The reason is sadly, the culture is very reserved and cautious, so as an "outsider" it's going to take A LONG time before you can be trusted in a senior/leadership position (no matter how good your German language skills are).
The good part, from my experience the people here are great, friendly, and yeh it takes time to get to know them but it pays off in the long run. But professionally... it's complicated.
So while people come here, work and stay for a few years, they're going to leave when they realise that despite their best efforts, they need to do 10x more than someone who is simply "a native" to the country (or... you'll stay in a position and just rot until you move on).
And this sadly affects applications for jobs (a photo is pretty much required which would be considered illegal in other countries like the UK), apply for apartments (which country is your last name from... automatic rejection), just to mention a few key cases that really affect immigration.
i've lived+worked in 4 different countries on 3 continents and i think you always have to expect to adjust to the culture, it's not going to change for you, nor should it. But if you want to progress professionally (and Germany NEEDS tech-imports, the tech culture here is a disaster, it's embarrassing) you're going to have to promote these people into high positions, not just view them as "cheaper labour".
And with the offer of DE citizenship where you're not giving up your birth citizenship, most people will take it, and move somewhere else in EU with a shiney new DE passport.
So for most middle-class families, the work grind will continue for the rest of their life, until retirement (if it even exists by then), without anything to show for it (owning the place you live in). How are people even going to be able to pay for their rent between retirement (67 years old) and assisted living (+75 years old)?
A small town where I've lived was very much like its neighbours, but one particular neigbour was different in two clearly visible ways: ① there were (still are) more rich people in that neighbour and ② it was much easier to get financing for starting and growing companies in that neighbour.
But even as an Englishman, it was very different to home. I remember the supermarket was shut all Sunday and was only open until 12 on the Saturday, and it shut early in the week too (at like 5pm or 6pm or something?) so by the time I'd got the train back home from work it was already closed. I had to get up early every Saturday just to make sure I could get the shopping done.
I remember once I waved at my neighbours who were sitting eating in a common garden area and they acted super confused that I would wave to them.
It didn't seem like an especially friendly place and there were so many rules about everything too, like just being able to take the rubbish or recycling out you had specific days and times.
Really, it's just what you are accustomed with.
Stores closing on Sunday is a good thing I think, it makes it easier for families to have a day together and kind of resets the week. On Saturdays they are also open until 8pm, some even until 10pm or so.
>I remember once I waved at my neighbours who were sitting eating in a common garden area and they acted super confused that I would wave to them.
You need to yell "Moin" very loudly. If you are in Southern Germany, you need to yell "MOIN" twice as loud to establish dominance.
When I moved back to Italy I had forgotten that shops close between 13 and 15:30. Every country has their own little quirks
There were some weird exceptions to the rule, too; in particular you could buy alcohol on trains.
I kinda miss the old Good Friday laws, it made it a great day for parties as all the pubs were closed.
I think things have improved a little bit over the past few years – one large retail park near us advertises "late opening" (7 pm! ha!) on Thursdays — but it's still difficult to run errands during the week. I don't understand why it makes sense economically to only have your store open when no one with a 9-5 job can shop there.
If it were the Anglosphere that had very restrictive laws about store hours/days of operation, and Germany/Austria with pretty much unlimited hours, this would be the #1 topic brought up in any online discussion whatsoever about the US/UK/etc. But because of DACH's smaller cultural visibility, it isn't brought up nearly so often in actuality.
First, things are bad: trains are getting worse every year, the highways are in disrepair (ask me about Bonn!), overloaded doctors, impossibly slow bureaucracy, economic crisis, growing inequality, housing crisis, and so on. If you're a fresh immigrant who cannot find a job in an economic crisis (aka "most of them") you may very well wonder why staying here alone when you could be just as unemployed near your family.
Second: I won't say that Germany is xenophobic (not even all AfD voters) but I will say it's unfriendly. Work example: I've worked in multiple places in German without language issues, and yet many jobs automatically disqualify me because they ask for "minimum C2", a rank I don't have and one that many native Germans wouldn't achieve either. Add less chances to make a social circle, inflexibility, not great weather, and a government that's constantly calling you lazy and entitled, and that's how you get depressed.
The sad part is, Germany has all the pieces to be a great place to live that, for some reason, has decided to dismantle them all one by one.
I sometimes wonder if the digestion of East-Germany hasn't somehow hurt a post-war rejuvenated Western&Southern German spirit.
Maybe it's just post-traumatic-stress from the Russian occupation still lingering: 1989 is not that far, generations-wise.
There is hope still... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT7MCko43YqeZ1x55O1DRtw
Any minute now those millions of doctors, lawyers, and engineers from the MENA countries that flooded Germany the past decade will fix all that! Any minute!
And with Alternative für Deutschland / AfD rising rapidly, this is only going to get much, much worse.
https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/70478/study-finds-racis...
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/germany-...
I don't think it's just the Germans and there's definitely an additional factor at play.
But it was the foundation for sociopolitical racism, so if the concept of race guides your thinking about people's characteristics, especially their non-physical characteristics, you are at least somewhat in danger of racist thinking.
Races exist at the biological level. I'm surprised this is even contested. IDK what makes you think white person is different from a black person? Is it vibes? Even a kid knows that a white person has different DNA.
You are talking about sociopolitical race discrimination and suggesting it has absolute, immutable biological mappings. It does not. This actually is quite close to real racism.
Will you suggest I'm sexist because I think male and female gender exists?
The semantics I am referring to are the suggestion that "white" and "black" exist as races on a genetic level.
The example I am introducing is to test the understanding behind that suggestion.
Race on the other hand, does not neatly cluster into discreet categories that any responsible person would define, draw boundaries around and count. Furthermore, race has not remained stable over recorded history. Populations mix, join and split. Which race were the Old Kingdom Egyptians? Our modern notions of Asian, Caucasian, etc. probably did not even exist during their era.
Categories are not fixed between cultures, even colours and numbers are hard to get right. So when you hear a word you can not be clear it is used in your broad meaning, or the narrow meaning.
This was actually my favourite way of nerd sniping back when I was young.
race as a cultural / social concept does exist though, and that biology certainly correlates to an extent due to geography and how human society has traditionally functioned.
I.e, the cornish are a race, falling under celtic, which originate from Iberia, but is there a modern biological difference to their surrounding English people? Are they more biologically similar to the modern people inhabiting the Iberian peninsula or those in Kent? And even then, are they really all thatthat biologically different from the modern spanish anyways?
Proof? What do you think the people were asked in the survey? Normal people use race in the normal way. I think white people exist. I think black people exist. Everyone knows this - I don't need any academic to prove me wrong.
And I don't think it makes me racist when some one asks me "are there different human races" and I answer "yes".
White people were only white if they could show bloodlines reaching back generations. One jewish great-grandfather would make you intelligible for the Arian race. They would laugh at your notion of white vs black.
So while you might not be racist for thinking so, you're at best misinformed.
Duello, T. M., Rivedal, S., Wickland, C., & Weller, A. (2021). Race and genetics versus ‘race’ in genetics. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 9(1), 232–245. https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoab018
Herd, P., Mills, M. C., & Dowd, J. B. (2021). Reconstructing Sociogenomics Research: Dismantling Biological Race and Genetic Essentialism Narratives. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 62(3), 419–435. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465211018682
Hunt, L. M., & Megyesi, M. S. (2008). Genes, race and research ethics: who’s minding the store? Journal of Medical Ethics, 34(7), 495–500. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2007.021295
Lujan, H. L., & DiCarlo, S. E. (2024). Misunderstanding of race as biology has deep negative biological and social consequences. Experimental Physiology, 109(8), 1240–1243. https://doi.org/10.1113/ep091491
But we don't need to be specialists in population genetics to observe that human cultures interbreed. We can't reliably correlate visible biomarkers with genetic origin, especially in contemporary multicultural societies or any of the places where numerous land invasions over thousands of years have ensured continual group mixing. For example Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, Mongolian steppe etc. My nephew is half 'Irish', half 'Indian'. But what does that mean exactly? His ancestry is likely to contain contributions from hundreds of subgroups and linguistic populations across South East India, as well as Ireland and the UK more broadly. Visibly he looks 'Indian', but what does that mean for a determinant of race?
These concepts were engineered in the colonial era. Only the names have changed. In college my friends and I picked up a cut price set of colonial era British encyclopedia. They had lots to say on racial groups, with detailed descriptions of the personality types, intelligence and appearance of groups like 'negroids' and 'hibernians'. Of course none of this was based on what we'd today term scientific reasoning or measurement - and yet the conclusions and stereotypes persist in our culture. Irrespective of powerful counterexamples demonstrating that culture and economics determine an enormous amount of educational and attainment potential. e.g.: Nigerian American economic success [1], the explosive boom and continual exceptional economic performance of Ireland [2], or the absurd difference in educational outcomes of countries which are ethnically homogenous but politically divided - e.g.: North and South Korea, Haiti and Dominican Republic etc.
Remember interindividual differences radically outpace intergroup differences. Which is not to suggest that highly homogenous ethnic groups (e.g.: askinazi jews, or certain West African populations) can't have significant differences in athletic ability. But such differences are on population levels much smaller than observable 'races' per say.
[1] https://medium.com/@joecarleton/why-nigerian-immigrants-are-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Tiger
The idea that race affects EXACTLY things that appear on the surface and nothing else is laughable. You need mountains of layers of cognitive dissonance to believe this. For example: different races are susceptible to different diseases. Instead of hitting tackling racism properly, you are putting fingers in your ears and shouting that race itself doesn't exist. Do you really think you can beat racism like this?
Ref your studies: You are doing the Jimmy Neutron Sodium Chloride meme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScCErU2742g
We've had four hundred years of colonialism - the idea that most people born in major cities in metropolitan hubs in the Western world are a member of one 'race' is laughable.
who is suggesting this? what do you think the people in the survey are asked? They were asked if races exist and they definitely do. White people exist and Black people exist. Normal people won't read your research papers lmao. Colloquially, races do exist and normal people should think that races do exist.
It's an extension of a much older, more insidious idea - blood purity. There are still people who would pretend to trace their own lineage back through every scholar, king, and prophet to Adam, while choosing to believe that everyone else is a mongrel line, inferior and subservient to them in some way.
Race is not pseudo science. Race is real. White people are meaningfully different from Black people. Its not bad to be different. It doesn't mean one is different from the other. You can't beat racism by claiming race itself is not real!
In the US the term "race" always refers to the social construct. The german word "Rasse" did not undergo that same change in meaning. Even the most extreme right wing in Germany, the most openly racist people you can find would not dare to use that word in this manner in public. This is far more offensive than using the n-word.
So having germans agree to such statements especially so many is genuinely quite shocking.
Also I think given the context you know how people mean these words. But all I see is wild jumping on some words without much context all the time.
Mountains of layers of cognitive dissonance are needed to believe this. Race is absolutely biological. To think otherwise is fooling oneself. You are doing a disservice to combating racism by negating the existence of race itself. Do you really think racism will just go away by suggesting black people and white people are exactly the same internally? Get real man.
They just aren't.
So it feel a bit more complicated than "germans are racist, BAD". Anecdotally I've heard that it's hard for any other nationality to do business in germany, simply because they prefer to do business with other germans. It's their country, we just need to accept those cultural differences, and their right to do as they please in their own country.
There's plenty of countries whose laws or attitudes I don't agree with, and that I just don't visit or have any ambition of staying in. China, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Chad are a few examples.
If you are not an engineer you must have an almost excellent level of local language --> an excellent level of a language is only possible if you are immersed daily over a long time and have the time to study --> to live there you need a job --> back to start
Different counties have different tolerances regarding how quick you pick up the local language. For Germany and France this tolerance is almost 0, for Netherlands it's much higher.
My theory is that in areas with lower densities of foreign nationals, you'd benefit more socially form learning the local language.
Overall sentiment is that the juice ain't worth the squeeze any more.
Back when my country became a full member of Schengen(2008) the ratio of GDP per capita between Germany and us was around 3.3x - salaries were roughly proportionally higher, so just about any job was worth moving there and potentially going through the hoops required to establish a permanent residence.
Earlier, especially throughout the 90s that ratio didn't go below 5, so a sizeable number of people attempted to move to Germany by any means possible.
Currently it hovers at around 2.1x and most of the discrepancy in salaries is focused on the trades.
A specialist from Poland typically doesn't have access to higher tier salaries, so they don't really enjoy a different quality of life than at home, so they have no reason to move.
This sounds like a personal issue. Is Germany at fault here?
Sounds more like systemic prejudice than "OP lacks social skills".
Let me start with the wonderful things: Public transportation is nice, at least compared to the U.S. I like the shared sense of responsibility that Germans have with things like recycling. The directness is quite nice, in the U.S I often had to question if someone was being genuine or not, and that is not really a problem here. If you're into various hobbies, clubs, etc., Germany has really incredible communities and clubs for so many things, and they're very organized about this, it's quite nice. The nature is great, and I've really enjoyed exploring different areas.
As for the negatives, it's clear in Germany that you're looking at buying into their system, for life so to speak. You don't find yourself getting equity, trading stocks, buying a home, etc. You generally are expected to work, keep your head down, and hopefully acquire an apartment where the rent won't increase while you support the social system (for the record, I am more than okay with paying my share, but I was shocked at the difference in take home pay, and particularly how it feels compared to the U.S). Buying a home is likely not going to be in the cards for most, and there is so much paperwork, painful and expensive driving courses, and strange decisions as well with starting your own business. I have for instance a few projects where I could be taking revenue, but I specifically am not as it would make my visa situation more complicated, and am instead waiting for a year or two.
Germany is really not a convenience culture, I consistently find myself exhausted. This might sound stupid, but in the U.S, I can simply hop in a car and grab a reasonably healthy Chipotle bowl or similar, get enough protein and vegetables, etc. In Germany, there really are not so many places for quick food to grab, in general the food is actually quite poor, I don't find myself eating out at all.
Additionally, the language is brutal, it's hard to explain just how exhausting it is to learn while you're working full time. I have probably spent ~600 hours practicing yet I am still only about an A2 speaking level, with my understanding generally being a bit higher.
All in all, I'm happy I made the switch, it's been incredibly rewarding, but it truly is exhausting. I can see how this would add up, and I often think about how easy my life might be in the United States, and I miss this easy, casual life that's been replaced for something that really expects and demands so much from me, every single day and interaction.
But I'd argue for most people getting into the car to get takeout is not very common.
That being said, I've noticed that these takeout meals tend to be pretty low quality and unhealthy and I miss this middle ground that I could lean on once or twice a week.
That is wildly false. First of all the availability of eating out options is directly influenced by where you are (e.g. in Berlin there is incredible variety of cuisines, price ranges and healthiness), and secondly almost every food or grocery you buy in Germany is of higher quality than the US equivalent.
I remember my shock when every single food item I bought in the US had sugar in it.
There also seems to be this general perception of food in the U.S being so bad, this is true for areas that are strongly lacking access, i.e inner cities, rural areas (much of the country to be fair!), but if you're in an agricultural hub in the U.S you can have absolutely incredible access to farmers markets and fresh produce. A lot of regional grocery stores have fresh sourdough and other breads similar in quality to the stuff you can find at Lidl/Aldi/Edeka.
Of course I haven't scoured the states (not even Germany for that matter), so.. :)
So what the Germans did is right, not wrong!
Racism here isn’t so severe that it leaves you with bruises, but you notice it in the little things. For example, this year I was looking for a new apartment with my partner, and when I first made contact, I used her German last name instead of my foreign one—just to be on the safe side. Whenever I do have to deal with the police—for example, because of a traffic accident or something similar—it seems like who gets blamed depends on skin color. If some guy named Hans Müller cuts me off, the police are still on his side. If I cut off someone named Achmed, strangely enough, they’re on my side. The last startup I worked for as a developer really played up its left-liberal, progressive image. Even so, the bosses were blond and blue-eyed, and the janitors were Black Africans. I could fill an entire book with impressions like these.
All the bureaucratic hurdles mentioned in the article are probably intentional. The aim is to make it difficult for foreigners to come here and stay, because these people are not wanted here. In recent years, even politicians deep within the left-liberal spectrum have touted the fact that the so-called migration problem has been brought under control. In other words, they have adopted the right-wing premise that migration itself is a problem, rather than the way migrants are treated and integrated.
The tragedy is that we’re running out of people of working age. We’re having too few children and are turning into an aging society. Over the next twenty years, this will hit us like a bus driving toward a cliff, while none of the passengers see the impending disaster. Immigration could be our salvation, but we just don’t want brown people.
At the same time, German society is tearing itself apart through policies that lack solidarity. Life is meant to be made as difficult and harsh as possible for people with average incomes. The last remnants of the welfare state are being gradually dismantled over successive legislative terms. Everything is being ruined by austerity measures. There is no longer any awareness that collective investments in education and public infrastructure are, in fact, investments that will yield a real return later on—for example, in the form of well-educated people, transportation networks that allow goods to be transported smoothly, or nationwide internet access when you need it. Instead, everything must be milked dry by the private sector, or it’s simply left to rot (or both).
Another comment here mentions that sclerotic forces are at work in Germany. I think that’s an apt description. It frustrates me immensely that society can’t pull itself together to take bold steps toward shaping a positive future. Instead, we have to watch as the country slowly withers away, while one idiot after another takes the reins of government to orchestrate the next round of bloodletting.
It's gotten to the point where I've now lost faith in democracy. Things aren't getting better—they're just getting worse and worse. And all I can do is try to position myself in my personal life in such a way that I can hopefully protect myself and a few people around me from the worst damage caused by this decline.
"it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" - unknown, often attributed to Churchill
Rah-rah democracy advocates, and patriots of countries which imagine themselves democratic, often attribute all sort of mythical virtues to democracy.
But the reality is no more than "statistically less bad than the alternatives".
These days, the by-far worst problem for most supposed democracies is the excessive financialization of wealth. A century ago, the personal fortunes of most better-off people were tied to the overall fortunes of the country, the province, the city, and the neighborhood in which they lived - giving them huge incentives to care about those collective fortunes. Vs. now, the prevailing attitude seems far closer to "when this place goes to shit, I'll just pack up and leave".
