[hugothefrog]

I just returned from Berlin a couple of nights ago, and met an English guy (I'm a New Zealander living in London) who'd worked there for a few years. He is an aerospace engineer working for a very famous English engineering firm in their German office.

He was of the opinion that German productivity, at least when compared with other European countries, was a myth. He told exactly the same anecdotes about German individuality as this article mentions, but gave it quite a negative spin.

When handing out bits of work to fellow engineers, the Germans would tend to put their heads down and start work immediately, instead of consulting with colleagues about previous solutions to the same problem, etc. Basically he said they did quite a lot of very efficient, very correct, very over-engineered re-inventing of the wheel.

Particularly he pointed out that to a German engineer, every part of the solution was equally important, where as to an English engineer, it was obvious some parts where more important than others. Focusing on those gave a better quality end-result when faced with a limited budget, but a German with a unlimited budget would give you an absolutely fantastic end-result.

[gaius]

The problem is that Germans have engineers, and an engineering culture and we don't (anymore). Even Aston Martins aren't made here anymore.

[hga]

R. V. Jones made a similar observation in Most Secret War (WWII) about collaboration between the operational and R&D branches. The Germans would build to spec without interaction with the requesting organization producing a fine piece of engineering whereas in the U.K. there would tend to be back and forth on the requirements and so on, with the U.K. device being less polished but more flexible and more likely to satisfy needs current and future. And I think often more quickly developed, since the R&D types would say "Well, can you relax this requirement?" and so on.

So this sounds like a long established engineering culture.

[Vivtek]

Germany is the long-established engineering culture, building on the old guild system of craftsmen. (Which still exist - the craftsmen's guilds, I mean. You aren't allowed to fix musical instruments until you've gone through your apprenticeship and journeyman's year.)

[zeemonkee]

Well, the UK was there first, with the Industrial Revolution.

It subsequently lost that lead to Germany - I don't have the link to hand, but one possible reason was the lax copyright laws in the German states allowed easier re-publication of technical manuals.

More recently British engineering ability has criminally been allowed to wither on the vine, but that's another story.

[jimbokun]

This is actually a timely piece of advice in my case, as I interact with my German managers. They might be expecting a more "go off and engineer what I asked for attitude" from me, while I'm doing more of the back and forth thing of suggesting alternative approaches with various trade offs.

Of course, they did decide to start their company here in the U.S., so they may appreciate some things about the U.S. style of doing business.

[yardie]

I guess you could look at it both ways. When building something you are only as strong as your weakest link. Closest analogy would be the "for want of a nail" in the Art of War.

And when you think of quality "German engineering" tends to get a stamp of approval. It implies that no detail was overlooked or under resourced. It probably doesn't mean much when buying a cheap toy, but if you are spending 40-80k on a car it is reassuring.

[tonf]

Germany would not be the second biggest exporter in the world if it was a myth. German approach seems to work better than English one at least in older, more established industries (cars, etc).