[hunterpayne]

Have you ever worked for a European company? You could say the exact same things about every country on the planet except the US version is probably less extreme. Also the US companies are probably more complex to run so its more visible. I once worked for a company that probably manages some of your retirement. They had a team of 50 people working on a compiler for an internal language. Not a single person on that team knew how to actually write a compiler and the executive in charge was both the most arrogant and least capable executive I have ever worked with. So the idea that this is somehow US specific is pretty absurd.

[programmertote]

I think you misunderstood my comment. What I'm saying is that the same issue can be observed in the US (i.e., it's not Germany specific).