In Greece, traditionally, we tend to consider Germany as the almost ultimate place in regards to reliability, efficiency, etc. It's a bit soothing to discover that almost everywhere everybody has the same issues (the difference in magnitude matters, of course)

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nicbou a day ago | parent | next [-]

It's a myth. Germans are methodical and risk-averse, but definitely not efficient. Things to get stuck at the precise point in time when they were over-engineered, and never move from there.

As a result, German bureaucracy tends to rely solely on paper and in-person appointments. With every state, every city, every office and every employee having their own interpretation of a procesd, you get an unpredictable, opaque, drawn out process that drives people mad.

There is a famous Asterix and Obelix scene about an office that drives people mad with bureaucracy. The protagonists are hunting for the Pass A38. This scene is better known in German than in its original French for a reason.

	▲	viridian 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think its overgeneralizing, but mostly accurate to say that the human-free constructs built by the Germans are quite efficient, but the human processes, systems, and interactions by which they get to these other results are byzantine at best, Kafkaesque at worst. Perhaps the two are even related. American companies will reach 3 9's of reliability for a device, call it sufficient, and ship a product. German companies will be engaged with not only internal stakeholders, but also various levels of government for weeks to months just to come to an agreement about what the acceptable threshold is (it's the highest asked for by the combined pool of stakeholders), and 18 months after the Americans hit the market, you'll have a wristwatch with 7 9's of reliability that costs 3x as much as the American one.

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Schweigerose a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

These times are long gone. Not only with government efficiency, but the transition to digital services, railroad services, you name it. And yet people voted for a 68 year old Blackrock manager without any kind of governmental expertise on any level as their new saviour.

	▲	BobaFloutist a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah these days the masters of officiencynard probably Japan.

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pnt12 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nowadays that's actually Switzerland (at least I hear great things about Zurich, except the cost of living).

	▲	deruta a day ago \| parent [-]
		I've, in turn, heard much praise for how Estonia is doing it.

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danieldk a day ago | parent | prev [-]

efficiency

Having lived in Germany for five years, this is a total myth. The German administration is a tire fire, I mean a filing cabinet fire. First lesson is: learn to wait. Have to do things at the municipality or the Finanzamt? Prepare to reserve 1-2 hours of your day, because you will have to wait a lot. And then the administration is pretty chaotic because (for historical reasons) they do not want to link administrations. Then they do random things like accidentally changing your and your partner's tax brackets in the middle of the year. My wife (who is German) chased them until they would fix it and they had no clue how it happened. Other foreign colleagues often had similar issues.

The same is true by the way with non-government stuff like medical care. Have an appointment with your GP or a medical specialist? Great, the appointment only means that you have to be there at a certain time. They will let you wait an hour or two without any remorse (what's the point of an appointment)?

Nothing is efficient in Germany. Reliability is also a meme at this point. Even 10 years ago, about 1/4-1/2 of the ICE trains I took would have a serious delay (which usually ended being a 2-3 hour delay if you have to cross a border). We just came back from vacation in Germany (it continues to be a beautiful country with nice people) with our electric car. The charging infrastructure is deplorable. Not only they have only a small number of chargers available (even a lot of highway stops only have two chargers), so impossible to charge on a busy day. But not only that, a lot of chargers are broken and nobody really cares for fixing them.

Sorry for the rant. tl;dr: Germany is not efficient and not reliable.

	▲	marcus_holmes a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This. German bureaucracy is a nightmare, especially if German is not your first language. German health system is a mess, but mainly because Germans are (probably rightly) suspicious of having electronic health records.
	▲	gambiting a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		My favourite anecdote regarding German EV chargers - I was trying to charge at a motorway stop couple years back, and the stupid charger needs an app, ok, got the app. And it's even in English, success! But.....when I try to add a payment card it says the billing address has to be in Germany. Ok, I'm determined so I ring their helpline.....only to be told it's open Monday to Saturday 9am till 4pm(it was Sunday). Honestly never seen this issue in any other EU country.