This morning we had another corporate visit, this time to Siemens AG. Siemens AG is a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, operating in the industry, energy, and healthcare sectors (I got this description from their website. I probably would have never thought of the “global powerhouse”
adjective on my own). We got a two hour tour of their facilities and they were very impressive. Our tour guide was a retired Siemens employee and was very informative. He also told us exactly what he thought in response to our questions (some of his answers were not so politically correct, but in a refreshing kind of way). Our guide took us through several different buildings including the manufacturing and testing buildings. The testing facility contained equipment capable of simulating a lightning strike (I didn’t know that was possible). Each building we saw was remarkably clean and the employees all seemed to be very involved in what they were doing. Overall it was a good experience.
After leaving Siemens Brad, CH and I followed our classmates to the U-Bahn (subway) and got on the train. Before leaving Siemens the three of us had decided, since we had a few hours to eat lunch and then get back to the university, that we would get off at a random subway station and find somewhere to eat. We forgot to mention it to anyone else though, so you can imagine the looks of confusion and panic on some of our classmate’s faces when we exited the train ten stops before we were supposed to. Anyway, we found our way to a mall near the subway stop and had lunch at a food court inside the mall. I don’t quite remember the name of the restaurant, but it was German fast-food. I had currywurst on a bun (basically a pork sausage, a hot dog in this case, with curry sauce...see the link for more info) and it was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I ordered another.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currywurst
We arrived back on campus at 2:00PM and had two classes. The first was Marketing, Media and Consumer Behavior in Germany and the second was People Management: Balancing Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivations. The first class was very interesting as Prof. Dr. Alfred Kuss discussed Germany’s unique marketing situation after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The second class, however, was even more interesting. Prof. Dr. Antoinette Weibel, an Austrian with a strong resemblance to my girlfriend’s mom, discussed the psychology of pay for performance. Spoiler alert...while most companies think pay for performance is great, the data shows that it only serves as positive motivation for people working certain types of jobs, mainly those that include simple and/or boring tasks. For jobs that include complex and/or interesting tasks, pay for performance tends to reduce performance. There’s more to tell, but I’m hoping the teaser will cause you to look into it yourself because it’s a lot to type.
Our day concluded with dinner at a restaurant called the Rathaus Cafe. Word to the wise, do not order salmon from a German restaurant. Do, however, order a Schofferhofer Grapefruit Hefeweizen Mix beer. Admittedly, it’s not a very manly beer, but it is delicious. Below is a picture of the Alexanderplatz U-Bahn station near the restaurant.
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