Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
1–10 of 131 posts
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#2There'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?
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#3Even if it's true that from europe the impression is that ppl in the US have no holidays and do less in more time (here we go, appreciate the honesty pls), I think it's wrong to generalize based on a few examples, as a lot of it probably depends on size and philosophy of the company and, obviously, on how you measure productivity.
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#4There is no data backing up the claims and stereotypes in this article.
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#5There'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.
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#6There'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?
Money is not always a good indicator of societal wealth. The standard of living rankings tell a truer story.
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#7There is no data backing up the claims and stereotypes in this article.
I'm German I find the recent sentiment towards Germany enjoyable but a bit surprising. Not long ago we we're the sick old man of Europe and Ireland was the European tiger.
I like life in Germany but it all seems like flavour-of-the-month journalism.
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#8There'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?
Money is not always a good indicator of societal wealth. The standard of living rankings tell a truer story.
It may very well be better for everyone's quality of life to pay people less and mandate more leisure; in other words, it may be better if society decides (for most people) how hard they should work.
But that's orthogonal to my point. You could mandate 6 weeks vacation in the US, too. But wages would go down as a result.
Generally, if you're in our profession and you want more vacation, become a contractor. People have been doing contract work for decades for exactly this reason.
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#9Hmm? That's news to me, I thought the US had a higher productivity overall. Hourly Germany might be better, but considering that you'd have to go to Korea to find people putting in more hours, the US comes out ahead.
And while France was behind Germany, they do even fewer hours.
Whether that matters a lot is a different matter altogether. Life-work balance is one issue, job satisfaction another. Working more hours vs. wanting to work more hours etc.
And in my experience, the IT industry is a bit different anyway, never mind the entrepreneurial sector thereof. So does this matter a lot to the usual HackerNews reader? Probably not.
Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations
#10What is the marginal cost to an employer in Germany of an hour of labor? And, in the US? The article did not explicitly state the metric used to quantify "output", but, given other similar studies I've seen, I must presume that profit/employee across the economy is a likely underlying metric. Given such a metric, could labor cost differences explain this "efficiency"? Let us consider a contrived example where, in Ohio, construction workers earn $20/hour and, in New York, $60. If we examined the techniques used (by capitalists) to build a structure, we would surely observe more capital-intensive but labor saving techniques in New York when compared to Ohio. Does this mean that the New York workers get more done? If you measure output (yards of concrete spread per day or whatever), then yes -- using a really expensive robotic concrete spreader allows the $60/hour employee to produce a lot of output. However, it might also be rational in Ohio to forgo the machine in favor of more labor-intensive methods. The profitability of the Ohio construction company might actually be higher, but the laborers in New York are "more productive."
I know little of Germany's regulations w.r.t. employment. Are labor costs (due to not only wages but taxes paid by the employer and other non-wage burdens) higher? Do employers in Germany rationally select higher levels of automation? Could this explain the disparity between countries in such a metric?