As a foreigner living in Germany for the best part of a decade, I tend to agree with the article that the situation is not dire but, at the same time, it does need work.
The train situation is a good starting point: an industry that used to be great and has been in slow decline for years without anyone doing anything other than shrugging and saying "well, that's how it is" or "yeah, but we are still better than X". I cannot speak for major macroeconomic trends but, as an individual, I can say that getting a doctor's appointment, an apartment, internet (not just the speed, but also getting the actual connection), a mandatory appointment at the "Bürgeramt" (and don't get me started on my citizenship application!) and (of course) traveling by train have been getting slightly more frustrating every year.
I know some of it is part of wider, world-wide tendencies (thanks, AirBnB), but it's also fair to recognize that the German government is getting asleep at the wheel. I actually appreciate that the government tends to err on the side of caution, but I also have to recognize that there's a line between "caution" and "paralyzed". I don't need to pay my taxes with Venmo, but I do need an apartment that I can actually afford to rent.
The train situation is also a great example of how to get some of the worst parts of private and public. It was privatized, but is 100% owned by the government …
And FWIW, getting an appointment (both doctors and Bürgeramt) has been getting better and better every year here. Bürgeramt is now fully online, you can even pay by credit card, I’ve had an online diagnosis with a skin doctor that my health insurance paid for via OAuth, I can now have other appointments via websites.
This was Partially driven by COVID, partially because it’s simply advancing.
The train discussion is often interesting with people who have lived somewhere where trains/public transport is spotty at best or nonexisting.
Sure, it's nice to be able to take a train, but if my experience is that I'm never on time and also not sure if it will start or arrive at all, what good does it do? I don't want to miss my flight in another city, so am I gonna take the train? Or the one before that? Oh, I was taking the first one of the day, that's bad luck.
It's also a great example because the public perception is heavily biased. If you look at the statistics, the vast majority of trains come on time. And have working AC. And are actually quite pleasant to travel with. It's fantastic how much train connectivity exists in Germany.
But a few cases of delayed or canceled trains, pushed in the media since it's easy to beat that horse, thankfully picked up by opposition-party-of-the-day (often those that were in government just a few years prior), and everybody talks as if no train is ever on time. And you can expect that car industry lobbies like that development too, without starting conspiracy theories here. (Tbh, if I was PR responsible for a car company, that's where I'd direct some funds..)
Sorry, but no, the public perception is accurate. I do not own a car, meaning I've used trains to commute in four Bundesländer and after all my years I feel confident to say they have all been uniformly bad.
Two friends of mine have bought cars to go to work. A third is often crashing with me because they can't make it to their destination due to delays. And I changed cities in no small part due to a one-year train line closure that's six months behind schedule and counting. DB schedules ten minutes connections for trains that arrive nine minutes late and then argues "it's just nine minutes!" disregarding the actual fifty one minutes that it takes for the next train to arrive.
I love trains and I'll keep using them for as long as they remain the greenest option. But I hate DB with a passion and I dream of a day when those at the top end up in jail.
The "Total passenger traffic" (Personenverkeher) values (which are the ones you quote) are calculated in some opaque way designed to hide the fact that "Long distance traffic" (Fernverkeher) are really bad.
More importantly, every single indicator in that page is going down, not up, and they are all worse now than they were in January 2022 [1].
Rejecting statistics that you don't like while pushing those that you do is a case of selection bias, the extension of which is the infamous "the election was rigged" trope.
It's easy to select a subset of trains to make the statistic of this subset look bad. Take a single train that was canceled. In that subset, the "on time" statistic is 0%. Really bad, eh? Or take one that was on time. 100%. Great, eh? Well, not useful, just like all other anecdotes.
So, yes, sure, we can all pick the subset for which the statistic suits our narrative and then keep disagreeing about the facts. It's not a useful way of debating though and only suits lobbys in pushing their agenda.
(Or we take the facts as they are.)
P.S.: Even the 80.6% that you quote are not "really bad". Ever been in North America? No train traffic at all sounds worse than 80.6% to me. The German train system has its issues, but it's by far not as bad as the public perception seems to believe.
P.P.S.: Check out the German "Staustatistik" some time. Over a thousand every day. Of course nobody who wants to make trains look bad and implicitly push the car as the better alternative talks about this.
I'm currently in the process of moving my business (one-man show, incorporated LLC doing IT/SW Eng.) out of Germany. The amount of bureaucracy running even the smallest of companies with no office at all (work out of home) is hilarious.
So much you need to get an accountant/tax advisor, but even then they will pass-through a lot of the bureaucracy. I need to put down excel sheets for every day of a business trip I do, mark whether its been longer or shorter than 8 hours, arrival/leave day etc. And double pay attention that the hotel you stayed didn't include breakfast, or at least had it separate on the invoice. If getting a company car, you are in for some real tax hell.
On top of that, the accountant charges ~5.000€/year for this single-person business (personal income tax declaration included). And no, it is not just an expensive accountant, as in Germany accountant prices are regulated just as lawyer fees are (they can max. give you 20% discount). Meanwhile, when I talk to my friends in Spain they pay less than 1.000€/year for accounting for an LLC (S.L.) with not even close the bureaucracy. And bear in mind, I'm german and speak the language, but even I struggle to keep up with all tax- and business regulations. On top of that, we have the highest tax load and social insurance is also amongst the top price ranges, while waiting months for a doctors appointment.
> If getting a company car, you are in for some real tax hell.
Only if you want to make use of tax incentives for company cars. It's easy to complain about the downsides and ignore the upside. You can just not put it into your tax declaration, then you don't have trouble. Oh then you don't get the money?
> Meanwhile, when I talk to my friends in Spain they pay less than 1.000€/year for accounting for an LLC (S.L.) with not even close the bureaucracy.
Their cost of living is likely also a fraction of where you lived in Germany. (I'm guessing a larger city with high cost of living.)
Hmm, this does not match my experience (but it's been a while). I'm not saying it's been great but maybe it's because I didn't file a single business trip or hotel stay. FWIW I also have to file those now as you described as an employee, so while it's not helping that is not unique to running a business :P
You have to file those as an employee just because your employer has to do the same beauraucracy. Sounds in the end you stopped doing business :P
There is tons of examples where a solo-enterpreneur is drowned in these regulations (corporate car or even e-bike (!), calculation of privateley used square meter space in the homeoffice, separation of heating cost for your home office etc.). Don't even get me started about the beaurocracy hell if I had employees, there are so many regulations and rules.
I think you hit the nail on the head. "Solo person with a laptop" (to exaggerate) has to jump through all the hoops a "proper company" has to do (and shouldn't) - but a proper company with a low amount of people is not much more work. Because that's what I meant, and it didn't feel overly bureaucratic to me.
The anecdotal evidence the author supplies: economic growth is slow, trains are late, IT investment as a % of GDP is half that of US and France, business license takes 120 days to acquire. Nowhere does it seem to talk about living standards of the population. As if the economy is its own end and the population is just an epiphenomenon.
That's bullshit. A Gewerbeanmeldung for a one-person startup or a GbR (same, just with more than one person) takes one DIN A4 sheet of paper per person, and about half an hour of waiting at the city authority.
An LLC (UG, GmbH, AG) takes more effort to form, yes (including raising 12.500€ of capital for the GmbH/AG), but you can easily transition from an existing Einzelunternehmen/GbR to a LLC.
> That's bullshit. A Gewerbeanmeldung for a one-person startup or a GbR (same, just with more than one person) takes one DIN A4 sheet of paper per person
Now that is bs. Because you also need to register with the tax authorities (Finanzamt) to get your tax id after that. Oh, and if you want to do your VAT declarations ("Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung") yourself, don't forget to request a digital certificate for ELSTER, which is sent - yes- via snail mail.
And good luck if you want a EU VAT id, which is another separate step/appointment. And when you want to pay out first dividends you are in for a surprise when the tax account asks all of the shareholders/owners of the GbR/GmbH for their proof of church membership (for dividends tax), which you have to request individually from the Finanzamt just to send it back to them later...
The thing is, the "time to start" is practically zero. You file the Gewerbeanmeldung and can start working immediately after, and do the rest (apply for a tax ID, ELSTER, IHK contributions) later on in the next weeks. Been through that twice. With the LLCs you can also operate as "UG/GmbH in Gründung" for a limited time if you need to start fast, but never went that route.
> you are in for a surprise when the tax account asks all of the shareholders/owners of the GbR/GmbH for their proof of church membership (for dividends tax)
Ah yes, I agree with you that this crap can go and die in a fire for all I care...
Sure but you are splitting hairs. If I enter a shop to buy sth and the clerk tells me I have to check back in a couple of weeks to get the proper invoice, I as a customer take my business elsewhere.
It's fine if you're running some sort of IT consultancy or whatever, your first invoice will be running weeks after the fact in any case.
Everyone else can wait a week (or less, if you're persistent in nagging the Finanzamt on the phone), but let's be real: if you're a shop owner, you need weeks of "empty" runway to rent a shop, set up the shop, buy inventory, wait for it to arrive... so in reality the week of waiting time won't matter.
IT consultancies are not the majorities of businesses. Additionally, your tax id does not necessarily take a week. And good luck if you do international (but within EU) buisness - the EU VAT id takes even longer.
Additionally, when did we (germans) start to accept and get so stuborn to defend this process? I mean, the process should be: You go to the "Gewerbeamt", fill out the forms, and get the same day a tax id, a EU VAT id, and a one-time token to create your ELSTER accounts and certificates. Thats what digitalization should be. How does anyone think the current, cumbersome process is the ultimate way and that this is considered business friendly, yet tends to defend or glorifies this process?
I believe that we have to get up to speed in digitalization - but there's far bigger fish to fry there than having to wait for a week for a tax ID. Our politicians are incompetent enough as is, and budgets for process improvements (or, to be fair, a lot of gov processes would benefit from complete overhauls) are just as small.
You clearly should speak to a tax advisor because the facts you're stating are just wrong. From the minute you applied tax-id, you can invoice with the remark that you will supply the tax-id later. So parentposter is infact right.
But it's probably easier to just rant, instead of gathering basic information.
Edit: and another, less obvious throwaway to answer this thread :) I'm not resorting in any way to personal threats, I'm just pointing out throwaway-account usage.
Edit2: And the reply to this thread is removed, as I pointed out the other obvious throwaway usage. There was antoher answer by throwaway "iiiieu". I'm quiting this discussion, mschuster91, save your throwaway creations :P
What seems to have been missed is that almost all large projects germany tried to push through in the past 10 years or so have turned out to be a massive fuckup. Digital drivers licence, stuttgart21, the list goes on.
Most sickness has symptoms, often minor and barely inconveniencing for a while until later stages .
The author is making observations about symptoms.
As a German, it is evident that we have caught a serious disease that started more than a decade ago. We sniffed free Russian Gas and ingested free Chinese manufacturing and got really high and felt great for a while but failed to invest into the future.
Now as both drugs are no longer cheap and their side effects are playing out, we will go through a serious withdrawal phase while having to invest for the future - a future that requires strong digital infrastructure we failed to build and a large part of the population rejects even digital learning devices in school based on a romanticized view of the olden times.
a future that requires more energy than in the past with even fewer options (In before the nuclear people jump in an hijack the narrative about that, it’s tangentially related but a drop in the bucket),
a future that needs us to make bold moves when an increasingly aging population is squabbling about every minor sacrifice, every wind-turbines location, every powerline of 5G cell tower and parties are locked to solely serve their constituents.
a future that requires leadership and vision to drive adaptation when the Manager of the country got his power by .. doing nothing and letting all other candidates destroy themselves. A “leader” who learned from 16 years of Merkel that all Germans want is no change while keeping prosperity and that doing nothing as long as possible is the best way to achieve it.
We lost our leaders as it always happens and are now run solely by managers, people who know how to get elected but not how to lead. Who know the game of thrones well enough to succeed but are mediocre at best, amateurs usually and corrupt at worst when given responsibility, afraid to touch the delicate balance of party loyalty and incentives that got them elected - vapid empty vessels not unlike those every day engaged playing the game of professionalism on LinkedIn while abdicating their responsibility to lead.
Even if leaders arise, they will be cut down and dulled enough by the managers and the population that fears change, they cannot move it anymore, this old old society.
A future that sees increasingly Europe, the engine of our growth being destabilized by our own and other forces, an act so stupid, it would reduce us to vassals in a global power conflict.
A future that requires military commitments to NATO and EU when the population is a third ex USSR, a third peace movement and a third alt-right (overlapping thirds)
A future were the economic engine of the country, the car, preferably driven without speed limit on the fictional Autobahn that has no speed limits and peasants, blaring Wohlstand with its powerful internal combustion engine, has to change for us to survive and the change is driven by China - but we really would like to stick to Kübelwagen GTI
The country had end stage Wohlstand disease where lack of growth means inability to run away from hard choices at a time when hard choices will get you voted out and consensus building had been destroyed by social media and hyper-scaled media conglomerates.
We are sick alright and quite late stage, as it so often is when you ignore the smaller symptoms. The nazis, openly fabulating about banning disabled children from schools and shooting migrants, and those who see no other option for their pent up desire for change approach the size of our large parties now. In the country that learned from but didn’t learn to avoid history repeating, the major opposition party leader talks about collaborating with the nazis, unable to instead offer viable alternatives as those would offend his base.
And now we look into a future where the robots have arrived for the jobs of the knowledge worker as the machines created havoc in the 1910s and 1920s. We bargain and hope that our lack of digital infrastructure will slow the progress. And get more afraid every day.
We see the symptoms but start preferring narratives that absolve us from the actions that brought us here.
We like to blame migrants for our problems as if migrants were the reasons. We blame “the greens” for the loss of nuclear power when the greens never had that power, never ruled, when a conservative chancellor and a socialist chancellor sold us out to Russia instead because it was easier to take cheap Gas than to reason with the nuclear fears in broad parts of society.
We are not special here, not unique. Most developed countries reach this stage eventually. Most systems of governance and society do. Our neighbors are sick too, the French, the British sneezed themselves away from Europe into decline.
The present can be comfortable and, if you don’t look to closely, appear healthy and wealthy, but the symptoms are far too numerous, the rot and decay and calcification far too obvious even beyond demographic effects to ignore without being willful - or selling narratives of national economic glory of the past as easy prescriptions, Brexit style.
This article is not saying anything at all. It's just a bunch of vague, loosely related complaints thrown together, as if the author built their thesis from reading reddit comments about Germany, but never stepped foot there. It's a real Gish gallop.
For context: This refers to an Economist special published in 1999 ("The sick man of the euro") which fuelled a public discourse in Germany on what needs to be improved leading up to the labor market reforms under chancellor Schröder ("Hartz IV" etc.). This fixed the most imminent problem of the time (high unemployment rate, inflexible labor market) and led to a stronger economic period in Germany.
This time, the underlying problems are probably much harder to tackle:
1. Germany's economic model depends on high worker productivity, strong education, cheap energy (still large industry base). All of these have structural weaknesses.
2. The public discourse is very much focussed on climate change, allowing little room for other discourses. Don't get me wrong: I believe the climate change discourse is globally the most important discourse of our time; it is just that there is little room left for other broad social discourses in Germany, at the moment.
3. No immediate pressure comparable to the high unemployment rate at the time. The German economy is getting comparably weaker, slowly but steadily. (Boiling frog problem)
That the economy is getting weaker, is eg. visible in GDP constant prices growth rate stats. It is yet not as severe as last time (between 2003 and 2006, Germany was last in G7, even behind Japan, and Italy with base year 1999), but the gap between the best performing G7 countries (US, Canada), number 3 (UK) and Germany is widening. Since 2017 Germany has fallen behind France, too (except in 2020). (see https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/Ap...)
> little room left for other broad social discourses in Germany, at the moment
Now you can call me a pessimist, but if we look back at the last 2 decades, did any social discourse really bring out anything positive?
The right-wing politicians are gaining more platform and more supporters, even the so-called social democrats brought us things like Hartz IV, the populists are always at work to call in less taxation for rich people by lying to poorer und uneducated people "they want to increase taxes! You'd get 10€ less per month!" while failing to admit they would maybe get 1000€ or 10k€ less per month)
I agree to some degree but in my view, in a democracy, big changes (especially those that hurt short term) require public discourse to be legitimate. In addition, on a practical level, few politicians risk pushing a big agenda without backing from the public opinion.
It's funny that everybody is focusing on how Germans won't change language to something else to attract muh migrants. But there's no talk about local culture. How do we raise next generation to go do real jobs? Instead of dreaming to become tiktokers or whatever is fancy at the moment.
Few migrants won't fix anything if locals sit on their asses. Especially if local culture pushes 2nd/3rd gen migrants the same way.
We need to use state propaganda machine (which is already very well greased in EU) to make it fancy to be engineer, doctor and so on. And then make sure those professions let people build a nice life. Universities have to be geared towards that as well.
> Germany has liberalised its immigration rules, but the visa process is still glacial and the system favours refugees over professionals who might want to settle in the country.
A big issue for professionals to move is they have to learn German.
Not really. It's possible to earn a living as an English speaker.
The biggest issues are housing and the horrendously slow immigration office. Bureaucracy in general is so slow that some people give up and leave. Employers can't wait 4 months for employees to get the permission to start working. Employees get tired of waiting for weeks for every little piece of paper. It's infuriating.
I've always thought about having simple dialects of languages: limited vocabulary, only three tenses, no declinations (in the languages they have, i.e. German) and only regular verbs (in the languages they have, i.e. Spanish). Would it be possible?
The EU has a framework, CEFR, that describes language levels of proficiency, starting at A1, and ending in C2. A1 requires you to be able to understand simple phrases about everyday, concrete topics. For example, suggest activities based on the weather forecast. C2 is essentially fluency.
This outdated overview (2009) shows that most European countries only require A1/A2 for residency, and for citizenship B1 or B2 at most. https://rm.coe.int/16802fc1d9
You're writing this tongue in cheek or really not knowing?
That's exactly what Indonesian is , a simplified standardized language to allow hundreds of different ethnicities with their own languages to easily communicate.
There are tons more but I guess Indonesian is the world's best example because it is the language of one the most populated island on earth and one of the most populus nations
And there's no need for three tenses, neither Chinese nor Indonesian have tenses.
Isn’t English this language? The past exists but the future barely doesn’t, there are no declinations, every noun can also be a verb. However, you have to learn every combination of “t”, “ght”, “i”, “ou” mixed up together.
English has its own issues. It is not phonetic and there is no official pronunciation. It also has inconsistencies like using auxiliar verbs to negate (I do not think this vs I think not this).
However, maybe a standardised pronunciation and the removal of some issues could make Neo-English a good and interesting language.
You've more or less described how and why English became the lingua franca of the modern era. English can be used for basic communication satisfactorily with only a passing understanding of the language.
English has many issues (non-phonetic, auxiliar verbs, big lexicon, etc.) I was aiming for a kind of artificial language with a natural language foundations.
This is not true. You don't have to learn German if you can find a company that uses English for their day-to-day work. There are a lot of them.
Also, as a professional, in the big cities like Berlin and Hamburg, there is a different immigration centre and they process your paperwork way faster.
I mean there is life beyond work. Finding apartments, doctor appointments, shcools is all a nightmare without knowing German. Public schools is berlin have no teachers
At least from my experience, the biggest issue is finding a decent place to live. With this I mean:
- if you don't speak German, then chances are you want to live in the big cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne,...) where some fraction of the population speak English... but in those cities there's a huge demand for flats and the offer is not up to it. Also, just by not speaking German you cut probably 50% of the flat offers already because they are offered by people who don't speak English
- if you just moved to Germany and you're applying to a flat, chances are they will ask you your last 3 payslips (this is not a law, but if they ask and you don't provide, well goodbye!)
Finding a flat even in Madrid if you're not speaking Spanish is almost impossible. Thus it can be worse, especially when you just landed in the new country. Some companies help their fresh employees with this to different extents but it's not a rule so the success rate will vary.
Yeah it sucks, I basically only know programmers who can get by living here without speaking German.
But honestly, in which countries is that really different? The only ones I remember stories about would be the Netherlands and Sweden, but also only if you're living in a big city and not in a small town. Obviously I'm leaving out the countries where their main language is English already and assuming you speak English. And Spain if you come from a Spanish-speaking country, and France if you come from a French-speaking country... but overall I just think that this is the default?
Depends on the job and region you will live. If you speak English, you can work it out in big cities with little to know knowledge about German language. But overall, needing to learn the local language is generally true for every country which does not speak your native language. So It's not like Germany is a big exception here.
not true. i know lots of people who came here to work and none of them speaks german beyond mere basics if at all. as a matter of fact all of them explain that this is because you get by well on english.
As a German with an expat partner, I'd say this depends very much. If you're working for consumer facing startups - sure. There's tons of those in Berlin and plenty in the other big cities (Germany is quite decentral). But if you want to settle a bit on the outskirts of even the big cities, it is a lot easier to understand at least some. I'd say 50% of the people we randomly interact with can hold a conversation in English.
And then there's work: There's a lot of good paying and rewarding tech jobs here that would seem foreign to SV types, in very specific domains or more traditional B2B. Getting a job at those places without speaking German is surely possible for a programmer, just a minor handicap maybe. But for other professions, it can be downright impossible.
stay here for a year. then go visit your home country india and then read again what you write here. won't have aged well. almost everybody coming to germany complains about all sorts of stuff. after about a year they can't leave anymore.
Not sure why you think I am from India. We are not comparing countries here. We are talking of absoluyes. If German quality is about being better than India, then ok, best of luck
Uh hu big thing. Hint: if you want to live in a different country, you should at least try to somewhat adapt the official language spoken, and also somewhat have a sweet spot for its culture. Otherwise, you are mostly just coming for economic reasons, and countries don't need that.
As someone else complained beforehand: the public health system is already strained, the influx of illegals, refugees and other immigrants didn't help the situation - what where people expecting?
> Otherwise, you are mostly just coming for economic reasons, and countries don't need that.
You sure about that? For example, there's nothing better for a country like Germany to have an inmigrant who has:
- got a bacherlo/masters degree in a different country other than Germany
- has a job in a German company and earns well above the average German citizen
- pays tons of taxes
- is relatively young (between 20 and 50 years old), so doesn't get to use the health care as much as others
Besides, European countries are getting old (the 'population pyramid' is getting inverted) so they definitely need young people that work (and it doesn't even really matter if they are skilled people or not; what's needed is people in the age of working and who can spend some of their earnings in the country)
Oh, griping and complaining are favourite German pastimes. A foreigner who has those two down already is halfway integrated and about to get citizenship.
But they are not just griping and complaining. They are also working, contributing to the culture, and paying taxes. They are a part of the society, and their perspective should not be ignored, disrespected and ridiculed like it is by so many in this thread.
> you are mostly just coming for economic reasons, and countries don't need that.
On the contrary, that is _precisely_ what Germany needs if you are to sustain the bloated bureaucracy and the pensions.
As another comment pointed out, the best kind of immigrant is the one who pays really high taxes and social contributions and doesn't use up any benefits. That means young people with no families in high paying jobs. They don't get sick, don't use the kitas/schools, don't need to get paid kindergeld (money that parents get per child), are not married so have much higher taxable income (on average, because of Ehegattensplitting), pay into the pension system from which they will almost certainly get back far less (if at all) than what they pay in, usually live in big cities so they don't drive and therefore have significantly less impact on marginal infrastructure costs and drive up demand and pay into the local services economy.
Also, if it is difficult for such immigrants to assimilate and naturalize, they will often just pack up and leave, having contributed to (but never using) the various social systems.
It takes time to adapt to a language and culture. You can't expect this before entering Germany. A professional is taking a chance with Germany, they are not refugees . Germany needs to be welcoming, it's not all 1 way traffic. Germany is not in a position to attract world's professionals acting this way
As a German ... I find it interesting that the Economist starts using 'sick man of Europe' the very same day a high-ranking conservative politician begins using that language [1], which has been absent since the early 2000s.
Coincidence, or a coordinated effort to bring in a new narrative?
As an immigrant (and a very well paid one paying obnoxiously high taxes), I've recommended every single person asking if they should move from India to Germany to not to. The only upgrade is in cleaner air to breathe and safety from crime. If you're in the higher earning bracket in India, then you get these there itself. So then moving to Germany from India is like stepping back into 1996.
Every single thing is so obsolete. Nothing is digitized. Everything requires a giant stack of actual paperwork to be taken to an office where the whims of the clerk dictate everything. A million rules exist in the hopes that they cover all possible scenarios, but inevitable they don't and if you happen to have a scenario which is not covered, you're shit out of luck because the clerk is sure as shit not going to put their ass on the line and make a decision not explicitly present in the rule book.
You pay through the nose for health insurance, but when you need to find a doctor, none can take you because their quota of public insurance patients is done for the quarter. If I paid the same amount in insurance in India, I'd have a helicopter flown out every time I stubbed my toe.
And then there's the wait time for everything. Appointment for visa extension: 8 months. Driving license conversion: 1 year. German exam: 5 months. What, you want the results for your exam also? Better wait another year then. Honestly Germany is a shit show, and if I hadn't already invested so much time, money and energy into this god forsaken country, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat.
But the worst part of all this is - the vast majority of Germans think this is all acceptable and okay. If you go to the /r/germany or /r/de subreddits, any thread with genuine complaints will be drowned in responses from native Germans who naively believe that Germany is a great country to live in because they either don't have these problems, or they know how to work the system and get their results. So there is no voting pressure to get things to change. So long as the omas and opas get their pension, Germany will stay as it is for ever - there is no need to change in their view.
I'm also an Indian guy working in Germany paying "obnoxiously high taxes", and my experience has been quite different.
> The only upgrade is in cleaner air to breathe and safety from crime
- Easy access to parks
- Good public transport (I used to live in Delhi, and it has an okay metro connectivity, but nowhere close to what even smaller German cities have).
- Traffic. I liked living in India, but holy shit, the traffic is the worst.
- It's a whole lot quieter which I really care about. I can hear birds chirping right now very close to Berlin's city center.
- Lots of activities to do if you're young.
- I know people complain about beauraucracy here, but I would be very surprised if India handles incoming migrant cases really smoothly either.
> But the worst part of all this is - the vast majority of Germans think this is all acceptable and okay. If you go to the /r/germany or /r/de subreddits, any thread with genuine complaints will be drowned in responses from native Germans who foolishly believe that Germany is a great country to live in because they either don't have these problems, or they know how to work the system and get their results.
Maybe it wasn't what you said, but how you said it. I'm judging based on your tone in this post. If you're this rude to people, expect them to dismiss your opinion even if you're making valid points.
It's not only rosy for me either.
- Cellphone coverage and mobile data is strangely expensive here for reasons I don't understand.
- Finding appartments is really difficult. But it's a problem that all big cities in Europe face. I wish some of my taxes would go towards making affordable mass housing.
- It's hard to learn a new language as an adult (not really the fault of Germans). You definitely run into German fairly often, websites, talking to cashiers, etc.
P.S. Obnoxiously high is a stretch. Yes, in India your taxes max out at 30% percent (roughly), which isn't nothing but you don't get much value out of it. In Germany, it maxes out at 45% but it pays for good quality education for everyone.
There are a lot of things you don't get in big cities in India, which you can easily get if you're in a small town or a village. Parks, trafic, quiet are all part of that.
That said, there are indeed a lot more things that are in general better in Germany than in India, and this rant of mine was the result of a year of frustrated dealings with German bureaucracy (not that that makes any of the points I raised invalid though).
> Maybe it wasn't what you said, but how you said it. I'm judging based on your tone in this post. If you're this rude to people, expect them to dismiss your opinion even if you're making valid points.
Actually, whenever I've had in person conversations with Germans, after they get to the point where they realize that immigrants don't have the same experience as they do, they quickly accept that there should be change. However, the vast majority needs to understand this and push for it. Otherwise there is zero political will to fix these things. And the large majority don't have a friendly neighbourhood immigrant who will sit and tell them all the problems they face.
> P.S. Obnoxiously high is a stretch.
If you are single, you get zero benefits out of the system and are just paying into a pot you cannot touch. So yes it's obnoxiously high when you consider you don't see much benefits from it. I do understand the social nature of contributions, but that doesn't make my wallet hurt any less whenever I receive my paycheck.
I didn't include the things you listed as problems because these are there in any country you would want to move to (except maybe cheap/better mobile internet). It's okay to have to learn German - it's the language of the country I chose to live in, and it is in some ways a much more logical language than English .
Housing crisis exists pretty much everywhere. Again can't see any political will anywhere to change this - which surprises me as this is something that arguably impacts Germans more than immigrants.
> That said, there are indeed a lot more things that are in general better in Germany than in India, and this rant of mine was the result of a year of frustrated dealings with German bureaucracy (not that that makes any of the points I raised invalid though).
And as a German let me say that you are totally right, when it comes to the bureaucracy. While most of the time the bureaucracy doesn't fell too bad for standard German citizens, I can well imagine that it is horrible for you and that it feels really oldfashioned.
All other points are not wrong but debatable, which dhruvrajvanshi already did. The problems that our nations face are both abundant but also quite different.
As an aside:
I also perceived you're post as too blunt and slightly unfair, just as some of the people in the sub-reddits probably felt. On the other hand sub-reddits are full of awful people and I can imagine that you have to deal with a lot of rudeness and prejudices yourself. I could understand where you were coming from and understood why you expressed yourself in this way after beuing frustrated by the German Bureaucracy. The quoted clarification was useful.
Just one note on my experience finding an apartment as an Ausländer there, I overpaid and had few options until I greatly grew my local network. So many apartments changed hands between friends/friends-of-friends -- person moving out introduces new person to landlord basically -- that they never make it to any property listing. And these are the best and cheapest apartments. Landlords I dealt with owned one or two apartments, instead of whole buildings so that approach worked well for them.
That's not true. But it depends very strong on the City and task to which degree something is digitized. The problems are federation and privacy-laws, which exist for historical reasons. Basically, every city is doing their own thing, and sharing of data has been made hard for public services for a long time. Germany is moving away from this, but because of the big clusterfuck of everything, it takes a while, and not everyone moves at the same speed. And things have become better fast in the last years, because of the pandemia. So it might be already very different from when you made your experiences.
> But the worst part of all this is - the vast majority of Germans think this is all acceptable and okay.
Nobody thinks that, but most process the normal citizen encounter, are fast and people know how to avoid the problems. This is a more general problem of Germany, that many things depends on you having the necessary knowledge and experience about the system to get things done fast.
> If you go to the /r/germany or /r/de subreddits, any thread with genuine complaints will be drowned in responses from native Germans who foolishly believe that Germany is a great country
Those are often parodies, German humor. The stupid dry level to say, but overall they just joke about the attitude of Germany and its rules. And overall, Germany is in fact not a bad country to live, there are far worse countries, like North Korea, Russia, parts of Ukraine, parts of USA.. At least people have Beer and Döner.
That is just your experience. You say as if things in India are all bed of roses. No major city in India (forget small towns) can boast of breathable air, manageable traffic, potable water from the tap or 24 hours of electricity. Women's safety - lol. Finding a place where there is a clean lake or some non-polluted piece of nature - forget that in North India.
Not to mention as a minority, who knows when you can be lynched or arrested for stating your opinion.
People come here, reek of privilege, miss their life in India where they had 3 servants for everything and also forget that if they have to go to any government office in India they have to pay bribes.
Also, please show some respect to the country you live in.
> That is just your experience. You say as if things in India are all bed of roses. No major city in India (forget small towns) can boast of breathable air, manageable traffic, potable water from the tap or 24 hours of electricity. Women's safety - lol. Finding a place where there is a clean lake or some non-polluted piece of nature - forget that in North India.
I think they were pretty clear about that:
> > If you're in the higher earning bracket in India, then you get these there itself.
> People come here, reek of privilege, miss their life in India where they had 3 servants for everything and also forget that if they have to go to any government office in India they have to pay bribes.
Unfortunately these are the exact people that Germany wants moving into their country - because they're the one's who pay the high taxes. Do you think Germany is throwing open their doors for the underprivileged folk of the developing world? Unless you're a refugee from a war torn land, they are not doing that. They don't want you here. Case in point - the new immigration reform allows you to bring your parents on FRV only if you're coming here on a high paying blue card job.
So if your goal is to explicitly attract these kinds of privileged individuals, then it's pointless to get pissed off when they speak from their position of privilege.
> Also, please show some respect to the country you live in.
So what, I should kow tow to a broken system and praise it? No thanks. People and countries should be able to take criticism. Also, just because I complain about everything that is bad doesn't mean that there is nothing good. It's just that none of them apply to a thread about Germany's dire immigration situation.
> So what, I should kow tow to a broken system and praise it? No thanks. People and countries should be able to take criticism. Also, just because I complain about everything that is bad doesn't mean that there is nothing good. It's just that none of them apply to a thread about Germany's dire immigration situation.
You don't kow tow have to but never attack a group of people like "They will never change". Looking at the history Germans are one people that happily criticise themselves. Even incl. racism.
Germans happily and always criticise the bureacracy. If you are not this aggressive in stereotyping then may be you are in a bubble without German friends/co-workers.
What broken system? You have some pain points.
BTW, that headline is correct but it takes only one year and then same Economist will reverse the headline.
Until Lehman bros crashed every one called Germany sickman of europe. Then it became so much praise for their great Economics powerhouse.
> You don't kow tow have to but never attack a group of people like "They will never change".
This is my view formed after living in Germany for the better part of a decade and seeing multiple Governments push back modernization projects and allocate the budget intended for them to populist people pleasing measures - and then seeing a lot of Germans agree with these measures. It's also formed from a lot of discussion on the /r/german subreddit and with Germans I know personally of varying age groups - most of them do not believe these are big problems or that substantial effort has to be put into to change them.
> Even incl. racism.
I don't want to talk about this as it is off-topic for the post, but racism is alive and very healthy in Germany. It's just not as "in-your-face" as in other countries which are generally thought of as having "racism problems".
> Unfortunately these are the exact people that Germany wants moving into their country - because they're the one's who pay the high taxes.
Not sure about that. The ideal immigrant to a country is young and well educated. Through labour, they will contribute immensely to society and pay top income tax.
In constrast, some rich people who park their wealth in offshore tax heavens and live off passive income don't contribute much, beyond rising real estate prices.
> Unfortunately these are the exact people that Germany wants moving into their country
Germany is already open for work for ALL of the EU member states and associated countries. The EU has a "freedom to move for goods, persons, services and capital" as one of the four principles. That means EVERYONE of the EU, who can afford the life in Germany, could move here.
Additionally we have people coming from other countries, incl. India on visas: students, workers, ... plus Germany currently hosts around 1 million persons from the Ukraine, because of the war.
> because they're the one's who pay the high taxes.
Germany needs workers in many professions: construction workers, in agriculture, nurses, software developers, ...
They come from the EU and from outside the EU. For EU citizens its relatively easy to move to other countries. The EU also made it easy for people from the Ukraine, to help the war refugees.
sounds like you miss your servants which happen to be a little too expensive for you here ... and you even have to treat them respectful. what a bummer
i think my comment was justified and quite on point. it is very much a cultural thing in india to have servants from a lower and less respected caste. it's not nice but that's how it is. and yes, the caste system is very much racist.
I don't know what to tell you other than that you broke the first guideline I quoted by caricaturing what the other person had written, and you broke the second guideline I quoted by being sarcastic and needlessly personal.
Way to assume. I love how literally everyone who criticizes Germany about being slow and inefficient is assumed to come from a place of privilege. If I missed by "servants" I'd be complaining about separating my garbage and having to make multiple trips to the recyclehof, not about bureaucracy sucking the life out of people.
Yes, but many countries aren’t like this. In many countries, administration is efficient. Why compare yourself to one notorious for poor administration
switzerland: possible - but many migrants complain about it being almost impossible to get accepted there beyond being a law abiding work force.
scandinavia: (not a country) strong contestants.
estonia: not really - i have several estonian friends who will give you a long list of reasons why germany is the better place to live and work. personally, i really like estonia. have been there many times.
uae (or singapure): sure ... but you are discrediting yourself by even mentioning those in this list or possibly considering them as a place to live.
first three are all in EU by the way - and very close to germany. so the good news is that you can just easily try to move there. have a nice trip.
I was dreading the anmeldung bureacratic process in Berlin and found them to be nice and accommodating and even flexible to me being slightly late and needing to go acquire further documents. My personal experience has been good.
How I wish my city would have an open appointment booking system. Instead I get to send an email, and then wait for a response for the next 4-6 months. Thankfully once you get that initial response the rest of the process moves smoothly now that there is an actual person you can talk to directly.
> If I paid the same amount in insurance in India, I'd have a helicopter flown out every time I stubbed my toe.
You are free to go private if you earn more than 60k a year and you get all the helicopters and 3-d printed tooth fillings. The only problem is that you can get back to public only if you get fired.
> Germans who foolishly believe that Germany is a great country to live
It's not Germans who foolishly believe these things, but all the immigrants who come to Germany over and over each year. If there were not so much immigration then the services for exams would be 1 week instead of 5 months.
> So long as the omas and opas get their pension, Germany will stay as it is for ever - there is no need to change in their view.
I strongly advise anyone who moves to Germany to start private pension scheme immediately because in 30 years there will be no pension in Germany, most likely.
> I strongly advise anyone who moves to Germany to start private pension scheme immediately because in 30 years there will be no pension in Germany, most likely.
But there is not way out of the government mandated pension unless you become self-employed. So you do have to pay into the giant ponzi scheme, while also building your own private funds.
With prior health conditions they won't even accept you 9 times out of 10. But honestly it's not a great deal to begin with.
To clarify why it's tricky:
I was going to private long time ago and they asked me if I have some conditions. I said I have mild scoliosis and whatever and they said "No, not like that - like HIV/AIDS or Cancer" and I said No.
Some time later they said I cheated them because I did not say I have "Nasal Septum Deviation" which is whatever for me, and it is not even close to having cancer or HIV. Basically they increased my premium by ~300 EUR because of that. So be careful, make sure you say EVERYTHING that might be wrong with you beforehand to not have surprises like I had.
Of course the upside is that:
- Nobody cares if you cannot speak German
- You get appointments next day regardless of what condition you have
- You go to hospital there is special counter for you sometimes where you skip line completely
> And then there's the wait time for everything. Appointment for visa extension: 8 months. Driving license conversion: 1 year. German exam: 5 months. What, you want the results for your exam also? Better wait another year then. Honestly Germany is a shit show, and if I hadn't already invested so much time, money and energy into this god forsaken country, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat.
I don't want to downplay any of this and I mostly agree with your points, but as a German the only "related" things I have to do is renew my ID and passport every 10 years and I've never had to wait such a long time (I think we're due to a change in our driving licenses, but that's one time, and I've not touched mine since I got it over 20 years ago).
My point being that we're not talking everyday things. Also not sure how long you've been here, before covid I could usually get one of these appointments in the next few weeks, like.. 2 or 3, which I found pretty reasonable. (just checked online, next available appointments are Tue-Fri next week). It was really bad in 2020-2022.
So maybe it depends on your city and the exact document you need to have renewed. I'm not saying this is a great country with low bureaucracy or that we're downplaying anything per se - but I've never heard a foreign national coworker complain that much, so maybe my town was just better at this all the time?
> I don't want to downplay any of this and I mostly agree with your points, but as a German the only "related" things I have to do is renew my ID and passport every 10 years and I've never had to wait such a long time (I think we're due to a change in our driving licenses, but that's one time, and I've not touched mine since I got it over 20 years ago).
Exactly. This is precisely my point. Germans don't realize that there are such big problems for immigrants because they don't go through any of it. And immigrants can't vote, and those who can vote don't face the problem so then problem never gets fixed.
Well, you originally put this as your talking point, more of a general rant how everything sucks, and then we should assume that your pain points with immigration are the main point.
In a perfect world I'd assume this would be fixed slowly as this seems to be a recent trend, but I'm not hopeful.
Also I'm pretty sure there's currently no way to vote in any election that would make any process more digital and faster and less bureaucratic, so while that doesn't help you, you're not missing anything here. (Yes, the FDP and Lindner especially have ran their campaign on some pipe dreams but my personal opinion can be summed up with: lol.)
Fixing this needs a general shift of thinking first, then the stuff that is only relevant to 3% of the population (also maybe in their first few years, so even less?) will follow.
> In a perfect world I'd assume this would be fixed slowly as this seems to be a recent trend, but I'm not hopeful.
Yes, I thought the Ampel coalition's push for digitization was a great start to this. And then I read last week that they slashed the budget and pushed it back again. So I'm losing hope too.
The problem is that digitalization is just one of the problems we have.
Currently we are paying billions for energy related issues, for the Ukraine war and investing lots into the military industry and in energy infrastructure transformation. We had three years covid slowing things down and creating various large problems: inner cities have huge problems keeping businesses alive (because people stay home and shopping moved to online) and there is a huge housing crisis due to large amounts of people coming germany (demand) and low building activity due to shortage of materials/labor and price increases. This all costs huge amount of money.
Germany is disrupted by the Ukraine war started by Russia and the economic boycott against Russia.
Digitalization is important, but people feared more about cold homes and about lack of electricity, than lack of public service digitalization.
>Every single thing is so obsolete. Nothing is digitized. Everything requires a giant stack of actual paperwork to be taken to an office where the whims of the clerk dictate everything. A million rules exist in the hopes that they cover all possible scenarios, but inevitable they don't and if you happen to have a scenario which is not covered, you're shit out of luck because the clerk is sure as shit not going to put their ass on the line and make a decision not explicitly present in the rule book.
>You pay through the nose for health insurance, but when you need to find a doctor, none can take you because their quota of public insurance patients is done for the quarter.
Just a reminder to anyone reading this: These are Germany-specific problems that don't exist in other Northern European countries like Denmark.
I live in the US and every other day I see a HN thread saying how America is terrible and how Europe is so much better than here. At the same time, you also see a lot more Europeans coming to the US than the other way around. The reality is that no place is perfect, the grass is always greener on the other side and the US, despite its problems, is a pretty darn good place to live.
By the way, I have many friends from South America who moved to Europe just to move back a couple of years later with stories very similar to what you are saying.
> I live in the US and every other day I see a HN thread saying how America is terrible and how Europe is so much better than here. At the same time, you also see a lot more Europeans coming to the US than the other way around. The reality is that no place is perfect, the grass is always greener on the other side and the US, despite its problems, is a pretty darn good place to live.
This topic is about Germany. Moreover you're replying to an Indian who moved to Germany...
> If I paid the same amount in insurance in India, I'd have a helicopter flown out every time I stubbed my toe.
Hi, I'm likely in the top 10% of top 1% of salaried professionals in India. I'd like to know where in India I'd be able to get the kind of insurance you're talking about. If it's not hyperbole, I'd love to move there. So far, I've found no insurance that's as generous as you describe. Not even close.
Thanks for sharing. I read the replies to your informative post. Sorry to see so much racism directed your way.
I’m a resident in Switzerland and my girlfriend is from south India, now also a resident there.
This has not at all been our experience. The administration has been surprisingly pleasant and efficient. From the day we applied for her residence to the day she got it took about 6 weeks. Would have been quicker if we did everything right.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I'll get an EU passport next year. Oops scratch that the wait for naturalization is now upto two years. So I'll get an EU passport in 3 years, and then the right to be able to move to any of 27 countries at my discretion will more than make up for this time and energy I've spent here.
Sorry, but I hope you can show these countries a little bit more respect than the country that provided you with the ability to get very well paid, got you clean are and safety from crime.
And this is where the fallacy is. Indian salaries are currently actually higher than German ones for my role. And that's without even accounting for PPP. The ground reality is different from what people assume it is. The base assumption always seems to be "People are moving to our coutnry from 3rd world countries because those 3rd world coutnries are not as good as us." That's totally not the case. There are a multitude of factors and every persons personal individual decisions.
And I love how there are multiple comments about disrespecting the country that I moved to. Why? Because I dared to criticize it instead of pretending everything is awesome? Yeah that's cool man. You do know that people criticize because they care and want the system to change for the better right?
What is disrespectful about voicing his opinion on things that he considers broken or in need of much improvement? It is entirely possible that German people are too complacent or privileged to see all the issues that he mentions.
> thread with genuine complaints will be drowned in responses from native Germans who foolishly believe that Germany is a great country to live in because t
This is disrespect.
Complaining the system is OK but not attacking people.
Assume some one just says "All native Indian men are involved in harassing women/girls (incl. r-a-p.e)"
> Perhaps, perhaps not. I'll get an EU passport next year. Oops scratch that the wait for naturalization is now upto two years. So I'll get an EU passport in 3 years, and then the right to be able to move to any of 27 countries at my discretion will more than make up for this time and energy I've spent here.
Hope, you will come back and report here and guide Indians/expats... If it is better/worse elsewhere.
(As some Indian living in EU for about 30 years - it won't be better. What you are expecting is Ambani level treatment. Then become one )
> And this is where the fallacy is. Indian salaries are currently actually higher than German ones for my role. And that's without even accounting for PPP.
I often meet people like this in many Indian restaurants - everyone brags but even after 20 years they never go out of Germany.
If this level of greatness is true then why are you here? I can even tell you that even at this level of richness you won't
- get the clean/non-flickering electricity in India that one gets in Germany
Lol, expecting your residence permit to not take 9 months to get renewed is Ambani level privilege? Expecting to get a doctor's appointment in a couple of weeks is privilege?
> If this level of greatness is true then why are you here? I can even tell you that even at this level of richness you won't
Believe it or not, it is true. You get paid more in India if you're an experienced and capable software dev than you do in Germany (unless you're employed by FAANG in Germany). As for why I don't do it - because even though I bitch about the bureaucracy and broken infrastructure, there are a billion other things that I love about Germany.
However just because I love a lot of things about Germany, doesn't mean I shouldn't criticize those things that are horribly broken - esp. when the politicians show no signs of wanting to fix them.
> I shouldn't criticize those things that are horribly broken - esp. when the politicians show no signs of wanting to fix them.
Of course, they do criticize. Are you even reading German news or staying only in thelocal.de or facebook for information.
so many subs incl r/legaladvicegerman constantly critical of system. I dare you to be critical of Indian system.
see Oliver Welke's "heute-show". Like Jon Stewart's Daily show.
Any change takes time. You have some bad experiences. But I know so many Indians/ Filipinos in Frankfurt with great experiences. Getting even PR residency in 1 month and passport in 6 months.
I have a feeling from your constant repeat of "I make more money than others across many threads" - it seems like you want things to happen 24/7 as you have MONEY. That is wrong.
Even a skilled plumber or skilled IT giant like you are treated equally. You think you need to be invited to FAST track like first class in planes and given service. That is not here. Go to UAE or Liechtenstein or Luxembourg.
Germany works more or less for middle class. Everyone is treated equally.
So if you don't face the problem personally you don't voice out against it? You do realize how cause and effect works right? If you don't voice out and change the system this is what happens:
1. More and more immigrants stop coming to Germany.
2. Taxes and Pensions dry up.
3. Already stressed and broken infrastructure can no longer be
maintained thanks to lack of funds.
4. Your quality of life (that of the guy who never faces these problems) goes down because you did not speak out and help change the system.
But yes, by all means be typisch Deutsch and stick your head in the sand. Let's see how that helps when the car manufacturing industry is long gone and Germany is the Greece of the 2030s.
Love people like you, move right towards insulting others. Maybe that’s why you have those issues. Not even going to bother arguing with people like you.
Sorry where was the insulting? You responded saying you won't fight against things that don't personally affect you, and I pointed out how things you don't think personally affect you will eventually affect you.
> But yes, by all means be typisch Deutsch and stick your head in the sand. Let's see how that helps when the car manufacturing industry is long gone and Germany is the Greece of the 2030s.
You are right, I also forget adding strawmen.
> You responded saying you won't fight against things that don't personally affect you
Didn’t say that either, but that fits with my image of you.
I'm an immigrant in India. There is curry everywhere. Everybody eats it, everybody smells like it. I hate curry. The smell, the taste, I could vomit every time. But the worst part of all this is - the vast majority of Indians think this is all acceptable and okay. If I hadn't already invested so much time, money and energy into this god forsaken country, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat.
Even with the /s it's a paltry attempt at belittling real issues. I didn't complain that Germany was full of beer and everybody ate bread and the smell of bakeries was suffocating.
> As an immigrant (and a very well paid one paying obnoxiously high taxes),
Public services cost money. Relative to contributions to society (if you compare to the lady in the supermarket or the immigrant guy cleaning the toilets), SWE pay is what is obnoxiously high.
Sure the paperwork and bureaucracy is annoying. But India isn't exactly known for shining in this regard. At least the corruption in the public sector is magnitudes less in Germany compared to India. Things may be slow, but not because you didn't pay up, but because they are just ... slow.
The slowness has advantages too. The right wing guys will have a harder time taking over because everything is so slow. (Fingers crossed)
> German exam: 5 months. What, you want the results for your exam also? Better wait another year then. Honestly Germany is a shit show,
It's a "shit show" because you need to wait for a while for your language exam results? Your priorities are odd. There are a few thousand things higher up on my personal priority list. What about corruption? Environment? Safety? Health care? Pension? Child care? Just sitting in a street café having a latte, reading a book, watching birds sing and kids play near by, all in central Berlin, all while being safe, breathing clean air and not hearing a 7-lane highway?
> But the worst part of all this is - the vast majority of Germans think this is all acceptable and okay.
So, why is this bad then? A society that is happy with how things work, that's the dream state, right? If you immigrated there and don't like it, well, you seem to be in the minority. Perhaps choose a place that's more to your liking then.
(I'm neither a citizen nor a resident in Germany.)
I am not a german but from India. while there is lack of digitialisation but most things work fine
> So then moving to Germany from India is like stepping back into 1996.
Seriously then leave the country.
> Germany will stay as it is for ever - there is no need to change in their view.
You are attacking Germans.
- Million rules exist and if followed then it works smoothly.
- I know vast majority of Indians think bureaucracy works like India
- Assuming you are from wealthy background or software or doctor etc. They expect minimal paperwork and want the German bureaucrats to skip things. Why? because they are entitled.
- The rules are very clearly laid out. Too often people from India fill up forms like <I dont give a shit. I am invited to work in your country. So give me visa attitude>
- If you complain so much about German bureaucrats try to get your passport or any documents (like attestation) from Indian Consulate/Embassy. Unless you have power/connections etc. they delay it EVEN when you give all papers. Look all the ridiculous docx or PDF with one small line for complete address in embassy website. More over if you dont speak Hindi it is PITA.
> he vast majority of Germans think this is all acceptable
They don't. But remember many things in Germany are designed for EVERYONE. Incl. non smartphone users.
- Look at Indian railway system: If you have coding skill all tickets are booked by these people. And people that wait for booking in counters are left NO with no seats on the first day of booking availablity. Is this happening?
- Data protection. Sure in India: you dont care and upload any document by whatsapp etc. We dont.
- Language: it is painful. But why not learn? (Given the fact Govt of India wants Southern people to learn Hindi - why dont you learn German)
> health insurance, but
I call BS. How many helicopters are available for you in India for the €100 - €200 you pay in Germany. Do you know the number of celebrities from Bollywood that came to Germany to get COVID vaccine (Yes, I am in this field).
>> Germany will stay as it is for ever - there is no need to change in their view.
> You are attacking Germans.
I don't think so and I don't feel attacked.
The problem is that German politics has been VERY conservative for the last decades and also in general, the population seems very much averse to change. The younger people (younger than 50, lol) are not usually in a position of power, and maybe even in the majority not open to tech. (Look at the pixelated houses discussions with street view)
I'm still amazed sometimes that we can even have things like online banking or that SOME chores at government offices work digitally, it's just not happening and everything they try to do sucks anyway.
Anything digital Germany absolutely feels like a weird place fixated on the good old days and another problem is that every time some progress is on the horizon someone misinterprets data protection and privacy laws again and manages to sabotage progress. Or it's people who want to go the extra mile and instead of fighting so that we are allowed to bay with a card everywhere want to completely abolish coins and paper money...
So in that regard I absolutely agree with the post you replied to. The majority or the people in power don't want this to change it seems, or are too incompetent.
> - Million rules exist and if followed then it works smoothly.
They don't cover all possible scenarios. Unless you are stuck in the no mans land things seem to work well for you. If instead Beamten were given the autonomy to make certain decisions not strictly by the rule book then this wouldn't be a problem.
> - I know vast majority of Indians think bureaucracy works like India
I don't expect it to work like in India. I just expect it to work in a reasonable amount of time.
> - Assuming you are from wealthy background or software or doctor etc. They expect minimal paperwork and want the German bureaucrats to skip things. Why? because they are entitled.
Where have I ever mentioned that I want things to be skipped? And minimal paperwork is not just expected by wealthy people - it's expected by everyone. Compare Germany's bureacracy with Netherlands or Swedens and there is a giant difference, primarily because most of the paperwork is minimized to bare necessities. Just because something worked when it was invented, doesn't mean it has to be stuck to when it's now causing a lot of pain needlessly.
> - The rules are very clearly laid out. Too often people from India fill up forms like <I dont give a shit. I am invited to work in your country. So give me visa attitude>
Again not sure where you got this from anything I said. I was only complaining about time taken and inflexibility of bureaucracy.
> - If you complain so much about German bureaucrats try to get your passport or any documents (like attestation) from Indian Consulate/Embassy. Unless you have power/connections etc. they delay it EVEN when you give all papers. Look all the ridiculous docx or PDF with one small line for complete address in embassy website. More over if you dont speak Hindi it is PITA.
Whataboutism.
> - Language: it is painful. But why not learn? (Given the fact Govt of India wants Southern people to learn Hindi - why dont you learn German)
I'm beginning to think you intended to reply to someone else. I never mentioned not speaking German as a problem. If you move to a country and live there, you should learn the local language.
> I call BS. How many helicopters are available for you in India for the €100 - €200 you pay in Germany.
Okay that was exaggerating for effect. But the point stands - If I paid 300Eur a month for health insurance in India I would be given the VIP treatment if I ever had to step into a hospital.
> the VIP treatment if I ever had to step into a hospital.
This is the problem for you. You got VIP treatment in India as you say you get better than FAANG salaries. No. Whether you are a plumber or $M you wait in the same queue.
Anecdotally my experience dealing with German companies being in the UK is that they can be highly detail-oriented and process driven, to the point where they can be hard to work with if you are outside Germany.
It seems that progressing fast with high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity isn't common, while other western companies seem happier to proceed faster with a looser brief and to solve problems flexibly as they come along.
Of course this won't be a universal truth and it might just be my personal experience, and it might also be a benefit in many situations, but I've always felt Germany has a different work culture compared to other European and Western countries.
Germany has more than enough alternatives for nuclear power. The situation would have been even better if not for some brain farts sabotaging the movement to alternatives for various reasons.
The big problem is that has Germany has big dependencies on coal, gas and gasoline, for industry, heating, and cars. Nuclear power can't replace this at all. Which is why Germany is shifting around usages and started investing big in hydrogen.
They did, most German reactors are ancient and were past the recommended life-time. And coal consumption did not increase because of the closing down of nuclear reactors.
Carbon emissions are also long-term plans. When you open a coal mine (which they do) or plan for increasing nuclear power, you have to plan decades in advance, which is why we should have started all this yesterday
Even if you do speak German, it's horrendously slow. You can't sit idle for months because this or that office has no appointments to do this or that thing.
Things that can be done online elsewhere must be done in person, by appointment. The appointments are hard to get, come weeks later, and only trigger a 2-8 week wait.
I think slow appointments are a thing across the western world right now (and possibly elsewhere, but my knowledge is lacking).
I'm currently trying to get my driving license in the UK, as a US immigrant. This means I need to go through the same process as a new driver. The wait was about a month between application and approval for my provisional license, then 1.5 months to take a theory test, then 2 months to take a practical test -- but that was choosing to drive four hours to a test centre with a test available, and if I'd wanted to take one in London, it would have been ~6 months, which is long enough that my American license would have expired and I'd be left unable to drive at all in the interim. (There's still a decent chance this happens, because if I fail the test, it's a month before I can reschedule, and then I probably have to schedule multiple months out again.)
Wait times were pretty bad in the US, too, before we left last year. It's not a government thing, but we had foundation work done on our house last year, and the lead time was about eight months between signing the contract and the work being carried out. Permitting alone took several months for what was relatively straightforward work on a single-family dwelling.
The 6 months expiring thing happened to me - the only amusing thing was the confused look on someone's face after I passed the provisional test and then got in my car by myself and drove off
I always found it a little backwards how you can just arrive at Heathrow with a license from anywhere else and jump behind the wheel, but after 6 months you magically lose the ability to drive.
Not my experience in Munich, but French are quite 'rude' too compared to southern Europeans and Anglos, so I would understand why people would think so.
Using Munich, a city entirely non-representative of the rest of the country is a bad idea. Munich in my experience feels like a modern post—current Germany entirely.
The primary issue of language is that, the large movers and shakers strictly enforce the language in upper level and so it flows down and below.
For the smaller shops who opens their doors to speaking common language(English), the quality of pay is sub-par compared to COL, so there is nothing attractive for talents to be there.
If you end up paying multiple times more for energy than you were a couple of years back, it's natural that exports are lower and imports are higher.
That means de-industrialisation of the country in a major way, because there's no way you can remain competitive on the world stage.
Germany was the major bread-winner and subsidiser for the whole of the EU, so it's not really that 'Germany is the sick man of Europe', it's more that 'Europe is the sick man of the West'.
We should be thankful that Betteridge's law of headlines applies here because Germans have a historical trend of coming up with internationally unpopular policies when they feel like they're in an economic downturn.
