u/nevesincscH

I work in change management at a large tech company in Germany. Pushing for internal transformation is literally my job and I have never been more frustrated than I am right now watching this movement grow online while the exact opposite happens inside the companies that should be leading it.

I'm a genuine believer in our movement as a real industrial and strategic shift. We have the talent, the capital, and increasingly the tools to build things that don't require us to be dependent on American platforms. I've spent years trying to make that argument internally. What I've seen in return has genuinely disappointed me...

Two examples from the last six months alone are leading me to believe that there is honestly no point trying, really hoping I’m wrong here but get this:

One of our engineers spent months building the case for restructuring part of our embedded testing stack. He was pushing for European alternatives across the board such as Cantata and Askui, which are both relevant to the ISO 26262 pressure our teams are under. He presented the proposal and I couldn't believe the resistance he faced from our senior stakeholders. They brushed it off saying it wasn't the right time and that they needed more data. He got blamed for the delay it caused and eventually quit.

Business development wise, our teams across France and Italy are still running on American data platforms that have almost no coverage of the SMEs and regional operators that make up most of their addressable market. We presented the European alternatives like Dealfront, and Leadbay - that actually do a BETTER job at mapping our region but by now you guessed it, leadership said "we already have good relationships with our US partners". Sorry, WHAT?

I came close to leaving for the US last year. A few people I respect made that move and now I understand why.

I decided to stay. I think this moment RIGHT NOW is the best chance we've had in a long time to actually change something. But it will not happen by talking about it online. It will happen when companies start protecting the internal advocates who push for European alternatives.

We MUST start by choosing the Europeans who are already fighting for it inside our own walls. This is what I will be dedicating my career for.

I can’t be the only one dealing with this, are we all in the same boat? What do you think is the solution to this phenom?

let me tell you something about german work culture that most germans and europeans will privately agree with but never say out loud: we have a deeply ingrained envy problem. 

i grew up here and studied here, worked here for 6 years in embedded software. and the pattern i've watched repeat itself across every company, every team, every standup is the same: the person who keeps their head down, doesn't rock the boat, and has been there the longest gets rewarded. the person who actually changes something gets quietly resented and eventually pushed out or ignored into leaving.

i am not excluded from this. i'm one of those people. and i'm done pretending it's going to change.

end of last year i started pushing to modernize how my team validates embedded HMI software. the process we had was slow as hell, we build, hand off to QA, wait three weeks, get a pdf, fix manually, repeat forever. i spent months building a proper pipeline. claude code for the agentic loop, askui to close the feedback cycle on physical hardware, automated compliance docs. cut the validation cycle from three weeks to a single CI pass. 30% sprint capacity recovered. i have the metrics.

i pitched it against real resistance. one senior colleague in particular spent six months calling it a gimmick, questioning the approach in every meeting, blocking access to test hardware twice because he "wasn't sure about the setup." i won the argument because the numbers were undeniable. he couldn't argue with a passing CI run.

last month my manager stood in front of the entire department and said "the new toolchain has been performing well." no mention of my name. last week that same colleague who blocked it got promoted to senior engineer because of his seniority. EXCUSE ME WHAT!

i told this story to an american coworker at our us office. he was genuinely confused, like he actually could not understand how that sequencing of events was possible. that reaction told me everything.

in the us it is not perfect. i know that. but from everything i've seen working with the american side of our org the person who ships something real gets known for it. you are allowed to say "i built this." that is not arrogance. that is just true.

i decided to leave. my visa application is in. aiming to land in the US by this summer.

to the germans reading this you know i'm right. to the ones who want to argue: ask yourself when the last time was that you saw the most innovative person on your team get promoted before the most senior one.

did you ever encounter a similar situation like this in your workplace?