American tech companies Having worked in Germany and Switzerland, I can tell you how many hoops my employer had to jump through to make their software engineer

American tech companies Having worked in Germany and Switzerland, I can tell you how many hoops my employer had to jump through to make their software engineers eligible (!) to work on the weekend. By law, only "essential" personnel can be required to work weekends. All exceptions have to be white-listed on a case-by-case basis. In one case, I had to be present at a 8am meeting on a Monday, in a town 5 hours away. Since trains didn't run until 5am, my employer shelled out for 150% travel time on sunday. And they didn't grumble about it. If fewer companies could get away with paying "an extra pizza", I have the feeling that a lot of "essential work over the holidays" suddenly becomes non-essential really quickly.