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

Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

openforum.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 131 posts

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#11

Post by pyre »

tptacek wrote: post #8
gaius wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

I think the point was that if the US mandated 6 weeks of vacation, and wages went down as a result, so would prices, no?

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#12

Post by gaius »

tptacek wrote: post #8
gaius wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Maybe, but like I say, it doesn't tell the whole story. Would the average American take a 2% cut in wages for an extra week's vacation a year?

The purpose of earning money is to enable you to live the lifestyle of your choice, that's axiomatic. If you can get everything you want for less money, are you more or less wealthy than someone who can't get what they want, for more?

Also, productivity is not linear with time. 30 hours of actual work beats 50 if half of those 50 is meetings and goofing off. That's the German and French secret, if any.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#13

Post by yummyfajitas »

gaius wrote: post #6
tptacek wrote: post #2

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?

Money is not always a good indicator of societal wealth. The standard of living rankings tell a truer story.

I disagree. PPP-adjusted money is a measure of how much of the stuff you want that you can actually afford to have.

"Standard of living" rankings tend to measure how much of the stuff that the study creators want that you can afford to have. A nation might have a low rank due simply to the fact that the people living there prefer different things than what the study creators think they should prefer. Measuring PPP-adjusted money doesn't have this problem.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#14

Post by raphman »

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.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#15

Post by yummyfajitas »

gaius wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Maybe, but like I say, it doesn't tell the whole story. Would the average American take a 2% cut in wages for an extra week's vacation a year? The purpose of earning money is to enable you to live the lifestyle of your choice, that's axiomatic. If you can get everything you want for less money, are you more or less wealthy than someone who can't get what they want, for more? Also, productivity is not linear with time…

Would the average American take a 2% cut in wages for an extra week's vacation a year?

From the article: "In 2008 it was estimated that three vacation days were left unused for most American workers."

Since the average American doesn't use all the vacation he has, the answer is probably no.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#16

Post by jacobolus »

“Geoghegan believes Germans understate their work hours, and Americans overstate work hours. Yet both countries are getting roughly the same amount of work done. This means that Germans are actually doing more, while working less.”

Is it just me, or does the claim about over/understating work hours run exactly contrary to the subsequent claim? (To be explicit: Germans understate their hours ⇒ they work more hours than they say ⇒ statistics showing Germans with higher productivity are exaggerated. And similarly Americans understate hours ⇒ they work less than claimed ⇒ they are more productive than statistics would suggest.)

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#17

Post by yummyfajitas »

pyre wrote: post #11
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

I think the point was that if the US mandated 6 weeks of vacation, and wages went down as a result, so would prices, no?

If supply of money went down, but the amount of goods and services produced remained the same, prices would go down.

If Americans worked less, it's likely that the amount of goods and services produced would also go down. In that case, prices would remain the same, and we would all just have less stuff.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#18

Post by smcl »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #5
tptacek wrote: post #2

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/

I can vouch for this, the graduate programmers in the US in a company I worked for were taking in around double what we were in Scotland. That said, our wages were a damn sight higher than our counterparts in China and India but at least everyone else got to live somewhere interesting :)

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#19

Post by hugothefrog »

I just returned from Berlin a couple of nights ago, and met an English guy (I'm a New Zealander living in London) who'd worked there for a few years. He is an aerospace engineer working for a very famous English engineering firm in their German office.

He was of the opinion that German productivity, at least when compared with other European countries, was a myth. He told exactly the same anecdotes about German individuality as this article mentions, but gave it quite a negative spin.

When handing out bits of work to fellow engineers, the Germans would tend to put their heads down and start work immediately, instead of consulting with colleagues about previous solutions to the same problem, etc. Basically he said they did quite a lot of very efficient, very correct, very over-engineered re-inventing of the wheel.

Particularly he pointed out that to a German engineer, every part of the solution was equally important, where as to an English engineer, it was obvious some parts where more important than others. Focusing on those gave a better quality end-result when faced with a limited budget, but a German with a unlimited budget would give you an absolutely fantastic end-result.

Re: Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations

#20

Post by nodata »

jacobolus wrote: post #16

“Geoghegan believes Germans understate their work hours, and Americans overstate work hours. Yet both countries are getting roughly the same amount of work done. This means that Germans are actually doing more, while working less.” Is it just me, or does the claim about over/understating work hours run exactly contrary to the subsequent claim? (To be explicit: Germans understate their hours ⇒ they work more hours tha…

Reworded your clarification for my own help:

A German makes 10 widgets in 5 hours and bills 4 hours. The German achieves 2.5 widgets per billed hour.

An American makes 10 widgets in 5 hours and bills 6 hours. The American achieves 1.67 widgets per billed hour.

Post reply on HN