Germany - The Great Mirage

I’ve been working in IT Sales or sales related roles here in Ireland for quite some time now, and one of the comments I’ve been getting quite a lot is just how backwards this country must seem to me given that I come from such a technologically advanced place as Germany. This is usually followed by stunned incredulity when I tell them about the facts on the ground, and how much of the perception of Germany is actually just a mirage. To put it bluntly, Germany’s image of a technologically advanced country is part accidental, and part carefully crafted illusion.

Now that does not mean that Germany is some backward place populated with hordes of marauding brutes, no matter how plausible that seems given your last encounters with Germans on Majorca or the Canary Islands. Germany is a world leader in many sectors, it‘s aerospace industry is second to none, as is it‘s heavy industry sector, even though the latter has shrunk considerably over the last decades. And I doubt I have to write much about the automotive sector in Germany. Just the names Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW, or Porsche say all there is to be said. However, beneath that glossy exterior lies one inescapable fact: Germany has completely slept through the digital and internet revolutions of the last twenty years, and in fact has become increasingly technophobic. In fact, the only areas of industry that seem to matter in Germany are those that belch out ludicrous amounts of noxious gases into the environment, climate change be damned. What is it with the Germans and their tendency to gas everything in sight, anyway? Borderline tasteless sarcasm aside, the fact remains that Germany seems to have a penchant for supporting the most polluting industries out there, while at the same time greenwashing them like there‘s no tomorrow. Remember that massive drop of industrial emissions in Germany in the 1990s and early 2000s? Yeah, that was not through any concerted effort, but simply due to the all-out collapse of much of the heavy industry in Eastern Germany and the Ruhr Valley.

Germany‘s reputation as a high tech powerhouse is not entirely undeserved. Companies such as Carl Zeiss demonstrate that fact.

Their products are outstanding in their field and at the leading edge of what is technically possible.

They‘re not exactly shy about showing this, which they do brilliantly in their global headquarters and company museum in Oberkochen by the way. Unfortunately, Zeiss is an exception rather than the norm.

More to the point with regards to this article, the situation is signifcantly worse with regards to IT. This is still regarded as just some passing fad amongst large parts of the population. Thing is, it is also still widespread amongst businesses as well, with many companies only having introduced computers because they had to, all the while complaining bitterly that all of it is nonsense. The same combination of ignorance and denial extends towards the reputation of those who are working in the sector. Working in the IT sector is more often than not not even considered work, and the phrase „something to do with computers“ is considered an acceptable job description for anyone from a first level support agent to server admins, IT security specialists, developers and even researchers. In fairness though, the latter case is partially understandable when you‘re dealing with someone who specialises in theoretical database structure modelling with regards to quantum computing. I had a neighbour working on that particular topic back in Germany. Still, anyone working in the IT sector can expect to be ostracised and ridiculed quite frequently.

This is even more true for anyone trying to start a business, particularly an IT business. Any type of entrepeneurialism is frowned upon and ridiculed from the start, and woe betide anyone who doesn‘t get it right the first time around. They‘re effectively discarded as lepers that should never be trusted, or even talked to again. That‘s if the person in question gets their business off the ground in the first place. Germany is notoriously bureaucratic, and supports for actual start-ups, business incubators, or co-working spaces are effectively non-existent. Not to mention that many banks won‘t touch any entepreneur who doesn‘t alrady have te backing of a large financier with a ten foot pole. As a result, most of the IT companies that are active in Germany are carbon copies of US success stories, or outright ripoff merchants such as the Samwer brothers.

Unfortunately, this ignorance extends to schools as well. It may seem utterly unbelievable, but even at the end of the second decade of the 21^st century, computer & IT classes are still not mandatory across Germany, and there are even state school systems that either don‘t have computer classes at all, or are just using outdated equipment & principles. Hell, when it comes to computer education, countries like Rwanda are likely far ahead of Germany, both with regards to equipment and qualified teachers. As such, many students are wholly unprepared for the modern IT world, leading to them bein much more infantile in their approach to matters & online conversations than comparable age groups, and also much more susceptible to online fraud, extortion, fake news campaigns, and other similarly dubious activities.

This type of ignorance has come to be reflected on those companies that do provide IT services, particularly to consumers. These are often dumbed down to the n-th degree, with only the most basic of features. If you do want to use any „advanced“ features, and this extends to mailbox capacities that exceed 250 megabytes (Yes, you read that right), or IMAP functionality, you better be prepared to pay. That being said, broadband internet is still relatively affordable. If you can get it, that is. Coverage is abysmal, and broadband providers like Vodafone or Deutsche Telekom are in no rush to extend their coverage, preferring to squeeze every bit of money they can get out of the government for minimal improvements. And no, mobile internet is not an alternative, as that is prohibitively expensive in Germany. Unlimited mobile broadband on a pay-as-you-go plan? Forget it, you can consider yourself lucky if you get more than 1GB of mobile data per top-up, and unlimited data is often not even available on top-tier data plans costing around 100€ a month.

Unless you happen to live in one of Germany‘s major cities, such as Frankfurt, decent internet access is often a gamble, with ISDN era speeds still the norm in many areas. 

With this type of pricing, you‘d think there‘d be a plethora of WiFi hotspots to take advantage of. I hate to say it, but this is Germany we‘re talking about, and if the above has taught you anything, then you should have realised by now that the country has a habit of sabotaging itself. This is particularly true for WiFi, where Germany is effectively a barren desert. Until a few years ago, a law was in place that made the providers of WiFi hotspots liable for any civil or criminal offences commited by the user of any device that was logged into the hotspot, the so-called „Störerhaftung“. This effectively made the provision of free WiFi hotspots suicidal for all but the largest companies. Even now, many smaller businesses are loathe to provide a free WiFi to their customer. Oh, and WiFi on the train or the bus? Good luck with that! Even on the few lines where Deutsche Bahn does offer WiFi, the available volume for 2^nd class passengers is 250 megabytes. Once again yes, you read that right. Want anything more? You‘ll have to pay. Contrast that with Ireland, where even the most rickety, mouldy, leaky Bus Éireann bus offers free unlimited wifi, albeit with limited bandwitdth, as does every train from the Ballina-Manula Junction „sheep shuttle“ to the prestigious cross-border „Enterprise“ services between Belfast and Dublin.

While even Irish Rail has unlimited, if speed-restricted wifi on all their trains...

...Deutsche Bahn can‘t even provide it on all of their flagship ICE services. I guess taking potshots at Greta Thunberg is a more pressing issue.

Germany‘s generally geriatric political caste and increasingly aging population don‘t help in the slightest. Over the last decade or two, the vast majority of decisionmakers on both a state and a federal level in Germany have been over 60, with many coming from rural & conservative backgrounds. For them, anything that doesn‘t conform to their existing world view, and to what they themselves perceived as advanced technology in their teens & twenties, is irrelevant child‘s play. Any efforts launched by the government in that field have been half-hearted at best, often resulting in nothing more than extremely unergonomic software and adding the prefix „cyber“ to anything that couldn‘t escape fast enough, all in a desparate attempt to keep up appearances. Even the few IT companies that do exist in Germany, such as SAP, tend to focus on sheer size and complexity over usability or cross-platform functionality.

Naturally, this willful ignorance has left the political leadership open to all types of „lobbying“ activity by private companies who have had no trouble at all in pushing successive governments in the direction that they wanted, enabling them to get their idea of legislation pushed through without much resistance at all. This dependence on lobbyists for „advice“ is one of the primary reasons for the high mobile internet costs, the poor coverage, and a legal situation that generally favours large companies over individuals, or even human rights. And as if that wasn‘t bad enough, successive Merkel governments have successfully infected Europe with this bug as well. Both the European copyright reform and anti-terror reforms have been basically dictated to the German conservatives by their private industry handlers, and then bludgeoned through by  EU commissioners & EU parliamentarians who would be considered corrupt and incompetent even by the shockingly low standards of the CDU/CSU.

All of this invariably adds up to a perfect storm of incompetence, ignorance and hubris that has left the country frozen in time over the last twenty years or so. It is this storm that any IT company attempting to sell their solutions in Germany will have to face. US companies will in addition find themselves confronted by a wall of suspicion. Part of this is due to a rising tide of anti-americanism that has been building since the early 2000s and has now reached levels unseen since the anti-Vietnam protests in the 1960s and 1970s. The other part of this is the extreme focus of German society on privacy and data protection. Even before the days of GDPR, these two fields were highly valued, with the right to privacy being constitutionally protected, and violations punishable by hefty fines or lengthy prison terms. Ever since the Snowden revelations, this has just added to the scrutiny that any US company will find itself under.

Small cities such as Speyer are where most of the economic potential of Germany is located. Unfortunately, these towns are often not just poorly connected to the internet, but also deeply sceptical of any digital initiatives.

So, while Germany is an economic powerhouse, it is by no means as advanced as some people might think. In fact, it is effectively a hostile environment for many IT companies, and ongoing social changes, including the rise of neofascist or neo-nazi parties like the AfD are likely to worsen the situation in the years to come. In the long run, it is unlikely that the mirage of Germany as a technologically advanced country will be sustainable, and eventually the veil will fall. Until then, technology companies doing business there would do well to remember that not every country is as eager to take up IT as their home may be.