6 ms·

I have wondered this. I work at an American company with many European employees and it is just really hard to see a complete lack of ambition/competitiveness.

by nxc18 5y ago

I have wondered this. I work at an American company with many European employees and it is just really hard to see a complete lack of ambition/competitiveness. At some point being on vacation so much must hurt, I know projects are delayed when folks just can’t be expected to be there and will randomly disappear for 4+ weeks at a time. But that really doesn’t explain the extreme cultural conservatism towards effort/ambition more generally. I feel like a Martian speaking an alien language when I try to get coworkers onboard with the idea of creating a competitive product or trying to be innovative at all. They just don’t want to do more than the bare minimum to compete. The concept of taking pride in the work and wanting to create something great is totally foreign. It seems like work is just a way to earn money for Europeans, which I sort of get, but I thought humans were supposed to be intrinsically motivated by pursuit of mastery/excellence? I get that baguettes and wine and croissants and endless Mediterranean vacations are more enjoyable than work but ffs someone needs to put effort towards advancing society.

everyone 5y ago
Your crud app is 'advancing society'? Really?
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  US companies are far more ambitious than that. I see large corporates in the US genuinely trying to solve real-world problems like car electrification, self-driving, space-exploration, etc.
  - _Microft 5y ago
    > I see large corporates run by Elon Musk genuinely trying to solve real-world problems like car electrification, self-driving, space-exploration, etc. Fixed that for you. ;)
    - iso1210 5y ago
      Quite. Musk is so unusual and venerated by many because he's different to the normal US billionaires who seem to want to squeeze the world and get new yachts. Bezos is doing blue original as a money sinking hobby. Ellison buys yachts and squeezes legacy companies (do new companies really choose to lock themselves into oracle?). Zuckerberg tries to control the worlds communication.
- nxc18 5y ago
  Not all of us have boring jobs. Geospatial intelligence is a severely underutilized technology (read: extreme growth potential). Remember the John Hopkins coronavirus dashboard making the rounds last year? You’ve probably had a use for the software that powered that.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    > Remember the John Hopkins coronavirus dashboard making the rounds last year? No. I've seen good stuff from ft.com, ourworldindata, gov.uk -- all 3 are from the UK.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Yes. Software is eating the world, one CRUD app at a time.
TMWNN 5y ago
>At some point being on vacation so much must hurt Ian Fleming wrote a new James Bond novel a year. He could do this because his job as an executive for a British newspaper let him take a month off every year. He'd go to his Jamaican estate[1], write the novel, and bring it home. ... Good god. According to Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming#Post-war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming#Post-war>, his job let Fleming take three months off each year! Either way, I'm pretty sure the list of American non-owner executives who took a month or three off annually in the 1950s is very, very short. [1] Goldeneye[2] [2] Yes, that Goldeneye
ativzzz 5y ago
A very US mindset. I live in the US and I completely disagree with your outlook on life. Great food with friends, or a vacation with family provides so much more satisfaction to me than anything a job could provide. The only thing a job provides that those things can't is money. I'm not so egotistical to think that I'm special and not easily replaceable. I'm no Steve Jobs or Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. I'm just a programmer. If I stopped working, society would not care at all. I bet you are not much different.
- specialkfan 5y ago
  Yep - it's this mindset that allows the US to be far more productive with arguably maybe a "lower" quality of life if you're benchmarking it against things like vacation time. It's all about trade-offs at the end of the day and what you choose to value. What folks in the US value are clearly different and therefore result in different priorities.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    > it's this mindset that allows the US to be far more productive https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm GDP per hour worked for the US is $72/hour, same as Belgium. France is $68, Denmark $75, Germany $66. Is 9% "far more productive"? Japan FWIW is $47/hour.
    - nxc18 5y ago
      Yes but you’re missing the part of the conversation where it was established that US workers work more. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2003/european-vacation-why-americans-work-more-than-europeans https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2003/european-vacatio... Anecdotally, it throws a wrench in the works when you can’t do any major projects over the winter or summer months because some portion of your team is going to be on a month-long vacation.
      - iso1210 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
foobiekr 5y ago
My exact experience working with Ericsson and Siemens. The employee attitude was basically “why try?”

by nxc18 5y ago

everyone 5y ago

Your crud app is 'advancing society'? Really?

chrisseaton 5y ago
US companies are far more ambitious than that. I see large corporates in the US genuinely trying to solve real-world problems like car electrification, self-driving, space-exploration, etc.
- _Microft 5y ago
  > I see large corporates run by Elon Musk genuinely trying to solve real-world problems like car electrification, self-driving, space-exploration, etc. Fixed that for you. ;)
  - iso1210 5y ago
    Quite. Musk is so unusual and venerated by many because he's different to the normal US billionaires who seem to want to squeeze the world and get new yachts. Bezos is doing blue original as a money sinking hobby. Ellison buys yachts and squeezes legacy companies (do new companies really choose to lock themselves into oracle?). Zuckerberg tries to control the worlds communication.
nxc18 5y ago
Not all of us have boring jobs. Geospatial intelligence is a severely underutilized technology (read: extreme growth potential). Remember the John Hopkins coronavirus dashboard making the rounds last year? You’ve probably had a use for the software that powered that.
- iso1210 5y ago
  > Remember the John Hopkins coronavirus dashboard making the rounds last year? No. I've seen good stuff from ft.com, ourworldindata, gov.uk -- all 3 are from the UK.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
Yes. Software is eating the world, one CRUD app at a time.

TMWNN 5y ago

>At some point being on vacation so much must hurt Ian Fleming wrote a new James Bond novel a year. He could do this because his job as an executive for a British newspaper let him take a month off every year. He'd go to his Jamaican estate[1], write the novel, and bring it home. ... Good god. According to Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming#Post-war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming#Post-war>, his job let Fleming take three months off each year! Either way, I'm pretty sure the list of American non-owner executives who took a month or three off annually in the 1950s is very, very short. [1] Goldeneye[2] [2] Yes, that Goldeneye

ativzzz 5y ago

A very US mindset. I live in the US and I completely disagree with your outlook on life. Great food with friends, or a vacation with family provides so much more satisfaction to me than anything a job could provide. The only thing a job provides that those things can't is money. I'm not so egotistical to think that I'm special and not easily replaceable. I'm no Steve Jobs or Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. I'm just a programmer. If I stopped working, society would not care at all. I bet you are not much different.

specialkfan 5y ago
Yep - it's this mindset that allows the US to be far more productive with arguably maybe a "lower" quality of life if you're benchmarking it against things like vacation time. It's all about trade-offs at the end of the day and what you choose to value. What folks in the US value are clearly different and therefore result in different priorities.
- iso1210 5y ago
  > it's this mindset that allows the US to be far more productive https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm GDP per hour worked for the US is $72/hour, same as Belgium. France is $68, Denmark $75, Germany $66. Is 9% "far more productive"? Japan FWIW is $47/hour.
  - nxc18 5y ago
    Yes but you’re missing the part of the conversation where it was established that US workers work more. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2003/european-vacation-why-americans-work-more-than-europeans https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2003/european-vacatio... Anecdotally, it throws a wrench in the works when you can’t do any major projects over the winter or summer months because some portion of your team is going to be on a month-long vacation.
    - iso1210 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

foobiekr 5y ago

My exact experience working with Ericsson and Siemens. The employee attitude was basically “why try?”