I can't agree with that. If there is something wrong, it must be dealt with as soon as possible. We engineers must learn to be professional and not let our ego get in the way.
Maybe it is a cultural thing ? I worked once in Germany and thought at first that the error pointing was brutal. But you get used to it and learn not to involve your self esteem. And retrospectively I found it to be a fair and effective work environment.
It depends on the context. Just yesterday I was doing a data centre audit with a colleague, who is many years my junior, and I am her manager, and she has hardly been in a data centre. She’s also amazing by the way.
So when I see her doing a few things that I wouldn’t have done, I could have just reacted and pointed it out and told her how it should be done. For sure I wanted to, I’m an engineer!
Or I can have a bit of trust that, given a minute and a few more repetitions, she’ll get it. Which she did. And now she’s learned something, and now I’m not “that guy”, and now we have a better relationship, and so on.
I appreciate that this might not be the sort of thing you had in mind. If there’s an error in code that isn’t going away if someone doesn’t say something then, sure, say something.
I would have had no problem pointing the wrong thing out if she hadn't 'got it' herself, but I knew she would.
The thing to avoid here is being the know-it-all who tells everyone how things should be done when, given just a second, those people would figure it out anyway. Nobody likes that guy.
Think you have to deal with the world as it is, rather than as it should be, if you want to make progress.
I’ve always found accepting that ego thing to be very difficult as I’m quite happy for people to scrap my ideas if they’re bad, but a lot of people aren’t wired like I am and I don’t hold that against them. Could be a genetic thing. I have other faults that they don’t, so tolerance is needed in both directions. Humans are buggy.
If you want to make progress you change the world as it is to the way it should be and throw out notions like thinking people are 'wired' in certain ways to rationalize the status quo.
These bug issues or bad software practices are results of a culture, and work cultures can be fixed. Hence OPs example of experiencing a very different culture in another country, and presumably German's aren't genetically built different to respond better to software error reports.
And the best time to fix it is right now because it'll be more expensive in a year.
German might be brutal in the way they say things, but from my experience, it's generally to hide their mistakes and not knowing much, so nobody would dare to confront an over-confident bullshitter, after all, they are damn convincing.
Germans are careful and deliberate in a way they phrase criticism. They don't just go full in nor randomly criticize everything.
And above all, they don't phrase things for maximal emotional impact. They dont exaggerate. They dont go out of way to make criticism sound funny. Which is unlike majority of "nerdy" or "geeky" criticism found online in tech circles.
I think the article could go a little bit more in depth, but overall I agree with the sentiment.
For starters, saying "this is wrong" is the least helpful way to present a problem. Of course it can work, but it's better to say what is your specific concern, why do you think it's important (and possible consequences) and a possible solution. That usually leads to better and more efficient discussions from the start.
Then there's the issue of you being wrong about being wrong. The good thing about starting the discussion in the way I said is that it helps you to actually form your thoughts and a lot of times that process leads you to the important questions, to the holes in your understanding and sometimes even the solutions.
"If there is something wrong, it must be dealt with as soon as possible."
The article was short, but I don't think it disagrees with you. It's more about how you say things. Try to lean into your curiosity and ask questions, instead of just straight up saying "that is wrong". Because asking curious questions makes the other person want to engage with you, while pointing out mistakes makes them defensive and likely to distrust you.
Maybe it is a cultural thing ? I worked once in Germany and thought at first that the error pointing was brutal. But you get used to it and learn not to involve your self esteem. And retrospectively I found it to be a fair and effective work environment.