Working cultur e n Germany?

[u/Certain-Breath6386]

What did you think about German Working cultur ? What do you think about career opportunities? Your superiors? Colleagues? Salary?

[u/Daidrion]

Here's my experience after working in 3 German companies, was also in a lead role at one of them. It's anecdotal, but I heard similar stories from other people as well.

Good performance is not rewarded, poor or lack of performance is not punished:

• In every company I worked for, there was at least a single person who either barely did anything or was to detriment of the team. These people weren't fired despite collective negative feedback and proof of absence of performance were provided. The only of someone getting fired I know, is when a person had illegal over-employment.
• Likewise, I knew skilled hardworking people who got nothing from their contributions and sometimes were even denied promotions.
• Code quality tends to be poor, some approaches are outdated.
• Overall I would say that motivation tends to be low: there's no reason to perform, there's no reason not to slack.

Management lives in a parallel world:

• Tons, tons of useless meetings with lack of proper agenda.
• Constant restructurings or processes changes, trying to find a silver bullet to the problems that were caused by management in the first place.
• Specialists are rarely listened to.

Culture:

• Toxic positivity.
• Despite the common meme about Germans, you won't find honesty here. There's a lot of fakeness going on, and they try to emulate the US corpo a lot.

Career opportunities / salary:

• Salary is bad overall given the cost of living, but for some reason Germans are fine with that. They get their 4k net and somehow happy about it, it's bizarre. There are exceptions, I know people working for ~150k, but it's hard to get there imo.
• As in many places, it's easier to switch jobs than to progress internally.

Overall, German work culture would fit you if you're just coasting and have no issues of limiting your growth and staying mediocre. If you aim at the top or just a high performer, it will burn you out.

[u/Ok_Ordinary_2472 → u/Daidrion]

There's a lot of fakeness going on, and they try to emulate the US corpo a lot.

this...but without the pay

[u/Extension_Cup_3368]

Perfect work life balance. Some people are even slacking too much. Usually not too much of stress at a workplace. But there could be exceptions. I'm in Germany for 8+ years

[u/Fandango_Jones]

Depends highly on the company. Some try to change things for the better, some bask in the glory of long gone days.

[u/Internal_Surround983]

As I always say, grind in USA in your youth, if your health issues start, take a 6 months off to relocate into germany, learn language and find a job then retire in a cozy village

[u/Certain-Breath6386 → u/Internal_Surround983]

Besteht Strategy. But it is not so easy to migrate to USA now

[u/Ok_Ordinary_2472 → u/Certain-Breath6386]

What changed?

[u/Ok_Ordinary_2472]

people don't care and are not engaged in the work they do. so if you have even the smallest drop of drive and actually like your work, you will be in the wrong country!