171–180 of 405 posts
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> it's harder to move from a class to another compared to the US. Not true: social mobility in US is lower than in Europe and Canada.
[Citation needed]
http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobil...
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To some extent, this is a choice many Americans intentionally make. There are many jobs that offer European-like benefits, working hours, and employment stability in the US (e.g. Federal government jobs and some companies) but these are frequently viewed as undesirable -- it is not a first choice for many people if circumstances offer something better. The tradeoffs tend to be similar to Europe if you take one of the…
> (e.g. Federal government jobs and some companies) but these are frequently viewed as undesirable Federal and government (city, state etc.) jobs (perhaps excluding IT) are some of the most desirable jobs in US, with long waiting lines. Got try get a city job in NYC....
But most Americans find government jobs to be unfulfilling and stifling for exactly the same reason -- it is a dead-end. I know it is different in other countries but "government job" has mixed connotations in the US.
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some of us love work.
When I was in my late 20s and early 30s I worked all the time - I loved it! At some point though I became disillusioned with work. There was always more of it, and it was primarily for someone else's benefit. If you're working for yourself I can see a stronger case for putting in those hours, but you still risk seeing those years go by in a haze of largely undifferentiated time sitting behind the keyboard, or what ha…
i work for myself. i generally get to my office around 5am, leave at 230pm, spend around 4 hours every weekday with my wife and kids. i ski mid-week in the winter when there's fresh powder. i'll log research hours on the weekend. i have health insurance, savings, and happiness. i like my work and consider my hours logged a little light, but closer to adequate than 26 or 22 or whatever that bloomberg article says (50 - 60 a wk).
I struggle to digest this article. Considering I'm an Italian who has ever worked 40+ hours a week (non tech jobs got me to 60+ hours/wk...). And then, when I lived in England, everyone seemed to be doing at most 35 hrs/wk. I understand that these are statistics, but I can't really match it to my experience (but, hey, maybe this tells me to complain less and enjoy spare time more!)
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FPGA designer (and embedded sys FW) living in Italy here, must say that tech jobs are possibly some of the few jobs that you can be safe to find here! Now, if tech means webdev I have friends that struggle to pay the bills by freelancing with that, but going down the stack you find much more demand (I have personally found A LOT of demand for EE). Consider that I'm speaking from the northern part of Italy, no idea ab…
Are your freelancing friends expats, or Italian citizens?
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Source?
First hit on Google: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility Graph down the bottom.
It'd be interesting to see a breakdown of the UK on the various countries though.
Less happy, certainly plausible. The only world superpower, definitely. While I don't have any evidence to back any of that up, it certainly appears the nation working the most, has the biggest economy/power. Obviously money/power isn't everything though.
I'm not entirely certain that a nation as a whole being a superpower is good for the people if the people living in it are miserable. "The economy" is not, in fact, a direct measure of how happy people are - it's an indicator which may have something to do with it in a broad sense, but can be gamed, especially once you get down to attempting to maximise arbitrary single numbers (GDP, stock market indicators, etc).
I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this: People earn a wider range of incomes in the U.S., so “workers have an incentive to try harder to move up the job ladder because a promotion is worth more,” said Dora Gicheva -The income range in the US is so large that there are lots of people at the bottom end who have to work multiple jobs. How much does that have to do with the longer work hours, Blo…
It's a very light analysis from me, so might not be fully true, but I live in the US, now in Europe, and in Canada before that. You could also say Canada is kind of in the middle. Well, maybe correlation doesn't imply causation in that case but here is what I can see: - US > Canada > Europe in terms of opportunities, be it starting salary, end-of-career salaries, and everything in the middle such as promotions, perso…
As a person from a third country talking about the USA and Europe (lives in US, traveled in EU), this absolutely rings true. At grocery stores in the US people have been unfailingly polite and courteous to me (even though they don't get any tips or anything). So at my job, if I have to interact with customers I always try to maintain that attitude.
Meanwhile in Europe they are usually grim faced and have a "get on with it" attitude, and have occasionally yelled or grimaced at me for minor errors like using a chip card wrong.
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> (e.g. Federal government jobs and some companies) but these are frequently viewed as undesirable Federal and government (city, state etc.) jobs (perhaps excluding IT) are some of the most desirable jobs in US, with long waiting lines. Got try get a city job in NYC....
Are you going to back up any of your claims?
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> (e.g. Federal government jobs and some companies) but these are frequently viewed as undesirable Federal and government (city, state etc.) jobs (perhaps excluding IT) are some of the most desirable jobs in US, with long waiting lines. Got try get a city job in NYC....
Yes, they are highly desirable to people that are non-ambitious and strongly risk averse, which includes a non-trivial percentage of the population. For a certain kind of person, those jobs are perfect; the pay and opportunity isn't great but the risk and level of effort is also low. I've worked in these organizations before; the people that take these jobs don't want much out of life, just looking to coast. But most…
I disagree - those people don't want much out of work, they still want plenty out of life. Most I've met have tremendously fulfilling family lives, or similar. Not to be discounted.