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How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

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Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#521

Post by iamsaitam »

bboygravity wrote: post #516
nicbou wrote: post #114

I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to life in the country. Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark. I cannot overstate how terribl…

Now try Portugal. It will make Germany look like a walk in the park.

Are you kidding? Specially with the article in the topic referring to creating a company. Search for "Criar uma empresa na hora".

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#522

Post by mkesper »

nixass wrote: post #463
nicbou wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine too! My residence permit expired in February, and my appointment is in July. I expect to have a valid residence title again by end of August. Mind you, I applied in December. I will not be able to travel out of the country for most of the summer as I wouldn't be allowed to reenter. They refused multiple times to issue the temporary permit that I'm legally entitled to. I'm having a lawyer ask again, this time wit…

Folks, you can travel outside of Germany for sure, as long as you stay inside Schengen.

Please add a link for people relying on this info.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#523

Post by iamsaitam »

jasonkester wrote: post #453
weinzierl wrote: post #400

As a German I agree with the gist: Germany is overly buerocratic and not startup friendly. When it comes to founding a company the author overcomplicates things, however. This is OK when you want to study the process, or want to become an expert in this and maybe make a business out of it. If you just want a company get started, just buy a ready made one. There are specialized lawyers that always keep a pool of fresh…

I find that Europe often has things like this. That is, the “easy way” that everyone uses. The frustrating thing is that there is no way of learning about it until you’ve already endured months of pain trying to follow the impossible steps outlined on the official government website. If that site had a little notice on top saying “Stop! Nobody does it this way! Google this term instead”, that would save a lot of pain…

Ah yes, Europe the country

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#524

Post by redrove »

throwaway220033 wrote: post #513
redrove wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I wholeheartedly agree with your points about being forced to remain a wage slave for pennies (in comparison to say the US) and people relying on the government way too much— these are right on the money — I do think casually slipping in “orgies” lessens the validity of your claim in the reader’s mind. Also I don’t think it’s fair to claim immigrants are being set on fire (with no citations) like it’s just regu…

My comment meant to trigger thoughts, not your echo. Do your own thinking. Just last week a Turkish family was set on fire. They will claim the victims are not Turkish and then won’t reveal the identities or photos of them. So you won’t know it’s still happening. Just talk to any Turkish person. Speaking of startups; Nazis here still attack Turkish small business owners. Ordinary people also face racist attacks if th…

I don’t disagree with you that nobody should have that happen to them and it’s horrible, but you’ve yet again disingenuously implied that Germany is some Nazi utopia where people are set alight on the street.

Bad things happen everywhere. DE is not unique in this regard but they do their best to prevent it, especially considering their history which weighs heavily on their culture.

(I’m not german btw)

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#525

Post by blueflow »

Loveaway wrote: post #288
whalesalad wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the redeeming qualities of Germany?

Orderly, rational people. Hard working, rich country, despite no natural wealth. No cutting corners, one of the reasons bureaucracy is so horrid. You are expected to have your shit together, still people are as lenient as they can be. Things work, you can trust people. Low crime, clean streets. Good sense of morality. Country is capable of much more, still holds itself back a lot, preference in humbleness. Things are…

> clean streets

Living here, i disagree. Just on my way to the train station i saw at least 10 cigarette butts on the ground. And its like that across the whole city.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#526

Post by brnt »

CalRobert wrote: post #478
brnt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in both, plus the Netherlands. France has one forgiving element: usually some room for the human element. Germans civil servants seem happy to apply rules and procedures, even if they are clearly suboptimal. French civil servants would agree it's ridiculous and are more inclined to help you get unstuck if you can show them that you are. France also seemed further along digitizing things. Total duration is…

My family and I are Irish citizens and while the Netherlands has been good to us, it is surprising to me that when we go to the hospital you have to check in with a specifically Dutch ID. In the name of the person with the appointment. That seems OK since I have a Dutch driver's licence, but my 4 year old daughter does not, and they seemed to have no idea what to do with her. Usually we figure it out but there's not…

Yeah, I know what you mean. Also, even though my partner has a Dutch tax ID, we still can't file together ourselves, on account of her not having a Dutch ID, and therefore not being able to setup DigiD 'correctly'. We can have a tax consultant do it for us however!

Highly optimized for the happy path, which of course does cover 99% of cases, but you better not be in the 1% :) That's what I liked about France: nobody expects you to be normal, so everybody is used to working around systems. For the Dutch (and Germans), systems are sacred, and if they don't work, it must be you!

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#527

Post by brnt »

gryn wrote: post #209
brnt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in both, plus the Netherlands. France has one forgiving element: usually some room for the human element. Germans civil servants seem happy to apply rules and procedures, even if they are clearly suboptimal. French civil servants would agree it's ridiculous and are more inclined to help you get unstuck if you can show them that you are. France also seemed further along digitizing things. Total duration is…

The digitization in france in making things worse on the edge though, the system are buggy and now you no longer have that human you can talk to fix things. I remember not being able to create an account because the website password validation regex was buggy, I wrote an email about it and it's probably still not fixed. I've had to read the "compiled" js of the website to understand what was wrong to begin with. I've…

At the very least I'm happy I can still see my pension was registered correctly and downloads the attestations to that effect. All without visiting an office in Paris only open on Thursdays 10:00-10:30am ;)

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#528

Post by smarnach »

nicbou wrote: post #114

I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to life in the country. Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark. I cannot overstate how terribl…

I think that's vastly overstating how bad it is. Maybe it's different if you are a German citizen. Just as an example, I never did anything other than signing the contract to get a job. I filled in a single form for each of my two kids when they were born. We got the forms in the hospital and just left them there. Similarly for registering a car -- there was a single simple form.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#529

Post by fransje26 »

anewhnaccount2 wrote: post #471
usr1106 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am familiar with both German and Finnish bureaucracy. German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique identifier (more and more weakened recently) and need to present documentation for everything. If you have no paper birth certificate you are not born... Finland has had much higher digitalization for decades. You have a person number and authorities store everythin…

The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments. These services are expensive and require staff to keep things going. Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease since this will cause the public sector to "make do and mend" and end up running more efficiently, rather than having a knock on effect and decr…

> Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease

Over time I developed a more cynical theory. As politicians have extremely short-term understandings and targets, they abuse the latent momentum of public services to surf on the inherent delayed response before service quality goes down and gets noticed. By then, they can blame the cause on something else, and move on to the next cost-cutting measure.

Even if there is an outcry, they can gaslight citizens into believing either that a) it was not better before or b) the changes are an imperious necessity that cannot be reversed.

Either way, the personnel and knowledge has been lost, so the service (and the quality-of-life that came with it) are lost forever.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#530

Post by ostenning »

i_am_a_peasant wrote: post #507
lnsru wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

€120k salary does not make you a king. And prices compared to pre pandemic ones also skyrocketed. Germany was once nice average salary/low living cost country. Now only average salary left. But it’s ok when one is already inside. Not recommended for newcomers though.

100K is damn hard to break into if you're on the strictly technical path nowadays, but maybe it's just my line of work (embedded). I've been trying to learn some web stuff and go and C# to maybe expand my job options a bit.

100K is easy to break as a freelancer. You'll obviously have more things to consider - multiple clients, accounting, legal and potential downtime, but its totally doable.

I think embedded could actually be a good discipline to work as a freelancer, most IoT products usually have a more rigid and defined development cycle than web platforms.

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