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

ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 462 posts

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

#22

Post by adrianb »

asdfologist wrote: post #4

Can someone here elucidate the downsides to living in Switzerland, over the US, particularly for those in the HN crowd?

I believe it's not trivial to get a job there, especially if you come from outside the EU. And soon restrictions will be imposed on EU countries as well.

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

#24

Post by benkuykendall »

Although Switzerland and America may have very different work cultures and social support policies, that's not the most obvious difference. Consider our per-capita GDPs (2013, nominal dollars)[1]:

   Switzerland    84,748
   United States  53,042
So even if the US passed new employment laws and embraced work-life balance, we would still have only 63% of Switzerland's money to spend on each person. I'm not saying that the US couldn't improve its working conditions, but its unavoidable that a wealthier nation will have resources to treat its working class well.

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=switzerland+vs+united+s...

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

#26

Post by airza »

rsync wrote: post #13

In Europe, many, many people were essentially slaves. They were property of a small class of landed gentry who ruled over them with, at best, patriarchal indifference and at worst homicidal, spiteful authoritarianism. They were peasants. Then, over the course of about 200 years, some of these gentry got their heads chopped off or were stripped of their papal lands or were rounded up and put in front of a firing squad…

what? America had an actual slave class. Also indentured servants.

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

#27

Post by jkot »

I think article skips anything negative.

For start "lunch hour" is mandatory and in reality it means you spend extra hour at work. I would rather spend a hour with my kid than eating with my boss.

Second the taxation leaves various compulsory "contributions": social, pension, wealth, tv, petrol etc. It is not 5% but more likely 50% of average salary.

And third, I have totally different experience with american companies. All american corporations I worked for had strong life-work balance, holidays etc.

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

#29

Post by hga »

phaemon wrote: post #10
[deleted] wrote: post #3

[deleted]

Calvin was hardly an intellectual midget, and the concept that he put forward the notion that "work led to salvation" is almost perversely wrong!

Indeed. In fact, I thought one of the most notorious aspects of his theology was predestination, as Wikipedia puts it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology_of_John_Calvin#Predes...):

Near the end of the Institutes, Calvin describes and defends the doctrine of predestination.... The principle, in Calvin's words, is that "All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death."

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

#30

Post by MHordecki »

rsync wrote: post #20
Locke1689 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to San Francisco, or Oklahoma?

Yes, it is more expensive in every way than San Francisco. Given the re-float of the Franc, it's even worse now. (I live in SF but one of the rsync.net locations is in Zurich and I travel there frequently)

Given the re-float, it's actually much better now (for residents) - prices of imported goods have fallen.
Post reply on HN