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I feel this article is a little weak in one major sense: comparing the US to European countries based on non-working time is okay, but you also need to compare

I feel this article is a little weak in one major sense: comparing the US to European countries based on non-working time is okay, but you also need to compare a metric like GDP. Using this, the US is #6 world-wide only behind two European countries. So yes, Euros may get more time off, but the US is a way more economically powerful and productive country economically. Hurting the economy, sure people get burned out, but it is hard to come to that conclusion based on the data given and the authors points.

lallysingh 12y ago
Well, normalized to working population, yes?
autokad 12y ago
it also tries to state that working hard leads to less productivity, when US productivity eclipses most european countries. i had a consultant complain that they hate working with europeans. the people always go on vacation and projects get held up, and they come back and have to get oriented with everything again. by the time they catch up they are on vacation again
- thejosh 12y ago
  That's the funniest excuse I've ever heard for Americans not having holiday leave.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- thegeomaster 12y ago
  How big a sample size of Europeans does your consultant have? Your claim that "Europeans go on vacation and projects get held up and they can never catch up again" is... dubious at best.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Yes I know a CTO who worked in the valley (I think he reported to Vint at one point) and the UK. He commented that the USA workers didn't produce more even though they only had 2 weeks vs the 5+ the civil service T&C derived uk workers did. spent far more time goofing off and gossiping and taking sneaky long weekends to go skiing was his comment.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      Danes who work in the U.S. are often very surprised by the lack of organization in American workplaces. People work long hours but they seem somewhat haphazard hours, at least from a foreign perspective. Meetings are a particularly big cultural friction point: Danes expect a meeting to start exactly at a specific time, have an agenda distributed at least a day ahead of time, stick to the agenda, and end at exactly the agreed ending time. So you have a 10-11am meeting, you get going on the main topics of discussion at 10:00 (not 10:15 after 15 mins of small-talk and waiting for stragglers to come in), people have come prepared with what they're discussing, and it's guaranteed to be done by 11:00.
  - autokad 12y ago
    i made a statement, backed it up by mentioning productivity, and then made a reference to a real world example that I have observed, unlike the article that just mostly made platitudes. if you'd like further evidence, the EU area has an unemployment rate close to 12%. companies are not anxious to hire europeans for one reason or another.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      Almost all the EU unemployment is in the countries with long working hours and shorter vacations, oddly enough. Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands don't have high unemployment. People work reasonably short hours, take long vacations, and the many consulting companies here have no problem getting contracts, both within Europe and worldwide. The European countries with major economic problems are in the south and east, where they tend not to have as generous vacation and hour policies in the first place. If you work with a Greek or Spanish consulting company, they will be there any time you want, bringing everyone into the office at 3am on a Saturday their time, if you ask for it. Good luck getting a Danish company to do that! Yet the Danish companies are not having trouble getting work.
- Nursie 12y ago
  >> the people always go on vacation and projects get held up, and they come back and have to get oriented with everything again. by the time they catch up they are on vacation again It's almost as if work is something they do to support a life outside the office. Outrageous.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  All of the measurements are based on the workforce, which is a term of art that means something. When you get more efficient, lay off people and have everyone else do 1.5-3x more work, you get efficient. The problem is, many of the discarded people are ending up on disability, and are thus out of the workforce. I'd like to compare the productivity of various societies based on population.
- kps 12y ago
  > it also tries to state that working hard leads to less productivity No, it says that working longer leads to less productivity.
- autokad 12y ago
  i clearly set something off. I didnt mean to disrespect EU workers, but it does seem like their vacation time is on the extreme side where as our seemingly lack there of is weighted towards the over working side but not by a huge deal. IMO
Someone1234 12y ago
The US has had a GDP advantage since the second world war. But since then much of the EU has rolled out socialised medicine and more workers rights (maternity leave, mandatory vacation, even a higher minimum wage) and they haven't slipped down the rankings as a result. Understanding why the US's GDP is as positive as it is is a much bigger topic that takes us into areas like natural resources (e.g. oil, metals, etc) but also history (e.g. World War 1, world War 2, even the cold war). It is a pretty weak argument to dismiss all of the article's points just by repeating "but GDP!!!" over and over which is more or less what your post is.
- JackFr 12y ago
  To quote Bobbi Flekman, "Money talks. Bullshit walks."
lnanek2 12y ago
Yeah, all these Europe's way are better articles and books fall a little flat considering how terrible their economies are nowadays. It sounds like they are saying, "come be like us! Our nations can't even make their debt payments!"
- baq 12y ago
  as if the US didn't go through a debt-ceiling crisis every other year.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Which is a completely manufactured "problem" whereby the completely real problem the EU nations in question had was that the money simply wasn't there.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  If you want to compare individual EU countries with something, compare them against individual US states, which also vary widely in terms of how well they do economically.
jcfrei 12y ago
I think an even better statistic would be the following (GPD per hours worked): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... The differences are remarkable. However the comparison is not entirely fair with countries like Norway resting at the top. Norway derives a large part of its GDP from industries which are not very labor heavy but contribute heavily to GDP (Norway's economy is >50% based on petrochemicals).
pbh101 12y ago
Quick note: according to Wikipedia (citing IMF, World Bank, etc) the US is #1 in GDP at ~$16 trillion, almost double China in the number two spot. We are number 6 in PPP, but if we're talking economic output I would argue the former is more relevant.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jbernier 12y ago
But how much of that GDP is going to the workers who're putting in the long hours? Great time to be an employer in the US.
rbehrends 12y ago
The problem with GDP per capita comparisons is that GDP is a bit of a weak measure of economic performance. It is a measure of raw, unadjusted economic throughput (cash flow, essentially), not necessarily a measure of economic performance. It is increased by an inefficient healthcare system (healthcare spending makes up 17.7% of the US GDP all on its own, while most of the affluent European countries are in the 9%-11% range), by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the United States' comparatively high energy usage per capita. See also RFK's famous quote one the GNP [1]. The reason why GDP is still used prominently as an economic indicator, while economists have been looking for better metrics, all those other metrics involve a fair amount of subjectivity. And GDP is still a pretty decent predictor of economic performance, despite its known weaknesses. But in the end, higher GDP does not necessarily translate into higher quality of life (of course, once the gap is large enough, it almost certainly does, at least for the average person, but we aren't talking orders of magnitude here). I don't think you'll see overall higher QoL in the US compared to Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, or France (the four OECD countries with the fewest hours worked per capita), regardless of where the GDP per capita is. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY
- brightsize 12y ago
  In the past two years, I've spent six months living in Germany. The quality-of-life difference between that country and the US is striking. In Germany, it appeared that ordinary people could both afford to, and were inclined to, partake often in small pleasures such as having a Bier and a bite at outdoor cafes in the summer. The streets were lined with these cafes and restaurants, most doing a brisk business. I never saw so many cut-flower shops in my life. The small pleasure of flowers was both affordable AND something that was on the minds of ordinary people, something that one would never encounter in the US. Here, such things are looked upon as frivolous luxuries, and financially they are that for the 99%. If you can afford such things as cut flowers, then, we're told by our betters, you can also work for less money or work more for what you're earning currently. Why do you deserve luxuries, peon? Despite what the pro-workaholic, GDP-flaunting people in the US would say, Germans on the whole seem to be quite materially prosperous. But with that, they are culturally prosperous in a quality-of-life sense too. They seem to expect it, whereas in the US a high QoL is reserved for the wealthy. Obviously I'm not saying that every German lives this way, necessarily. But I think that this cultural observation is accurate. I think if average people in the US would be brought to understand that they too could have a modest life containing a big helping of everyday pleasures and without life-sucking, excessive work expectations, there'd be a revolution.
Derbasti 12y ago
If you compare countries, a more productive economy is a good measure. If you compare people and lives, not so much.

lallysingh 12y ago

Well, normalized to working population, yes?

autokad 12y ago

it also tries to state that working hard leads to less productivity, when US productivity eclipses most european countries. i had a consultant complain that they hate working with europeans. the people always go on vacation and projects get held up, and they come back and have to get oriented with everything again. by the time they catch up they are on vacation again

thejosh 12y ago
That's the funniest excuse I've ever heard for Americans not having holiday leave.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
thegeomaster 12y ago
How big a sample size of Europeans does your consultant have? Your claim that "Europeans go on vacation and projects get held up and they can never catch up again" is... dubious at best.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Yes I know a CTO who worked in the valley (I think he reported to Vint at one point) and the UK. He commented that the USA workers didn't produce more even though they only had 2 weeks vs the 5+ the civil service T&C derived uk workers did. spent far more time goofing off and gossiping and taking sneaky long weekends to go skiing was his comment.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    Danes who work in the U.S. are often very surprised by the lack of organization in American workplaces. People work long hours but they seem somewhat haphazard hours, at least from a foreign perspective. Meetings are a particularly big cultural friction point: Danes expect a meeting to start exactly at a specific time, have an agenda distributed at least a day ahead of time, stick to the agenda, and end at exactly the agreed ending time. So you have a 10-11am meeting, you get going on the main topics of discussion at 10:00 (not 10:15 after 15 mins of small-talk and waiting for stragglers to come in), people have come prepared with what they're discussing, and it's guaranteed to be done by 11:00.
- autokad 12y ago
  i made a statement, backed it up by mentioning productivity, and then made a reference to a real world example that I have observed, unlike the article that just mostly made platitudes. if you'd like further evidence, the EU area has an unemployment rate close to 12%. companies are not anxious to hire europeans for one reason or another.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    Almost all the EU unemployment is in the countries with long working hours and shorter vacations, oddly enough. Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands don't have high unemployment. People work reasonably short hours, take long vacations, and the many consulting companies here have no problem getting contracts, both within Europe and worldwide. The European countries with major economic problems are in the south and east, where they tend not to have as generous vacation and hour policies in the first place. If you work with a Greek or Spanish consulting company, they will be there any time you want, bringing everyone into the office at 3am on a Saturday their time, if you ask for it. Good luck getting a Danish company to do that! Yet the Danish companies are not having trouble getting work.
Nursie 12y ago
>> the people always go on vacation and projects get held up, and they come back and have to get oriented with everything again. by the time they catch up they are on vacation again It's almost as if work is something they do to support a life outside the office. Outrageous.
Spooky23 12y ago
All of the measurements are based on the workforce, which is a term of art that means something. When you get more efficient, lay off people and have everyone else do 1.5-3x more work, you get efficient. The problem is, many of the discarded people are ending up on disability, and are thus out of the workforce. I'd like to compare the productivity of various societies based on population.
kps 12y ago
> it also tries to state that working hard leads to less productivity No, it says that working longer leads to less productivity.
autokad 12y ago
i clearly set something off. I didnt mean to disrespect EU workers, but it does seem like their vacation time is on the extreme side where as our seemingly lack there of is weighted towards the over working side but not by a huge deal. IMO

Someone1234 12y ago

The US has had a GDP advantage since the second world war. But since then much of the EU has rolled out socialised medicine and more workers rights (maternity leave, mandatory vacation, even a higher minimum wage) and they haven't slipped down the rankings as a result. Understanding why the US's GDP is as positive as it is is a much bigger topic that takes us into areas like natural resources (e.g. oil, metals, etc) but also history (e.g. World War 1, world War 2, even the cold war). It is a pretty weak argument to dismiss all of the article's points just by repeating "but GDP!!!" over and over which is more or less what your post is.

JackFr 12y ago
To quote Bobbi Flekman, "Money talks. Bullshit walks."

lnanek2 12y ago

Yeah, all these Europe's way are better articles and books fall a little flat considering how terrible their economies are nowadays. It sounds like they are saying, "come be like us! Our nations can't even make their debt payments!"

baq 12y ago
as if the US didn't go through a debt-ceiling crisis every other year.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Which is a completely manufactured "problem" whereby the completely real problem the EU nations in question had was that the money simply wasn't there.
mike_hearn 12y ago
If you want to compare individual EU countries with something, compare them against individual US states, which also vary widely in terms of how well they do economically.

jcfrei 12y ago

I think an even better statistic would be the following (GPD per hours worked): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... The differences are remarkable. However the comparison is not entirely fair with countries like Norway resting at the top. Norway derives a large part of its GDP from industries which are not very labor heavy but contribute heavily to GDP (Norway's economy is >50% based on petrochemicals).

pbh101 12y ago

Quick note: according to Wikipedia (citing IMF, World Bank, etc) the US is #1 in GDP at ~$16 trillion, almost double China in the number two spot. We are number 6 in PPP, but if we're talking economic output I would argue the former is more relevant.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jbernier 12y ago

But how much of that GDP is going to the workers who're putting in the long hours? Great time to be an employer in the US.

rbehrends 12y ago

The problem with GDP per capita comparisons is that GDP is a bit of a weak measure of economic performance. It is a measure of raw, unadjusted economic throughput (cash flow, essentially), not necessarily a measure of economic performance. It is increased by an inefficient healthcare system (healthcare spending makes up 17.7% of the US GDP all on its own, while most of the affluent European countries are in the 9%-11% range), by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the United States' comparatively high energy usage per capita. See also RFK's famous quote one the GNP [1]. The reason why GDP is still used prominently as an economic indicator, while economists have been looking for better metrics, all those other metrics involve a fair amount of subjectivity. And GDP is still a pretty decent predictor of economic performance, despite its known weaknesses. But in the end, higher GDP does not necessarily translate into higher quality of life (of course, once the gap is large enough, it almost certainly does, at least for the average person, but we aren't talking orders of magnitude here). I don't think you'll see overall higher QoL in the US compared to Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, or France (the four OECD countries with the fewest hours worked per capita), regardless of where the GDP per capita is. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY

brightsize 12y ago
In the past two years, I've spent six months living in Germany. The quality-of-life difference between that country and the US is striking. In Germany, it appeared that ordinary people could both afford to, and were inclined to, partake often in small pleasures such as having a Bier and a bite at outdoor cafes in the summer. The streets were lined with these cafes and restaurants, most doing a brisk business. I never saw so many cut-flower shops in my life. The small pleasure of flowers was both affordable AND something that was on the minds of ordinary people, something that one would never encounter in the US. Here, such things are looked upon as frivolous luxuries, and financially they are that for the 99%. If you can afford such things as cut flowers, then, we're told by our betters, you can also work for less money or work more for what you're earning currently. Why do you deserve luxuries, peon? Despite what the pro-workaholic, GDP-flaunting people in the US would say, Germans on the whole seem to be quite materially prosperous. But with that, they are culturally prosperous in a quality-of-life sense too. They seem to expect it, whereas in the US a high QoL is reserved for the wealthy. Obviously I'm not saying that every German lives this way, necessarily. But I think that this cultural observation is accurate. I think if average people in the US would be brought to understand that they too could have a modest life containing a big helping of everyday pleasures and without life-sucking, excessive work expectations, there'd be a revolution.

Derbasti 12y ago

If you compare countries, a more productive economy is a good measure. If you compare people and lives, not so much.