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Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

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Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#31

Post by mschuster91 »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #20
djpr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany doesn't have many "unicorns" so politics will protect them until way too late, for the companies, for the share/stakeholders and the planet. Interesting. Is there a strong feeling of innovation/unicorn envy among the wider business culture in Germany? Is it a fear of being stale, comparisons to Silicon Valley & Asian tech scene, or something else? I'm curious if you have more insight on this?

I mean SAP has roughly 30 BN € in revenue and according to their marketing more than 70 % of all transactions worldwide run through an SAP system. If that's not a "unicorn" company I really don't know what qualifies. You could of course argue that SAP is quite old already (founded in 1972, soon to be 50 years old), but so is e.g. Intel (founded in 1968). It's true we missed the boat on the second and third waves of I…

SAP is a solid business, but have you used their software? Once? It's atrocious and the developer experience is even worse, ABAP gives me shudders to this day. Not to mention that somehow, whenever a big IT project in government or private industry crashes, SAP seems always to be lurking.

SAP is not "modern" in any sense and certainly not "innovative". Unicorn companies generally are both.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#32

Post by lazyjones »

sushshshsh wrote: post #12
mschuster91 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a strong feeling of innovation/unicorn envy among the wider business culture in Germany? Everyone wants to be like the SV hipsters, no one can because the higher-ups are still mentally and literally stuck in fax times, there is almost no venture capital (and the venture capital that is here gets invested into stuff like Rocket Internet whose "business model" is to copycat US ideas), banks (across the EU) w…

May I also additionally ask how on Earth a 50k salary for a software engineer is at all justified? After paying taxes and rent, it seems to me there is not much money left over for saving or lifestyle spending? It seems like an unfair situation

> how on Earth a 50k salary for a software engineer is at all justified?

Too many mediocre developers available (local & EE), too few good ones (they're in the US, UK, Switzerland). Also, if you can't find software engineers at that price, you just close the office and move it to Poland or so. Hence fewer employers remain.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#33

Post by synaesthesisx »

matsche wrote: post #2

it baffles me that it had to come this far. There were warning signs all over it. The German BaFin messed up so badly that one must either fundamentally doubt theircompetence or question their integrity.

Agreed - there were glaring red flags since as early as 2008. Here's an account from one of the earliest critics: https://valueandopportunity.com/2020/06/19/wirecard-the-germ...

The fact that something this obviously fraudulent dragged on for over a decade is nuts.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#34

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

lazyjones wrote: post #27
djpr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany doesn't have many "unicorns" so politics will protect them until way too late, for the companies, for the share/stakeholders and the planet. Interesting. Is there a strong feeling of innovation/unicorn envy among the wider business culture in Germany? Is it a fear of being stale, comparisons to Silicon Valley & Asian tech scene, or something else? I'm curious if you have more insight on this?

> Is there a strong feeling of innovation/unicorn envy among the wider business culture in Germany? It's not the business culture that's driving this, it's politics. Germany simply isn't a competitive environment for entrepreneurship anymore with problems in many areas: schools, taxation, immigration (too easy for unqualified workers), legislation. Politics is in denial and desperate for success stories that would pr…

Can you please elaborate how/why immigration is easy for unqualified workers in Germany? I thought the point of immigration is to bring in qualified workers to boost the economy.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#35

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

raxxorrax wrote: post #14
djpr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany doesn't have many "unicorns" so politics will protect them until way too late, for the companies, for the share/stakeholders and the planet. Interesting. Is there a strong feeling of innovation/unicorn envy among the wider business culture in Germany? Is it a fear of being stale, comparisons to Silicon Valley & Asian tech scene, or something else? I'm curious if you have more insight on this?

There is a profound lack of developers to start. I was in a German startup and it was awesome. Product didn't pan out for the mass market (medical devices) but the few devices we build by hand are now used for studies in clinics. So it wasn't at all wasted. Software sucks though because I wrote it shortly after finishing my studies with negligible experience. But it works at least. I got support from another develope…

>There is a profound lack of developers to start.

I don't think so. Judging by the low salaries most companies are offering in parallel with the huge number of devs on reddit from outside of the EU wanting to move to Germany it doesn't look like there's a shortage of developers, quite the contrary.

If there was a shortage, pretty shore we'd see higher salaries being offered.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#36

Post by ThePhysicist »

mschuster91 wrote: post #31
ThePhysicist wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean SAP has roughly 30 BN € in revenue and according to their marketing more than 70 % of all transactions worldwide run through an SAP system. If that's not a "unicorn" company I really don't know what qualifies. You could of course argue that SAP is quite old already (founded in 1972, soon to be 50 years old), but so is e.g. Intel (founded in 1968). It's true we missed the boat on the second and third waves of I…

SAP is a solid business, but have you used their software? Once? It's atrocious and the developer experience is even worse, ABAP gives me shudders to this day. Not to mention that somehow, whenever a big IT project in government or private industry crashes, SAP seems always to be lurking. SAP is not "modern" in any sense and certainly not "innovative". Unicorn companies generally are both.

It’s enterprise software, so by definition it “sucks” to the average developer due to its complexity and accumulated tech debt. Show me one software tool that has as much functionality as SAP and does not suck by your standards. Unicorns like Slack have better UI/UX because they solve a conceptually much simpler problem. Maybe you could say it’s better to find a large market that can be addressed with a simple tool, but being in a large market with an incredibly complex product also has its benefits. I doubt for example that SAP will be disrupted by a unicorn with better UI because the upfront cost of building the same functionality that SAP offers (and which is not superfluous) is horrendously high. Regarding Slack I can absolutely imagine that it will be disrupted in the near future, because it’s conceptually a much simpler product.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#37

Post by woodpanel »

mschuster91 wrote: post #28
woodpanel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd would rather say: a) Incompetence instead of curruption. Plus b) trust culture as entry-vector. a) It has been bemoaned on many instances regarding Germans and finance: We're just inapt when it comes to knowledge about finance. Teachers unions fight tooth and nail to keep finance and business acumen out of the curriculum. This (itself being rooted in culture) will have to bear fruit in some way or another. Eg. Ge…

> Eg. Germany has the lowest share of people invested in equities of all industrialized nations. Even with negative interest rates, people rather use savings accounts than "risky" products with yields above 2% That is mostly to be blamed on savings accounts being decent in interest until the 2008 financial crisis while at the same time, especially in the dotcom boom, a lot of money was destroyed in the stock markets.…

I disagree.

- Returns of Savings accounts were better accross the industrialized world back then.

- The amount of people investing in equities was low before the "Volksaktie". It only declined thereafter even throughout the latest, longest bull-run in history.

But yes, events like the dot-com bubble or now Wirecard just strenghten the prejudice Germans have toward the whole topic.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#38

Post by riffraff »

synaesthesisx wrote: post #33
matsche wrote: post #2

it baffles me that it had to come this far. There were warning signs all over it. The German BaFin messed up so badly that one must either fundamentally doubt theircompetence or question their integrity.

Agreed - there were glaring red flags since as early as 2008. Here's an account from one of the earliest critics: https://valueandopportunity.com/2020/06/19/wirecard-the-germ... The fact that something this obviously fraudulent dragged on for over a decade is nuts.

Don't forget their auditors who have seen nothing wrong for ten years.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#39

Post by sushshshsh »

jlangenauer wrote: post #17
sushshshsh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I also additionally ask how on Earth a 50k salary for a software engineer is at all justified? After paying taxes and rent, it seems to me there is not much money left over for saving or lifestyle spending? It seems like an unfair situation

Why is it unfair? No-one is forcing anyone to accept development work for 50k per year, yet there are plenty of people happy to do it.

Define plenty? It seems to me the other commenters have offered counter points to you.

In the US, before taxes, an income of $130,000 to $170,000 is the norm in bigger cities. I imagine based on my calculations that the difference between Berlin's discretionary income for SWE and NY/SF/SEA/BOS is probably an extra $50,000 post tax.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#40

Post by sushshshsh »

rob74 wrote: post #21
Tomte wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, people manage to buy houses and fly on vacations on that income.

Trust me, in Germany with that income you can either buy an apartment (not a house, at least not in a place where you will find a software developer job nearby) or fly on vacations, but not both...

Thank you for providing your perspective :)
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