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Comment by rmc | Hacker News Reader

> Europeans in general don't seem to have that same drive Americans do to create new products

Maybe they don't want to work 70 hour weeks?

Exactly. Elon Musk has been working 80 hour work weeks for the past 20 years now. I'm not saying that's anywhere near a balanced lifestyle. But without those sacrifices, it's much harder to produce innovative world changing products or services. The United States creates and draws those character types to it, and for many Europeans countries, they don't.

There's a body of research that corroborates the opposite claim, i.e., that past a certain point, working more hours does not correlate with -- or correlates negatively with -- effectiveness. So if Europe is less "innovative", the reasons are not likely related to a simplistic measure like hours worked.

And I am sure there are exceptions to that claim, e.g. Elon Musk. Not all humans are wired the same way. People that can work 80 hour weeks effectively are rare, which is why those types of CEOs have million dollar salaries.

On overall, probably not. There's a difference though between average load and peak load. Virtually nobody could sustain a 80 hour work weak for an extended time. A lot of people could do it for a short time, provided the possibility of a large reward.

I'm pretty sure the accumulation of capital that draws people to SV and New York. There were numerous studies, e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228200217_The_Geogr... . That's why it is really hard to set foot 50 miles further than the centre of VCs, not because it is harder to attract talent.)

“In Connecticut and Massachusetts the proportion of investments located within 50 miles of the investor’s home or office is 37% (Freear et al, 1992). In New England the equivalent proportion is 58% (Wetzel, 1981) while in Ottawa the proportion is 85% (this high proportion reflecting its proximity to different cultural and political milieus to the north and south and distance from other major urban areas in English-speaking Canada). In the UK, Mason and Harrison (1994) found that two-thirds of investments by UK business angels were made within 100 miles of home.” http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/15803/

This slowly changes, but still, matters.

Probably. Same result. These are trade-offs made in picking a social model. Higher subjective happiness, perhaps, in exchange for a loss of competitiveness. As long as the latter isn't so much that it makes the former unsustainable, I think it is a fair choice. Not what would make me happy, though.

Maybe. And that's totally valid choice. But hardly compatible with high-risk high-reward culture that most startups - at least initially - are. I mean, you certainly can run a startup on 9-to-5 40 days off per yer schedule. It just the chances of it succeeding will be somewhat less than one where people are willing to put 70 hour weeks in. If these diminished chances are enough for you - great. But overall the model would have less prolific startup scene - which is what, I think, we do observe.

Just about any study about effective I read concluded that working more then 50 hours a week shows you down.

Was supposed to be "slows".

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