91–100 of 131 posts
The article has some facts not completely correct: "The government provides citizens with free healthcare, free university education, and childcare." Healthcare plans are mandatory for most but not paid by the government. University education at public universities costs between 0 and 500 EUR per semester, childcare is subsidized but not completely free.
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R. V. Jones made a similar observation in Most Secret War (WWII) about collaboration between the operational and R&D branches. The Germans would build to spec without interaction with the requesting organization producing a fine piece of engineering whereas in the U.K. there would tend to be back and forth on the requirements and so on, with the U.K. device being less polished but more flexible and more likely to sat…
Germany is the long-established engineering culture, building on the old guild system of craftsmen. (Which still exist - the craftsmen's guilds, I mean. You aren't allowed to fix musical instruments until you've gone through your apprenticeship and journeyman's year.)
It subsequently lost that lead to Germany - I don't have the link to hand, but one possible reason was the lax copyright laws in the German states allowed easier re-publication of technical manuals.
More recently British engineering ability has criminally been allowed to wither on the vine, but that's another story.
As a Brit who used to work in New York, for an investment company, I have a different view. While I agree my US fellow workers are very sociable during the day, they do tend to run off 5pm sharp! There's no "go for beers after work" environment. I spoke to them candidly about this and they said their real friends are the ones they grew up with and tend to hang out with them. I also had a colleague at HSBC and another…
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The average house in Oak Park is many, many decades old. I don't know what Europeans think of us, but I hope there isn't a stereotype that we live in disposable houses!
What does "many, many decades old" mean? You do realize that there are people living in houses in Europe that have existed longer than the US has been a country, right? You do live in disposable houses. Have you seen how a house in the US is built? The walls are made of what are called 2"x4"s [1], spaced 1.5' apart. If you've ever been to Lowes or one of those kinds of places and seen insulation you'll see why. Insul…
I think it’s funny that productivity is often the only frame which is used to discuss Germany’s mandated vacation [1]. That’s not at all the intent of the law, its purpose is not increasing productivity. It exists because German lawmakers think that every employee deserves at least four weeks of paid vacation the same way US lawmakers think that every employee deserves at least $7.25 per hour [2]. I [3] am completely…
As a comparison, the American company I work for (in Canada) provides a default of two weeks vacation with two weeks PEL (Personal Emergency Leave) that can be used for doctors' appointments, etc. That's twenty days, although only ten of them can be used for vacations.
I realize that not every company in America provides sick days, but that's IMO a different issue.
There's no such thing as a free lunch; whether or not we're less productive, nobody's paying you for the hours you don't work. And, indeed, aren't Germany's wages, by sector, consistently lower than those in the US?
According to Max Klein, that is certainly true for programmers. Based on the numbers he gave, "a good programmer" in Germany gets paid less than a fresh college grad in the US. http://maxkle.in/giving-up-on-europe/
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Of course you also have 3.5 times the population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP... difference only 26%... guess you should move to Qatar or Luxembourg though -- but when you're not rich from oil or moving large sums of bank money around, that high GDP is not actually helping, is it? And then there is stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_index .
Yeah that it's nice that Germany might be more efficient, but we're still > 4 times their size. When we're talking about country "power" no one cares about efficiency. As for Quality of Life, that's fine, but I love America and I love our lifestyle, so perhaps that's more of a personal choice than an aggregated one.
I think it’s funny that productivity is often the only frame which is used to discuss Germany’s mandated vacation [1]. That’s not at all the intent of the law, its purpose is not increasing productivity. It exists because German lawmakers think that every employee deserves at least four weeks of paid vacation the same way US lawmakers think that every employee deserves at least $7.25 per hour [2]. I [3] am completely…
A discussion I had with a German couple in Verona while I was on vacation suggested that German companies don't generally give sick days and that the mandated vacation time had to be used for sick days. Was what I heard correct? As a comparison, the American company I work for (in Canada) provides a default of two weeks vacation with two weeks PEL (Personal Emergency Leave) that can be used for doctors' appointments,…
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Experienced Rails devs in the US generally bill $100+/hr; similar for .NET contractors. I don't have a ton of pricing experience with anything else.
are you talking about companies or freelancers?
The article has some facts not completely correct: "The government provides citizens with free healthcare, free university education, and childcare." Healthcare plans are mandatory for most but not paid by the government. University education at public universities costs between 0 and 500 EUR per semester, childcare is subsidized but not completely free.
500 EUR per semester is not mutch in America you pay like 5000$ or something?