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Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

bloomberg.com

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Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#331

Post by jdmichal »

_benedict wrote: post #328
lovich wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it cant be compared at all since the US doesn't have any official languages. De jure != de facto

You seem to be missing the majority of my point, but I agree it's an arbitrary distinction as a technicality. However, 32 US states do declare English as their official language. That's certainly more homogenous than the EU, the original point of contention. Just 2 of 28 EU states declare their official national language as English, and only one of these has English as their only official language (indeed, only the U…

In the Brexit threads, it was discussed that the EU language selection is not really representative of populous or culture. Each country could only select one, and multiple entries didn't add anything. So many countries who may have potentially selected English didn't, because it was already selected by another country and it would be a "wasted" selection. For instance, Ireland has more English speakers than Irish speakers, yet it declared Irish as its EU language. It may very well switch to English when Brexit completes.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#332

Post by Accacin »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #236
jypepin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> When you call cust sup in Europe, the service is way worst. People to try as hard to make the extra effort, etc. When you call customer support in the US, you get someone in India who barely speaks English. If you call customer support in the Netherlands you get a Dutch person because no one outside the Netherlands speaks Dutch. Also, due to better consumer protection laws the actual results are often way better to…

I actually never thought of that. We have the same "problem" in the UK with support, although I've noticed more companies trying to get support back into the UK and these are the companies I try and do business with.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#333

Post by Accacin »

snovv_crash wrote: post #315
wil421 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick google search and I can't find many places in Europe that offer 25 days, not including the national holidays. If I include national holidays I get 22 days off. No set sick days unless you're out for more than 5 consecutive days. I'm not sure why you'd move to SV, startup life's seems like hell.

From Wikipedia[1], minimum annual days leave are: UK: 28 Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden: 25 Iceland, Malta: 24 Portugal, Spain: 22 The EU mandates a minimum of 20 days, so all other EU member states have 20. Of course, these are just the mandated minimums. Many employers will give more to be competitive. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

8 of those in the UK are Bank Holidays. I'm not sure about others countries because I'm from the UK, but I think other countries get more "real" holiday days than the UK.

Most companies I've worked for offer a little more than the minimum, for example I get 23 days excluding bank holidays and that generally increases by a day per year you've worked at the company or something like that.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#335

Post by vkou »

zeveb wrote: post #153
ajmurmann wrote: post #32

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…

> This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire. Very few people retire at 20 or 40; I fail to see why in an era where people are starting to expect to live until their 80s they should stop working at 65. Is it not good for us all to have the contributions, knowledge & experience of those over 65 in the workplace? Pension p…

White collar, middle-class people can expect to live until their 80s.

Life expectancy for lower class people, blue-collar workers, and manual laborers has not gained significantly - and neither has productive life expectancy.

If you threw out your back stocking shelves at 43, what exactly are you supposed to do? Get a desk job? If you were capable of getting a desk job, you probably would have done that before you crippled yourself.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#336

Post by zdkl »

wang_li wrote: post #294
snovv_crash wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in Switzerland (which has only 8 million people) there are 4 official languages. Only 30k people speak Romansh, so let's ignore that one. But if you go to the German part, most people don't even understand French. Likewise, if you go to the French part, most people don't understand German. The Italian part is quite a bit smaller than rest of Switzerland, and most people there choose to learn French as a second l…

It's absurd to use languages spoken as a proxy for cultural diversity. That being said, according to wikipedia there are 430 languages spoken in the US. There are 32 languages used by 100,000+ people. And implying that simply because people speak the same language they have the same culture is nuts. People in Utah have the exact same language and accent as people in California but the two populations have very differ…

You and salmon30salmon are missing the point. Language is an indicator of 4000+ years of local cultural differentiation. The rest of us europeans are just trying not to say something about 200years worth of adopting cultures. That does indeed create a unique multifaceted community, but surely you realise how much in common you have with most of the rest of the US population? In Europe these language barriers correspond to sometimes dramatic changes in climate, environment and lifestyle. Finns have very little in common with Italians as far as weltanschauung or culture goes, for instance. I doubt you could find as drastic and systemic difference on your side.

(Just to clarify, I don't mean to imply EU>US, just underlining the difference's depths)

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#337

Post by tstrimple »

Accacin wrote: post #330
k__ wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time I feel like US or UK people are fake, because of all the forced smalltalk. Yes, this is their culture and I respect it, but I just don't feel comfortable with it :/

I must live in a different part of the UK than you, because I rarely get any small talk. Yes, they do come and ask if everything's okay, but that's it really. When I visited the US it was like every 5mins asking if I wanted anything else, a drink, etc., etc.

I thought small talk was illegal in the UK.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#338

Post by wott »

BadCookie wrote: post #324
zeveb wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds less like people in Europe are "discouraged" from working, rather than many Americans must work longer because they can't retire. Very few people retire at 20 or 40; I fail to see why in an era where people are starting to expect to live until their 80s they should stop working at 65. Is it not good for us all to have the contributions, knowledge & experience of those over 65 in the workplace? Pension p…

Perhaps it is reasonable to expect a white-collar worker to work past 65, but how about a blue-collar worker or a laborer? Not everyone sits in a chair in front of a computer all day for their job.

Even for white-collar and computer people, intellectual abilities do degrade over time too. If the task is demanding in that respect and you go below the threshold where it cannot be compensated by experience, performance will drop dramatically to the point of not being able to accomplish the tasks in a reasonable way. Of course the degradation rate and acceleration depend highly on the individual. But you cannot ask everybody to work these jobs after 65 or 70, even though these are white-collar jobs.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#339

Post by lazyant »

adwn wrote: post #87
ajmurmann wrote: post #32

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…

> I find it astonishing how positive Bloomberg tries to spin this Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8

That ad reminds me of an ad I saw in the US in 99 or so, it depicts a man waking up super early (kissing their children who are asleep) and leaving to work, it was for (used?) Mercedes I think, same idea, work super hard to drive a nice car, I thought it was the most depressing ad I ever saw.

Re: Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

#340

Post by pmontra »

piva00 wrote: post #89
donretag wrote: post #74

I would love to live and work in Italy (or any other Mediterranean climate country), but there are simply no [tech] jobs. And what few software jobs there are are not interesting at all and pay very little. I value my time and I am willing to take a pay cut to live in Europe, but the jobs are not simply there. Why can there be no middle ground? For now, the plan is to work hard and retire early. Real estate price cha…

You can definitely find tech jobs in Portugal and Spain, mostly in Lisbon and Barcelona. They will not pay the same as in Germany, the Netherlands, UK or here in Sweden but you can live very comfortably with a tech salary there, so there's middle ground. Italy unfortunately doesn't really have a well developed tech industry as far as I know.

Why not? Not many Earth shattering startups but being one of the largest EU economies means that Italy has many IT jobs. I spent the first half of my career in a 1000 people consulting company and a 3000 people mobile phone operator. Then I went freelancing, mostly web, and I pay my bills. There are many SME tech companies, selling their own products and services or consulting.

There is quite a difference between the South and the North, two very different economies. If you ever want to try to work Italy go to the North. Probably Milan is the safest starting point.

That said, I'm sure that the UK, Germany and France are better off than Italy, even the North of it.

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