German emigrants in India: "My daughters lived in a golden cage"

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Ayudha Puja is a special holiday in India: priests bless the tools. A priest also stops by the Siemens office in Bangalore to consecrate the computers. As the boss, Gerd Höfner has a special position in the procedure and has to assist.

They have terminated their rental contracts, sold or given away their belongings, said goodbye to friends and parents and embarked on an adventure - in Indonesia, Peru or the USA. Career SPIEGEL has reported about emigrants for years. But what became of their dreams? We asked around.

7,000 kilometers lie between Gerd Höfner's two domiciles: The managing director of the medical technology group Siemens Healthineers in India commutes between Bangalore, India and Rome. The flight takes 13 hours with a change. Höfner, who has been jetting around the world for meetings for more than 20 years, is no more exhausting than a trip from Hamburg to the Baltic Sea. He flew the route every two weeks - until the corona crisis kept him in Italy.   

Since March, the boss of almost 4,000 employees who develop software for medical devices in Bangalore and Slovakia has been working in the corner of an apartment in Rome. His daughters sat next door in virtual classrooms until the summer vacation. They are 14 and 16 years old and go to international school in Rome.  

When SPIEGEL reported on Höfner's assignment abroad eight years ago, he said that he and his wife felt so comfortable in India that it would be difficult for them to imagine returning to Germany. At that time you lived in a compound, a fenced-in residential complex with many international and Indian neighbors. "This has the advantage that the children can quickly run over to their friends", Höfner had said. Now he says: "You lived in a golden cage."   

Living with the family in India is perfect - but only up to a certain age. "Two teenage blondes in Bangalore cannot walk on the street alone without being constantly spoken to," says Höfner. Just get on the bus to go to the shopping center? Unthinkable for the German girls.   

Another point that the Höfners disliked: They had little opportunity to introduce their daughters to Western culture. "There is a Beethoven concert in Bangalore maybe once a year if the Goethe Institute invites you."   

Italy as a retirement home

So Höfner and his wife sat down and thought: Where do we want to live? They chose Rome. That is an interim solution, says Höfner. Because they didn't really want to move to Italy for a few years to enjoy their retirement.

As a young married couple, the two of them lived in Italy during their first assignment abroad for Siemens. They are reasonably able to speak the language and love the culture and zest for life. If the daughters learn Italian and feel at home in Rome, they may come to visit more often as adults, so the thought.  

For Gerd Höfner, who was already on business almost every other week until the corona crisis, it seemed to make little difference whether the family now lives in Bangalore, at the Siemens Healthineers headquarters in Erlangen or in Rome. And so Höfner's wife, who had given up her job as a gynecologist at the University Clinic in Erlangen almost 20 years ago to follow him to Bangalore, moved with the two girls to Italy.  

"It is being built, built, built, but the city always lags behind when it comes to demand."

Gerd Höfner

Gerd Höfner has swapped the house in Bangalore for an apartment on the same compound, two dogs and a cat are still there - they are looked after by a domestic worker. Höfner also has his own driver, which is the rule for foreigners in India and enables him to start his working day in Bangalore in the car. Because he needs at least three quarters of an hour for the almost 20 kilometers to the office, often longer.  

Bangalore has been growing rapidly for decades. Höfner can still remember the opening of the first shopping mall in 2005. When he and his wife moved into town, there were only two supermarkets and wild monkeys were doing gymnastics in the streets. There are now hardly any monkeys left, but there are 70 shopping centers, a subway and miles of motorway bridges, in whose traffic jams thousands of new commuters line up every year. "People are building, building, building, but the city is always lagging behind when it comes to demand," says Höfner. 

More computer scientists than freelance jobs in IT

Nobody really knows how many inhabitants the city currently has; estimates are between twelve and 15 million people. And around half a million new residents are added every year. Bangalore, formerly just a cheap outsourcing location, has developed into one of the most important tech hubs in the world: Whether Google or Microsoft, Goldman Sachs or Huawei, ABB or Siemens - the global corporate elite is driving the digitization of their businesses here. Around 1250 companies have set up such "Global Inhouse Centers", their own IT offshoots, in India - almost half of them in Bangalore. 

Unlike in Europe, where companies have to compete for IT specialists, there are more applicants in Bangalore than job advertisements in international corporations. "Indian IT service providers often have more than 200,000 employees. They hire 10,000 new people every year - but the entire recruiting is correspondingly anonymous and designed for the masses, and the work content is not always that interesting," says Höfner. "That makes us attractive as a global in-house center for software engineers."  

Siemens Healthineers has repeatedly been recognized as a particularly good employer in India by the consulting institute "Great Place to Work". For the ranking, all employees are asked, among other things: Is the right person always promoted in their department? How satisfied are you with your work-life balance? On average, seven out of ten employees gave the company top marks. Höfner is proud of that. He attaches great importance to a good working atmosphere, a "Thank God It's Monday culture", as he calls it: instead of the end of the working week, his employees should long for the beginning.  

Better to listen than talk

Since March, Höfner has personally asked more than 700 employees about their well-being via video chat. "We listen more than we talk", more listening than talking, is one of the seven principles of Siemens Healthineers and his motto as a manager. He blocks one hour a day for such conversations - during which the employees also like to talk about their children.  

Höfner had already learned how important family life is in everyday working life in India during an intercultural training course. He had insisted on this after Siemens had previously sent him to Genoa without preparation and it was only with great effort that he was able to gain the trust of the workforce. "I wanted to do better in India," says Höfner.  

Following the advice of the intercultural trainers, his first official act in Bangalore was to invite all department heads to personal discussions and to ask them: Are you married? How many kids do you have "From a German point of view it is difficult to imagine, but in India it is essential," says Höfner.  

The Ayudha Puja holiday also took some getting used to: On this day, priests bless the tools, be it excavators, saucepans or computers. And the boss traditionally has to assist with the ceremony. After 18 years this is no longer a problem for Höfner: "The priest and I already know each other."  

"Culture is never good or bad, just different." 

Gerd Höfner

He tried to adapt from the start, says Höfner. He has now even gained something from eating with his fingers: you never burn your tongue and by touching it you experience food on a further sensual level. "Culture is never good or bad, just different."   

When the entire Siemens Healthineers workforce, children and partners got together for a virtual yoga class on International Yoga Day, Höfner and his family were there from Rome.  

More often in the home office in the future

During the corona crisis, he became a fan of video telephony. Managing the fortunes of the Bangalore firm from Rome works surprisingly well, he says. And the employees are even more productive in the home office than in the office in Bangalore's "Electronic City" - which is probably mainly due to the fact that they donate part of the saved commuting time to the company. Höfner doubts that this effect will last, but still believes in the future of the home office. 

Siemens wants to make the global standard in the group that in future more than half of the employees no longer have to go to the office or the factory two to three days a week, but work from home. "But why do you have to go to the office at all?" Asks Höfner. Certainly there are topics that are better discussed in person, so it makes sense to come to the office if necessary. Otherwise, however, you can work from home or elsewhere. Siemens Healthineers is listed as an independent company in the MDAX and can establish rules independently of the parent company. These are now being worked out for the post-corona period.  

Will he go back to his old jet set life himself? Hofner laughs. He will probably continue to commute between Bangalore and Rome. "But I will certainly make fewer business trips. It will probably result in a mix of personal and virtual meetings that take place alternately."