[rmk2]

The tech sector does absolutely nothing for the unemployed or to allay the wider social problems in Berlin. The last big wave to hit Berlin was the move of parliament from Bonn, with countless media companies settling in Berlin in its wake. However, these companies also attract people from outside, these are the now (in)famous "Schwaben" coming in. Berlin is hip, and young, educated people come from all over the place (and world) to be part of it. That, however, does very little for Hellersdorf, the Märkisches Viertel, Siemensstadt etc. etc. What all of this brings is a further social divide in the city and further gentrification á la Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte.

So far, I fail to see how technology companies are going to be any different.

[walshemj]

Do German tech companies not participate in the much vaunted Apprenticeship system?

In the UK we normally think of Germany as having very good technical education that puts us to shame - for some reason does this not work in IT?

[rmk2]

They don't. The German apprenticeship system[1] requires formal certification and a coordination with Berufsschulen (trade schools). This would require a far longer existence and half-life than most startups have.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany

[Xylakant]

I know some that do. The certification is not bound to the company, but rather to a person - our designer here is certified and she could have an apprentice. The coordination is manageable, you just shouldn't expect your apprentice to be a full time employee.

[walshemj]

Why is that? has the chamber of commerce which appears to be in charge not been doing It's job and defining an apprenticeships for IT or where they to concerned with traditional engineering?

Why are not larger companies in Germany not training IT apprentices.

A start up almost by definition requires more experienced workers.

[junto]

The apprenticeships schemes are great, but very very rigid. This is fine when you are learning to become a Tischler (joiner or cabinet maker) because the techniques of joining haven't changed much in the last 100 years, so if your apprenticeship under a Meister Tischler take 5 years then the technology is still the same.

Try that with IT. Did MongoDb exist 5 years ago? Did Node.js? The list is endless.

Information Technology moves too fast for the German style and concept of apprenticeships (in my opinion). There are apprenticeships for Informatik, but I see them much like undergraduate Computer Science courses.

My experience of CS undergraduate studies are that you will learn the basic concepts, and a bunch of bullshit thrown in that you'll never use again in the workplace, but that is about it.

[walshemj]

So you do an apprenticeship to learn the basic underlying principals of the trade/profession not to get taught by rote the latest new shiny thing (tm).

Having more people who have been taught properly from first principals rather than only learning the latest trendy thing woudl be a very good idea! You would certainly have less of the "developers who cant program fizz buzz problems"

And I would expect a competent person to be able to pick up mongodb or nodejs even before they had finished the 4 year apprenticeship.

I started my career on the vocational track track (in mech eng) and on my second day at work they said "pop down the the company library there is a book on FORTRAN learn it"

[tbolse]

There are quite some apprenticeships in the field of IT! They are existing for quite some time now - at least for 13 years:

(sorry for caps lock - this is copy and paste) - FACHINFORMATIKER ANWENDUNGSENTWICKLUNG (software eng./dev.) - FACHINFORMATIKER SYSTEMINTEGRATION (sys. integration) - IT-SYSTEM-ELEKTRONIKER (IT technicians) - IT-SYSTEM-KAUFMANN (IT business) - INFORMATIKKAUFMANN (again IT business) - Mathematisch-technische Software-Entwickler - Informationselektroniker - Fachangestellte für Medien- und Informationsdienste - Mediengestalter Digital und Print

In conclusion: the chamber of commerce ideed did its job. If they did it very well is a question of perspecitve.

To bring this into startup context: Most very early Startups won't take apprenticeships as this is an additional workload and overhead (apprentices want to be tought...) that might not pay off in the short term. As an apprentice I would also think twice about joining a startup as one needs at least 2 1/2 years to finish the apprenticeship. (Startups might not exist that long.)

my 2 cents

[walshemj]

Wow some of those are a mouthful ;-)

But your right a startup with say 5 developers trying to develop a product in a short time scale is probably not suitable for trainees.

How how do the apprenticeships is it day release or block? 1 day a week at college and working 4 days a week is not that to much to ask from an employer? especially as apprentice's probably are paid less.

I am assuming there is a system of training levies so that the cost is born across the whole of industry - when I did mine (in mech eng) we joked that the government gave the employer more in grant subsidy for us than our actual salary.

[xenonite]

Actually these apprentices exist. ("Fachinformatiker", "Duale Hochschule")

[VMG]

Honest question, why should it be the responsibility of tech companies to solve social problems? They are in the business of solving tech problems.

[rmk2]

If you actually would like to stay in a place, perhaps it would be good if that place actually functioned? Berlin with its brilliant handling of its airport (delayed), public transport (broken), water supply (to be bought back) and famously brilliant decision making in all things concerning finance[1], pretty much doesn't. Berlin is the state with the second highest debt of all German states, just behind the notoriously broke Bremen. Another reason is Soziale Marktwirtschaft, which, actually thinks that exactly that is one of the functions of economic wealth[2].

[1]: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/bundeslaender-rank... (2011 data)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy

[Tichy]

public transport isn't that broken, I get around quite well. The water supply things seems to be mainly a battle of ideologies, again my water supply works fine atm. Presumably the tech companies will at least pay taxes and alleviate the debt. I am no specialist on that subject, but I suspect it also comes from the unique history of Berlin, not (just) financial incompetence. Problem for a long time has been that Berlin is very big, yet has no big industries.

Actually I often wonder what all the people here do for a living. I guess the main employer is the government now.

[Xylakant]

> I am no specialist on that subject, but I suspect it also comes from the unique history of Berlin, not (just) financial incompetence.

Financial incompetence and bad planning are a strong factor. West Berlin used to be subsidized before the wall fell and since nobody ever questioned the amount of money flowing here they could basically do what they wanted. After the reunion Berlins administration expected the population to grow to 5 million by the year 2000 but that growth never materialized. Still, they kept spending money like they used to.

> Problem for a long time has been that Berlin is very big, yet has no big industries.

It actually used to be the core of the german tech industry. There's whole quarters named after companies: Siemensstadt, Borsigwerke, ... and whole blocks in the city that used to be factories - Oberbaum city that used to be the Osram Lamp factories, Varta, ... A lot are now converted to office space.

> Actually I often wonder what all the people here do for a living. I guess the main employer is the government now.

Government is a strong factor. A lot of media companies moved to Berlin and a lot of service and support, especially for companies which trade a lot with eastern europe. The BASF has their whole eastern european business support in Berlin - that big tower at Warschauer Strasse. Berlin is fairly strong with biotech startups as well. No industry to speak of, though.

[rmk2]

I'll reply to you regarding public transport, but this goes for all of the other replies, as well. The repeated failures every winter and overall frailty of the network seem to be a consequence of years of mismanagement and increasingly aggressive under-funding/cost-saving/corner-cutting by the Deutsche Bahn. While this certainly does not result in immidiate widespread collapse, it is just one sign of the degradation of the underlying infrastructure. So while "broken" might be somewhat harsh, I do think that this is directly the direction we are heading.

The water supplies do work fine, the problem however is, that, much like Dresden's sale of its city-owned flats to the Gagfah (an investor), selling core infrastructure to investors risks long-term sustainability in favour of short-term profit. You might be right though that this is somewhat down to ideology.

[raverbashing]

Berlin's public transport system is probably better than 90% of systems all around the world.

London and Paris are comparable (and worse)

Cost cutting by DB? So the problems are in the S-Bahn rather than the subway/BVG?

Edit: ok I read some answers, I'll add that DB is rebuilding the bridges on Yorkstraße

[karl42]

The public transport certainly has its problems, but overall it works rather well and is far from being broken.

[Xylakant]

wait for winter and watch the s-bahn. Actually, it's not the BVG (City owned) that has major problems but the S-Bahn which belongs to the Deutsche Bahn. There was a major collapse in summer 2009(?) when the authorities realized the the S-Bahn had been saving money and cutting corners on maintenance for trains and basically compelled them to take 2/3 of their trains out of service for emergency maintenance. They still have not recovered fully, some lines are still serviced with under length trains or on a schedule that's half as often than actually planned. Whole lines getting shut down due to lack of personal or trains. Berlins public transport used to be outstanding, now it's sub-par.

[redbad]

I always wonder what basis for comparison people have when they complain about Berlin's public transport. Because, as somebody who's witnessed first-hand how it works in nearly every major metropolitan area in North America, and many across Europe and Australia, I can say without doubt that the situation in Berlin is phenomenal. A few slow or cancelled S-bahns in the dead of winter do not make a system sub-par.

[Xylakant]

It's not 'a few slow or cancelled S-Bahn'. Last winter season the system was so strained that the S-Bahn to the airport was running only every 20 minutes and was pretty much guaranteed to be either late or cancelled. So to get in time for your flight you had to leave like an hour earlier than planned. It's slowly getting better, but the last couple of winters you pretty much could not rely on the S-Bahn if you wanted to be anywhere on a specific time.

Compare it to Munich, where it's a minor scandal if one S-Bahn is like 5 minutes late. That's outstanding.

[kokotko]

how is public transport broken in berlin? it's one of the best i've ever seen (availability wise)

[_ak]

Before 2009, it was much better, especially S-Bahn, which used to have much shorter intervals. But no, S-Bahn decided to be cheap on maintenance, which ended catastrophically in 2009, and they still have to recover from that. They're still trying to get back to the old schedule, but lack the train cars resp. the people to maintain them (which they had fired).

[lumberjack]

Nobody is pleading tech companies to do anything.

People are just discussing whether substantial investment to attract tech companies is wise if the hope is that tech companies will contribute towards fixing social problems or even contribute substantially to the local economy.