[wenc]

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).

[pcurve]

"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.

[joe_mamba]

>how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals

I 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.

[RGamma]

~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...

[twoodfin]

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.

[logicchains]

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.

[joe_mamba]

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.

[petre]

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.

[specialist]

> blow your brains of how cheap

Yes 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.

[Gravityloss]

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.

[neuralRiot]

I work on German cars on a daily basis, the “online diagnostic” of one of the top brands runs on a sort of remote desktop fashion complete with windows boot screen, I don’t need to tell you that speed is not one of its main features.

[petre]

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.

[stephencanon]

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.

[0x000xca0xfe]

     I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

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 anymore. They just want to keep the system running until retirement.

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.

[collingreen]

> there is nothing we can do

The 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.

[cucumber3732842]

>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 anymore

However 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).

[dogemaster2025]

Certain liberal cities are the “East US.”

[realo]

Do you mean places like Kansas? Very clearly becoming "East US" : https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5728969/kansas-revokes-...

[dogemaster2025]

Actually Kansas is doing the opposite of East Germany.

East Germany introduced the Transsexuellengesetz in 1980, which allowed people to change their first name or gender, as long as they provided, among other things, two psychiatric evaluations to ensure the condition was permanent, and not some decision driven by some temporary influence or fashion, but a full diagnosis of transsexualismus.

[Throaway1985123]

True, Minneapolis had the USA Stasi deployed there!

[collingreen]

Which certain ones and in which way are they like the east Germany mentioned?

Or is this just lazy bigotslop?

[dogemaster2025]

The socialist ones, which were like east Germany because they are socialist.

[wholinator2]

What do you mean?

[OKRainbowKid]

That's my impression as well. The future is being sold for the present.

[joe_mamba]

>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.

[Bombthecat]

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.

[shafyy]

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.

[ivan_gammel]

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.

[kuerbel]

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.

[ivan_gammel]

> 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?

[shafyy]

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.

[markbravo0312]

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.”

[throwway120385]

Or a lot of smaller sacrifices by a large group of people.

[joe_mamba]

>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.

[petre]

> As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.

Spend your money elsewhere, perhaps?

[expedition32]

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.

[brummm]

Skoda is owned by VW

[Bombthecat]

For me, it feels like Skoda is the old VW...

[jarek83]

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.

[speeder]

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.

[piquadrat]

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...

[speeder]

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).

[pcurve]

agreed. IMHO, last good BMWs were E90 and F10s. That's when they still cared about craftsmanship even in areas not visible to customers.

[tirant]

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.

[stephencanon]

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.

[analog31]

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.

[servo_sausage]

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.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

I think Germany got infected by the shareholder value and privatization virus but doesn't really understand it.

[notTooFarGone]

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.

[RobRivera]

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.

[Geof25]

> 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.

[bob1029]

I've learned my lesson about German engineering after buying one of their vacuum cleaners. The ergonomics of the machine seem bad on purpose.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Anecdotally, I disagree. The ergonomics on my Miele are very good. It is clear that attention was paid to many details of using it.

[marceldegraaf]

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.

[ido]

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.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

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.

[rasz]

> I was amazed how well designed and ergonomic the inside of the machine is

Now do an alternator on a VAG car :)

[marceldegraaf]

It was a compliment to Miele in particular, not to all of German engineering ever ;-)

[aix1]

I have a Metabo vacuum (ASA 30 H PC) and absolutely love it. What's bad about the ergonomics of yours?

[bob1029]

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.

[nicbou]

Not just tanks but the entire economy and railways in the same time period.

[Lio]

> 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 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.

[gregorygoc]

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.

[menaerus]

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.

[samiv]

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.

[aeyes]

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.

[mft_]

With respect, you’ve given the typical German response to virtually any outsider’s criticism anything German: no, it’s simple, you’re just not doing/understanding it correctly, just learn a, b and c, and then do d, e, f and g.

(Except Deutsche Bahn; no-one argues at criticism there. It’s quite refreshing!)

[samiv]

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.

[bombela]

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.

[throwway120385]

That explains so much about the roads and signage in Tahiti.

[0xffff2]

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.

[earthnail]

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.

[samiv]

"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).

[shizzor]

I have never seen those anywhere in Germany. Are you sure you are talking about traffic lights?

[pino83]

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.)

[dogemaster2025]

It’s so German to blame the user!

[wwosik]

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.

[FeloniousHam]

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).

[raspasov]

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.

[omega3]

> if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users

Perhaps 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.

[vladvasiliu]

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.