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As a French person living in Sweden this does not match my experience about overworking. Working hours can be unreasonable in France and people in startups hace
by mijamo 4y ago
As a French person living in Sweden this does not match my experience about overworking. Working hours can be unreasonable in France and people in startups hace a much better life/work balance in Sweden. I know plenty of engineers working 8-19 or so in France, whereas in Sweden it basically does not seem to exist at all. You do your 40 hours and not more. In France officially it is 35 but outside the big companies you actually end up more around 50-55.
One thing I noticed in France on the other hand is the importance of the diploma. In Sweden it has very little value, whereas in France it sometimes shapes your whole career. And the good students coming from a good school directly get high paying jobs in big comfortable companies so that does limit the incentive to risk it all in a startup instead.
Regarding the cost to hire I think it's a false issue. It actually costs more to hire in the US because salaries are higher. Job safety and how hard it is to fire people largely depends of your company culture as well, in my experience for startups it is a very secondary problem. Usually if an employee is a clear misfit they also feel bad and are happy to take an exit package and get a job somewhere else that fits better. It is however a concern for larger companies when you have an employee of 20 years that would never find another job at the same salary level, is without motivation, and is nearly not possible to fire (you have plenty of those in the big french companies, having worked their whole carreer there and just waiting for retirement while doing the minimum not to get fired with cause). But that should not really impact innovation as you wouldn't find those employees in a startup.
- freedom2099 4y agoI don’t know where your French data come from… but I live in the French Riviera and no one here works overtime… my company office is empty by 5h30 (and the boss is the first to leave). And all my friends in the region share the same experience.
- baby 4y ago> One thing I noticed in France on the other hand is the importance of the diploma. In Sweden it has very little value, whereas in France it sometimes shapes your whole career. And the good students coming from a good school directly get high paying jobs in big comfortable companies so that does limit the incentive to risk it all in a startup instead. That's interesting. A lot of the insanely good engineers I've worked with (and work with) either don't have diplomas or didn't even finish high school. Perhaps France is missing on this a lot by being pretty discriminatory when hiring. Also, one thing I'm thinking about now, I think a lot of people in the US are on stimulants (e.g. adderall) whereas I doubt this is really a thing in France.
- green-eclipse 4y ago> I think a lot of people in the US are on stimulants Can you define "a lot"? That's a pretty bold claim.
- baby 4y agoYeah it’s hard to prove anything, I have some friends who tell me that everyone in crypto is doing adderall or others. I’m not, but I’d be willing to believe that a much bigger percentage of people do it compared to france
- vjk800 4y ago> Also, one thing I'm thinking about now, I think a lot of people in the US are on stimulants (e.g. adderall) whereas I doubt this is really a thing in France. I've also read about many students in elite (mostly US) universities using stimulants. Presumably many of them also continue using them after graduating. Here in Finland, I've never heard of anyone taking e.g. ADHD medication for performance enhancement.