Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested • Hacker News Board

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#51

Post by Tomte » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

sushshshsh wrote: post #39

jlangenauer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And what do you think do houses cost in Germany, compared to "bigger cities" in America?

I know plenty of people in that income range myself who do own houses (or apartments in some cases) and wouldn't think of forgoing their summer vacation in Menorca or Ibiza.

"The other commenters" is just one, and he's factually wrong. No matter how much HNers love to pile on, 50k Euros is a respectable income in most parts of Germany.

The idea that all software engineering is in Stuttgart, Munich or Berlin is laughable. We have lots and lots of family companies of the so-called "Mittelstand" strewn across the province (but West Germany primarily). Some of those are hidden champions. In towns and regions few Americans will ever have heard of.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#52

Post by celloductor » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

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 behemoth and a success story, but you are missing the point. by the same logic you could even put Oracle in the category. but they are hardly described as a unicorn, or a startup by most people.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#53

Post by Fjolsvith » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

neuronic wrote: post #43

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…

E&Y simply had no interest in losing a customer by reporting what was well known to them.

So now, if you want to cook your books, E&Y is the auditors to go to?

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#54

Post by programbreeding » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

ubermonkey wrote: post #49

I am coming way late to this story. Is there a good backgrounder on this whole thing?

I'd recommend this HN post [0] which links to a good background story [1]. It literally starts with "For those who just came back from a 15 year space mission: Wirecard is a German company that..." haha.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598824

[1] https://valueandopportunity.com/2020/06/19/wirecard-the-germ...

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#55

Post by patall » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

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...

My parents earn together ~90k, just bought a house and travel about 4 weeks a year through all of europe and still support us three kids. So thats not true, at least not if you are living in a smaller city. And for places like Berlin or Munich, 50k a year would be ridicoulously low. CEO in a start-up in Berlin told me a few month ago that they are hiring poeple with literally 2 to 3 coursera courses in machine learning for around 60k, more experienced people rather in the range of 90k. Big corp like Bayer will hire you with a PhD starting around 120k (as analyst without further responsebilites, team managers obviously get more). Given the Copay on Retirement and Health Insurance, that equates to an US salary of around 150k USD. Quite a bit lower than SV, but not as bad as some people want to make it.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#56

Post by gumby » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #29

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…

> there is almost no venture capital That's simply not true. There is a lot of VC but there aren't many good startups - because the best people are heading straight for SV instead of dealing with a second-rate environment and a second-rate (in IT) labor force.

The German venture market (USD 6B) is about the size of a second tier market like Los Angeles. MoneyTree says that SV investment In Q1 of 2020 was about 2X Germany’s total for last year.

Not to mention that what gets invested in is mostly food delivery, shops and not particularly technical businesses (which are a very large investment sector in the US but aren’t considered “startups”. What gets written up in, say, Gründerszene are companies like the one that would tell you where to get your car repaired.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#57

Post by weinzierl » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

Allegedly he will be released on 5 million Euro bail at 5 pm CET.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#58

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

Fjolsvith wrote: post #53

neuronic wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E&Y simply had no interest in losing a customer by reporting what was well known to them.

So now, if you want to cook your books, E&Y is the auditors to go to?

[deleted]

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#59

Post by dasv » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #41

ThePhysicist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said I think the problem is more that most people from IT just tend to ignore companies that don’t fit into their worldview. There are plenty of highly successful technology companies in Germany, just not so many in software.

>the problem is more that most people from IT just tend to ignore companies that don’t fit into their worldview Why is this a problem? If I studied IT and want a good job in IT then that will interest me the most. Sure, it's good for the overall economy, but what good is it to me that I'm surrounded by pharma or mechanical engineering companies if IT is my bread winner?

Pharma and mechanical engineering companies need IT people, too, even if their core business is not IT.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#60

Post by kyrra » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #38

synaesthesisx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you are over-estimating what an auditor is expected to do. Auditor's, to me, seem to be there to make sure you're compliant with the law or regulation that they are auditing for. In these audits, the company gathers and presents all of the data that the auditors will see.

The auditors will do interviews with people, but the company also (somewhat) picks who will get interviewed.

Remember that auditors are paid for by the company they are auditing. They are motivated to do the minimum required to pass the given regulation. They aren't there for true oversight, they are there to make sure all the checkboxes are checked.