Mark Zuckerberg Interview with Axel Springer CEO | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg Interview with Axel Springer CEO

businessinsider.com

39 pointsprostoalex47 comments

Important and notable while reading this is that the company "Axel Springer" is the owner of the german equivalent (in paper) of Fox News, or for UK people, the Daily Mail.

The influence of this is visible at the very start of the article, which is a submarine advertisement for Berlin as a tech location, where Springer has many businesses that look for candidates from a large pool of developers who they then massively underpay.

Not to be confused with "Springer Verlag" a big german science publisher.

> Important and notable while reading this is that the company "Axel Springer" is the owner of the german equivalent (in paper) of Fox News, or for UK people, the Daily Mail.

I don't know anything about this company and I see no reason not to trust you on that. But since this interview doesnt' ask us to rely on Axel Springer's reputation, or trust it's word on something, how is this relevant?

To give context? It was the Axel Springer foundation that awarded the award, made the interview, and "lightly edited" it.

Because it is likely that this whole thing wasn't written "because it is interesting" or "contains valuable information", but because it probably fulfills some marketing purpose or other hidden motive.

I'm basically saying: If you're gonna read this, bring a big salt shaker.

Note for example the praise on Berlin as a tech location. Note how effusive it is. Now consider this: Starting offers for developers with 5 years experience at Idealo (property of Axel Springer) in 2010 were 20000 € per year.

I don't know any details for other things mentioned in that interview, but i would expect similar things to be "left out" as well.

Axel Springer publications are also among the most notorious offenders of privacy laws whenever they feel like they're missing a juicy scoop otherwise. Of course they're all chubby with Facebook, especially because it allows them to get high-definition photographs of murder victims, suspects and everyone else they want to bring to the immediate attention of their readers:

http://www.bildblog.de/77136/sein-wort-in-ihren-ohren/

That sounds strange to me. There are a lot of companies searching for good developers in Berlin, working in Berlin myself as a software developer and knowing plenty of others i can't believe they can find anyone halfway decent who would work for that kind of money because there are simply a lot of better options.

Besides that, your point is valid, but aren't any kind of awards always about marketing, new connections, brand recognition etc ?

There's a difference between advertisement and "submarine ad", wherein the second one claims to provide something specific, while just serving to advertise something else.

€20000? Good grief. Even if I wanted to take that job (as an Australian who'd like to work in Berlin), I couldn't because the minimum pay for an EU Blue Card worker is €38688 and that's with the discounted rate for IT-skilled workers. (Otherwise the company has to offer a minimum €49600 for an EU Blue Card to be granted.)

Yeah, i was equally baffled. When i told them 40k would be my absolute minimum they told me "You'd have to work for two then." They were also located in the absolutely cheapest part of Berlin they could be in. If you want to work in Berlin, prepare for a lot of research. It's absolutely possible, however due to the huge population of students, prices can be weird.

I earn 60k as a software dev in Berlin and know plenty of people who earn at least around the 50k mark. Also i regularly get offers for about the same kind of money or more. 10 years experience, no university degree.

From my experience working as a software dev in Berlin right now, 50k+ salaries are easy to get if you are halfway decent, i earn more than that. 20k is a joke and if true the people working there are super naive juniors or just really bad.

20k? What a joke

Just in case some managers rejoice and get ideas, here are the average German IT salaries according to Handelsblatt:

http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/beruf-und-buero/buer...

Good luck hiring someone for 20.000 per year.

probably fulfills some marketing purpose or other hidden motive.

Oh, thanks for your valuable insights. Please send us a note once you found a form of human communication that can not be interpreted as "marketing purpose" or "hidden motives".

To call Axel Springer's reputation bad would describe their reputation as far more positive than it is. There is a famous quote by Max Goldt that describes the stance especially from the political left on the newspaper quite well:

> This newspaper [Bild a newspaper Axel Springer is publishing] is a vile institution. It's wrong to read it. Someone who contributes to it is socially unacceptable. It would be wrong to be friendly or even polite to their editors. One has to be as unfriendly to them as is allowed by law. They're bad humans, that do wrong things.

It doesn't matter what they're doing, it's that Axel Springer is involved that's the problem and in any discussion that involves enough Germans someone will point it out.

> To call Axel Springer's reputation bad would describe their reputation as far more positive than it is.

The communist Baader-Meinhof terrorists bombed three targets:

1. US Army bases, for the Vietnam War.

2. German police offices, for covering up Nazi crimes.

3. Axel Springer buildings, for their newspapers.

"Bad reputation" is more than an understatement.

They are rather opinionated. That, however, isn't very respectable in the German (very consensus driven) public sphere.

Most German newspapers are very bad on a journalistic/technologic level. Might be caused by the small userbase and the language barrier that shields away international competition.

The problem isn't that their opinionated, it's that they lie. Systematically and remorselessly.

http://www.bildblog.de/

For example, Peter Lustig: He was the host of Germany's most popular kids TV show for decades. At some point, he made an off-hand derisive comment about the BILD. Quickly, BILD spread a rumour that he secretly hated kids and was only in it for the money, a rumour they kept alive for decades; and which they are now again bringing to the front covers after his death, claiming to "try to uncover the truth".

Utterly disgusting and borderline criminal.

To be more detailed, he said jokingly (roughly) "kids are dirty and rowdy" and also said "i don't want them on the set". What the interview failed to bring across was that he was trying to explain that for young kids who just want to play, being on a film set where strict and professional work is done, is just hell, so he wanted to expose them to that as little as possible.

Of course Bild ran with the least favourable interpretation of the words above and smeared one of the most important, loved and loving people on german TV.

..the lying press is a very common meme in Germany right now. The word "Lügenpresse" which combines "lie" and "press" even has its own wikipedia entry.

The claim that media owned by the Axel Springer Group or BILD specifically promotes lies more often than other publications seems rather biased to me.

The fact that BILD lies shamelessly and consistently has been established long before the word Lügenpresse was ever coined.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=L%C3%BCgenpresse

They're not just opinionated. They violate ethical standards, are sexist, lie, violate the privacy of crime victims, are racist and xenophobic bordering on illegal incitement of hatred, they harrass people that speak against them and have at times glorified police violence including a deadly shooting.

On top of all that they have a large influence on politics and politicians in Germany. Much larger than any other newspaper in Germany.

It's a German tradition that whenever somebody mentions the name of that publishing house, all Germans have to jump in and go apeshit :D

And yet somehow it's still the biggest newspaper publisher in Germany.

(And hey, at least nobody is blowing up their offices any more.)

Abandoning blowing up offices as a form of critique is very progressive, indeed.

It has porn. No seriously. It's the easiest way to have a coffee in the morning in the office and look at some boobs. Most "read" paper on my base when i was in the army.

Ok that's pretty soft. Used to be a time a shoulder or ankle was 'porn'. I guess topless beaches are really 'porn beaches'.

Reminds me of a recent comment that "German factories run on tits": https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46ti4d/e...

It's not just a German problem. Over 80% of Polish media are owned by German media companies and conglomerates and, IIRC, the bulk of it is divided between Axel Springer and Bauer. I think that it doesn't take much of a leap to see the political implications.

Also, Business Insider is owned by Axel Springer.

The company that owns BILD also owns BI. :D

Hmmn. These sorts of interviews are always flawed. Either they're done by someone with an agenda, or they're done by someone whose understanding of the subject is so rudimentary that he/she can't yet muster up an agenda.

In this case, it's an interesting stroll through Zuckerberg's stated priorities of the moment. We're all free to re-filter the interview as we see fit to adjust for Springer spin and Zuckerberg spin. Getting vexed about the full range of Springer activities at this particular moment seems like a waste of good cortisol.

Finally, a nice piece on Zuck in Berlin, Axel Springer's CEO is quite a smart guy turned that dino corporation into something digital in few years.

There was another public thing on Facebook (Q&A town hall Berlin) where the German questioners had a) so-so questions b) some really, really bad English skills and c) just felt like backwoodsmen, all paired by Facebook's European head who is also German and must be in love with Zuck (he interviewed Zuck few times on the trip and asked odd questions—why does an FB employee interview Zuck??). Absolutely nothing against Germans, nice people, but especially this town hall speak was a bit embarrassing and gave a slightly wrong picture of Germans.

EDIT: Hey downvoters, please read my piece again, it's NOT against any nationality—it rather criticizes how the interviewers/questioners were chosen which might give a not representative picture.

Pretty sure you're getting downvoted (i did not) for actally praising one of the companies most reviled in Germany. See my comment below for details on why it's reviled. Edit: Facebook is also widely hated, since many germans have very strong opinions on privacy thanks to the history with Stasi.

> Edit: Facebook is also widely hated, since many germans have very strong opinions on privacy thanks to the history with Stasi.

Stasi, Gestapo, Biedermeier era, … Germany has been on the receiving end of oppressive surveillance for longer than it has been a country.

Admittedly the first guy to ask a question was kind of a joke but other than that the questions were pretty normal for events like this which are heavily scripted PR vehicles anyway.

Zuck is very articulate in this piece. He describes FB ops in a pithy sentence, and gives pointed answers to questions on Berlin's tech scene. I thought it showed his acumen quite well.

That's the same Axel Springer CEO who compared Zuckerberg to a dictator not two years ago. Mathias Dopfner in his open letter:

"With the exception of biological viruses, there is nothing with such speed, efficiency and aggressiveness that spreads like these technology platforms"

(Source: "Google under fire from European media tycoon", http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27063372

This is the same CEO that helped pass a law in Germany that required anyone who publishes more than a short snippet of text from a newspaper to pay royalties. Google, not wanting to pay royalties, instead removed Axel Springer's news story snippets from its search results in accordance with the new law. Axel Springer noticed a sharp decline in page views in the two weeks following the removal of their news story snippets and promptly changed their mind.

> and promptly changed their mind.

They didn't. They _sued_ Google, trying force them to link to them (and, naturally, pay for it – a paltry 6% of Google's revenue in Germany¹). It was turned down by the courts in September², only then was Google given a gratis license by some publishers.

Smaller actors (other search engines, newspapers, bloggers, …), of course, can't afford risking such a confrontation and now have to pay up for the privilege! of being allowed to advertise for Axel Springer publications.

This, too, ended up in the courts, as said smaller actors sued the publishers over the gratis license given to Google, claiming it was anti-competitive. The case is handled in secret, VG Media (the organisation founded by AS to handle licensing) is suppressing information of it from becoming public.³

¹: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Leistungsschutzrecht-...

²: http://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Meldung/DE/Pressem...

³: http://www.golem.de/news/gratislizenz-fuer-google-die-streng...

> and now have to pay up for the privilege! of being allowed to advertise for Axel Springer publications.

Very much off-topic, but your punctuation error left me wishing English allowed for infixed exclamation marks. This would place emphasis on the word 'privilege' rather than on the whole phrase (as the case when appended to the end of a sentence).

I don't think it was in error, but a deliberate attempt to add emphasis. I usually put it in parenthesis(!), so it does not confuse the reader.

I was under the impression that they changed their mind and allowed Google to re-index their news snippets following the sharp decline in traffic. Yes, they later sued Google and lost, but this doesn't change the fact that they reversed their decision 2 weeks after their content was removed.

Intonation is missing when an interview is written instead of recorded. For example I'm not sure near the end of the interview if the punctation marks of Döpfner's dialogue are even correct e.g. is he making statements or is he asking questions.

An example: Döpfner: America doesn't have these historic traumas.

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