7 ms·

The whole time I was thinking "Man, this is crazy, don't they see how that hurts productivity?" And then I thought about Europe compared to the United States. T

by e_modad 12y ago

The whole time I was thinking "Man, this is crazy, don't they see how that hurts productivity?" And then I thought about Europe compared to the United States. To our European colleagues: Do you think of us as working ourselves to death?

Cookingboy 12y ago
Except from the actual productivity angle, Silicon Valley (and to a larger extent, the U.S. economy) do have the most to show in terms of final results when compared to the rest of the world.
- _delirium 12y ago
  By what measure does Silicon Valley have good final results to show? Simply GDP per capita or something of that sort? I lived in the SF Bay Area for years, and I left in part because it was such a bad place to live, which to me does not seem like a very good showing. I now live in Copenhagen, and if you want to talk about results to show for an economy, Copenhagen is better in every way I can think of. It's just a nicer place to live. It has less poverty, lower crime, lower incarceration, better transit, better healthcare, sidewalks are not covered in human feces, homeless rate is massively lower, housing is more affordable, there is a more experimental startup culture, offices are more affordable, unemployment is low, etc. I can believe that SF is richer numerically, but walking around Copenhagen subjectively feels like a much more economically successful city. SF's is a weird kind of segregated wealth: there are some very rich people, driving expensive cars and living in penthouses, but the area overall has a lot of poverty and a ton of social problems, and does not subjectively feel wealthy to me. If I have to worry about stepping in feces or being mugged, to me that is not a mark of a particularly successful economic system, or the mark of an area that is desirable to live in.
  - dashboardfront 12y ago
    Man. I studied in Copenhagen, and I really disliked the place. It was a sentiment shared by a lot of the international students I ran into, sans the ones on exchange. The variety of stores, the opening hours, the size of grocery, the limited food selection, and especially the unwelcoming culture got to me pretty quickly. How are you integrating into the Danish culture (assuming you're not a native Dane)?
    - GandalfTheThird 12y ago
      In other words, not for those dependent on consummerism and overeating.
      - dashboardfront 12y ago
        Right. Because there's no consumerism in Copenhagen and no fat people either. I'm curious as to how you pulled that out of everything I said. More accurately, there's little room for individualists in Denmark. The atmosphere of Jantelov is not very pleasant, and outsiders especially struggle to find their place within it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
    - _delirium 12y ago
      I haven't had much of an issue with groceries/etc. Opening hours are good enough for me, typically 8am-10pm x 7 days a week (depending on how long ago you were in Copenhagen, that might not have been the case at the time). I guess I'm not really attempting to integrate into Danish culture per se. I feel pretty comfortable with cosmopolitan Copenhagen culture, which is a bit different. Copenhagen is a really international city these days, and my group of friends is from a number of countries (Spanish, German, Greek, Polish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Korean, Syrian, and yes, Danish). So unless we all become fluent enough in Danish to prefer it over English, we're going to speak English as a practical matter anyway. If you're in the central areas of the city, in my experience that's not uncommon— in a typical bar in Indre By, Vesterbro, or Nørrebro, the table next to you is almost as likely to be speaking English as Danish. It'd be nice to speak Danish too, just from a practical perspective I have little opportunity/need to. I'd say about half of the cultural events are in English as well, so it doesn't even really feel like being in some kind of expat bubble. Especially anything to do with science or technology: game-dev meet-ups, hackathons, research talks at universities, etc. are mostly done in English. Looking at the talks at http://www.cphtalks.org/ http://www.cphtalks.org/, for example (which admittedly leans towards academic talks), I count 50 talks in the coming week, of which 41 are in English and 9 are in Danish. Between that and having learned enough written Danish that I can read a newspaper ok, I feel reasonably connected. I do think it's hard to meet Danish people, but once you know 1 or 2, it's easier to meet others. And Copenhagen is a great place to meet non-Danish people. I think I have honestly met more German people here than I would have if I were actually living in Germany.
  - ggreer 12y ago
    I agree that SF is a dirty city, but there are nicer parts of the bay area. I think the parent was talking about more than numbers, though focused in a different area: what Silicon Valley creates. Consider how much time you spend using things created in the bay area: Google, Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ebay, WordPress, Pintrest, Reddit, Instagram, Paypal... the list is too long to name everything.
    - willvarfar 12y ago
      I'm living in the south of Sweden near Copenhagen and will be going to a open-source dev meet-up in Copenhagen today in fact. There's not the same Valley feeling perhaps but there is a startup and dev scene. The region is really really productive technically. There are lots of startups and some do really well. Skype (Swedes, Danes and Estonians), Spotify, Mojang (Minecraft), Dice (owned by EA; Battlefield etc), Massive, etc etc. Lots are in the game-making space. There are lots of big companies too such as Ikea, Ericsson, Saab, etc etc. Names you recognize. And Sweden is a really really big exporter of music; the third biggest exporter in the world, or something like that, which is not bad for a population about that of London. Of course many want to move to the Valley and I know many who have. But having been over to visit a few times I'd much rather work remotely from my farm house deep in the Swedish countryside with my great broadband.
    - bane 12y ago
      One thing to note: lots of VCs basically require you to relocate to SV to do your startup. That's one reason there's so many startups in SV.
johansch 12y ago
(I am Swedish.) I think Silicon Valley-style working hours are actually sometimes required to win in the race of building world leading products. Of course, in the vast majority of the time it's probably being applied in a stupid way, just like in Japan. It all comes down to how hard it is to scale up a team. ("The mythical man month", etc.) You can actually borrow against future productivity by running a team really, really hard when it really matters. (Compare with the stories of how iPhone 1.0 was developed.) In Europe pulling off something like this is only feasible in a small start-ups where everyone knows what's at stake, and there is a reward mechanism in place that works.
- tiles 12y ago
  Just curious, where can I find stories about how the iPhone 1.0 was developed? I'm not sure what to search for.
  - Scuds 12y ago
    A book would be a fairly heavy undertaking since it's a compilation of interviews, casual chats, etc. For casual chats, the Debug Podcast: http://www.imore.com/debug http://www.imore.com/debug http://www.imore.com/debug-39-nitin-ganatra-episode-i-system-7-carbon http://www.imore.com/debug-39-nitin-ganatra-episode-i-system... with the former Director of Engineering, iOS Applications at Apple Inc, Nitin Ganatra http://www.imore.com/debug-40-nitin-ganatra-episode-ii-os-x-ios http://www.imore.com/debug-40-nitin-ganatra-episode-ii-os-x-... Debug 40: Nitin Ganatra episode II: OS X to iOS http://www.imore.com/debug-41-nitin-ganatra-episode-iii-iphone-ipad http://www.imore.com/debug-41-nitin-ganatra-episode-iii-ipho... Debug 41: Nitin Ganatra episode III: iPhone to iPad http://www.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoing-software-steve-jobs http://www.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoi... What's it like to demo software to Steve Jobs http://www.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-understanding-apple http://www.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-unde... Part II Why am I posting this into a talk about Japan? Oh well.
  - yulaow 12y ago
    The Bio book of Steve Jobs has some chapters about it. There are also some citations about some members of the team and good part of them said it was a fantastic experience, but they had also to change job after it because they felt really exhausted (in some parts they talk about 100h per week as a standard in some teams, so I can understand them).
oblio 12y ago
Most of you, yes. And I'm not talking only about software. I heard some horror stories about lawyers as well. Plus you're nuts with your education loans, no matter what those colleges offer!
facepalm 12y ago
yes
Wintamute 12y ago
Brit here. Yep, what I hear about your working hours, working culture and amount of holiday terrifies me to the extent that I'd certainly think twice about coming over to work there for awhile. In my 10 years experience working in the London web development industry I've seen it become quite unfashionable to be slavishly devoted to your work life - and now in my current employment the studio manager practically kicks us out the door at 6pm. YMMV naturally ...
- tzakrajs 12y ago
  I keep hearing all this talk about overworking in the valley, but someone who I met, and many of his colleagues, work about 35 hours a week.
yulaow 12y ago
Personally there are two things that scary me enough to never try to find a job in the US. The first one is how you handle the whole health system, I am hardly capable to find even a single thing good about it. The second is, indeed, the long hours per week you are willing to do often in salaried jobs (at least here in Europe when I have to do more hours I get them paid a lot more than standard hours, and even in that case there is a limitation on the number of extra hours that my employer cannot surpass).
- hueving 12y ago
  If you are a software engineer you can get a job a company with good health insurance easily so that's a non-issue. The hours per week is a work culture specific to the business. Startups are more demanding, but you can easily find roles at large businesses where they are fine with 35-40 hours per week.
  - Devthrowaway80 12y ago
    Not sure I'd call it a non-issue - having recently immigrated to the US from Canada, having "good health insurance" by American standards has still left me significantly worse off than I was when I had universal healthcare.
    - thedufer 12y ago
      Its rare, but actually good health insurance exists here. I'm young/healthy enough that I haven't hit the limit of coverage, but I understand that's pretty hard to do, and deductibles/co-pays/drug costs are all reimbursable. That said, I understand its a fairly unique situation.
      - zrail 12y ago
        That is an exceedingly unique situation. I have never heard of any of that being reimbursable. Even with the amazing insurance I had at my previous job, none of that was true. Also, FYI, because of the ACA (Obamacare) there is no longer a lifetime or yearly cap on benefits.
badname 12y ago
Yup. Sorry.
ad_hominem 12y ago
If we're going to turn this into yet another United States - Europe comparison, you could also compare the flip side of the equation: high barriers to entry in starting a business in Japan being similar to Europe. In some ways Japan seems to have the worst of both worlds - regular jobs are low pay with deathmarch hours, yet it's seemingly impossible to escape by striking out on your own.
- final 12y ago
  Interesting - what are the high barriers to starting a business in Europe? AFAIK most countries in EU have higher unemployment benefits and other social protections than US (many ppl live on benefits while starting a business). People who say leave a mega corp to do a starup still have health insurance. Registering a company take a few hours. Most countries have all kinds of tax subsidies for the founders, investors and employees of new businesses.
lmm 12y ago
Yes

by e_modad 12y ago

Cookingboy 12y ago

Except from the actual productivity angle, Silicon Valley (and to a larger extent, the U.S. economy) do have the most to show in terms of final results when compared to the rest of the world.

_delirium 12y ago
By what measure does Silicon Valley have good final results to show? Simply GDP per capita or something of that sort? I lived in the SF Bay Area for years, and I left in part because it was such a bad place to live, which to me does not seem like a very good showing. I now live in Copenhagen, and if you want to talk about results to show for an economy, Copenhagen is better in every way I can think of. It's just a nicer place to live. It has less poverty, lower crime, lower incarceration, better transit, better healthcare, sidewalks are not covered in human feces, homeless rate is massively lower, housing is more affordable, there is a more experimental startup culture, offices are more affordable, unemployment is low, etc. I can believe that SF is richer numerically, but walking around Copenhagen subjectively feels like a much more economically successful city. SF's is a weird kind of segregated wealth: there are some very rich people, driving expensive cars and living in penthouses, but the area overall has a lot of poverty and a ton of social problems, and does not subjectively feel wealthy to me. If I have to worry about stepping in feces or being mugged, to me that is not a mark of a particularly successful economic system, or the mark of an area that is desirable to live in.
- dashboardfront 12y ago
  Man. I studied in Copenhagen, and I really disliked the place. It was a sentiment shared by a lot of the international students I ran into, sans the ones on exchange. The variety of stores, the opening hours, the size of grocery, the limited food selection, and especially the unwelcoming culture got to me pretty quickly. How are you integrating into the Danish culture (assuming you're not a native Dane)?
  - GandalfTheThird 12y ago
    In other words, not for those dependent on consummerism and overeating.
    - dashboardfront 12y ago
      Right. Because there's no consumerism in Copenhagen and no fat people either. I'm curious as to how you pulled that out of everything I said. More accurately, there's little room for individualists in Denmark. The atmosphere of Jantelov is not very pleasant, and outsiders especially struggle to find their place within it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
  - _delirium 12y ago
    I haven't had much of an issue with groceries/etc. Opening hours are good enough for me, typically 8am-10pm x 7 days a week (depending on how long ago you were in Copenhagen, that might not have been the case at the time). I guess I'm not really attempting to integrate into Danish culture per se. I feel pretty comfortable with cosmopolitan Copenhagen culture, which is a bit different. Copenhagen is a really international city these days, and my group of friends is from a number of countries (Spanish, German, Greek, Polish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Korean, Syrian, and yes, Danish). So unless we all become fluent enough in Danish to prefer it over English, we're going to speak English as a practical matter anyway. If you're in the central areas of the city, in my experience that's not uncommon— in a typical bar in Indre By, Vesterbro, or Nørrebro, the table next to you is almost as likely to be speaking English as Danish. It'd be nice to speak Danish too, just from a practical perspective I have little opportunity/need to. I'd say about half of the cultural events are in English as well, so it doesn't even really feel like being in some kind of expat bubble. Especially anything to do with science or technology: game-dev meet-ups, hackathons, research talks at universities, etc. are mostly done in English. Looking at the talks at http://www.cphtalks.org/ http://www.cphtalks.org/, for example (which admittedly leans towards academic talks), I count 50 talks in the coming week, of which 41 are in English and 9 are in Danish. Between that and having learned enough written Danish that I can read a newspaper ok, I feel reasonably connected. I do think it's hard to meet Danish people, but once you know 1 or 2, it's easier to meet others. And Copenhagen is a great place to meet non-Danish people. I think I have honestly met more German people here than I would have if I were actually living in Germany.
- ggreer 12y ago
  I agree that SF is a dirty city, but there are nicer parts of the bay area. I think the parent was talking about more than numbers, though focused in a different area: what Silicon Valley creates. Consider how much time you spend using things created in the bay area: Google, Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ebay, WordPress, Pintrest, Reddit, Instagram, Paypal... the list is too long to name everything.
  - willvarfar 12y ago
    I'm living in the south of Sweden near Copenhagen and will be going to a open-source dev meet-up in Copenhagen today in fact. There's not the same Valley feeling perhaps but there is a startup and dev scene. The region is really really productive technically. There are lots of startups and some do really well. Skype (Swedes, Danes and Estonians), Spotify, Mojang (Minecraft), Dice (owned by EA; Battlefield etc), Massive, etc etc. Lots are in the game-making space. There are lots of big companies too such as Ikea, Ericsson, Saab, etc etc. Names you recognize. And Sweden is a really really big exporter of music; the third biggest exporter in the world, or something like that, which is not bad for a population about that of London. Of course many want to move to the Valley and I know many who have. But having been over to visit a few times I'd much rather work remotely from my farm house deep in the Swedish countryside with my great broadband.
  - bane 12y ago
    One thing to note: lots of VCs basically require you to relocate to SV to do your startup. That's one reason there's so many startups in SV.

johansch 12y ago

(I am Swedish.) I think Silicon Valley-style working hours are actually sometimes required to win in the race of building world leading products. Of course, in the vast majority of the time it's probably being applied in a stupid way, just like in Japan. It all comes down to how hard it is to scale up a team. ("The mythical man month", etc.) You can actually borrow against future productivity by running a team really, really hard when it really matters. (Compare with the stories of how iPhone 1.0 was developed.) In Europe pulling off something like this is only feasible in a small start-ups where everyone knows what's at stake, and there is a reward mechanism in place that works.

tiles 12y ago
Just curious, where can I find stories about how the iPhone 1.0 was developed? I'm not sure what to search for.
- Scuds 12y ago
  A book would be a fairly heavy undertaking since it's a compilation of interviews, casual chats, etc. For casual chats, the Debug Podcast: http://www.imore.com/debug http://www.imore.com/debug http://www.imore.com/debug-39-nitin-ganatra-episode-i-system-7-carbon http://www.imore.com/debug-39-nitin-ganatra-episode-i-system... with the former Director of Engineering, iOS Applications at Apple Inc, Nitin Ganatra http://www.imore.com/debug-40-nitin-ganatra-episode-ii-os-x-ios http://www.imore.com/debug-40-nitin-ganatra-episode-ii-os-x-... Debug 40: Nitin Ganatra episode II: OS X to iOS http://www.imore.com/debug-41-nitin-ganatra-episode-iii-iphone-ipad http://www.imore.com/debug-41-nitin-ganatra-episode-iii-ipho... Debug 41: Nitin Ganatra episode III: iPhone to iPad http://www.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoing-software-steve-jobs http://www.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoi... What's it like to demo software to Steve Jobs http://www.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-understanding-apple http://www.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-unde... Part II Why am I posting this into a talk about Japan? Oh well.
- yulaow 12y ago
  The Bio book of Steve Jobs has some chapters about it. There are also some citations about some members of the team and good part of them said it was a fantastic experience, but they had also to change job after it because they felt really exhausted (in some parts they talk about 100h per week as a standard in some teams, so I can understand them).

oblio 12y ago

Most of you, yes. And I'm not talking only about software. I heard some horror stories about lawyers as well. Plus you're nuts with your education loans, no matter what those colleges offer!

facepalm 12y ago

yes

Wintamute 12y ago

Brit here. Yep, what I hear about your working hours, working culture and amount of holiday terrifies me to the extent that I'd certainly think twice about coming over to work there for awhile. In my 10 years experience working in the London web development industry I've seen it become quite unfashionable to be slavishly devoted to your work life - and now in my current employment the studio manager practically kicks us out the door at 6pm. YMMV naturally ...

tzakrajs 12y ago
I keep hearing all this talk about overworking in the valley, but someone who I met, and many of his colleagues, work about 35 hours a week.

yulaow 12y ago

Personally there are two things that scary me enough to never try to find a job in the US. The first one is how you handle the whole health system, I am hardly capable to find even a single thing good about it. The second is, indeed, the long hours per week you are willing to do often in salaried jobs (at least here in Europe when I have to do more hours I get them paid a lot more than standard hours, and even in that case there is a limitation on the number of extra hours that my employer cannot surpass).

hueving 12y ago
If you are a software engineer you can get a job a company with good health insurance easily so that's a non-issue. The hours per week is a work culture specific to the business. Startups are more demanding, but you can easily find roles at large businesses where they are fine with 35-40 hours per week.
- Devthrowaway80 12y ago
  Not sure I'd call it a non-issue - having recently immigrated to the US from Canada, having "good health insurance" by American standards has still left me significantly worse off than I was when I had universal healthcare.
  - thedufer 12y ago
    Its rare, but actually good health insurance exists here. I'm young/healthy enough that I haven't hit the limit of coverage, but I understand that's pretty hard to do, and deductibles/co-pays/drug costs are all reimbursable. That said, I understand its a fairly unique situation.
    - zrail 12y ago
      That is an exceedingly unique situation. I have never heard of any of that being reimbursable. Even with the amazing insurance I had at my previous job, none of that was true. Also, FYI, because of the ACA (Obamacare) there is no longer a lifetime or yearly cap on benefits.

badname 12y ago

Yup. Sorry.

ad_hominem 12y ago

If we're going to turn this into yet another United States - Europe comparison, you could also compare the flip side of the equation: high barriers to entry in starting a business in Japan being similar to Europe. In some ways Japan seems to have the worst of both worlds - regular jobs are low pay with deathmarch hours, yet it's seemingly impossible to escape by striking out on your own.

final 12y ago
Interesting - what are the high barriers to starting a business in Europe? AFAIK most countries in EU have higher unemployment benefits and other social protections than US (many ppl live on benefits while starting a business). People who say leave a mega corp to do a starup still have health insurance. Registering a company take a few hours. Most countries have all kinds of tax subsidies for the founders, investors and employees of new businesses.

lmm 12y ago

Yes