3/4/2026 at 10:58:38 PM
Whenever I hear german companies mention digitalisation, I get reminded that they still use pen and pencil in production environments to log data, pass those sheets to secreteries who enter the data into legacy systems so data analysts can enter it into another system that then has an integration with SAP. Data from SAP then flows onwards to some buzzword filled Azure product that costs a few million a month from which someone downloads an xls file and uploads it to Tableau where they run some simple calculations. Someone else downloads it as an xls and manually writes (not copy pastes) the numbers into a power point presentation and makes graphs by drawing shapes. This is then presented at some bi-monthly meeting.I wish I was making this stuff up.
by Maxion
3/5/2026 at 1:11:42 AM
I used to work for the US side of a German multinational (one of the largest in the world) and discovered the same thing when it came to software.The German side always had slick presentations (they always had good visual marketing) and impressive claims, but whenever I tried to work with their products, I always found the claims overstated and that they hadn't really executed deeply. This despite my German counterparts working hard (I visited HQ in Germany and when they work, they really work and clock the hours, no idle chitchat)... yet it doesn't translate to impact.
A lot of their products had impressive front-ends but half-baked back-ends (on the American side, it's the reverse -- our interfaces looked like crap, but our stuff actually worked and often delivered in less time).
A lot of their designs were also non-human friendly (if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users -- weird little user-hostile features pop up everywhere). I don't understand why this is -- this is a nation that produced Dieter Rams. Tobi Lutke (CEO Shopify) likes to talk about how Germans grew up surrounded by good design, yet that design culture never permeated many German products. I own a Bosch in-unit washer/dryer and it's frustratingly unintuitive and has a "my (the engineer's) way or the highway" philosophy.
I went to a BMW talk once about the infotainment system (it was built on the latest Azure tech), but came away feeling that the work was not deep. It was skin deep.
I wonder what has happened to the German builder/tinkerer culture that made German manufacturing great. In the 1980s and 1990s, Germany was synonymous with excellence. But in the 2000s-present, not so much (except maybe in very narrow mittelstand verticals, e.g. Zeiss).
by wenc
3/5/2026 at 7:01:57 AM
"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users "cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions.
Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many interesting stories to share, but one that has always stayed with me is, his disdain for how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals. This was in the 90s, so definitely passed the West Germany glory days.
My take is, in the era of global competition, Germans didn't know how to strike the right balance and effective allocate resources. Where to compromise, and where not to. I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.
by pcurve
3/5/2026 at 1:01:47 PM
I have long experience of multiple German car brands. The interface spectrum goes like this: driving and seats etc are close to perfect for me. As long as it's about buttons, they are really good. But once it goes to screens, it starts getting worse. And then, with mobile app, it's basically barely functioning at all.by Gravityloss
3/5/2026 at 8:41:34 PM
I like how the VW controls are laid out on older models but not the seats. They're too hard and not confortable. Even my Suzuki has better, more confy seats. The seats in the A1 I had were a diaster, especially the back seats, totally useless unless you put 10 year old kids in them.The fronts seats were hard, your butt would hurt after 3 hours. The engine was rattling new and the car is a pita to repair, something broke all the time. But it stuck to the road and was so much fun to drive that I skidded in a roundabout and nearly hit the lane separator. A Civic is probably better in every regard though. Newer Audi diesel models automotive eat up oil, adblue. You basically need to fill up at least 3 or 4 fluids all of the time, including screenwash. Just another extra reason to avoid diesels.by petre
3/5/2026 at 1:32:02 PM
Our (~2015) 3-series controls are just about perfect. Where they differ from Honda/Toyota's controls that I am also very familiar with, they're noticeably better now that I'm familiar with them. Everything is really well thought-out.Of course, now they (and almost every other manufacturer) have followed Tesla off the cliff and made everything a screen, so the current generation cars have abysmal controls.
by stephencanon
3/5/2026 at 10:57:45 AM
I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.
There is no long-term strategic thinking anymore, only feel-good policies and short-term cash burning for their respective clientele.
As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.
by 0x000xca0xfe
3/5/2026 at 4:52:50 PM
> there is nothing we can doThe is always something you can do. Sometimes it's hard or uncomfortable but you can still have an impact on the things you care about if you're willing to do enough.
by collingreen
3/5/2026 at 5:00:42 PM
Yeah, I would call it: managing the crash.They try to hold on to everything until retirement and don't care about anything else. In ten years Germany is like, what? 60 percent over 60?
Everyone knows it won't work, but try to hold on to it as long as possible.
by Bombthecat
3/5/2026 at 1:17:58 PM
That's my impression as well. The future is being sold for the present.by OKRainbowKid
3/5/2026 at 2:47:32 PM
>The future is being sold for the present.That's where the famous high European pensions come from. In France now the average pension is higher than the average salary.
by joe_mamba
3/5/2026 at 1:37:21 PM
>As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymoreHowever bad Germany is in this regard, I suspect the US is far worse. There is no cohort in the US who remembers living in "East US" to temper the excesses of the people who've only known ease and comfort (though of course those people will tell you they worked hard to <insert career/prosperity path that no longer exists).
by cucumber3732842
3/5/2026 at 3:08:41 PM
Certain liberal cities are the “East US.”by dogemaster2025
3/5/2026 at 5:02:16 PM
Do you mean places like Kansas? Very clearly becoming "East US" : https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5728969/kansas-revokes-...by realo
3/5/2026 at 8:36:46 PM
True, Minneapolis had the USA Stasi deployed there!by Throaway1985123
3/5/2026 at 4:54:14 PM
Which certain ones and in which way are they like the east Germany mentioned?Or is this just lazy bigotslop?
by collingreen
3/5/2026 at 4:50:40 PM
What do you mean?by wholinator2
3/5/2026 at 1:33:42 PM
You are right about the issue, but wrong about the action. There are things you can do. Vote for candidates and parties that genuinely want a different future. Become politically active yourself. Run for office. Work with your local community. Every bit of action helps.by shafyy
3/5/2026 at 2:21:44 PM
There is no party in German political landscape interested, capable of solving or even understanding the problems that needed to be solved. We have lost political center to groups of special interests and medieval guides. The state sponsored tool for informing about political programs (Wahl-O-Mat) is biased towards political issues of the mainstream. E.g. nobody is talking about the suffocating monopoly of notaries or increasing the property ownership by any significant margin. Running for office is an interesting idea, but in party-dominated politics to achieve anything is a decades-long adventure.by ivan_gammel
3/5/2026 at 4:19:34 PM
The wahl-o-mat is not biased, it's based on the respective election programs. If one party decides to put something "about the suffocating monopoly of notaries" in it, it's not enough to be mentioned. There have to be some parties at least to make it comparable.Also feel free to peruse election programs yourself. Most parties put out short versions.
You also don't need to run for office to have an effect on party lines. I'm a member of a party. There are congresses on a regional (Bundesland) and national level. In my party the process is voting for proposals before the national congress due to the huge amount of proposals, but usually every proposal on regional level is discussed and voted on. It does not take much time to prepare a proposal, but it shapes the discourse.
by kuerbel
3/5/2026 at 6:05:43 PM
> The wahl-o-mat is not biased, it's based on the respective election programs.That’s exactly my point. If a problem exists or a solution to a problem is possible about which no party is willing to talk about, it will not show it. The choice of topics is based on party opinions, not on voter surveys. This is called bias.
> Also feel free to peruse election programs yourself.
I read the full programs. This is the main reason why I think German political system is in the state of crisis.
> I'm a member of a party.
You surely know some examples when a party member shaped the discourse and set the course of institutional reforms. How long did it take for that person to achieve such results?
by ivan_gammel
3/5/2026 at 2:49:59 PM
It seems to even get the compass needle pointing in the right direction would require immense personal sacrifice. This brings to mind a line I heard recently: “I burn my life to make a sunrise I will never see.”by markbravo0312
3/5/2026 at 6:35:12 PM
Or a lot of smaller sacrifices by a large group of people.by throwway120385
3/5/2026 at 2:59:52 PM
For me personally, Die Linke is hitting many spots. Of course, nobody will ever be 100% aligned with a political party's program, but that's ok.by shafyy
3/5/2026 at 8:53:26 PM
> As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.Spend your money elsewhere, perhaps?
by petre
3/5/2026 at 2:50:03 PM
>who only saw rising prosperity their entire life.Their prosperity has been artificially inflated and not earned for the last years, as the government adjusted their pensions according to inflation, not according to actual economic growth/fall of the nation. It's a cheat code that shouldn't be used if you wish for economic reality but it's used to buy votes.
>They just want to keep the system running until retirement.
To be fair, this is a similar issue with Boomers versus Gen-X in the US and most of the west.
by joe_mamba
3/5/2026 at 9:08:56 AM
>how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing dealsI think most people(Americans mostly) don't have the faintest idea how true that is right now. Here's a comment of mine from a few weeks ago giving such a present-day example that will blow your brains of how cheap german companies are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023
I feel like German companies know they lost the innovation race (I mean companies that aren't Zeiss), they lost the cheap manufacturing race "thanks" to Russian gas dependence and ideological denuclearisation before enough renewables were built, so all that's left for them now to stay afloat is reducing labor and operating costs by offshoring and pinching all the pennies they can find, but even that it not enough since from where I stand there's weekly corporate bankruptcies and layoffs and that's including the fact that the government has been speeding like crazy the last 3+ years to make sure the private sector industry doesn't completely collapse.
by joe_mamba
3/5/2026 at 12:59:23 PM
I’m told that Germans in general are “cheap” and that this is an expected consequence of their economic policies designed to reinforce their industrial base.I wish I could find the reference I’m thinking of, but the idea was that Germans buying absurdly cheap wine and their constantly underfunded trains were part of a pattern of deliberate domestic under-investment to keep exports competitive.
Someone ITT surely knows more.
by twoodfin
3/5/2026 at 3:22:20 PM
Surely not as cheap as the Dutch, who'll apparently send you a bill for a couple dollars worth of snacks you ate at their house.by logicchains
3/5/2026 at 3:33:55 PM
Dutch may be cheap at hospitality but they're savvy at running business, while Germans are cheap at running business and the economy in general, hence why austerity is their favorite word in the vocabulary, they're penny wise and pound foolish.And unfortunately the focus on austerity post-2008 spearheaded by Germany only held the EU economy back compared to the US.
by joe_mamba
3/5/2026 at 1:03:34 PM
~46M employed (of which ~16M part time, usually related to child or elder care), ~84M total population, ~22M pensioners, avg age ~47, lots of SMEs, little natural resources. It's part of necessary consolidation. Considering all that, we're doing quite well...by RGamma
3/5/2026 at 5:36:52 PM
17 million foreigners live in Germany. Germans are being replaced.https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/foreign-born-population...
by slaw
3/5/2026 at 9:01:50 PM
If they're planning to reduce labour with this BMW robot, I have interesting news for them: the Chinese showcased kung fu dancing robots that runs circles around their lame German humanoid robot who can't even pour a beer, let alone assemble cars.by petre
3/5/2026 at 2:15:21 PM
> blow your brains of how cheapYes and: ossified, top-heavy, ever more bureaucratic, MBA/consultant brain rot.
From your linked comment:
> willing to bet my entire salary that the costs of all the new extra bureaucratic overhead
Yup.
by specialist
3/5/2026 at 4:04:30 PM
There was always global competition but Mercedes and BMW had the brand power.At least Volkswagen is still building relatively cheap and reliable cars for the masses- they can compete with Kia and Skoda.
by expedition32
3/5/2026 at 4:10:58 PM
Skoda is owned by VWby brummm
3/5/2026 at 5:03:12 PM
For me, it feels like Skoda is the old VW...by Bombthecat
3/5/2026 at 6:44:38 AM
BMW's most recent infotainment is a big step backwards to me in both areas - aesthetics and UX. Its previous generation was one of the best in the market also in both. I literally don't consider buying the newest 4-series just because of it, especially of the ultrawide driver's "monitor" - it's just so ugly, and I regret it, since on the outside the car appeals me so much more. I'd rather spend the same on previous year model with better specs.by jarek83
3/5/2026 at 12:59:50 PM
I worked on BMW infotainment for a time. My opinions are my own obviously, I don't even work at BMW anymore.So, when I was working, I found the decisions regarding the infotainment mind boggling, to me they made zero sense, until I found some random documents deep in the BMW intranet, where I found the logic of it all: The focus was actually increasing the car range, so for example instead of having one infotainment dedicated hardware, one for the doors, one for the brakes, etc... now the cars have the least amount of computers as possible, located in the locations that result in the least wires as possible, with the goal of saving weight. Because of this, the software layer now had to deal with extra virtualizations, software that originally was to run on a specific microcontroller and do a specific task, and communicated with other parts by wire, now shares a generalized CPU with many other software, and communicate by virtual machines sending messages to each other.
Marvelous stuff from the point of mechanical engineering, indeed results in lighter car and less parts. But the end result for the user? It is mind bogglingly bad, several VMs running on top of each other, everything is slow, the Infotainment instead of being just Infotainment now do several other things.
I had written some of the surprising non-Infotainment stuff the Infotainment do, but that probably would cross into violating NDAs territory, so better not. Just let's say the Infotainment has to meet some non-entertainment related EU regulations.
by speeder
3/5/2026 at 3:09:25 PM
Isn't what you are describing known as Zonal Architecture (as opposed to Domain Architecture) and supposed to be the hot new way of architecting automotive platforms? Tesla was pioneering it. The Volkswagen Group spent billions to get their hands on Rivian's zonal architecture platform.https://insideevs.com/features/724945/zonal-architecture-sof...
by piquadrat
3/5/2026 at 3:33:41 PM
Yes that is the name.But bafflingly to me, almost zero of my coworkers seemed to be aware of it. They would just get the seemly weird orders from above and would execute them, without figuring out the end goal, and this does result into some bad software engineering (because people don't know the end goal they don't know what they can optimize, so they just don't).
by speeder
3/5/2026 at 7:04:26 AM
agreed. IMHO, last good BMWs were E90 and F10s. That's when they still cared about craftsmanship even in areas not visible to customers.by pcurve
3/5/2026 at 10:34:08 AM
I strongly disagree. The step from the F series to the G vehicles was big, quality improved a lot, specially for the 3 series (F30, F31 vs G20, G21) and the X3 (the G01 feels like a 5 series). The materials, assembly, noises during driving, but specially the driving dynamics and robustness are incredibly high.It’s also true though that the last wave of G models has improved driving dynamics but cheapened out in interior materials. Peak BMW interiors happened between 2019-2022 with the G01, G30, G05 and iX, i4. Being my favorites the iX and the G01.
BMW also has the best infotainment system after Tesla. And it still integrates well with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
by tirant
3/5/2026 at 1:37:03 PM
Mechanically, you're probably right, but the screen-centric controls of the newer generation are _awful_ by comparison to the F generation's physical buttons and dials (this isn't BMW though, it's the whole industry).My wife and I both have F31s, which we will drive until we can no longer source replacement parts unless the industry comes to its senses first (unlikely). Any time we've ever looked at plausible replacements, the screen-based controls are an immediate hard no.
by stephencanon
3/5/2026 at 8:55:17 AM
> I wonder what has happened to the German builder/tinkerer culture that made German manufacturing great.Over engineered stuff which hate the user is staple of German manufacturing. Look on tanks during WW2. Impressive on the surface but unreliable crap for everyone who used it.
by Geof25
3/5/2026 at 9:57:46 AM
I've learned my lesson about German engineering after buying one of their vacuum cleaners. The ergonomics of the machine seem bad on purpose.by bob1029
3/5/2026 at 10:45:36 AM
Anecdotally, I disagree. The ergonomics on my Miele are very good. It is clear that attention was paid to many details of using it.by SideburnsOfDoom
3/5/2026 at 12:05:18 PM
I recently replaced the shock dampers on our Miele washing machine (~10 years old) and I was amazed how well designed and ergonomic the inside of the machine is.Parts are very easy to get at, all screws are Torx of identical size, and there's one very obvious way to take the machine apart and put it back together again. Made the replacement a breeze.
by marceldegraaf
3/5/2026 at 1:01:02 PM
I think the whole premise of judging a whole country on some random product a company from that country made is rediculous. It's like saying Americans can't develop software because Microsoft screwed up Windows in the last few versions.by ido
3/5/2026 at 1:28:48 PM
Indeed, the parent phrase " German engineering ... their vacuum cleaners" struck me as a bit ridiculous. Perhaps there is a design standard for a company and "their" products, but this was too sweeping.by SideburnsOfDoom
3/5/2026 at 10:36:50 AM
I have a Metabo vacuum (ASA 30 H PC) and absolutely love it. What's bad about the ergonomics of yours?by aix1
3/5/2026 at 11:10:46 AM
I have a Sebo. The primary thing I dislike is the weight. You'd think something this heavy would have some kind of performance advantage, but it doesn't. I've seen battery powered shit from Walmart suck harder than this machine does.by bob1029
3/5/2026 at 10:27:50 AM
Not just tanks but the entire economy and railways in the same time period.by nicbou
3/5/2026 at 2:26:15 AM
I think Germany got infected by the shareholder value and privatization virus but doesn't really understand it.by vjvjvjvjghv
3/5/2026 at 11:38:37 AM
Working for german medium-sized companies:It's really that the upper management does not appreciate change over departments if it's not their idea.
There is always the mentality that "why fix it if it works" where you actually have to wait for people to go to their pension to really grab a process and drive change.
You then get partially digitalized processes where digital native departments are concerned but they always have to solve the problem of interacting with a bunch of legacy systems and workflows, which in itself is so much harder and more inefficient.
by notTooFarGone
3/5/2026 at 3:09:31 AM
Whats funny is when its privatized by publicly traded companies it becomes this weird nationalized-kinda but not really thing that turns the economy into a bifercated class of first class citizens and second class citizens.by RobRivera
3/5/2026 at 4:12:43 AM
I wonder if anybody's manufacturing was great before the Japanese quality revolution. It took Germany longer than the US to adopt modern quality control. Granted, Germany did a lot of it, for instance their chemical industries were staggering.I've formed the impression that every country's engineering and design cultures are essentially aesthetics.
by analog31
3/5/2026 at 11:07:58 AM
History of manafacturing philosophy is a pretty interesting lens;I once had the chance to chatt with an old German colleague about the change in mentality over multiple decades. One thing he highlighted was the change from "lower error rate equals less waste, and higher final sale price" to "customer complaints or defect rates should be above a threshold, otherwise we are investing too much in the process control".
Particularly due to the desire to derisk the process; design by collaboration with the end user, and contracts with quality requirements, rather than the design being owned by the manufacturer.
by servo_sausage
3/5/2026 at 1:38:40 PM
As a non German but someone who has lived there for 10 years my take is that its cultural part of being Germans. They always seem to gravitate towards making things just a little bit more difficult.Sthe keyboards are not QWERTY. They're QWERTZ.
Traffic lights are in excessive combinations of green/yellow/red. Sometimes you might have yellow/red light sometimes only red.
Roads often have "end of speed limit" sign. But the speed limit might have been temporary for construction. So now you have to remember the original speed limit. Why not post the actual speed limit again?
Stuff like this is absolutely everywhere in the German society for apparently no reason.
EDIT: Adding the best for last.. in Germany when you have an IBAN bank account (you know the I stands for international) you must have German international bank account, or else it will be rejected by everyone and everything.
by samiv
3/5/2026 at 3:05:59 PM
I don't get any of your examples.There are many different keyboard layouts, at least nowadays there is only one German layout. For Spanish there are 2 different layouts which are both actively sold.
The meaning of yellow on traffic lights is no problem, you'll see it for no longer than 2 seconds. Unless it flashes yellow which means that the traffic light is shut off, then "right before left" applies. Some countries only have a green light, no red and no yellow. Now that is a problem because if the light is off because you a) don't see it, you have to know that it is there, and b) don't know if it is operational.
The end of a speed limit indication means the same as no speed limit indication. The lawful limit for the type of road applies, 50 in the city, 100 for rural roads, unlimited for Autobahn. Thats why on the Autobahn there will be a speed limit indication after every on-ramp, if there is no speed limit sign then it is unlimited.
by aeyes
3/5/2026 at 3:21:13 PM
I know how the traffic lights work, point was that there are just excessively many of different combinations in Germany rather than just a single standard green/yellow/red."The end of a speed limit indication means the same as no speed limit indication. The lawful limit for the type of road applies, 50 in the city, 100 for rural roads,"
See, that's already wrong because the "Landstraße" may be 70, 80 or 100 depending on the exact road. If there's construction you might have a lower speed for the construction and then "end of limitation" at which point you have to remember whether the road is 70, 80 or 100.
Another example, if you have a Landstraße that is 100km/h, but you have a section that is 80km/h which has construction that has 50km/h, after construction you see "end of limit" what's the speed you're allowed to drive? 80 or 100? If you just had the speed limit sign all this confusion would simply not exist.
by samiv
3/5/2026 at 7:33:51 PM
I can't speak to Germany, but we also have "end of speed limit" signs in California, and here they definitely mean what the other commenters have said, i.e. the basic speed rule applies. Just based on reading these comments, the German rules seem to be the same here, so I would very much suspect that that in your example the speed limit is unambiguously 100km/hr after the "end of limit" sign.by 0xffff2
3/5/2026 at 5:48:58 PM
France does the same with regards to speed limits. There are also signs telling you the speed limit hasn't changed, or telling you to watch your speed, but without giving you the speed limit!You are supposed to guess the speed limit from the size and shape of the road too. When I ask, almost nobody knows what is the speed of a road, they just wing it.
By law the speed limit has to be posted before an automatic speed trap (they are everywhere in France). Essentially training everybody that speeds limits are only for avoiding the speed trap "tax", but don't matter otherwise.
by bombela
3/5/2026 at 6:41:34 PM
That explains so much about the roads and signage in Tahiti.by throwway120385
3/5/2026 at 2:13:39 PM
German here. Some of it I can agree with. The traffic light though is very simple. Yellow means “it was green and will turn red”. Red+yellow means “it was red and will turn green”.It’s this way in the entire country. There are many things I can get upset with in Germany (I moved abroad 10y ago and have an outsider’s perspective by now) but the traffic light example to me just indicates you didn’t ask why certain things were the way they were.
by earthnail
3/5/2026 at 8:54:36 PM
After reading some parts of this thread, all I can recommend is the following: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/539867-never-argue-with-an-...(I'm sure there are various German things to criticize or to make fun of. Much of what I read here, however, says more about the (US?!) authors, though.)
by pino83
3/5/2026 at 3:23:04 PM
"The traffic light though is very simple. Yellow means “it was green and will turn red”. Red+yellow means “it was red and will turn green”."That was not the point, that's the standard way the lights will work.
The point is that sometimes you have a light combination where actual light post only has yellow/red for example (no green light). Sometimes you have a light post that has red only (on, off).
by samiv
3/5/2026 at 2:50:51 PM
It’s so German to blame the user!by dogemaster2025
3/5/2026 at 7:32:38 AM
> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users -- weird little user-hostile features pop up everywhereI drive a German car, all be it one from 2015, I don’t recognise this statement at all.
I find it quite well designed.
This sounds more like over generalised FUD to me.
by Lio
3/5/2026 at 7:55:43 AM
I agree. Parent comment is making extremely generalized statements, about German cars with overconfidence. There’s not a single “German” car, it’s a huge ecosystem of brands like VW (Audi, Porsche), BMW, Mercedes. I’m quite sure they don’t have the single “user-hostile” interface.by gregorygoc
3/5/2026 at 12:11:09 PM
They all look the same, e.g. like sh*t IMO, so although the above statement sounds overgeneralized it doesn't meant that it doesn't generalize well. IME it does.by menaerus
3/5/2026 at 3:36:08 PM
My experience is totally to the contrary. That American software is overpromoted crap - see you there Salesforce.I have an (admittedly) older BMW. It just works. At first I thought that the cruise control lever is worse than buttons on the weel. After spending a lot of time in the car - no it isn't, it's much better.
by wwosik
3/5/2026 at 5:54:37 PM
I’ve rented many different brands and the BMW interface is by far the best and quite consistent across generations. It hasn’t changed all that much since early 2000s. What exactly do you think was “user-hostile”? If you want to see bad UI/UX, try a Range Rover. Unfortunately all brands collectively (even BMW) have taken a step back with the latest generation of cars and the touch-screen-all-the-things craze.by raspasov
3/5/2026 at 2:04:40 PM
I have a engineer relative who worked for German companies for 20 years in the US and Europe: "You can tell a German nothing."(He loved his time there and the people of course).
by FeloniousHam
3/5/2026 at 11:12:08 AM
> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end usersPerhaps they were built for engineers designing the car not for the actual people repairing or maintaining them - they are notorious for requiring a cascade of disassembly for repairs of simple components, require specialist tools, overengineering of components etc.
by omega3
3/5/2026 at 5:02:42 PM
I don't know about culture in German companies, but my experience with end-user products is the opposite of yours.I used to have a 2005 c-class mercedes, and that was a great car. Everything was well thought-out and had some very nice touches I didn't even know I needed and haven't seen in any other car my dad has had since then. It was very reliable and even had a recall some 3 years ago for a minor issue with the sunroof – which didn't manifest in my specific car.
I also have a Siemens dishwasher that is absolutely great. It has direct buttons on the front for direct selection of the different washing cycles it has, plus delayed start, extra rinse, and half load. It has an app, but you'd never know if you didn't read the manual – everything is accessible through the front panel and intelligible icons. The drawers are adjustable with the latches you need to pull on falling right under your fingers when you hold them.
In contrast, my LG washer + dryer is much more of a PITA to operate, with indicators that don't fall in front of the labels. I have to count the programs and the wheel clicks just to be sure which one is actually selected, even though I've had it for two years now. The thing doesn't even have a dedicated spin cycle! You can only select it as part of some other, larger cycle, or by using the app to upload a "custom" program. But without the app, there's no way of knowing what the currently loaded 'custom' program does until you actually start it.
by vladvasiliu
3/5/2026 at 11:15:05 AM
[dead]by bikesharing
3/5/2026 at 12:35:34 PM
> has an integration with SAPThere is your problem right there. A family member worked for a large German company which used in-house developed software for exchanging and preparing lab reports for customers. The software worked well since the 90ies, was perfectly tailored to the company, and the people writing it were in the same building and could ship bug fixes within hours. Everyone was happy. Around 2015, someone in management had the idea to move the entire process to a customized off-the-shelf SAP product because of <buzzwords>. The software engineers were in effect degraded to administrators. The new system missed so many edge cases of the lab process that they had to fall back to pen, paper and phone. Customer complaints and employee turnover started to skyrocket immediately afterwards.
by lqet
3/5/2026 at 12:56:31 PM
But did the manager get promoted?by onlyrealcuzzo
3/5/2026 at 10:13:18 AM
I worked with several multinationals, and the Germans always had very complex processes, but cannot at all confirm that they were the least digitised. The Americans were always behind in integrations (lots of file-based stuff), using outdated software, etc. I think the US has this problem that in Germany working for a bigger company is attracting talent, vs. the US where the talent goes to tech, while the rest is really far behind, i.e., Fortune500.by _glass
3/5/2026 at 10:23:11 AM
Germany is desperately wishing for a wonder weapon that will help them catch up and overtake other nations technologically. They constantly talk about smart cities and AI pie-in-the-sky projects while their administration is paper-based, risk-averse and parsimonious. They would not recognise not use such a breakthrough solution if it was handed to them.Berlin's Chief Digitalization Officer's Twitter account was pure black comedy, until he was replaced by someone who - to my knowledge - has been AWOL for years.
by nicbou
3/5/2026 at 1:28:00 AM
This describes large companies everywhereI encountered oil wells essentially controlled by post-it notes passed around an office.
by estearum
3/5/2026 at 1:29:57 AM
Maybe they found the PostIt notes worked better than whatever software they tried.by jimbokun
3/5/2026 at 3:05:03 AM
Many such casesby estearum
3/5/2026 at 4:18:32 AM
I distinctly remember reading that the entire bill of materials for building a Boeing 747 was managed in Excel. I have not been able to find that claim since then but it was so amazing to me that I remember it.It doesn't really make sense as I think about it now, because the 747 design predates Excel by many years so maybe it was BS.
by SoftTalker
3/5/2026 at 5:01:13 AM
Assume that later models of the 747 were managed in Excel. No trolling: What is wrong with that? You can write insanely powerful software using (1) formulas on the sheet (which are essentially functional programming) and (2) imperative logic in VBA (HTTP calls, database calls, file system, etc.). For years, I used this model and wrote pretty powerful software. Sometimes, I miss it for the encapsulated system. These days, in "biz dev" (internal software), it seems like the Excel model was replaced with an Electron front-end (HTML/CSS/JS) with Java back-end.by throwaway2037
3/5/2026 at 3:04:20 PM
> No trolling: What is wrong with that?Because you can't define a named custom formula by composing the built-ins. So every cell is just the same copy-pasted formula string. When you need to change something, you have to change it everywhere and pray that you didn't miss one usage.
I can't count how many times I found a bug in a spreadsheet because someone (who might be me) missed one or two instances.
by labcomputer
3/5/2026 at 6:19:40 AM
There's nothing particularly wrong with it, Excel works great. But almost any complex Excel file is riddled with obscure bugs and the nature of the tool makes it impractical to apply some of the most effective quality control techniques. Like you can't easily do code reviews or write an automated test suite.by nradov
3/5/2026 at 10:04:33 AM
I suspect the average excel spreadsheet has fewer bugs than the average custom in-house enterprise softwareby yen223
3/5/2026 at 6:25:57 AM
I second this! Excel is a front end everybody knows and everybody can run. I always got laughed at when I say the biggest competitor of small apps (things like gym diary, meal planner etc.) is excel. Now that it even support python…by SvenL
3/5/2026 at 4:07:19 PM
Investment banks were running complex trading books in Excel well into this century. Insanely powerful software.by FabHK
3/5/2026 at 3:23:04 PM
That reminds me.I worked for a company where we punched in using an iButton (it's a pretty neat 1-wire thing that fits on a key chain).
The punch clock system was logged and then at the end of the month, they printed out a single A4 sheet for every employee for us to make corrections and sign. Of course, someone had the unenviable job of going over all those and applying the corrections.
We also had to write down hours spent on different projects in a completely different system that wasn't at all integrated with the punch clock system.
At some point in the last couple of years that I worked there, they switched to Workday. That was not an improvement.
by any1
3/5/2026 at 8:26:19 PM
Wow, how is that an improvement over something like timeclock.kiwi?by loic-joachim
3/5/2026 at 1:30:06 PM
In many cases in Germany "digitalization" means there's a PDF which you can download, print, fill out sign and scan and send copy of.by samiv
3/5/2026 at 1:56:54 PM
Then wait for the one person in the org that deals with those documents to come back from their 3 week vacation.by dizhn
3/5/2026 at 12:07:49 PM
> I get reminded that they still use pen and pencil in production environments to log data,That's the fundamental reason they're using humanoid robots - industrial robots have a hard time holding pencils.
by Xylakant
3/5/2026 at 12:11:45 AM
I've seen worse. For 2 years I received the results weekly, that I didn't ask for, of a $1m a year burn reporting stack. This was launched during a massive back patting ceremony like something out of Severance.So one day I stared at it randomly and noticed that the pie chart percentages on one thing didn't even add up to 100. Looked back at history and it turned out this had been the case since day one. Spent a day taking it to bits and a good 50% of it made no sense at all and people had been making business decisions on it without checking it.
And to remediate it? They replaced it with some AI generated slop which is even worse.
by dgxyz
3/5/2026 at 1:39:16 AM
It's always funny when HN users comment that there are no more opportunities for startups and it's too hard to compete against large, wealthy corporations. The reality is that most of them are so badly managed that competing against them is easy if you're actually competent.by nradov
3/5/2026 at 5:08:48 AM
> The reality is that most of them are so badly managed that competing against them is easy if you're actually competent.The world is a graveyard littered with startups that thought this way. One of the consequences of wealth concentration and monopolies is that it is insufficient to be better than your competitors because your customers are also incompetent. To find product-market fit you not only have to be better, you have to be noticed by someone that cares that you're better and upon reflection confirms you solve a valuable problem.
By way of analogy, it's not enough to realize that MouseCorp makes shitty mousetraps and the local village spends $1M/yr on them. You can make a better mousetrap thinking its worth $1M/yr, or do the deeper look and realize the local village doesn't have a mouse problem but rather has a problem with too many feral cats, and has no interest in buying better mousetraps and once their attention is gained simply stops buying mousetraps altogether. Both parties lacked competence, but that didn't mean there was a market.
by tristor
3/5/2026 at 5:48:38 AM
Right, so don't waste time trying to sell low-margin products to local governments. As the saying goes: it's like trying to shear a pig, too much squealing and not enough wool.by nradov
3/5/2026 at 5:51:42 AM
> The world is a graveyard littered with startups that thought this way. One of the consequences of wealth concentration and monopolies is that it is insufficient to be better than your competitors because your customers are also incompetent.It's less that and more that governments and bureaucrats are corrupted to create barriers tot the market and to turn a blind eye to anti competitive behavior and outright illegal practices. For example huge banking corporations have been caught laundering money for drug cartels and got away with fines -- if your fintech startup tried that on, you would never see the outside of a prison cell.
by stinkbeetle
3/5/2026 at 12:57:35 PM
> For example huge banking corporations have been caught laundering money for drug cartels and got away with fines -- if your fintech startup tried that on, you would never see the outside of a prison cell.German bank N26 was embroiled in money laundering, scams and other issues stemming from bad KYC for years, and all they got was a slap on the wrist from regulators.
by mschuster91
3/5/2026 at 12:17:25 AM
I have seen this way to often in other areas. That is the push here as well AI can sort through it. Too many people are held to account for not meeting what amounts to made up numbers.by fires10
3/5/2026 at 1:46:56 AM
Someone intentionally doesn't want those numbers seen or applied.by functionmouse
3/4/2026 at 11:45:10 PM
They make connecting SAP so difficult... this is the only wayby kingjimmy
3/4/2026 at 11:56:23 PM
It's not how it works. You suppose to contract a consulting company that contracts some offshore company to connect you to SAP.by paffdragon
3/5/2026 at 7:45:29 AM
But you can't just hire one, you have to hire functional consultants (who tell you your flow is wrong and you have to adjust that to how SAP does things) and then implementation consultants who don't know how the process works, but can actually implement that integration. And then again after the next release because the integration broke.by isbvhodnvemrwvn
3/5/2026 at 7:07:55 AM
And the customer being cheap doesn't pay for the proper modules and thus everything gets mapped to PSP elements -- to keep the same old garbage piles that get pushed around.by GuestFAUniverse
3/5/2026 at 1:32:00 AM
I wonder if it’s cheaper to just have an AI write the parts of SAP you actually need.by jimbokun
3/5/2026 at 2:37:48 AM
if the AI is a certified SAP consultant, sure. But then it would probably cost you $20K/month in subscription.by xarope
3/5/2026 at 2:13:46 PM
> Someone else downloads it as an xls and manually writes (not copy pastes) the numbers into a power point presentation and makes graphs by drawing shapes. This is then presented at some bi-monthly meeting.I made an app that fixes this part of the problem. The rest is cultural.
by airstrike
3/4/2026 at 11:28:01 PM
That might actually describe a pretty good implementation of an interface to SAP.I think pencil is more efficient than SAP.
by FrustratedMonky
3/4/2026 at 11:48:04 PM
I agree and it's quite resilient to digital outages/downtime (at least in terms of hours, probably not more than a few days) so your manufacturing productivity won't drop to zero when the ERP system goes down. The paper logs can also be entered later when the system comes back up.As we've seen in the Iran conflict, datacenters are a target and result in extended outages.
by hypeatei
3/5/2026 at 7:33:29 AM
I remember a few years ago hearing that SAP stood for Stop All Productionby jimnotgym
3/5/2026 at 12:55:27 PM
Sanduhr-Anzeige-Programm (hourglass display program)by RGamma
3/4/2026 at 11:52:37 PM
true absolute dogshit softwareby fHr
3/5/2026 at 12:24:41 AM
that's a featureby nom
3/5/2026 at 7:50:53 AM
They are improving, though, given the international pressures. I've seen it at least in the organisation I am working (a university hospital).by kensai
3/5/2026 at 7:50:26 AM
Or even more likely gets emailed around daily to a bunch of people, half of which don't work there anymore, most of which don't read it, and one that is looking to haul people over the coals over a KPI that is against the companies best interests, but is powerful enough to command this wasting of timeby jimnotgym
3/5/2026 at 10:28:41 AM
I've only seen pen and paper at work in connection with things where real paper signed with actual pens was required by law in such unambiguous terms that nobody felt like taking the risk of PDFs or a boolean database column. So, less than once per year. I've never printed anything for work and I'm not really sure how I would correctly print something. I think there is one printer in my branch office, somewhere?I haven't seen any production process in automotive involve hand-written paper and I doubt it exists. Automotive supply chains have always been under massive cost pressure and therefore were always at the forefront of the most deeply digitized and automated supply chains.
by formerly_proven
3/5/2026 at 12:26:19 AM
> I wish I was making this stuff up.Lmao. Yes it's a pretty good summary of what happens in the corporate world, and not only in Germany.
by drnick1
3/5/2026 at 12:25:26 PM
> someone downloads an xls file and uploads it to TableauSometimes this is because of red tape and not because of software. I’ve run into many situations where you can log into the system and download a spreadsheet from the web interface, but the equivalent API hasn’t been configured (or has been deliberately disabled).
by mr_toad
3/5/2026 at 1:05:04 AM
SAP is truly terrible.by KnuthIsGod
3/5/2026 at 7:30:44 AM
Well....Before you say SAP is terrible, have you tried the competition?
It has some data entry screens that are super efficient, cursor always goes to the right place, tab moves you to the right place etc. 15 years and lots of ERPs later I have never seen better
When you are viewing a purchase invoice on the ledger you can see the PO it is matched to, click on it and it goes to the PO. Click a line on the PO you can see the GRNs related. Click on them you go to the actual GRNs
Oracle ERP can't do any of that.
by jimnotgym
3/5/2026 at 10:19:41 AM
SAP is much better than the home-grown stuff Tesla, Space X, or Amazon are using. One needs to compare the "new" public cloud solution, rather than the outdated soon not supported ECC system.by _glass
3/5/2026 at 10:36:43 AM
SAP is just a skeleton and a library. How processes are implemented on it depends on the company consulting and adapting it to the business using it.A merge between Palantir and SAP would dominate the market in a way there wouldn’t be any competitor left.
by tirant
3/4/2026 at 11:37:17 PM
[dead]by monero-xmr