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Comment by you_eeeeeediot | Hacker News Reader

The problem is work ethic. I've been to France on business on 2-week stints about a dozen times, and I can tell you from my experience they do not want to work hard -- at anything. 6hr workdays, and at LEAST 1hr for lunch and worst of all they look at you like you are the crazy one for wanting to get more done each day.

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I've been living here for 7 years, worked for 3 different companies. I suppose I have a bit more anecdotes than your dozen of times.

There are places are people don't seem to do anything. But it's hardly a France-only occurrence. There are only plenty of companies where you are expected to work hard and deliver results; again, hardly France-only.

I love it when some casual observations from a visitor become trusted source of generalisation for a whole country.

I guess it depends on where you work, like all countries.

I have the exacts same experience as you working at a NYC insurance company (9 to 5 then go home).

I also know at lot of companies here (in France) where people work their asses off everyday.

My current startup has a 9-5 culture, and we get a lot more done than any other startup I've worked for. No ping-pong, no long lunch breaks, no watercooler discussions, much less surfing on company time. I get more done in 8 hours than I used to get done in 12, and I get an extra 4 hours with my family.

I find that ping-pong and watercooler discussions are necessary as breaks. Otherwise you burn out and you only get, say, 4 hours of real work done in an 8-hour day.

Breaks are still necessary, but they're a lot less frequent and a lot shorter.

Fair point, my HQ is in NYC I can attest to the 9 to 5 as well. I think it has more to do with transit scheduling than anything. Then again Paris is extremely expensive to live in the Metro area as well so that may have something to do with my experience as well.

I worked for 3 years in France (Paris and province), and 3 years in the US (NJ and NYC). Things are the same. Humans are the same. It all depends on the company culture.

Having a healthy 1-hour+ lunch is one of the things that French do very, very right. Esp. as they tend to eat in small places with home cooking. I wish we all did this.

On an individual scale, statistics show that French private-sector workers are more productive than Germans and far ahead of the British.

Perhaps six hours is all they need to accomplish the task?

The more difficult it is for the people living in a country to find work, the higher the productivity of the work force. For example, if only people able to obtain degrees from prestigious schools or able to succeed in low-paying internships that last for years because they have family to help them survive are able to get jobs, productivity will be high.

And France is known for make it hard for people to find jobs.

Productivity, in other words, is a measure of the value produced per hour worked.

If instead we look at the most often cited measure of value produced per resident, namely, GDP per capita, France is not doing better than Germany or the UK -- in either "nominal" GDP or GDP "purchasing power parity" according to the most recent World-Bank data.

Young french here, yes its true mostly for workman and for functionary but there are a lot a people who work a lot (in startup and small buisness), the main problem is that people dont want to change their advantages cause of financial crisis and big worker union doesnt want to discuss about this.

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