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Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

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Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#341

Post by xnyan »

eru wrote: post #325
TurboHaskal wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always struggled with this in Germany as a foreigner. Coming from a country in which the so called formal form changed significantly in the last decades and is now reserved to people you don't want to get along with (that's how politicians refer to members of other parties, or how customer support starts to address you after you tell them that you want to quit the contract), I always ended up using the informal for…

Many people who formally learn German as a second language (as opposed to just picking it up on the spot) seem to default to Sie. I guess that's what they teach in the Goethe institute. Defaulting to Sie seems like a safe default. At worst you get some funny looks for being overly formal, but you don't insult anyone.

I don’t think it’s just German. When I started learning Russian, 95% of what I was taught was on вы (plural/formal you). When you’re a beginner you really lean on stock phrases and bits you learned in class, so when I moved to Kharkov everything I said was formal for about six months. It took a year before I really stopped speaking to children or pets formally. It makes sense I guess, if you’re not sure formal is probably safer than informal (although speaking to someone formally when you should be speaking informally can also be insulting.)

It’s not just knowing when to use formal/informal - native speakers often forget this but in languages with verbs that conjugate, a beginner learner may not be as good with the Du conjugations as they are with Sie. Again, when you are just starting with the language or you’re not confident you lean on repeating things you’ve learned and if you were taught Sie then that’s what you do.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#342

Post by bencw »

k__ wrote: post #305
benjohnson1707 wrote: post #96

Former Schwarz employee here: The company made SO much money in the past 4 decades with big box / discount retailing, you won't believe it. Salaries are off the charts (it would make senior software engineers in SV look pale). Hubris is as well. The only thing that drives reasoning are statements like 'we're not just some random company, we're Schwarz Group'. It's the poster child Corp described by Andy Gorves statem…

"skill level did not take off so much" Big problem in German enterprise. They don't have any IT skills, but much money and are constantly crying for "digital transformation" what usually only leads them to being conned by big consulting agencies.

Why is this? Is there a brain drain going on?

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#343

Post by rsynnott »

dragonwriter wrote: post #188
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, "my data is handled by a company under the EU law" is quite a good sale pitch these days.

> Also, "my data is handled by a company under the EU law" is quite a good sale pitch these days. Everyone operating in the EU is under EU law, including Amazon, so it's certainly not a competitive pitch vs. Amazon, however much it might be on a checklist of things customers are looking for.

It's complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._United_Stat...

There are absolutely companies who won't use Amazon due to concerns over things like that.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#344

Post by brummm »

occamrazor wrote: post #166
paganel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salaries are off the charts Just to add another data point, Lidl is also the retailer that pays the best market salaries in the Eastern-European country where I live in (they actually included that in several of their hiring ads), and I'm talking about shop people like cashiers and the people that put things on the shelves. > They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. In here they've also ope…

I guess you mean the 2nd person form (du or ihr fir singular or plural) instead of the 3rd person plural (Sie), which is the courtesy form fir singular and plural. Yes, in German it’s a big deal, roughly the same as saying “Hey dude” instead of “Good morning Mr Smith”.

A lot of the comments below indicate that that the Du/Sie distinction is something old fashioned and young people don't do this anymore. This is arguably false. Even though it might not be at the same level as it was 70 or 80 years ago, this distinction is still very much part of the German language and society.

With people my age I would probably always use the informal Du, but only in informal situations. In case of formal interactions, as part of a business transaction, etc. I would probably always go to the Sie if I didn't know the person and would expect the same in reverse. Anything else would probably be perceived as lacking respect. English doesn't have anything equivalent except maybe first name/last name basis, so it's always hard to explain to Americans.

Of course, as a foreigner things are always less strict and one gets some slack for not speaking the language perfectly.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#345

Post by luckylion »

oneplane wrote: post #295
luckylion wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon said (to Congress, no less) that it does not let it's own team responsible to deciding on which products to buy & sell access confidential sales reports of third party sellers that use their platform. And then it was revealed that they regularly do get access to these information. There's no reasonable expectation that Amazon will not use any data it can easily access to make decisions. I don't find that your…

Sounds like a lot of conspiracy that isn't going be limited to Amazon so it still doesn't make sense to single out their computing company. If you encrypt your data on your public cloud (like you should), then no, the AWS retail company cannot 'get' your data from the AWS Web Services company.

Sure, Google or Microsoft might look at your stuff aswell - but why would they? Neither of them are in retail so they aren't competitors. If you're developing a new search engine that rivals Google, yeah, I wouldn't host that on Google's infrastructure. Have a serious contender for Microsoft's money cows? Maybe not put your code and issue tracking on GitHub.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#346

Post by collyw »

adventured wrote: post #112
saagarjha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really? That’s an absurd number even by large company standards.

It's not absurd, it's undersized in fact. AWS is nearing 50% larger than SAP in sales, which have 101,000 employees. AWS is now approximately the size of Oracle in sales, which have 136,000 employees.

Where do you find numbers like that? It would be interesting to see other companies.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#347

Post by enitihas »

bencw wrote: post #342
k__ wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"skill level did not take off so much" Big problem in German enterprise. They don't have any IT skills, but much money and are constantly crying for "digital transformation" what usually only leads them to being conned by big consulting agencies.

Why is this? Is there a brain drain going on?

Should be. The salary disparity in US and EU is immense.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#348

Post by BiteCode_dev »

eru wrote: post #334
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand this. I would never prefer a German company if there was an equivalent American company providing the same service. In some ways it must feel like a loss of sovereignty to be so heavily reliant on American companies for necessary services. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc.

> I would never prefer a German company if there was an equivalent American company providing the same service. Why?

You know the game and the meta game better in your own country. Plus, there is nationalism, solidarity, proximity, proudness, language barrier, favoritism, etc. that all enter in consideration.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#349

Post by vidarh »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #272
vidarh wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, in German it’s a big deal, roughly the same as saying “Hey dude” instead of “Good morning Mr Smith”. It's been changing for decades across a lot of languages. I grew up in Norway where these forms were dying out as I was a child (70's/80's) and mostly used to older people, to the point where they're now mostly used sarcastically to imply someone is a pompous ass or to very old people or in very formal situatio…

I've lived in both Germany and currently Sweden. I have asked about the formal address here in Sweden, and the only time someone ever said you might use it is when talking to one of the royal family (while trying to suppress a laugh). Most younger people respond by saying that we don't have a formal-informal distinction here, which in practice is pretty true. I have a good friend who spent half his childhood in Germa…

I think the death of the formal forms in Sweden relatively closely mirrored the changes in Norwegian. In Scandinavia I feel it was in part at least hastened by the post-war political landscape where the strength of the workers movement meant there was a big push towards a more egalitarian society in general, and that was carried over into language reforms.

I think the notion of using the formal forms only when talking to the royal family is close to how it would be in Norwegian too. In written language it retains every so slightly more use, but then too the only times it would be used non-sarcastically would be in something like e.g. an invite to something very formal. E.g. if I received an invite to a black tie event, then maybe it wouldn't be out of place. It'd still feel old fashioned, but then sometimes that is the goal.

> But that formal training was really rigorously applied, so she cannot help it. Even with our close friends sometimes.

I think that's the case for a lot of people who learned these languages some time ago - my teachers knew there was a transition happening, but would rather have us come across as too formal or polite than insult someone, especially as the focus was on learning these languages for business rather than for personal use, and it's really hard to get used to changing those things for languages you don't use every day in particular.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#350

Post by adrianN »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #254
adrianN wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70k for senior level in Germany seems low to me. Siemens for example pays around 45-60k starting salary for developers.

In which city/division can one find this salary? Siemens is huge and has multiple business units in multiple cities each with their own salary grid.

Siemens pays according to the IG Metall labor agreement which you can find here (in German) https://www.igmetall.de/tarif/tariftabellen/wie-viel-gibt-es

A software engineer should get _at least_ EG10 which ends up being >50k e.g. in Berlin.

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