America's misguided culture of overwork

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010/index.html

by rb2k_ • 16 years ago

176 181 16 years ago

I'm surprised wealth distribution wasn't mentioned in the stuff about GDP comparison. I'm no Economist but I was under the impression that wealth is distributed more evenly in European countries than in the US. We have rich people here in Europe but the US seems to have lots of insanely rich people and lots of poor people to go with it...

aci• 16 years ago

This is not only your impression. Look for example at this Wikpedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ...

gaius4• 16 years ago

Well, it is more subtle than that, the distinction between wealth and money. For example, the Rothschilds cash fortune isn't comparable to the paper worth of someone like Gates. But arguably in any practical sense, the lifestyle they live, they're wealthier.

European ideas about wealth are less about cash and more about (inherited/inheritable) tangible assets and connections to people at a similar level.

henrikschroder• 16 years ago

It's quite striking to read up on the differences in definitions of social classes between Europe and the US. In the US, class is almost entirely about income bracket, in Europe, class is mostly about your social network.

arethuza6• 16 years ago

Norway is an interesting example - one of the highest per capita GDP figures but unusual in that the distribution of incomes is very narrow e.g.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...

gyardley6• 16 years ago

Norway is a very lovely country but I doubt there's a sustainable model there for the rest of the world to follow, since we all can't become the world's third-largest exporter of oil.

Hagelin5• 16 years ago

"How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place? The Allies did it.”

What? I’m pretty sure the European labour movement and the Social Democrats wouldn’t agree with that answer. On a list of possible explanations, I think ”You can thank the Americans for it” would rank rather low.

lenni3• 16 years ago

Maybe not so much in this specific instance, but Germany's economic and political structure (decentralisation of power and money) was a direct result of the occupation by the Allies, who wanted to avoid a strong central government. America was hugely influential in 1945-70.

Hagelin5• 16 years ago

Sure, but labour laws in Germany are closely related to those of other Northern European countries, such as the Scandinavian ones. Like them or not, the labour movement in the form of the unions and the Social Democratic parties fought long and hard for them. To claim that we have the Americans to thank for them is really rather absurd.

microtonal3• 16 years ago

But the Dutch, French, Scandinavian, and others aren't, and the those systems is very comparable to that of Germany. Many of the ideas originate from far before WWII, and had a strong presence (and development) in Europe since events such as the French revolution.

It's America-centrism to think that all welfare and modernism is brought to the world by the USA. One typical anecdote a former exchange student told me, that some high school kids in the USA believed (this was at the end of the nineties) that European countries do not have their own radio channels ;). Go educate yourself, the average Western-European citizen has more luxury, more free time, and better health-care than the average citizen of the United States (I know, I have visited the US often).

The primary advantage of the US is that it is far easier to set up a company, and make it really big. If you make it, you will be rich and wealthy. If you fail, you will hit rock bottom. It is a consequence of the system, wages, taxing, etc.

othello• 16 years ago

Certainly not, the high degree of decentralisation in Germany predates post-WWII by at least a century. [1]

Before it was unified in 1870, Germany was made of a number of small independent kingdoms, loosely associated through the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, then through the German Confederation from 1815 until the unification under Prussia's dominance in 1870 [2].

This late unification (in comparison with France or England for example, which already had an embryo of a unified central state as early as the XIIIth century [3]) explains the non-centralised nature of the German state and economy. The Allies had very little to do with it.

1: http://countrystudies.us/germany/151.htm

2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire#Modern_period

3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_France#Saint_Louis

macco2• 16 years ago

Thanking Americans for it is definitely on the list. My parents were both born during WWII - they are very greatful to the US.

Hagelin5• 16 years ago

Yes, I’m sure your parents have great reasons to be grateful to the US, as do I, I’m just saying that German labour laws aren’t one of them.

Ras_2• 16 years ago

Otto von Bismarck was also instrumental:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Bismarck.27s_...

dhoe2• 16 years ago

It's an interesting topic, and quite complex. In my line of work (high level tech support), measuring productivity is relatively straightforward, and the European team with its 30 days of holidays and no overtime at all beats the US team in average output per year easily. Both lose out to the Indians, whom I admire a lot for the pure raw effort.

On the other hand, I've heard local startups complain about the difficulty of finding people that are willing to put in the hours that you'd need in a startup.

rb2k_3• 16 years ago

The question is if those startups are willing to pay in relation to the hours they want (and I don't think one should keep this relation at a linear scale)

gst• 16 years ago

Do startups really need these hours? Or do they only think they need them? It's not the hours that count, it's the output.

For example, I can work 60 or 80 hours a week instead of 40, but it doesn't really make a difference because the effective output will stay more or less the same. Without sufficient leisure time I'm just slower and I'll make errors when working.

In addition, with progressive systems it doesn't even make sense to work that much. 20 hours more a week reduces my leisure time to effectively zero. On the other hand, even if this additional hours were paid, the effective difference would be minimal, due to the high taxes I'd have to pay for them.

arethuza6• 16 years ago

I'm interested that this question has got so many votes without any replies.

In my view there are times in start-ups (I've been involved in two, once as a co-founder) there are times when you do have to go that extra mile (or ten), but I don't think coding is the area where this is really obvious.

For example, if there are a handful of people in the company and you try and get VC investment that takes a huge amount of effort so you end up having coding time round about other tasks. So even though your total code output doesn't go up that much you end up doing piles of other stuff (e.g. planning for a major deployment at a customer) thay someone technical has to do but which isn't coding. Something has got to give - so you work longer hours, not because you want to, but because you have to.

Looking back do I think expecting employees to work crazy hours makes them any more productive as developers - absolutely not. But as a founder/exec you have to do it.

d_c• 16 years ago

"free university tuition" -> Not true anymore, it's more like 300-600 Euros per semester. Still not much compared to the US but enough for german students to protest and public banks to create state-sponsored student loans. This type of loan for students was unknown before in Germany.

ugh3• 16 years ago

Not everywhere. My university is in a state with no tuition.

rb2k_3• 16 years ago

Well, it is true for at least some of the states. For the other ones (I'm in Baden-Württemberg), it's usually 500 Euros + 1xx Euros of fees per semester. Also: I recently read an article (sorry, no link) about student loans in Germany. Apparently, there are about 20-30 banks that offer "student loans". Only 3-4 actually offer something that is limited to students and apparently most of the banks want to move away from keeping those "special" deals arround

roel_v2• 16 years ago

Are there state-provided student loans in Germany? Here in the Netherlands there have been for years (decades maybe? - I'm an immigrant here, my knowledge only goes back 15 years or so ;) )

dhoe2• 16 years ago

Yes, although the rules change frequently. For me it was an interest free loan of which I had to pay back only 50%.

magamiako• 16 years ago

The school I want to attend here in the states costs $250 per credit hour. A bachelor's degree (4-year) is 120 credit hours. It's $30,000 USD. I know salaries in some parts of the EU are behind the US in terms of buying power within their respective countries, but even at 500 Euros, you're not paying anywhere near like what we're paying for school, even adjusted for your local wages.

matwood• 16 years ago

A better comparison might be to compare countries in the EU to states in the US. Some states use the lottery to provide tuition to any in-state student going to a state school.

nihilocrat• 16 years ago

(As an American) the first time I heard about people not going to university in Germany because they couldn't afford it I pretty much gave up all hope for humanity. Some people just don't know how lucky they are.

lenni3• 16 years ago

Hmm, I enjoy hearing all the praise heap onto us (Germany) latetly. There was a time when Germany was called the sick, fat old man of Europe, too inflexible and and stubborn to able to adjust to a changing environment.

I'm sure once the growth lessens the tone will change again - I'll enjoy it as long as it lasts.

dsplittgerber3• 16 years ago

Which growth are you referring to? Growth has overall been dismal at best.

lenni3• 16 years ago

2.2% economic growth in the last quarter; higher than anything since reunification.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/13/german-econom...

Luc• 16 years ago

The good average performance numbers are especially impressive when you consider West-Germany absorbed the underdeveloped East-German economy in 1990, and still provides massive subsidy transfers (afaik). You must be doing something right!

dsplittgerber3• 16 years ago

This guy has lots of facts wrong - makes you wonder about his accuracy in research:

- no federally mandated six weeks of vacation time (though 4-5 weeks are the norm, even in private sector)

- University tuition has been introduced recently (though still low, but will rise as obvious source of gov revenue)

- Free nursing care / child care for a small percentage of toddlers only

- No labor minister of that name (he is undersecretary) etc.

ugh3• 16 years ago

Four weeks are federally mandated.

teoruiz• 16 years ago

> - University tuition has been introduced recently (though still low, but will rise as obvious source of gov revenue)

In Spain (another socialist economy by the article standards) University tuition is something between 600-1000 EUR a year and has not risen for a good decade now (except for the inflation).

run4yourlives3• 16 years ago

Spain is on the verge of bankruptcy. Just saying.

Nitramp3• 16 years ago

Correct, but he's at least a bit wrong in both directions. I was surprised to read people in Tupelo are three times wealthier than people in Hamburg; Tupelo might have a higher GDP, but certainly not three times.

Maybe he was trying to be polemic?

I still agree with the sentiment of the article. European societies sacrifice a bit of growth potential and individual freedom to get better living conditions for all. I think that's a wise move, and going over the board into the opposite direction, as America sometimes feels, has the potential to truly damage society as a whole.

berntb• 16 years ago

>>European societies sacrifice a bit of growth potential and individual freedom to get better living conditions for all. I think that's a wise move

The problem with sacrificing growth rates ought to be that interest accumulate -- that is, Europe becomes further and further behind.

But that seems to be countered by a variant of "second mover advantage" -- it is easier to grow fast when you are far behind (see e.g. China).

The Americans might be beating down the path for us. Who knows how slow we would otherwise move...?

Would be interesting to read a serious analysis of this.

CWuestefeld2• 16 years ago

European societies sacrifice a bit of growth potential and individual freedom to get better living conditions for all.

Economists can tell you that this can't scale up to the whole world. Paul Graham's article explains it very well. (The following is all quotation; I'm not italicizing, in the interest of readability)

If you want to reduce economic inequality instead of just improving the overall standard of living, it's not enough just to raise up the poor. What if one of your newly minted engineers gets ambitious and goes on to become another Bill Gates? Economic inequality will be as bad as ever. If you actually want to compress the gap between rich and poor, you have to push down on the top as well as pushing up on the bottom.

How do you push down on the top? You could try to decrease the productivity of the people who make the most money: make the best surgeons operate with their left hands, force popular actors to overeat, and so on. But this approach is hard to implement. The only practical solution is to let people do the best work they can, and then (either by taxation or by limiting what they can charge) to confiscate whatever you deem to be surplus.

...

At a minimum, we'd have to accept lower rates of technological growth. If you believe that large, established companies could somehow be made to develop new technology as fast as startups, the ball is in your court to explain how. (If you can come up with a remotely plausible story, you can make a fortune writing business books and consulting for large companies.)

Ok, so we get slower growth. Is that so bad? Well, one reason it's bad in practice is that other countries might not agree to slow down with us. If you're content to develop new technologies at a slower rate than the rest of the world, what happens is that you don't invent anything at all. Anything you might discover has already been invented elsewhere. And the only thing you can offer in return is raw materials and cheap labor. Once you sink that low, other countries can do whatever they like with you: install puppet governments, siphon off your best workers, use your women as prostitutes, dump their toxic waste on your territory-- all the things we do to poor countries now. The only defense is to isolate yourself, as communist countries did in the twentieth century. But the problem then is, you have to become a police state to enforce it.

http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html

Loic• 16 years ago

Vacations norm is more 5 to 6 weeks with 38h to 41h work week. That is, for all the people I know in Germany. (I know nobody with only 4 weeks). Please note that these are paid holidays, you have a lot of days off too (Christmas, etc.)

The University tuition is about €500/year.

Nursing/Day care for the kids (we have 3.5 and 1.5 year old kids) is from free to €200/€500 per month for both of them (it depends of your income and where you live).

For the title "minister" or alike, this is always a translation issue, it is always hard to map the name from one country to another because the same name may mean something different (Prime Minister in UK and France for example).

66-75-63-6b• 16 years ago

There is a legal minimum amount of vacation though - IIRC it's something like 25 days/year.

bpyne5• 16 years ago

I'm employed at a university in the US and have what we consider a "cushy" job: i.e. good benefits and a short work week. Just for comparison, here's what my employer offers.

vacation = 2 weeks

personal time = 6 days (sick time is considered personal time)

holidays = 7

We have also time off that I don't know how to categorize. It's specific to universities.

university shutdown between Christmas and New Year's = 7 days

Memorial Day until Labor Day we leave at 1pm on Friday, assuming no critical work needs to be completed.

University tuition ranges and often includes housing, which is necessary in less urban areas. $1000/class would be on the low end.

Day care for our 4.5 year old is about $250/week.

My work week is 40 hours but we're strongly encouraged to take a 1 hour lunch. However, with the exception of one other person in my social circle, everyone else works 45+ hours weekly.

EDIT: Applied line breaks again.

yummyfajitas10• 16 years ago

Not to mention: ...it’s 50,000 dollars for tuition at NYU and it’s zero at Humboldt University in Berlin. So NYU adds catastrophic amounts of GDP per capita and Humboldt adds nothing.

Which is utterly false. The author is confusing business sector output and GDP.

MaxMorlock• 16 years ago

It is four weeks (minimum). Please check: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/burlg/__3.html

It is 24 working days and since Saturdays count as working days: 24 / 6 = 4

It is called "Bundesurlaubsgesetz" -- my translation: Federal Vacation Law.

Does anything like that exist somewhere else?

chokma• 16 years ago

But you do not need to take off Saturdays, which counts as part of the weekend for most (this depends on your employer). If I want to have a week long holiday, it's five days.

Generally, if you live in the southern part of Germany, you also get several catholic hol(i|y)days, no matter if you are catholic or not.

c4urself• 16 years ago

standard offers i've come across in contracts is 2 free days per working month here, however 20 days is minimum by law not counting holidays. i've lived both in the US and EU, and while i feel there is more freedom in the US, the problem is as soon as you start working you can't enjoy them cause you're working 40+ hours per week and barely have any vacation.

frobozz2• 16 years ago

Only working 10/11 days per month - 8 in February? Where is this?

kleiba• 16 years ago

20 (work-) days per year, not month.

eru2• 16 years ago

From the artice: "Germany has the highest degree of worker control on the planet since the collapse of the Soviet Union." As if the Soviet union was a workers' paradise. There was lots of party control, but certainly not worker control.

roel_v2• 16 years ago

Yes, comparing European 'socialism' to Soviet/Chinese style socialism ('communism') is so myopic that it has become a litmus test to detect writers who have at least a basic understanding of American/European system comparisons. Someone who sees 'socialism' and interprets it American-style, and thinks that Europe is that, starts out so wrong that anything based on those assumptions is tainted.

praptak2• 16 years ago

I believe the author is wrong about GDP contribution of free tuition:

"You know, it’s 50,000 dollars for tuition at NYU and it’s zero at Humboldt University in Berlin. So NYU adds catastrophic amounts of GDP per capita and Humboldt adds nothing."

Granted, there are several approaches to calculating GDP but none of them ignores the government spending.

stuaxo• 16 years ago

Ah, but does it cost the government of Germany 50,000 dollars for a years tuition?

praptak2• 16 years ago

Probably less but not zero as the author states.

speleding• 16 years ago

I've worked in both countries and I noticed at least one explanation for the productivity difference that isn't mentioned in the article. If a German is at risk of missing a deadline on a project he will put in a lot of extra hours to avoid that. An American who already puts in way more hours has much less time and energy left to make up for unforeseen circumstances. So the increase in flexibility pays off by avoiding rescheduling dependent projects. Perhaps this flexibility may have other benefits too, such as that people have more time to intellectually enrich themselves in ways that benefit the company.

zv• 16 years ago

Can't agree more.

known• 16 years ago

The Xenophobe's Guide to the Germans http://www.ovalbooks.com/xeno/Germans.html

DanielBMarkham3• 16 years ago

This article is pure speculative narrative.

That is, whereas most essays make a thesis, then present evidence and arguments to support that thesis, this article presents a whole story spun out of thin air, involving FDR, national health insurance, vacations, the Chinese.

As such, it presents an interesting problem. You could argue with some detail --- such as the role Germany plays as a competitive partner in China -- and still it would have much of nothing to do with the rest of the essay. The thing is so loosely coupled it's impervious to criticism. I'm not sure whether to be impressed or disgusted.

I found this to be more of the same fairy tale we Americans have been telling ourselves for decades -- if only we were the Europeans. Things would be so much better. While Germans are doing some great things, we will never be Germany. Or Norway. Or Sweden. Personally I'd like to move beyond that and talk about the real country we live in.

furyg3• 16 years ago

While this story certainly isn't great for discussion (for the points you mentioned) I disagree with your last statement.

Comparisons are useful, especially when they're disentangled from the politics. I don't really care about how Swedes are ethically superior because they have more mandated vacation and a shorter workday. What I care about are the effects. Is there a lower occurrence of burnout? Are Swedes more productive during working hours? Are work-related injuries (and related costs to employers) lower? etc.

These things are intertwined with other socio-policial factors, of course, so it can be difficult to divorce them... but not too difficult.

DanielBMarkham3• 16 years ago

Two interesting points from your comments.

First, Americans can work any kind of work week they want. There's a book -- 4-hour-work-week -- that a lot of folks are trying to make work. In technology teams especially. I tell my teams that I don't care how much you work or don't: what matters is productivity and predictability.

Sure, lots of others don't feel that way, but it's up to each situation. If there were some good lessons to be learned from some example? Bring them on! I'm all for it.

Second, complex systems of hundreds of millions of people do very poorly as an engineering experiment. Or -- you can't decide how you want things to turn out and then pull some magic lever and have it turn out that way. It's never that simple. So discussions about huge generalizations are premised on a really bad flaw: that somehow we can massively change everything at one time.

[edit]As an example, you couldn't decide in 1970 that you wanted every person to have a notebook computer by 2020. You could decide to train more people in hard sciences. You could decide to make incentives for investing. But you can't take one complex system as an example and then tell another one to conform to it. That's just not the way complex systems work. And that's not meant as a political comment. That's just a rule of complex systems.[/edit]

It's much better to take all the new information you can find and incorporate it from the ground-up. Want a society with 20-hour work weeks? Cool. Go build one. Nobody is stopping you, and if it's wildly successful then others will very quickly copy it. This is a very easy thing. Actually from this angle I don't even see the point of the article.

The only other angle is that someone or somebody -- one presumes government -- should tell us how to do our work. From my own experience, technology is one of the few areas where we create our own reality. And time and time again, we make it sucky on ourselves. But it's our reality. I wouldn't want to take that ultimate ownership away from us, no matter how good the cause.

elmindreda• 16 years ago

Sweden isn't the example it used to be, in this regard. We currently have a (relatively) right-wing government that's privatising services, cutting social safety nets and creating a low-wage job market. This is having the same effects it did in the US.

timr• 16 years ago

"This article is pure speculative narrative. That is, whereas most essays make a thesis, then present evidence and arguments to support that thesis, this article presents a whole story spun out of thin air, involving FDR, national health insurance, vacations, the Chinese."

Huh. Maybe we're being A/B tested, because the article that I just read began with a clear thesis ("European social democracy – particularly Germany’s – offers some tantalizing solutions to our overworked age"), provided multiple lines of evidence and arguments to support that thesis, and didn't mention the "FDR" or "the Chinese" at all (it mentions, China, at the very end...but only to say that China isn't our enemy). If the article that you read is speculative and theoretical...well, perhaps you've got something from the Cato institute stuck in your browser cache?

It's also pretty interesting that you would lead with that statement, when your counter-argument is an assertion: "we will never be Germany". Maybe you're right, but I'm missing the part of your comment where you provide evidence and arguments to support your thesis -- or even an argument as to why we need to be Germany to adopt some of their ideas. Must be the A/B testing.

jdminhbg• 16 years ago

I'm on the other side of the A/B testing. Where's the evidence, if you don't mind hitting your back button and quoting some?

jeebusroxors• 16 years ago

"You can pull out these GDP per capita statistics and say that people in Mississippi are vastly wealthier than people in Frankfurt and Hamburg. That can’t be true. Just spend two months in Hamburg and spend two months in Tupelo, Mississippi. There’s something wrong if the statistics are telling you that the people in Tupelo are three times wealthier than the people in Germany."

I stopped reading after this thinking along the same lines as the OP. I'm still not fully awake but this doesn't seem like a good argument, although to be fair you didn't say the arguments were good.

hammmatt4• 16 years ago

As long as we are speculating.

What exactly is wrong with learning from the examples and failures of other countries.

True, maybe we can not generate the same economy as Germany. However, perhaps we could find a way to copy or mimic what is that makes Germany so effective.

The article would argue that is their social polices. It is probably a mix of harmful and beneficial. I'd wager their free healthcare doesn't contribute as much as their free education, ext.

The United States shouldn't strive to be any other country. However, effective methods are effective methods and we should embrace what is rational.

thwarted2• 16 years ago

There is probably a lot of national pride that manifests itself similar to NIH syndrome.

alaithea• 16 years ago

> I'd wager their free healthcare doesn't contribute as much as their free education, ext.

Germany's healthcare system is universal, but not free.

Standard insurance is funded by a combination of employee contributions, employer contributions and government subsidies on a scale determined by income level. Higher income workers sometimes choose to pay a tax and opt out of the standard plan, in favor of 'private' insurance. The latter's premiums are not linked to income level but instead to health status.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care#Germany

Tichy• 16 years ago

It feels funny that Germany is being marked as the prototypical socialist country. We don't think of us like that.

It seems even in the US the state is paying for things (streets, school?), so the US is also socialist? It seems to me that by the definition that most US commentators seem to use, any country with taxes is socialist.

As for the health insurance, note that it is only mandatory for employed people. If you are a freelancer or business owner/entrepreneur, you can drop out of the social insurance system for the most parts (except if the government decides to use taxes to compensate for troubles with the pension plans, which is outrageous to me). In fact, it is a problem to get into the social insurance system if you are not employed.

While health insurance is expensive here, I don't think it makes us into a socialist country. In the real socialist and communist countries you were supposed to give up everything for the benefit of the state, and your idea of fun free time was hopefully voluntary farm work.

gyardley6• 16 years ago

Many Americans don't distinguish between 'socialist' and 'social democracy', since there hasn't been a strong social democratic tradition in America for generations. You should just swap out the two terms, and then (hopefully) the conversation will feel a bit less weird.

parbo3• 16 years ago

How about moving to Sweden? We have 4G (the real LTE-kind) in the three largest cities now, and even better social safety net than Germany. ;)

count• 16 years ago

Isn't it incredibly difficult for non-EU citizens to move to Sweden to work/live?

parbo3• 16 years ago

I don't know. I would think that moving from the US is not a problem.

martinkallstrom• 16 years ago

No, not as far as I know from the people I know that are in that situation. Of course there are some things you have to deal with, but they are more than bearable.

rb2k_3• 16 years ago

That's easy if you only have 3 "large" cities :) Stockholm (1.2 mil+), Goteborg (0.5 mil+), Malmo (0.25 mil+)

parbo3• 16 years ago

I don't think there's anything easy about it. It's the first commercial deployment of LTE in the world (Oslo in Norway also has it, but that's also TeliaSonera). I'll grant you that it's cheaper with fewer cities, but not easier. Btw, the cost is 359:- SEK ($45 or so) per month. They include the modem and give you a laptop if you sign up now..

karve• 16 years ago

While I like our system in Sweden, there has been a dramatic change in the last 10 years. Especially for students, youth, foreigners and others with a limited social network.

The housing market is ridiculous, both for renting and buying, especially compared to 10 years ago. For students it has become harder to both get accepted to university and to keep their student benefits. Foreign students have harder to get admitted, not competing fully with Swedish students and also soon have to pay tuition around 8000€/year. When you finish school you won't get unemployment benefits, but instead have to apply for welfare if you can't find a job instantly. I've heard it's a funny feeling having studied for five years and then being interrogated by welfare workers who can't understand why you're there in the first place. If you're young you basically won't get any help for the first three months of unemployment, which is when you want it.

Off the top of my head I know several people who has moved to Berlin explicitly for the cheaper housing and better quality of life. Swedish DJ Petter Nordkvist[1] has stated in interviews[2] that he moved to Berlin because "it is nearly impossible to find a flat [in Stockholm] if you don’t buy". An example even more relevant to this site is Soundcloud. The founders attended university and the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship in Sweden and then moved themselves and their company to Berlin, stating "since it was and still is affordable to live and work there"[3] as one of the reasons for moving.

[1] http://www.discogs.com/artist/Petter+Nordkvist [2] http://www.hrfq3.sakura.ne.jp/home//e_interview/petter02/ind... [3] http://blog.twingly.com/2010/05/18/from-stockholm-to-berlin-...

gyardley6• 16 years ago

I'm starting to think there's something to the idea of a national culture - nothing genetic, but a set of high-level assumptions and attitudes about life that inform the vast majority of people in a region, across the political spectrum. I've personally run into vast differences in attitudes about privacy and government between Americans and Germans, and I've been thinking a lot lately about Heinrich's 'WEIRD' paper (which finds differences between Americans and other Western nations - and Western nations and the rest of the world - on psychological tests.)

I suspect that because of certain prevalent American values (autonomy, distrust of authority, a bit of the Horatio Alger myth) they've naturally optimized to the work environment best suited to them. I further suspect that America could only switch to a German system very, very gradually. The country's just not currently suited for social democracy - they'd be terrible at it.

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

My personal experience with Germans is that they are hard workers for several hours, then they take off and play. During the time they are working they are focused on getting work done.

Americans will put in long hours, but then during the course of the day will play in the form of checking personal email, talking around the water cooler, etc.

You can cross ref. this with NASA's finding that programmers who were only allowed to work 5 days a week of 8 hour days were as productive and had less bugs in their code than those allowed to work more hours.

cpach• 16 years ago

Sounds like an interesting study. I searched for it but didn't find anything. You don't happen to have a link?

ChaseB• 16 years ago

Production possibilities frontier... If I recall correctly, we learned this is my MacroEcon class in undergrad.

mattm• 16 years ago

My experience echoes this. I really believe there is a fixed limit to the amount of work one can do and once you cross that line, you just end up goofing off or procrastinating. And it's nowhere near 40 hours per week. I would say it's more like 20-30.

The 40 hour work week is standard because Henry Ford's productivity studies found that for repetitive, manual labour, that was the maximum amount of hours one could work before a drastic reduction in productivity. That bar was set nearly 100 years ago and yet we still follow it even though work has drastically changed.

I never understand people who work insane hours. They may be at work for X hours per day but I really doubt they are working all that time.

kjhgfgbhnj2• 16 years ago

Ironically the 40hour week in America came about because it was MORE efficient than working 6day weeks - in fewer hours you got more done with the weekend to rest.

Then somebody forgot this and decided that if 40 was good 48 must be better.

bpyne5• 16 years ago

I saw a PBS documentary sometime in the early 90's about the Labor Movement in the US. Just after getting the 40 hour work week, they pushed for 32 hours because it was found to be optimal. Industrialists fought harder against that one so Congress felt it was a worthy compromise to leave at 40. I'd love to find the study the Labor Movement based its conclusion on.

My own experience is that I'm maximally focused for 6 hours each day but it's split into 2-3 hour bursts.

DrPhish• 16 years ago

I found the American model of screwing around all day in order to have something to do during your (essentially mandatory) overtime to be present in Japan as well. It's taken to an extreme in both cultures, and the drop in productivity is obvious to the outside observer. The funny thing is that, at least in Japan, pretty well everyone recognizes it as a problem, but no one is willing to make any progress towards fixing it. They are completely resigned to it's "necessity".

Ras_2• 16 years ago

This might also be true in education (e.g. Finland has the least amount of school hours in OECD-countries, while its results are the best according to PISA).

Destruct1• 16 years ago

Whenever a recession hits a country everbody doubts their system. They look for other countries which are growing at the moment and try to emulate their success.

I still remember the time when the japanese were strong and everybody (europeans and americans) tried to become japanese, use their culture and work ethic.

In a decade or two, the american will forget the recession and wonder about wierd articles like this one.

bitwize• 16 years ago

Nice job putting that song in my head, hero.

"...turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so..."

maxawaytoolong2• 16 years ago

I don't know much about other industries. But in software, much of the 'long hours' seems like the result of keeping up appearances, not actual necessity. In my office now, I am sitting here posting to Hacker News. My sysadmins are playing foosball. They'll probably then go get lunch for an hour. Then come back, read some websites for an hour. Punch out a couple tickets. Play foosball. Go to some meetings. Then around 6pm people will start freaking out and stay until 10 or 11 scrambling to get the work done they were supposed to do all day.

In contrast, a startup I once worked for grew large enough to have an office in Germany. I went to work there one summer. The Germans simply didn't fuck around. They'd come in by like 8 am, crush the problems, crank out features and then go home. The Germans maybe weren't as "fun" as their US counterparts, but they were an order of magnitude more efficient.

I don't know what it is, but Germans seem to have a cold, efficient "Terminator" relationship to work. Americans have a dramatic bi-polar relationship to work, where they waste a lot of time when they are working and then worry and complain about their jobs are when they are not working.

lefstathiou• 16 years ago

I've always found these America vs Europe comparisons to to be rather poor. We're so much bigger and more diverse and our problems are on such a larger scale that its hard for me to rationalize we are still talking apples to apples. I cant help but laugh when i see these "quality of life" indexes that compare Norway, one of the most xenophobic/racist/elitist nations with a population half that of Manhattan, to the US.

While it's easy to point out how much nicer life is in Europe, i worry that people forget how much of that lifestyle is fueled by American growth/consumption. In Greece we have an expression, when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. If America slows down, the European lifestyle, which is already in decline given its unsustainability, is going to completely disappear.

To me, an unsustainable system of life/rule/govt etc is bad by definition, regardless of whether or not it works "for now". European companies are falling behind their American counterparts in many of the next generation industries. The Chinese are lining up to trounce them further. It's going to get really bad unless they make some serious changes.

Just my perspective, not that it's worth much.

sasvari2• 16 years ago

Norway, one of the most xenophobic/racist/elitist nations

for me this is a pretty severe accusation. don't know on which data you are basing that on ...

European companies are falling behind their American counterparts in many of the next generation industries.

well, do they? do all of them? which industries? which companies? looking at green technology i.e., Europe (especially Germany) is in a very good position for the future. and this is one of the most promising industries ...

linuxhansl• 16 years ago

A German here living in the US for about 10 years...

I found that I my line of work (software engineering), this is not generally true. I used to work more daily hours when I was still in Germany, and there was a culture of "You have to be in the office, otherwise we cannot verify that you are actually working".

Here I work from home when I like, work odd hours, work few hours (as long as I work focused during the hours I do work), and I am generally trusted to get my work done.

sigstoat• 16 years ago

i could swear that in the early/mid 90's, the story was that germans were more awesome because they worked longer hours than we did. now we're not awesome because we work longer hours. am i misremembering the articles, or have we indeed always been at war with eurasia?

jackowayed• 16 years ago

>You know, it’s 50,000 dollars for tuition at NYU and it’s zero at Humboldt University in Berlin. So NYU adds catastrophic amounts of GDP per capita and Humboldt adds nothing

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)

So unless the government is managing not to pay the professors or pay any other money to make Humboldt happen, Humboldt is adding to the GDP, just as government spending rather than consumer spending.

Now, it may not cost the government $50k/student. But it doesn't cost them 0 either.

temphn• 16 years ago

Maybe the US is the most powerful country in the world _because_ its people work hard in a high productivity system.

America is an exception. But perhaps it is "out of sync" with the world in the same way Google is out of sync with your average software corp.

gills• 16 years ago

Well, this is as far as I could read.

Despite the numbers, social democracy really does work...

Yes, numbers, those pesky axioms that just won't obey when we legislate away the laws of physics.

Oh. My.

vondur• 16 years ago

Our government could provide us with all the embellishments that the major European Democracies enjoy. Unfortunately, a big chuck of our tax dollars supports our Empire (wars and a enormous military)

America's misguided culture of overwork

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