5 ms·

Ditto. Sweden defines a working week as 40 hour. However, 1 hour of wellness and two daily coffee breaks (15 minutes) are usually included in working time. So "

Ditto. Sweden defines a working week as 40 hour. However, 1 hour of wellness and two daily coffee breaks (15 minutes) are usually included in working time. So "butt-in-chair" time is 36.5 hours per week.

ChuckNorris89 3y ago
Ha, come to Austria where your break times are not included in your working time, so if your contract is 38,5h per week, then that's your expected butt-in-chair time as that doesn't include any breaks. The mandatory 30min lunch break and other coffee breaks are not included in that, but as extra in your own non-billable time, while the clock is not running, so you could easily be spending 40+h/week in the office if your company insists on keeping track of your time, which some do and also don't offer WFH so they can nickel and dime you on your butt-in-chair time which they can't if you're at home.
- anticristi 3y ago
  Another Austrian work quirk that always gets me: 14 salaries.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    Yeah, you're not actually getting paid 2 extra salaries, it's just your yearly salary divided by 14 instead of 12. The only extra si you pay less tax on those 2 extra salaries so you get more money in your pocket before summer and Christmas.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    I guess when the 13 and 14 was added it was essentially a pay increase in some negotiation? And stuck around? However, if the company has more money in some point of the year, it makes sense for them to pay more wage at that time.
- n_ary 3y ago
  Also applies in Germany. Infact, every contract I have(had) includes a special clauses “40 hours per week, not including any lunch or break hours…”. However, I see my colleagues spending 2-3h each day on coffee/lunch break and doing actual work for ~3-4h and then going home. Only people I’ve seen religiously maintaining that 40h/week are consultants/contractors/HR.
low_tech_love 3y ago
Honest question: as a person in-between academia and industry (sorry, I stalked you a little bit), what are your views on the percentage of actual, hands-on work happening in those 36.5 hours? I have a theory that in Sweden you must divide your work into 80/20: 80% self-advertising (bragging in meetings, etc.) and 20% actual work. Anything more and you’re wasting your time and losing the race.
- anticristi 3y ago
  I'm at the seniority in my career where I still find stalking flattering. :))) I think in every job you need to (a) do good work, (b) make that work visible. So at least some amount of self-advertisement is good both for the individual and the organization. You would wonder how much time I spend on "stalking" engineers and making their amazing work more visible towards our customers -- giving proper credit during our biweekly demos, of course. Unfortunately, above a certain threshold (say about 20% of your time), self-advertisement is toxic. As far as I could notice, this happens in environments where people feel unsafe. This can happen both in industry and academia. However, you might be right that self-advertisement is more present in academia, given the tendance to assess individuals over teams and given the overall "squeeze". :) Would you agree?
  - low_tech_love 3y ago
    I never worked in the industry, so unfortunately I don’t have a basis for comparison. But in our case (academia in Sweden) I’d say it is certainly not because of lack of safety. If anything, one of my assumptions is that it’s actually the opposite. Since we’re not being judged by merit (at least not in any significance way for better or worse), and there is no easy way to get paid more for extra time or better outcomes, people will inflate their mediocre results to find a way to work less with the same pay.
    - anticristi 3y ago
      Interesting hypothesis. I think your hypothesis has some merits. The way salary increases work in Swedish academia is that the union negotiates an average increase over the whole university -- say 2.5%. Then the department head will give some below the average and some above the average. So it's up to you to be "the loudest in the department" to get an above-average increase. Not saying how things should be, just saying how things are.

ChuckNorris89 3y ago

Ha, come to Austria where your break times are not included in your working time, so if your contract is 38,5h per week, then that's your expected butt-in-chair time as that doesn't include any breaks. The mandatory 30min lunch break and other coffee breaks are not included in that, but as extra in your own non-billable time, while the clock is not running, so you could easily be spending 40+h/week in the office if your company insists on keeping track of your time, which some do and also don't offer WFH so they can nickel and dime you on your butt-in-chair time which they can't if you're at home.

anticristi 3y ago
Another Austrian work quirk that always gets me: 14 salaries.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  Yeah, you're not actually getting paid 2 extra salaries, it's just your yearly salary divided by 14 instead of 12. The only extra si you pay less tax on those 2 extra salaries so you get more money in your pocket before summer and Christmas.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  I guess when the 13 and 14 was added it was essentially a pay increase in some negotiation? And stuck around? However, if the company has more money in some point of the year, it makes sense for them to pay more wage at that time.
n_ary 3y ago
Also applies in Germany. Infact, every contract I have(had) includes a special clauses “40 hours per week, not including any lunch or break hours…”. However, I see my colleagues spending 2-3h each day on coffee/lunch break and doing actual work for ~3-4h and then going home. Only people I’ve seen religiously maintaining that 40h/week are consultants/contractors/HR.

low_tech_love 3y ago

Honest question: as a person in-between academia and industry (sorry, I stalked you a little bit), what are your views on the percentage of actual, hands-on work happening in those 36.5 hours? I have a theory that in Sweden you must divide your work into 80/20: 80% self-advertising (bragging in meetings, etc.) and 20% actual work. Anything more and you’re wasting your time and losing the race.

anticristi 3y ago
I'm at the seniority in my career where I still find stalking flattering. :))) I think in every job you need to (a) do good work, (b) make that work visible. So at least some amount of self-advertisement is good both for the individual and the organization. You would wonder how much time I spend on "stalking" engineers and making their amazing work more visible towards our customers -- giving proper credit during our biweekly demos, of course. Unfortunately, above a certain threshold (say about 20% of your time), self-advertisement is toxic. As far as I could notice, this happens in environments where people feel unsafe. This can happen both in industry and academia. However, you might be right that self-advertisement is more present in academia, given the tendance to assess individuals over teams and given the overall "squeeze". :) Would you agree?
- low_tech_love 3y ago
  I never worked in the industry, so unfortunately I don’t have a basis for comparison. But in our case (academia in Sweden) I’d say it is certainly not because of lack of safety. If anything, one of my assumptions is that it’s actually the opposite. Since we’re not being judged by merit (at least not in any significance way for better or worse), and there is no easy way to get paid more for extra time or better outcomes, people will inflate their mediocre results to find a way to work less with the same pay.
  - anticristi 3y ago
    Interesting hypothesis. I think your hypothesis has some merits. The way salary increases work in Swedish academia is that the union negotiates an average increase over the whole university -- say 2.5%. Then the department head will give some below the average and some above the average. So it's up to you to be "the loudest in the department" to get an above-average increase. Not saying how things should be, just saying how things are.