advice is: she should simply abandon such concepts ("identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]", "naturalization") that, as a native German, are simply far away from the mentality that I observe in daily life.

Don't forget that a unified Germany was a concept that only involved in the 19th century, so "Germany" is more of a somewhat "synthetic" unification of various historical, and very different, federal states where the unifying element is rather what is now considered to be a shared language, ethicity, culture and history.

With this in mind, the advice should be obvious:

This woman should concentrate on getting really good in German, and learn about the more than 1000 years of (what is now German) culture and history, and additionally learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life.

What she should not do, is caring about what "identifying as" or "feeling like a" German means - she should put this out of her mind, since modern Germany is a very synthetic unification of what were historically very different sovereign nations that share what is now considered to be a common language, ethicity, culture and history.

> I strongly suspect that developers moving from writing code to managing agents to write code for them is very similar to developers moving into leadership and management roles and managing ICs to write code for them.

I disagree.

From ICs that I lead, I expect that they learn fast. On the other hand, LLMs are basically incapable of improving.

Another issue that I can see is that I don't particularly like eager new colleagues who come up with (hallucinate) wrong answers. At the beginning, if you are uncertain, learn, and if you have questions that learning does not answer by itself, ask questions. But strongly avoid hallucinating answers. New colleagues can be taught that, LLMs not so.

> As someone who has met a lot of math majors and a lot of CS majors, I am skeptical of your supposition that CS majors are better at finding and applying novel abstractions than math majors who know how to code.

I do work with people who have a math major. Let me put it this way: if they were interested in finding and applying novel abstractions for programming, they would for sure often be very capable in this, but people who majored in math often rather love to apply these skills to more mathematical problems in their area of interest.

- If it's about gaining a deep understanding of the topic involved for the pursuit of knowledge, it's science or engineering.

- If it's about manipulating people, it's politics.

> Further to this point, it's quite common to favour a candidate with a strong STEM degree who has learned to code as an adjacency.

... because they know less about programming, and thus think much less deeply how a novel abstraction could look like which solves the problem much more elegantly.

In other words: these applicants more obediently do their work instead of regularly questioning whether there could be a better way and thus rocking the boat too much. :-(