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Don't feel bad. Europeans have a much better work-life balance. Plenty of parental leave. A culture that prioritizes life outside the office. Six weeks of guara

Don't feel bad. Europeans have a much better work-life balance. Plenty of parental leave. A culture that prioritizes life outside the office. Six weeks of guaranteed vacation that people actually take. Etc. Those things have a price. Namely, when people work less, less innovation happens, which means less productivity growth happens, which means less innovation happens, and so on. I lived in Germany for two years. I absolutely loved it. However, despite its reputation, it's not a place that I would say prioritizes work (compared to the U.S.)

qbasic_forever 4y ago
Yet Germany is the 4th largest economy in the entire world with a GDP of near 4 trillion US dollars, despite being a country of only 83 million people (only the 19th largest country in world). Perhaps the Germans have figured out how to work smarter, not harder...
- atwood22 4y ago
  U.S. productivity is higher than Germany (outputs / inputs), so it appears Germany hasn’t quite figured out how to worker smarter than people in the U.S.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Yeah, but how much of the value that this is based on is artificially inflated, either by outright bullshit such as HFT and other forms of "wealth" that are solely created out of numbers or to account for indirect bullshit such as absurd healthcare and rent costs that drive up wages and, indirectly, product prices?
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      > artificially inflated a huge chunk of that is excessive healthcare costs https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expenditure-as-percent-of-gdp-since-1960/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expendi...
      - corrral 4y ago
        Yup. My back-of-envelope from past looks at this is that 5-10% of US GDP is purely drag from excess healthcare costs, i.e. we'd collectively be better off and our economy (entrepreneurship, especially) healthier if that amount of our GDP simply vanished, even though it would mean lower GDP per capita. There's a quote from Obama in an article from The Nation years ago, that basically says we can't fix our healthcare system properly because it would put too many (white-collar make-work jobs program participants, essentially, under our current system) people out of work.
- filmgirlcw 4y ago
  OK, but the state of California is the fifth largest economy in the entire world ($3.4T USD) and has less than half the population of Germany. Arguments like this are pointless.
maccard 4y ago
> Namely, when people work less, less innovation happens, which means less productivity growth happens, which means less innovation happens, and so on. That's quite a stretch. Ask any engineer about having that a-ha moment in the shower, or when out for a walk. Downtime is incredibly important for mentally intense work. Work smarter, not harder and all that. Productivity isn't tied to time spent in office - my experience with american offices is that they encourage people to hang around, spend time there with meals, etc. That's not productive time, that's time spent in the office. Similarly, innovation doesn't come from time in the office, it comes from collaboration, experience, thinking outside the box. > However, despite its reputation, it's not a place that I would say prioritizes work (compared to the U.S.) I don't think this is a fair statement. The US prioritizes butts-in-seats, workplaces where you're competing against your peers, system where the power imbalance between an employee and employer is heavily stacked in favour of the employer. That doesn't mean that the US prioritizes work., and it definitely doesn't mean that Germany doesn't prioritize work.
- atwood22 4y ago
  > That's quite a stretch. Ask any engineer about having that a-ha moment in the shower, or when out for a walk. Downtime is incredibly important for mentally intense work. I agree but I think you’ll find that working usually contributes economic value. Not working usually doesn’t. The key word being usually. if you’re in doubt, just try to record the economic value delivered by your downtime. How many hours are idled for every a-ha moment? Not that there is anything wrong with idling… > That doesn't mean that the US prioritizes work., and it definitely doesn't mean that Germany doesn't prioritize work. I’m using productivity as a measurement. Ideally, productivity accounts for inefficient work by comparing inputs (labor) to economic outputs. The U.S. is more productive in this sense, so it’s more than just butts in seats.
  - maccard 4y ago
    By that logic economic value is only created by active work, and not by any of the thought process that goes into it. That's an asinine thought process.
what-the-grump 4y ago
So we should all be learning Chinese by your logic?
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > So we should all be learning Chinese by your logic? I fail to see how admitting that certain countries have particular qualities that make them less competitive in a given industry and thus make it more economically feasible to use the solutions of other nations, means that they would become dependent on another culture/language. I mean, exploring new languages and knowing a few polite phrases is generally a good idea, even if you don't find the idea of learning a new language fun/useful personally. That said, it's not like it's required either: people who shop on AliExpress don't need to know Chinese by any means. Globalization (and thus getting out-competed in certain respects) is kind of inevitable nowadays, though admittedly it would be really cool to see European alternatives to AWS - I mean, Alibaba Cloud and Yandex Cloud seem to prove that it's at least somewhat feasible to explore something like that and companies like Hetzner and Scaleway seem to also prove that the infrastructure aspects are basically covered. All that's missing is the platform around it, as well as all of the complexity and development that would come with setting out to make something like that.
tarjei_huse 4y ago
This may cut both ways with regards to innovation. For example, Europe as come way longer than the US when it comes to automation in various sectors (see f.x. the recent Economist article about inefficiencies in the US retail sector). The main US advantage wrt to the last generation of tech giants (i.e. Google, Facebook and Amazon) is language. You will reach scale far faster in the US than in Europe because you do not have to translate your product to new languages and markets. Thus the US giants reached scale before similar European products could compete.
trasz 4y ago
You’re conflating innovation with office work, while in reality it’s often - or mostly - the inverse: the work patterns typical for software industry hurt innovation, replacing it mindless repetition - see the vast majority of software startups.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>Europeans have [...] Six weeks of guaranteed vacation that people actually take. That is false. EU mandates minimum 4 weeks of PTO across all members but varies wildly according to country, sector and company. In most EU countries I've seen the average tends to hover around 5 weeks while 6 weeks or more is usually for very generous employers trying to attract top applicants in employee friendly countries. I get you're attempting a jab at Americans by flashing large number of PTO, but let's be realistic that 6 weeks is not the norm in for all jobs in the whole of Europe.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Six days PTO would still be a jab at Americans.
- tchalla 4y ago
  > 4 weeks of PTO There’s vacation and sick leave in most of EU. PTO is an acronym used in the US and the concept doesn’t apply in Europe.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Vacation days in Europe are still paid time off technically.
    - tchalla 4y ago
      Paid time off in the US includes sick leave. It’s not useful to stick to acronyms which aren’t applicable n that specific context.
      - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        I didn't know the US has a monopoly on the term paid time off.
        tchalla 4y ago

qbasic_forever 4y ago

Yet Germany is the 4th largest economy in the entire world with a GDP of near 4 trillion US dollars, despite being a country of only 83 million people (only the 19th largest country in world). Perhaps the Germans have figured out how to work smarter, not harder...

atwood22 4y ago
U.S. productivity is higher than Germany (outputs / inputs), so it appears Germany hasn’t quite figured out how to worker smarter than people in the U.S.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Yeah, but how much of the value that this is based on is artificially inflated, either by outright bullshit such as HFT and other forms of "wealth" that are solely created out of numbers or to account for indirect bullshit such as absurd healthcare and rent costs that drive up wages and, indirectly, product prices?
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > artificially inflated a huge chunk of that is excessive healthcare costs https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expenditure-as-percent-of-gdp-since-1960/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expendi...
    - corrral 4y ago
      Yup. My back-of-envelope from past looks at this is that 5-10% of US GDP is purely drag from excess healthcare costs, i.e. we'd collectively be better off and our economy (entrepreneurship, especially) healthier if that amount of our GDP simply vanished, even though it would mean lower GDP per capita. There's a quote from Obama in an article from The Nation years ago, that basically says we can't fix our healthcare system properly because it would put too many (white-collar make-work jobs program participants, essentially, under our current system) people out of work.
filmgirlcw 4y ago
OK, but the state of California is the fifth largest economy in the entire world ($3.4T USD) and has less than half the population of Germany. Arguments like this are pointless.

maccard 4y ago

> Namely, when people work less, less innovation happens, which means less productivity growth happens, which means less innovation happens, and so on. That's quite a stretch. Ask any engineer about having that a-ha moment in the shower, or when out for a walk. Downtime is incredibly important for mentally intense work. Work smarter, not harder and all that. Productivity isn't tied to time spent in office - my experience with american offices is that they encourage people to hang around, spend time there with meals, etc. That's not productive time, that's time spent in the office. Similarly, innovation doesn't come from time in the office, it comes from collaboration, experience, thinking outside the box. > However, despite its reputation, it's not a place that I would say prioritizes work (compared to the U.S.) I don't think this is a fair statement. The US prioritizes butts-in-seats, workplaces where you're competing against your peers, system where the power imbalance between an employee and employer is heavily stacked in favour of the employer. That doesn't mean that the US prioritizes work., and it definitely doesn't mean that Germany doesn't prioritize work.

atwood22 4y ago
> That's quite a stretch. Ask any engineer about having that a-ha moment in the shower, or when out for a walk. Downtime is incredibly important for mentally intense work. I agree but I think you’ll find that working usually contributes economic value. Not working usually doesn’t. The key word being usually. if you’re in doubt, just try to record the economic value delivered by your downtime. How many hours are idled for every a-ha moment? Not that there is anything wrong with idling… > That doesn't mean that the US prioritizes work., and it definitely doesn't mean that Germany doesn't prioritize work. I’m using productivity as a measurement. Ideally, productivity accounts for inefficient work by comparing inputs (labor) to economic outputs. The U.S. is more productive in this sense, so it’s more than just butts in seats.
- maccard 4y ago
  By that logic economic value is only created by active work, and not by any of the thought process that goes into it. That's an asinine thought process.

what-the-grump 4y ago

So we should all be learning Chinese by your logic?

KronisLV 4y ago
> So we should all be learning Chinese by your logic? I fail to see how admitting that certain countries have particular qualities that make them less competitive in a given industry and thus make it more economically feasible to use the solutions of other nations, means that they would become dependent on another culture/language. I mean, exploring new languages and knowing a few polite phrases is generally a good idea, even if you don't find the idea of learning a new language fun/useful personally. That said, it's not like it's required either: people who shop on AliExpress don't need to know Chinese by any means. Globalization (and thus getting out-competed in certain respects) is kind of inevitable nowadays, though admittedly it would be really cool to see European alternatives to AWS - I mean, Alibaba Cloud and Yandex Cloud seem to prove that it's at least somewhat feasible to explore something like that and companies like Hetzner and Scaleway seem to also prove that the infrastructure aspects are basically covered. All that's missing is the platform around it, as well as all of the complexity and development that would come with setting out to make something like that.

tarjei_huse 4y ago

This may cut both ways with regards to innovation. For example, Europe as come way longer than the US when it comes to automation in various sectors (see f.x. the recent Economist article about inefficiencies in the US retail sector). The main US advantage wrt to the last generation of tech giants (i.e. Google, Facebook and Amazon) is language. You will reach scale far faster in the US than in Europe because you do not have to translate your product to new languages and markets. Thus the US giants reached scale before similar European products could compete.

trasz 4y ago

You’re conflating innovation with office work, while in reality it’s often - or mostly - the inverse: the work patterns typical for software industry hurt innovation, replacing it mindless repetition - see the vast majority of software startups.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>Europeans have [...] Six weeks of guaranteed vacation that people actually take. That is false. EU mandates minimum 4 weeks of PTO across all members but varies wildly according to country, sector and company. In most EU countries I've seen the average tends to hover around 5 weeks while 6 weeks or more is usually for very generous employers trying to attract top applicants in employee friendly countries. I get you're attempting a jab at Americans by flashing large number of PTO, but let's be realistic that 6 weeks is not the norm in for all jobs in the whole of Europe.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
Six days PTO would still be a jab at Americans.
tchalla 4y ago
> 4 weeks of PTO There’s vacation and sick leave in most of EU. PTO is an acronym used in the US and the concept doesn’t apply in Europe.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Vacation days in Europe are still paid time off technically.
  - tchalla 4y ago
    Paid time off in the US includes sick leave. It’s not useful to stick to acronyms which aren’t applicable n that specific context.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      I didn't know the US has a monopoly on the term paid time off.
      - tchalla 4y ago