Comment by ShabbyDoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ShabbyDoo | Hacker News Reader

What 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?

Wages are in general lower, and on the whole the spectrum is compressed -- so low-paid jobs tend to be a big higher, but a software developer in Berlin makes about half to a third of what they would in Silicon Valley.

Also, the article is a bit off on some of its numbers -- 6 weeks of vacation aren't required by law, 24 days are (i.e. just under 5 weeks), though 6 is a common perk.

Additionally, at least in the software industry, I've commonly seen people reporting fewer hours than they actually work because by law overtime must be compensated by money or vacation, which is often an annoyance for the employer and employee (i.e. you're working late to get something done, by choice, and your boss is annoyed because now they're supposed to give you vacation time for that), so I got in the habit of always just reporting 40 hours.

In general I'd take this article with a grain of salt; it's not that it's mostly wrong, but it's clearly written in fandom, rather than a quest-for-understanding sort of way.

Why would you compared Berlin (one of Germany's poorer mega-cities) to pretty much the best paying area for tech workers in the states?

It's true that you'd still see a huge salary disparity even if you compare SV to Hamburg, Munich or Frankfurt, but comparing to Berlin is still a bit disingenuous.

Also, I believe SV (especially for tech workers) is the outlier here - there is no other place in the world where developers are so highly payed, and the highest average wage earners among professionals in Germany are not people in the software industry like in SV (they are probably the people working in finance & banking in Frankfurt).

The example holds for Hamburg, and is pretty close for Munich or Frankfurt. (I've spent four years working in Baden-Württemberg and four in Berlin.) Tech salaries are just a lot lower in Germany. In comparison, in the US, there are a number of cities where wages are pretty close to Silicon Valley. I believe NYC is a bit higher. If you want to compare finance to finance, I assure you that salaries in New York are higher than they are in Frankfurt.

But in Berlin, you can have a top notch meal with fresh veggies and local ingredients for $5, a beautiful apartment near all sorts of great things for $800 easily, and, oh yeah, excellent healthcare and other social benefits.

You can't talk about salaries in other cities without considering the cost-of-living differences.

That said, I know programmers in Vienna making what I would consider pretty good salaries (60-70K/euros), even in the US. With 5-6 weeks of vacation.

You mean a self-prepared meal for $5? If you want to go out, $5 will buy you a Döner or Currywurst.

This matches my limited experience. I toured a German factory once - their level of technology and processes are astounding. I watched a car getting painted - it was on a catwalk over running water with turbines to capture some energy from the process, and bristles on the turbines to take most of the paint out and recycle the water. The efficiencies are enormous, technology investment very high.

I haven't been through so many factories to compare, but the investments in technology I saw seem higher than in the American factories I've been through. Small sample size, though, basically anecdotal, so take me with a grain of salt here.

I know what you mean. I once had a tour at a Volkswagen factory. It was jaw dropping and amazing how well thought out all processes were planned and managed.

You're probably right about the labor-saving techniques. In Germany, you get gardeners with automatic leaf blowers (i.e., faster, but more noise), and with a whole slew of bottom-tier jobs (such as supermarket baggers) missing. The car industry is purely based on robots and automation - which is probably the same in the US.

I suspect this must be a European thing then. I'm in London and I'd assumed that leaf blowers were a universal thing, and I had to google "supermarket bagger" - it seems like a weird gimmick, is this common?

If anything, older Americans lament the reduction in the level of grocery store service over the years. While most stores (at least around Cleveland) have baggers, there is only one higher-end grocery which still loads one's bags in his car for him. The customer leaves his cart by the exit, drives his car up to the store, and some teenagers load the bags into the trunk ("boot" for those in the UK?).

Well, leaf blowers are sold in South America too, but we have supermarket baggers like in the U.S.

Something odd is that gas stations over here are called "service stations", and we get our cars filled (no filling it yourself), oil checked and other niceties - it's so disconcerting for me going to an European gas station (went to one in Vienna).

Wikipedia once again surprised me with the depth of the article on Filling Stations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filling_station

I guess I'd only experienced full service stations before going to Europe.

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