201–210 of 314 posts
The more I read about this, the more it feels like a VW bailout. If you want innovation, make it easier to start up and shut down research companies, you don't need a new ministry to hand out taxpayer money to companies.
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Both can be true, and what you described is, in my opinion, one of the primary causes of insane bureaucracy in Germany. This inflexible mindset is what causes the relentless enforcement of bureaucracy and procedures in Germany, there is very little leeway here in terms of bending the rules, making exceptions, turning a blind eye. This cultural inflexibility, traditionalism and risk-aversion all ties together into a p…
This couldn't be more incorrect. I document German bureaucracy for a living. The hardest part of my job is that every state, city, office and case worker applies the rules differently, making it really hard to predict a specific outcome. In most cases it plays in people's favour, unless the case worker is particularly grumpy and you happen to hit one of their pet peeves. I struggle to document the variance for Berlin…
I actually think Germany would be really good at digital infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer. Germany is immensely proud of its history of creating standards - there's literally a place in berlin called DIN Platz. Germany is also very proud, and rightly so, in its history of mathematical innovation. Everything that isn't dross in the computer world is either a well designed standard, or a w…
This allows most Germans to sleep soundly at night knowing some company won't show up at the door selling the same product they do, but better and cheaper.
This is a well know playbook, and is appealing to bureaucrats who conflate a stack paperwork with actual quality, and is not exclusive to Germans (why does FDA approved medicine cost 100x of chemically indentical stuff sold in other countries etc.)/
I actually think Germany would be really good at digital infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer. Germany is immensely proud of its history of creating standards - there's literally a place in berlin called DIN Platz. Germany is also very proud, and rightly so, in its history of mathematical innovation. Everything that isn't dross in the computer world is either a well designed standard, or a w…
> I actually think Germany would be really good at digital infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer. They still have the automotive / electrical engineering mindset on computers and software. Software in Germany is built to achieve a means to an end. It is never the end goal itself.
> Software in Germany is built to achieve a means to an end. It is never the end goal itself.
The upside is that this will actually provide lots of research funding to small companies. Think of it like the seed round from a VC, but instead of investing into new companies, they try to strategically invest into existing companies to boost future tax revenue. It'll probably be very German, meaning overly bureaucratic. But the basic idea of financing R&D in small companies to grow them more competitive seems legi…
Applying for a grant is normally difficult. In Germany, it's outright hellish. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised.
On all levels, once you really breathe that there is a human person you are directing your inquiry to, and that you can help them do their job, they will be happy to direct money towards you. That principle applies from local startup funds to federal grants to EU level project officers. The “bureaucracy“ can be annoying in the sense of feeling like a waste of time (which, since you should factor in the cost of application into your later grant, is simply not true. It is actually really well paid boring labor.), but it’s really not complex or hard. If you believe they are hard for you (“hell“), you are engaged in negative self talk.
If you approach these things as highly annoying, and direct your annoying energy to the people who are handling your application, you will annoy them, which will make you feel like they are there to annoy you. The alternative is to approach them with the understanding that they’re not trying to make your life hard but are simply doing their job. They know much better than you that some things should be changed but it’s not up to them to change them, and they are not the right target to lobby for change.
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The problem is not the bureaucracy. Nobody's stopping a local mid-market manufacturer from automating workflows. Or hindering a utility company from offering a better service process. The problem is corporate leadership. German companies tend to be run by people who are inflexible, uninspired, and cheap. Maybe it's in the culture. Compare this to Austria, where there's a cultural flair for the dramatic (and therefore…
As a German I would love to contradict this but I tend to agree. Bureaucracy isn't such a big deal in my experience - might be different depending what area you are working in - but the leadership culture regarding software is the cause of most of the misery I've seen and I've been involved with. Cheap as in no investments in people or software quality. Salaries are also not competitive in a lot of places. Disregard…
> Salaries are also not competitive in a lot of places.
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> Compare this to Austria, where there's a cultural flair for the dramatic (and therefore an eagerness to stand out, even if it's weird) or Switzerland where enterprises, public or private, are not afraid to place big bets. Can you call out with some examples for those of us unfamiliar with those 'big bets'?
One very big bet I would say would be the NRLA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA Switzerland sits between Germany, Italy, and France, and was getting choked by road traffic, so voters have approved the largest tunnels in the world to get goods around and through Switzerland without using roads.
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Applying for a grant is normally difficult. In Germany, it's outright hellish. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised.
I have applied for a few grants in Germany and also got them. It’s honestly not that difficult. If you have a large consortium with many partners it can become complicated but mostly because of the partners and not the government. My secret advice: when there is a grant there is also always a number you call or an email address, if anything is unclear, you can call them and they have always been very helpful.
100%. That can also sometime save you a ton of work of putting together information that they may not care about.
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Germany has tons of potential, but Germany is one of the most risk averse countries on the planet (see Uncertainty Avoidance Cultures)[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_avoidance ]. This makes it amazing at building high quality industrial products, taking innovation done elsewhere and refining and polishing it, slowly over many years - building standards as you say. However, it doesn't help much in the inno…
How does the Germany of today reconcile itself with the iconoclasts of its past from mathematicians, physicists, chemists, explorers, filmmakers, and industrialists who set the stage for modern life during the late 19th and early 20th centuries?