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What about our lack of vacation days and holidays?
A lack of vacation can make a job shitty. But a shitty job with some vacation doesn't make it a pleasant job.
There is no link to the original study. There are two links within the text, but neither of them link to the study. In fact, one of those two links is misleadingly presented as the link to the study, but is not actually the link to the study. Challenge question for stats and math nerds: if 93% of a sample of 1000 Americans claim they enjoy their job, and if 91% of a sample of ~650 Netherlanders claim that they love t…
A more important question is probably how the sampling was conducted. How did they guarantee a representative sample in each country? How did they account for the gig economy, small businesses, part-time employees, and employees paid under the table? So many ways a survey like this could be wrong.
[1] https://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/ztest/default2.aspx
What about our lack of vacation days and holidays?
Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days each year. Work guilt may play a role: "Americans left 768 million days of paid time off unused last year, according to research released by the U.S. Travel Association. The study found that 55 percent of Americans did not use all of their paid vacation time." "More than half of U.S. workers ― 54 percent — reported feeling guilty about taking…
That is a plausible but pessimistic view of the situation. The more optimistic reading is that american workers derive personal pleasure and fulfillment from the work itself. If you are happier working in a fulfilling job than sitting idly on a beach, then it would make sense you wouldn't use all of your vacation days.
Work guilt probably does play a role, as does corporate policies that subtly punish vacation, but I would also bet that some percentage of workers actually enjoy what they do.
What about our lack of vacation days and holidays?
Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days each year. Work guilt may play a role: "Americans left 768 million days of paid time off unused last year, according to research released by the U.S. Travel Association. The study found that 55 percent of Americans did not use all of their paid vacation time." "More than half of U.S. workers ― 54 percent — reported feeling guilty about taking…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days each year. Work guilt may play a role: "Americans left 768 million days of paid time off unused last year, according to research released by the U.S. Travel Association. The study found that 55 percent of Americans did not use all of their paid vacation time." "More than half of U.S. workers ― 54 percent — reported feeling guilty about taking…
> Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days each year. Work guilt may play a role That is a plausible but pessimistic view of the situation. The more optimistic reading is that american workers derive personal pleasure and fulfillment from the work itself. If you are happier working in a fulfilling job than sitting idly on a beach, then it would make sense you wouldn't use all of your…
Or spending time with family, learning a new skill, going on an adventure.
"Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days each year. Work guilt may play a role That is a plausible but pessimistic view of the situation. The more optimistic reading is that american workers derive personal pleasure and fulfillment from the work itself. If you are happier working in a fulfilling job than sitting idly on a beach, then it would make sense you wouldn't use all of your…
> than sitting idly on a beach Or spending time with family, learning a new skill, going on an adventure. "Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true.
I don't disagree, we're not talking about absolutes here. But it's reasonable to consider that, all other things being equal, someone who loves their job may be less inclined to take as many vacation days compared to someone who hates their job.
Advocating for longer vacations, leisure time, and simply being disconnected so folks can develop their interests outside of work are important. However, most people spend most of their non-sleeping life at work. Accordingly, making work itself more fulfilling can often have a far greater impact than simply requiring less of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> than sitting idly on a beach Or spending time with family, learning a new skill, going on an adventure. "Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true.
> "Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true. I don't disagree, we're not talking about absolutes here. But it's reasonable to consider that, all other things being equal, someone who loves their job may be less inclined to take as many vacation days compared to someone who hates their job. Advocating for longer vacations, leisure time,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true. I don't disagree, we're not talking about absolutes here. But it's reasonable to consider that, all other things being equal, someone who loves their job may be less inclined to take as many vacation days compared to someone who hates their job. Advocating for longer vacations, leisure time,…
As a manager I do not accept that team members skip PTO. We're not paying for it to be nice, we expect ROI. Happy, healthy people are generally productive, highly cooperative and inventive.
Sure, but as a manager, you should probably know that giving people engaging work, with meaningful impact, and significant personal growth opportunities is often a greater motivator than providing additional days off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a manager I do not accept that team members skip PTO. We're not paying for it to be nice, we expect ROI. Happy, healthy people are generally productive, highly cooperative and inventive.
> As a manager I do not accept that team members skip PTO. Sure, but as a manager, you should probably know that giving people engaging work, with meaningful impact, and significant personal growth opportunities is often a greater motivator than providing additional days off.
* PTO is not about motivation - it's about quality of work output.
There is no link to the original study. There are two links within the text, but neither of them link to the study. In fact, one of those two links is misleadingly presented as the link to the study, but is not actually the link to the study. Challenge question for stats and math nerds: if 93% of a sample of 1000 Americans claim they enjoy their job, and if 91% of a sample of ~650 Netherlanders claim that they love t…
This is part of a class of statistical problems that I really want to figure out how to solve, because I feel like understanding problems like this will give me a much, much stronger foundational understanding of statistics. For example, can anyone here explain how sampling a normally-distributed population with unknown mean and unknown variance brings forth the Student-T distribution? No explanation that I have read makes any sense on a pre-computation, intuitive level of understanding.
So let me at least set up the foundation for the math needed to answer the question: "What are the odds that Netherlanders are actually happier than Americans regarding their jobs, given that a sample of 1000 random Americans produced 93% whom are happy with their jobs, and a sample of 650 Netherlanders produced 91% whom are happy with their jobs".
The setup: let's imagine a multiverse. Inside this multiverse are an infinite number of universes, and inside each universe, x% of Americans are happy with their jobs. The value of "x" varies between each universe; for each universe, there is a single, unique value of "x", and for each value of "x", there is a single, unique universe.
Let's imagine that when we see the results of a survey of 1000 Americans, we do not know which universe it came from. It's possible that exactly 930 out of 350,000,000 Americans are happy with their job (essentially 0%), but that random selection of 1000 Americans just so happened to pick those 930. It's possible that 99% of Americans are happy with their jobs, but the sample just so happened to randomly pick up too many unhappy workers.
If we have a universe where 50% of the American population is happy, then there is a 1000-Choose-930 * 0.50^930 * 0.50^70 chance that a random sample of 1000 will have 93% of the sample will be happy with their jobs (binomial distribution; the odds that 10 coin flips will land on 5 heads depends partially on the number of ways 10 coins can be deliberately arranged so that 5 specific coins will be heads up). 1000-Choose-930 * 0.50^930 * 0.50^70 = 6.5710^-193. If we have a universe where 93% of the American population is happy with their jobs, then there is a 1000-Choose-930 0.93^930 * 0.07^70 chance that a random sample of 1000 will have 93% of that sample be happy with their jobs. 1000-Choose-930 * 0.93^930 * 0.07^70 = 0.0494. In general, when we have a universe with x% of the population happy with their jobs, the odds that a random sample will show 93% happiness is 1000-Choose-930 * x^930 * (1-x)^70.
We now need to step back into our multiverse and realize that we're sampling 1000 people from each universe with equal probability, and then collecting the number of "samples of 1000 people show 93% happiness" instances into a single pot. We need to ask ourselves, "given that we have a sample of 1000 people showing 93% happiness, what are the odds that we are in a universe where x% of the American population is happy?". The answer to that is: "The number of times a universe with x% happiness produces a sample of 1000 with 93% happiness, divided by the number of times all the universes in the multiverse produces a sample of 1000 with 93% happiness.
The percentage of "93% of sample of 1000 are happy with their jobs" samples in a universe with x% happiness, compared to all the other equally-likely-to-be-chosen universes, in a situation where each universe has been sampled 10^99999 times, is approximately: (1000-Choose-930 * x^930 * (1-x)^70 * 10^99999) / sum(i=0;irange of values of x.
So, bringing a bit of calculus into the fold: The percentage of "93% of sample of 1000 are happy with their jobs" samples in a universe with x% happiness (where x is between numbers x1 and x2), compared to all the other infinite equally-likely-to-be-chosen universes between x=0 and x=100, is: integral(x1 through x2: 1000-Choose-930 * x^930 * (1-x)^70) / integral(0 through 100: 1000-Choose-930 * i^930 * (1-i)^70)
Likewise, if we create another multiverse of universes where y% of Netherlanders (with varying values of y) are happy about their jobs, then the odds that a random sample of 650 Netherlanders will have 91% of that sample confess happiness with their job is: 650-Choose-592 * y^592 * (1-y)^58. So if we consider all universes equally likely, and we are given a sample of 650 people, 91% of whom are happy with their jobs, then the odds that we are living in a universe where the real, actual percentage of Netherlanders are happy with their jobs lies in between values y1 and y2 can be calculated. That calculation is: integral(y1 through y2: 650-Choose-592 * y^592 * (1-y)^58) / integral(0 through 100: 650-Choose-592 * y^592 * (1-y)^58).
My original question was this: what are the odds that the original survey was a statistical fluke, and that Netherlanders are happier than Americans with their jobs? Well, if 0% of Americans are happy with their jobs, then we need to know the odds of 0%-100% of Netherlanders are happy with their jobs. If 1% of Americans are happy with their jobs, then we needs to know the odds of 1%-100% of Netherlanders are happy with their jobs. If there is a 50% chance that 0% of Americans are happy with their jobs, and also a 50% chance that 1% of Americans are happy with their jobs, then the odds that Netherlanders are happier with their jobs than Americans is 50% times the odds of 1%-100% Netherlander satisfaction, plus 50% times the odds of 2%-100% satisfaction. Generalizing this pattern, we get this equation: The odds of Netherlanders being happier = The odds of x% of Americans being happy with their jobs * the odds of x%-100% of Netherlanders being happy with their jobs.
The odds that x% of Americans are happy with their jobs is: integral(x through x+epsilon: 1000-Choose-930 * x^930 * (1-x)^70) / integral(0 through 100: 1000-Choose-930 * i^930 * (1-i)^70). The odds of x%-100% of Netherlanders are happy with their jobs is: integral(x through 100: 650-Choose-592 * y^592 * (1-y)^58) / integral(0 through 100: 650-Choose-592 * y^592 * (1-y)^58). Now we need to multiply those values together and take the limit as epsilon goes to zero:
lim (as epsilon -> 0): integral(0 through 100: {integral(x through x+epsilon: 1000-Choose-930 * x^930 * (1-x)^70) / integral(0 through 100: 1000-Choose-930 * i^930 * (1-i)^70)} * {integral(x through 100: 650-Choose-592 * y^592 * (1-y)^58) / integral(0 through 100: 650-Choose-592 * y^592 * (1-y)^58)}.
Someone please evaluate that expression. Or at least check my math/logic.