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Comment by vesinisa | Hacker News Reader

I am under the impression that 6-hour days are widely adopted in France. Anyone know more of it?

It's essentially a myth [0]. According to the latest stats from the European Commission [1] the French work 40.4 hours/week on average (including paid/unpaid extra hours; excluding meal breaks and travel time), which is close to the EU average of 41.4 hours.

[0] http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140312-frances-mythic-35-...

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&l...

This is completely false. French workers (at mid-management level and above - not hourly workers) work long hours. Longer than German and Nordic countries, for example, where leaving at 5pm is the norm and leaving later is more a sign of poor work planning than of dedication.

I think workday hours are similar to American employees, but work less in the weekends and have more vacations.

This is not my experience. I work for a French multinational games company and I'm situated in Sweden.

It's astonishingly common for my French counterparts to "arrive" at there computer at 10:30 each day and head out the door shortly before 17:00. Not to mention the 1.5hour or so lunch they tend to take.

This is a sample of maybe 20 people, and maybe it's a culture of the company more than the country, but I've noticed they like to shake hands with everybody on the floor before starting their day, and they also like to take a coffee first and have a chat. For me though, I operate "remote" and when they are not available on Lync/Skype then they may as well be not working because they're.. not.. working.

it is a stark contrast to my team who are jacked in before 9, and save for a few hourly strolls to the canteen and lunchtime do not leave until 18:00. (unless something breaks then we stay, which is common in crunch times.)

I think I work for the same French multinational games company ;-)

I do work with people from both our Swedish and French studios and I can definitely confirm what you said, both ways.

That is 180° to my own experience (CAC40 company) but hey, "company culture" :)

Leaving at 5pm is the norm in Germany only in very particular circumstances. Most people I know are stuck until 18:30 or so.

Interesting. I worked for a multinational, we had a (brilliant) German intern who worked in our FR headquarters, very long hours. Then she moved back to Germany in a local division, where she was always the last one closing the lights, by a long shot. It might be the effect of headquarter vs local company, perhaps, but 5pm is what I saw in most plants in Germany.

stuck? i'm amazed at how negatively most europeans view "work".

Or how positively we view life.

> French workers (at mid-management level and above - not hourly workers) work long hours.

Why?

Why what? What do they work long hours? I don't know, "culture".

Nobody works 6 hours/day. Most contracts will be 35h (7 hours/day) to 39h per week.

In engineering/programming/etc. you either have such a contract or often unlimited hours contract (so the only limit by law is something like 72h/week, IIRC), and, in practice, you generally do about 45 hours/week. It doesn't matter if you have an unlimited hours contract or a nice strict 35h contracts: you'll work 45 hours anyway and your 10 extra hours per week will not be paid. And when I say they are not paid, I don't mean they are just not paid more than the regular ones, I mean they are not paid at all.

Only in large traditional companies, the extra hours are counted and either paid or exchanged for extra vacation. But large companies have now outsourced most of the work to subcontractors, which use unlimited contracts or simply do not give a fuck about respecting the laws and are small enough so that there is no union. And anyway, go and try to unionise engineers/computer scientists...

In theory, it is 7 hours a day (for 35 hours a week contracts). In reality, most office workers are pulling unpaid extra hours.

It's also possible to get 38.5 or 40 hours contracts, where you would get extra holidays to compensate (over a year).

I've worked as a programmer in France, Canada and England. In my experience France and England are pretty much the same in terms of work-time (8 hours/day, 5 week holiday), Canada is behind by lack of holiday (8 hours/day, generally 3 weeks holiday)

Edit: bare in mind this is based on my experience and will presumably be very different depending on the employer.

For the holiday length mentioned, out of curiosity, which length is it?

   5 weeks x (5 days / per work week) = 25 days off

   or 

   5 weeks x (7 days / per week) = 35 days off

In France it's 25 paid vacation days or 36 if you include paid public holidays. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b.... 20 paid vacation days is the EU minimum [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive_2003

It means 25 days off.

Contracts always state the period in days, or hours for part-time workers, but it's normal to divide by five and say "weeks" in conversation.

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