<story><title>Germany Tries to Catch Up with Startup World</title><url>http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/germany-tries-to-catch-up-with-startup-world-a-1140130.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cntlzw</author><text>My time to shine. Where shall I start? First of all there is mentality. In Germany people kinda expect you to get a job and push through with it until you go to pension. Changing jobs a lot is often seen as a personal failure. That poor accountant that hates his job and gets paid because he just sits in the same stinky office day by day gets more honoured than anyone trying to change.&lt;p&gt;People here get judged if they start a business and fail. If you are successful then fine. If not, people don&amp;#x27;t give you credit. Personally I rate the person higher that tries several times, falls, gets up and starts over. Unfortunately that is not the case.&lt;p&gt;Nice example if you are from the USA. Over there it is more socially accepted to get married and divorced often than not at all. In Germany it is quite the opposite. You can&amp;#x27;t even make a failure in private how could you do that in business?&lt;p&gt;Many business here have roots and are decades old. That whole &amp;quot;Mittelschicht&amp;quot; is build on family owned business. That is actually a good thing and probably one of the reasons the economy in Germany is so efficient, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t give anyone the incentive to start something.&lt;p&gt;And don&amp;#x27;t forget Germany is all about bureaucracy. Lots of paperwork and money just to get a GmbH. And a GmbH is what you need to gain trust from other companies.&lt;p&gt;Sorry, there is so much to it. Hopefully there will be some change in attitude. It is already happening.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheAdamAndChe</author><text>I personally hope there won&amp;#x27;t be a change in attitude. The work culture in America is toxic for the workers, requiring job hopping, long hours, and relatively little gain. There&amp;#x27;s very little long-term stability, and no assurance that their jobs won&amp;#x27;t eventually be outsourced. Why would Germans want to adopt that culture? Why should they praise failure? Why should they change bureaucracy to favor the capital owners over the workers?</text></comment>
<story><title>Germany Tries to Catch Up with Startup World</title><url>http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/germany-tries-to-catch-up-with-startup-world-a-1140130.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cntlzw</author><text>My time to shine. Where shall I start? First of all there is mentality. In Germany people kinda expect you to get a job and push through with it until you go to pension. Changing jobs a lot is often seen as a personal failure. That poor accountant that hates his job and gets paid because he just sits in the same stinky office day by day gets more honoured than anyone trying to change.&lt;p&gt;People here get judged if they start a business and fail. If you are successful then fine. If not, people don&amp;#x27;t give you credit. Personally I rate the person higher that tries several times, falls, gets up and starts over. Unfortunately that is not the case.&lt;p&gt;Nice example if you are from the USA. Over there it is more socially accepted to get married and divorced often than not at all. In Germany it is quite the opposite. You can&amp;#x27;t even make a failure in private how could you do that in business?&lt;p&gt;Many business here have roots and are decades old. That whole &amp;quot;Mittelschicht&amp;quot; is build on family owned business. That is actually a good thing and probably one of the reasons the economy in Germany is so efficient, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t give anyone the incentive to start something.&lt;p&gt;And don&amp;#x27;t forget Germany is all about bureaucracy. Lots of paperwork and money just to get a GmbH. And a GmbH is what you need to gain trust from other companies.&lt;p&gt;Sorry, there is so much to it. Hopefully there will be some change in attitude. It is already happening.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>harryf</author><text>The other fun part is getting your office connected to the Internet - Deutsche Telekom will happily take 5 weeks to respond to what should be their most simplest of requests</text></comment>