[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.