A German commonplace in engineering and quality discussion: the result is only as good as the route to it. The claim is not moral. It is that an outcome produced by an uncontrolled process cannot be relied on to recur.
business
Maintenance
Wartung. German equipment comes with a maintenance schedule, and service contracts covering it are normal for machinery, lifts, heating systems and vehicles. Reliability is not treated as a property of the object. It is treated as something maintained.
Staying marketable
Stay marketable. Keep your résumé current. Always be networking. Your network is your net worth.
American career advice, given as a permanent instruction rather than as something to do when looking. Security is described as a property of the individual, maintained continuously.
Salary negotiation
American career advice treats accepting a first offer as a mistake. Universities run workshops on it. Books are written about it. Employers expect the conversation. The initial number is understood by both sides to be an opening.
The Genius Bar
American technology retail built in-store technical support as a named destination, with appointments and a counter. Repair and troubleshooting became part of the retail experience rather than something that happened elsewhere afterwards.
Second-time founders
Silicon Valley investors are widely understood to prefer a founder whose first company failed to one who has never started a company. The failure is priced as an asset. Whatever else it produced, it produced someone who has already made the mistakes.
The company shutdown
Betriebsferien. Many German companies close entirely for a fixed period, commonly in summer or between Christmas and New Year, with the works council agreeing the dates. Nobody is covering. Nobody is on call. The building is shut.
The loaner
American dealerships and service operations supply a substitute vehicle or device while yours is repaired, and it is advertised as part of the offer. The inconvenience is treated as the thing being minimised.
When the basis falls away
Störung der Geschäftsgrundlage. Section 313 BGB allows a contract to be adjusted where the circumstances that formed its basis have changed so severely that holding a party to it would be unreasonable. The remedy is adjustment rather than release. The law’s instinct is to restore the balance rather than to end the relationship.
The layoff
American reductions in force are announced publicly, executed quickly and often in a single day, with severance offered rather than required. The word is neutral in American English and carries no implication of fault on either side.