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Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

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Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#791

Post by happytoexplain »

dofm wrote: post #768
simianwords wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But like... no one claims there's some essentialist and typological race. Everyone knows that it is lossy but a real category. Whom are you attacking here? Any educated person knows that there's no one to one mapping between DNA and how the word "Asian" is used. There's a good predictive power for DNA and a high correlation. But that's how language works. Between a "hill" and a "mountain", there's no concrete boundar…

> Advice: don't create this strawman. Argue against the real thing: race is a category albeit a fuzzy one that humans use through language and this category has a biological basis. Advice: the above is essentially indistinguishable from the false scientific argumentation that white supremacists use to make their case. It has no meaningful basis in science.

Essentially indistinguishable? That's going so far. Please don't do this. It's so counter-productive to provide evidence for the "they call everything racist/white-supremacist" accusation.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#792

Post by guenthert »

fallingbananna wrote: post #657
dudul wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you live 6 years in a country without reaching B1?

You don't magically get language skills by living in the country. You still have to put in the time and effort. The utmost basics, A1, you could learn very quickly and those will get you through basic interactions (buying groceries, greeting neighbors, etc.) At work, doctors, apartment search etc. you can use English. For contracts you can use translate, since B1 wouldn't get you far there anyway. But to get to B1, y…

> Especially given that there aren't interesting media to immerse yourself into in German, compared to other languages like Japanese or Korean.

There's nothing interesting to read im Land der Dichter & Denker? Perhaps following is to your taste? https://editionfaust.de/produkt/faust/

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#793

Post by laylower »

parheric wrote: post #20

I've been here for a decade, and sadly I feel the issue is upward mobility for skilled workers. Unless you're working for an intl company, with ex-pats in positions of leadership, your chances of "getting ahead" are going to be limited, especially when you're competing against natives. The reason is sadly, the culture is very reserved and cautious, so as an "outsider" it's going to take A LONG time before you can be…

You are right I think - but this is the case for everywhere besides startups in the US

Try going to Singapore, Japan, the UK, Netherlands, god forbid France, Germany, Latin America. Try going into engineering in major US companies - you know how hiring works and who is prioritized over whom.

If you are not local or you are not part of the inner circle of management the glass ceiling is there.

Some would say that it's just empirical evidence and they never had this problem. I would call them lucky.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#794

Post by imtringued »

freehorse wrote: post #509
pessimizer wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making it sound like the desire to be a Frenchman is an unreasonable requirement for becoming a Frenchman. > abandon your own language, culture Thank god nobody is asking this. They're being asked to learn enough French to participate in France. B1 is hard, but it ain't B2, and you'll still barely understand what's going on around you.

> requirement for becoming a Frenchman The discussion is about permanent residence, not citizenship. Permanent residence allows eg an employee be able to continue staying in a country without being dependent on a particular employer and having to reapply everytime they change jobs. It is gives a person who works in a country for a certain amount of time already, paying taxes etc, having the same rights as an employee…

You have to choose one way or another.

Either you argue that the job requires you to stay in another country and the stay is always temporary and there you would not focus on any given language since you're going to leave before you reach any level of proficiency

or you want to stay in the country because you like it and therefore learn the language.

You cannot cherry pick the option where you have your cake and eat it too.

It is illogical to demand permanent residency for a temporary stay that is short enough to not bother learning the language.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#795

Post by imtringued »

earthdeity wrote: post #655
s1artibartfast wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone wants to be a permanent resident of a country and build their life there, they should have to plan to eventually become a citizen of that country. To allow otherwise leads to its destruction, just people with no long term skin in the game extracting before moving on. It is a huge conflict of interest among the population. Its like having a corporation where half the owners want a quick return and exist and…

Extraction is a weird way to put it. Usually, immigrants, especially skilled workers, are overwhelmingly net contributors. That's part of why modern economies want them so badly. It's actually the perfect opposite, a skilled worker who plans to leave is a burden on their home country as they presumably will use services there they never paid for. Hopefully, in developed nations this balances out more or less. In unde…

All of the net benefits you're talking about require some form of assimilation and we're in a discussion about rejecting/refusing assimilation.

There is plenty of evidence that immigrant enclaves depress wages because these immigrants are trapped in their local community instead of being part of the broader national economy.

Everything you're talking about just proves the point of the person you're responding to.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#796

Post by imtringued »

NorthSouthNorth wrote: post #198
ikut3hva wrote: post #165

Hi everyone I don’t usually comment on topics like this because there are so many biases and different perspectives involved. In the end, I believe only the person who has actually gone through the experience can truly understand it; otherwise, it often becomes just another judgment. We are an ASEAN family earning more than €200k gross annually (sorry for mentioning the TC, but there is a reason for it—please keep re…

You can get B1 with a bit of spare time. With kids, I understand it's a different situation; however, it took me about 2 years to get there, learning in my spare spare time (which after a certain point was just listening to audio books before bed). The compounding effect works. BUUUUT, even with B2, it's just not enough for avoiding "the look", as you put it. I think you need flawless C1 or something, idk. Don't care…

There is a massive difference between complaining about someone being bad at a language and treating the act of telling someone to learn the language as some great offense.

One of those is an honest attempt, the other one is pure hostility.

For me it doesn't really matter how well you speak the language.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#797

Post by rayiner »

hollerith wrote: post #775
oblio wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, how many CEOs of major German companies are non-German? A quick headcount says Mercedes, Adidas, Bayer,... https://www.consultancy.eu/news/1605/one-third-of-executives... It pays off to do the actual research before passing judgment.

CEO of Mercedes was born in Sweden to Swedish parents; has blue eyes. CEO of Adidas has a Norwegian father and grew up in Norway; has pale skin, reddish-blonde hair and blue eyes. CEO of Bayer was born and raised in the US. Last name is "Anderson". Has pale skin and blue eyes. Two of them could pass as German (at least until they started talking): most Norwegians don't really look like Germans and the CEO of Adidas i…

Yeah, my wife speaks German and can easily understand Swedish (and probably Norwegian). There’s not a big cultural and linguistic for a Norwegian to come into a German company. It’s like an Australian coming into an American company.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#798

Post by ChemSpider »

sdevonoes wrote: post #743
jonash54 wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. As a german i can say we don‘t care about your salary, we only really care about your language and culture. If you move to a foreign country, learn their language, it‘s literally the only way to integrate into a culture. Germans frown upon rich, tax-paying immigrants that don‘t try to learn german way more than they frown upon B1 speaking ones that don‘t have a job. It‘s about culture, not money. It‘s not th…

Doesn’t really match my experience. If you are non white and you go and look for an apartment in any big german city (because you shouldn’t move a small town if you are non white) then you have 2 options: you have money and can afford a slightly higher rent than average or you don’t have extra money and have to compete with the locals. You have very little chance to find something decent if you compete against the lo…

>(because you shouldn’t move a small town if you are non white)

Where does this rule come from? It does not match my experience.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#799

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

Otterly99 wrote: post #777
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German. You can get to A2 level pretty easy (in most indoeuropean languages at least), but jumping to B1 can seriously be a year or more of studying. You have to be able to handle basic daily situations in the given language and understand what is said in a TV or Radio show. With practice yo…

I think it can be more useful to think in terms of hours of lessons rather than time spent learning. My partner is learning french right now at a private school and they have occasional classes (1h30 once a week), middle ground (2h twice a week) or intensive classes (4h five times a week). The program is always 70h, but you can either do it in a month, a semester or a year. Having learned czech, I only had 1h30 a wee…

You are completely right, and hours spent (in class) is how say US Foreign Service measures how quickly you get somewhat competent in a given language. There’s a lot of hoopla about just immersing yourself to the language and so on, but for most people achieving B1 means going to classes several hours every week for quite awhile.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#800

Post by customguy »

simianwords wrote: post #765
customguy wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article doesn't mention the word "race" once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) > there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable Any educated person with access to the internet who never was even curious about this I'm suspicious of. If you don't arrive at it by the thought experiments a bored teenager might do, it takes like 5 mi…

But like... no one claims there's some essentialist and typological race. Everyone knows that it is lossy but a real category. Whom are you attacking here? Any educated person knows that there's no one to one mapping between DNA and how the word "Asian" is used. There's a good predictive power for DNA and a high correlation. But that's how language works. Between a "hill" and a "mountain", there's no concrete boundar…

There is one human race, you can divide them in groups by whatever markers you want, doesn't make it a race. "Tall people" is no more a race than "white people" is.

> I think this is what you have done: you want to signal that you are against racism.

To whom? If you had any idea the spats I got into (let's say with "liberals", as a shorthand) because I heard and understood Body Count before they were even born, and same for MLK and Frederick Douglass. I don't do sides, and I'm not aware of any that would have me, so don't assume about me to get away of the scientific facts on race when it comes to humans.

And this isn't 1950s, so "not being racist" is not a flex to me. It's not something to be proud of, but rather grateful for. Like not sacrificing children to volcanos anymore or whatever doesn't make us better people, it makes us better off. We're lucky to have the opportunity to be less ignorant is all.

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