Germany's Slowdown | Hacker News Reader

Germany's Slowdown

apricitas.io

21 pointspaulpauper21 comments

> Germany was especially vulnerable to the withdrawal of Russian natural gas supplies—the country used a disproportionate amount of natural gas for its heavy industry and gas-powered home heating systems, and in 2021, 55% of German natural gas consumption came from Russia

So much reliance on a potential enemy was a huge mistake. Germany should've foreseen that in the span of say 40 years it was likely there would be a major conflict with Russia.

All prediction markets were estimating at fairly high this possibility and the fact that Germany didn't realize this and course-corrected is surprising to say the least.

I believe the common explanation is corruption rather than a mistake.

It's not really a matter for foresight when Germany is going trough with shutting down all nuclear energy while the neighbours are starting to build new ones.

Cool infographics... Bookmarked...

But you haven't mentioned China... For last 20 years Germany have been riding a wave of Chinese manufacturing and modernization.

With Chinese slowdown (lockdowns etc.) and automotive industry (15 % of Germany's GDP) facing green evolution (which is a problem as Gemans can't code) it seems like Germany have lost both engines of growth. Energy crisis seems like the last drop....

> which is a problem as Gemans can't code

What's the factual basis for that claim? I'm German and I can code.

Also the tenuous connection between EVs and coding. I know the ID.3 had a lot of bugs initially, but these were bugs in the infotainment system. There's no reason these wouldn't pop up in an ICE engine.

EVs aren't inherently more difficult to program.

You could make the argument for autonomous driving. But that's a different topic.

Reason why there is so many bugs in ID.3 and others is because it has stupidly and unnecessarily complex architecture.

Which has nothing to do with the fact that it's an EV.

Modern cars have a lot of embedded systems in them. A small fraction of them is drivetrain related, like battery controller and inverter control on an EV.

Actually ICE is way more complex than EV.

But I think people get confused with EV and autonomous driving.

>I'm German and I can code.

Me, too.

But software engineering is definitely not on par in Germany with other important branches, e.g. car manufactoring.

There are huge successful non-IT companies that fail to transform into digital age. They have problems to hire good software engineers.

In the home computer era in the 80s I saw a lot of people in Europe produce nice software. But somehow we did not make the jump into PC-era.

Software Engineering is definitely on par with what you'd expect from a standard, non-tech Fortune 500 company in the US or elsewhere. We just don't have any tech startups, because our investment culture is fundamentally different than that from the US. We lack both the public, private and military financing that would allow a culture like it exists in the valley. That goes not only for Germany but Europe as a whole.

Though I don't consider this to be a bad thing. There's a considerable amount of startups advertising their seed funding on here with products that I don't think would have a market fit outside the valley right now.

We don't have many tech startups, but also don't have many big tech companies. Like there is SAP, and then... Wirecard maybe. Oh no, that's the one that faked IT greatness. I guess, there are Siemens and Bosch.

Then, IT talents: In 2020 Informatik (computer science) made it to the second-most studied university discipline after BWL (business admistration). Which is very interesting since it was not even TOP 10 for decades and still is a male-dominated field. Tradionally Germany has great apprenticeships, so there are multiple vocational schools you can go to learn something in IT, backed by IHK (chamber of commerce and industry). We'll need them, because we somehow fail to attract many foreign talents, compared to Switzerland.

ABAP and Windows 3.11 doesn't count

Yep, plenty of dev going on in Germany.

"cope", not "code", I think the previous poster was trying to say.

Ah yes, I agree. Though it is worth to mention that VW is not the only EV manufacturer in Germany, we have some promising Startups. Though I think VW's ineptitude with producing good software products has largely to do with years of unwillingness of investing into actual research and talent growth. And so far it worked well for them, thanks to the formidable work ethics of German culture.

Germany has been reaping in lots of money due to it's position in the eurozone. They were by far the strongest producer of goods, and not allowing other countries to compete using low valued currency means they gained an astonishing amount of money.

Could it be that the COVID scarcity and recent inflation hit them harder because of that?

The graph very strongly suggests that GDP growth in Germany has stagnated while it's still growing in the US. But I don't buy that. Living conditions for most people in the US have stagnated - if not deteriorated - in recent years.

living conditions is not GDP.

Also "for most people" implies OP thinks that GDP growth is fairly distributed.

Living conditions in Germany have also worsened. Housing prices are as high as ever, the health system is still struggling (too few doctors in rural areas, high costs and decreasing service quality in hospitals) and of course the energy prices.

Not denying that the USA has issues but Germany is also on its way downhill.

I am currently a Financial Management Analyst at the Bureau of Labor Statistics working to support the Labor Market Information and Occupational Health and Safety surveys that BLS conducts. I write independently about economics, business, and public policy for a better world at apricitas.substack.com.

Prior to working at BLS I was a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Uganda as an Business Development Advisor from 2019-2020. I graduated from George Washington University in 2018 with a BA in Economics and Political Science.

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