Own-costs. The German term for what a thing costs the producer before any margin, and it appears in ordinary commercial speech as well as in accounting.
Zu Selbstkosten abgeben — to hand something over at own-cost — is a specific and meaningful statement in German business. It names an exact point on a scale everyone is assumed to know exists.
Sloppy. And the judgment is aimed at the method, not the outcome.
Schlampig gearbeitet — worked sloppily — can be said of something that came out fine. It means the result cannot be relied on, because the way it was produced would not reliably produce it again.
Dienstalter. Seniority as a quantity with a name, and it governs progression through pay steps in the public sector and much of the private sector automatically. Time in the role advances you whether or not anybody decides to advance you.
Under the line. The German for the net result, and the line in question is the one drawn across a column of figures before the total is written beneath it. The phrase assumes a column exists.
Clean work. The German praise for something done well.
Not strong work, not smart work, not impressive work. Clean — as in leaving nothing behind that someone else has to deal with.
The German Stellenbeschreibung is a formal document with defined content: the tasks, the authority, the reporting lines, the substitution arrangements. It is referenced in disputes. What the role contains is a matter of record.
Sighted over the thumb. The German for a rough estimate, from the surveyor’s trick of gauging distance by holding up a thumb. It is always flagged, and flagging it is the point — the speaker is marking the number as not properly derived before anyone else can.
Craft-clean. Said of a law, an article, a piece of engineering or an argument: the work was done properly.
The phrase exists because Germans need to separate two judgments that English tends to run together. A law can be politically wrong and handwerklich sauber. It can also be politically right and handwerklich schlecht, and the second is a real criticism that survives agreement with the aim.
German collective agreements set Entgeltgruppen — pay bands graded by the task rather than by the person. The description of the role determines the band. Promotion means being assigned different work, and the money follows the work rather than the individual.
Gütekriterien. German research methodology teaches three quality criteria in a fixed order: Objektivität, Reliabilität, Validität. Objectivity means the result does not depend on who carried out the measurement. Reliability means the instrument measures with small error. Validity means it measures the thing it was supposed to measure.
And they are taught as a chain. Objectivity is the precondition for reliability, and reliability is the precondition for validity. You cannot have the third without the first two.
Every German student who has written a thesis has had to argue all three in a methods chapter.