Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 207 posts

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#71

Post by outime »

baby wrote: post #47

I personally find Switzerland boring and expensive. And I'm not sure your work culture is going to be that different if you work at Google or another tech company. If I go back to Europe I would go to Portugal or Italy or Spain. These countries are laid back, cheap, have good weather and good food. What else do you want? London and some cities in France like Bordeaux or Montpellier are insanely fun too.

The countries you mentioned (for context, I’m from Spain and moved to Finland many years ago) aren’t laid back when it comes to work. These may offer you some improvement compared to US but you usually get poor salaries and not very good conditions, unless you work for a multinational (but then it’s usually not very exciting place to be in, however depends of your preferences).

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#72

Post by fastball »

izacus wrote: post #27
S_A_P wrote: post #8

Transportation is the biggest difference between the us and a lot of the rest of the world. Switzerland is the size of a small New England state. Mass transit is a tough thing to scale. That said I’ve noticed that a lot of the jobs in the us that would be considered “glamorous” are by and large the lowest paying jobs with the longest hours. Looking past the status of a company and career and looking into the practica…

I never understood that argument - Bay Area, the (arguably) richest place on this planet is smaller then Switzerland and it's transit system is catastrophic in comparison to SBB still. I get that you can't cover Alabama with Swiss railways, but why the heck is traveling from Zurich a Swiss mountain top in the middle of nowhere still faster and more convenient than getting from SF to Mountain View?

Out-of-control NIMBYism.

Not sure why Switzerland doesn't experience that, but there you go.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#73

Post by kyleblarson »

kyledrake wrote: post #2

Sure, but it's also really expensive to live in Switzerland. Not factoring in the cost of living over there is pretty disingenuous. And it's going to be a serious project to get residency there if you're not a Swiss citizen. Edit: This is not an opinion, cost of living in Switzerland is highest in the world, twice as high as in the US. Even if you make twice as much money, you're basically making the same amount. And…

Well, this is a Vox article we're talking about.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#74

Post by na85 »

mruts wrote: post #7
llamataboot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's okay, you can sub most any country in Europe in, and still end up with a much more sane work culture than the US.

Many people (including myself), don't want a laid back work culture. I want to kill myself for the firm, and work as hard as humanly possible. I think I just derive the most happiness from working (though I do like drinking as well). I know a lot of other people like this. Maybe you can call us brainwashed or whatever, but this is how myself and most of my co-workers are. I don't think it's an accident that America i…

>Many people (including myself), don't want a laid back work culture. I want to kill myself for the firm, and work as hard as humanly possible. I think I just derive the most happiness from working (though I do like drinking as well).

This was really sad to read.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#75

Post by tmd83 »

Tomte wrote: post #12
mruts wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people (including myself), don't want a laid back work culture. I want to kill myself for the firm, and work as hard as humanly possible. I think I just derive the most happiness from working (though I do like drinking as well). I know a lot of other people like this. Maybe you can call us brainwashed or whatever, but this is how myself and most of my co-workers are. I don't think it's an accident that America i…

> I don't think it's an accident that America is the most rich and powerful country in the world. Or that American Tech dominant the world (except for China) You were the winners of a World War that left your competitors in scorched ruins, while you hadn't suffered much physical damage. In the multi-stranded bundle of reasons for American dominance, this is the big one.

I think people also forget how must during and post WW2 a huge chunk of world talent moved to US and how that contributed to the technological superiority. If you take top 0.01% talent of the world in STEM, what percentage of them would be living/working in US right now?

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#76

Post by daniel_reetz »

cpursley wrote: post #33
elamje wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been there? I really don’t think Russia has it figured out better than the US. Russia’s infrastructure is certainly not close to the level of Europe/Japan or China.

> Have you been there? I really don’t think Russia has it figured out better than the US. Yes, I live here. Russian transportation absolutely blows anything in the US away, and I've traveled extensively in both countries. Transportation is embarrassing and frustrating for me when I come back to the US. The US is absolutely car-dependent. Russia has everything from Rail transport (trans-Siberian, etc), city subways (M…

I really wish we had marshrutka in the States.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#77

Post by falsedan »

H8crilA wrote: post #50
falsedan wrote: post #30

I recently moved from working for a US company to working for a CH one. There’s some disadvantages, like people not giving their all at work slowing things down. Compared to the previous role, it’s glacial. But no on call, 6 weeks vacation, and 8% pension contribution from the company that I don’t even have to match is a good trade-off. Work is always going to be frustrating, but I’m at a point in my life that I’d ra…

What's the deal with people putting 120% efforts at work. It's clear that this is not necessary (for example - Switzerland is just fine). Put a steady 60-80% and bump it up to 100% when things get rough. I truly don't get it, sometimes it feels like people simply want to spend lives at work rather than do something else.

It’s frustrating for the things that should take a couple of hours but take 3-4 weeks, like laptop replacements or deploying new monitoring software or upgrading build tools or fixing a broken master branch. But ultimately those things don’t objectively matter and leaving at 5:45 to spend time with my family objectively does.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#78

Post by cpursley »

fastball wrote: post #66
cpursley wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you been there? I really don’t think Russia has it figured out better than the US. Yes, I live here. Russian transportation absolutely blows anything in the US away, and I've traveled extensively in both countries. Transportation is embarrassing and frustrating for me when I come back to the US. The US is absolutely car-dependent. Russia has everything from Rail transport (trans-Siberian, etc), city subways (M…

You don't think US cities have mass transit? The NYC subway[0] is 30 years older than the Moscow Metro[1], if you want to talk about "having things for a century". The US has train lines that cross the entire country as well. No HSR, which is what is needed, but then again neither does Russia. Here is a map of transcontinental railroads in the US in 1887[2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway [1]…

> You don't think US cities have mass transit?

No, they are a hilarious joke. NYC metro is a dirty cesspool that can't build anything within budget. Marta in ATL doesen't go anywhere and hasn't added a new line in decades. Everyone knows how bad BART is.

Also, it's generally more expensive to take Amtrak than fly. And Amtrak goes nowhere vs the Russian train systems. Just pull up a map to compare.

And Russia does have some HSR (could use some more): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Russia

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#79

Post by fastball »

boudin wrote: post #64
fastball wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty disingenuous to say GDP when you mean GDP PPP. The US does have the highest GDP (by a large margin).

Fine by me, but it's meaningless since it's not adjusted. And anyway, still not the case https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...

You're really not very good at this.

GDP per capita is not the same as GDP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#80

Post by cpursley »

garmaine wrote: post #63
cpursley wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a vital part of it. It's much healthier to walk bike or ride transit to work and daily activities. Additionally, being closer to everything means less stress and more free time (better work/life balance).

Yeah but it doesn’t have anything to do with my healthcare premiums being more than my rent, or my boss making me work 80 hour weeks without overtime and a measly 2 weeks per year vacation which I am discouraged from taking. Those are far more pressing issues imho.

> Yeah but it doesn’t have anything to do with my healthcare premiums being more than my rent

Fair enough.

Post reply on HN