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Fetishizing hard work is a purely American phenomenon True, if by "American" you mean "American, German, Swiss, Austrian, Swedish, Japanese, Victorian British,

Fetishizing hard work is a purely American phenomenon True, if by "American" you mean "American, German, Swiss, Austrian, Swedish, Japanese, Victorian British, and Protestant". (I'm sure I left out a few, actually).

glogla 13y ago
I do have some experience with Germans, and I don't think so. Germans are pros. They expect you to be professionals, the expect you to be prepared, on time, and do a good work, and they expect you not to waste anyone's time. This, in the end, makes for a every different business culture than I remember from US -- the meetings are as short as possible. The managers actually listen to their engineers, because their expertise is what they are paying them for, and I have yet to meet a German Pointy Haired Boss, while experience both mine and of my friends with US or US-run corporations is that more than half managers are PHBes. They also don't care what you wear, don't care what you do after work, and the don't want unnecessarily long hours. They are efficient an serious about what they do, but they don't worship work the way USians and Japanese do, for example. (I don't have experience with working with other cultures. Also, I'm not German.) EDIT: But in no way would Germans require you to do more hours just for the sake of more hours. You owe the company you work for your best, professional effort. But you owe them 40 hours, not more.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  I agree. German work culture is about efficiency whereas American work culture is about long hours.
- workhere-io 13y ago
  I have worked with a lot of Germans, and they do value long hours - as well as efficiency.
- papsosouid 13y ago
  Nothing you said contradicts the previous poster though. Germans do value hard work. You are inexplicably interpreting "hard work" to mean "long hours". Hard work is working hard, it is entirely orthogonal to how long you spend working.
mrweasel 13y ago
It's not really about nationality, it's about the company you run or work for. Sure some nationalities generally stick to shorter hours, but the reaction you get from coworkers or the boss if you keep a strict 8 - 16 day is company culture. I work for a small company, where the owner work long hour, 12 - 16 hours a day. My desire to stay at home in my hammock in the garden doesn't really fit their view of working. However if I did my jobs a developer to perfection, then they wouldn't know the different between me sleeping in the hammock or sitting behind the desk. It can be hard to explain, because it quickly become "time we could be spending on other projects".
- workhere-io 13y ago
  It's not really about nationality In my experience nationality (or, to put it another way, the culture that you share with the people in your region) does matter. I'm certainly not saying that a nation's work ethic is shared by every single citizen - generalizations naturally don't apply to everyone. I'm also not saying that all companies in a country behave the same - there are going to be variations. But overall, the way you look at work varies greatly from country to country.

glogla 13y ago

I do have some experience with Germans, and I don't think so. Germans are pros. They expect you to be professionals, the expect you to be prepared, on time, and do a good work, and they expect you not to waste anyone's time. This, in the end, makes for a every different business culture than I remember from US -- the meetings are as short as possible. The managers actually listen to their engineers, because their expertise is what they are paying them for, and I have yet to meet a German Pointy Haired Boss, while experience both mine and of my friends with US or US-run corporations is that more than half managers are PHBes. They also don't care what you wear, don't care what you do after work, and the don't want unnecessarily long hours. They are efficient an serious about what they do, but they don't worship work the way USians and Japanese do, for example. (I don't have experience with working with other cultures. Also, I'm not German.) EDIT: But in no way would Germans require you to do more hours just for the sake of more hours. You owe the company you work for your best, professional effort. But you owe them 40 hours, not more.

enraged_camel 13y ago
I agree. German work culture is about efficiency whereas American work culture is about long hours.
workhere-io 13y ago
I have worked with a lot of Germans, and they do value long hours - as well as efficiency.
papsosouid 13y ago
Nothing you said contradicts the previous poster though. Germans do value hard work. You are inexplicably interpreting "hard work" to mean "long hours". Hard work is working hard, it is entirely orthogonal to how long you spend working.

mrweasel 13y ago

It's not really about nationality, it's about the company you run or work for. Sure some nationalities generally stick to shorter hours, but the reaction you get from coworkers or the boss if you keep a strict 8 - 16 day is company culture. I work for a small company, where the owner work long hour, 12 - 16 hours a day. My desire to stay at home in my hammock in the garden doesn't really fit their view of working. However if I did my jobs a developer to perfection, then they wouldn't know the different between me sleeping in the hammock or sitting behind the desk. It can be hard to explain, because it quickly become "time we could be spending on other projects".

workhere-io 13y ago
It's not really about nationality In my experience nationality (or, to put it another way, the culture that you share with the people in your region) does matter. I'm certainly not saying that a nation's work ethic is shared by every single citizen - generalizations naturally don't apply to everyone. I'm also not saying that all companies in a country behave the same - there are going to be variations. But overall, the way you look at work varies greatly from country to country.