It's better to do the 7.5 hours, go home and come back rested the next day. Your subconscious will be working on the problem anyway.
Most European countries seem to be over the glorification of long grueling hours. In the US and Japan it's still a badge of honor how much you work - never mind that productivity in either country isn't scaling relative to the hours used.
I work in a startup with 45 top notch engineers.
There's a huge difference between being at work 12 hours a day and actually doing something productive with that time.
Japan is an excellent example of this, in their office culture you never leave before the boss does and try to be at the office before them. People spend 12+ hours at work and don't produce more than other people who work sensible hours.
Coronavirus and remote works might be a savior for that culture.
Not saying anything about whether this is a good idea or not. Just saying that I know people like this that I used to be skeptical about before.
Then one night I found out could't sleep. At all. Had to take a few pills just to get some shuteye and woke up with a shitty metal taste in my mouth every morning.
I started getting heart palpitations at odd times. Was on SSRI for a few years just to get over the burnout. Acid reflux so bad I could only eat unseasoned chicken and white rice for 6 months.
Since that episode I've learned moderation and have had a hard 8h/day policy with rare exceptions. No issues since, and my output hasn't really changed.
For instance I work at an international company and I already get paid 2-3x less than same level engineers in US. I feel like this would increase the gap even more.
And I'd prefer to have the option to over-achieve if this is what I choose to do with my life.
But honestly the pay gap is not due to labour laws, at least not directly. It's because there's a war between the big tech firms to acquire talent which doesn't exist the same way in Europe.
But it would require coming out of my comfort zone so much. I have a girlfriend here, family, friends and much more.
I have calculated that I could "FIRE" in US so much faster compared to where I live. Especially if I did some years of work in USA and then "FIRE"d at some low cost of living country.
But I think I'm not going to do it for now. Luckily the company pays well in my country too, just not as well. But I do have a lot of regrets that I'm not using my potential to the fullest.
Why do you think US has so many big tech firms compared to Europe and other places? And why is there so much war between tech companies specifically in US?
Historical/incidental reasons I suppose. I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of the big tech giants, and a lot of VC being centered there (especially around SV specifically) so there is a lot of defensive hiring. When facebook pays a developer $250k per year, it's not only because of the value they're providing facebook, but it's because of the value they could provide a startup which could compete with facebook. By driving up the price of talent, they price startups out of the market.
Startups in Europe have much less access to VC funding, so they are less of a threat.
- World class universities
- Weak/non-existent non-compete
- Better risk tolerance from VC (Can't just park the money in real-estate. Worth it to invest in the Next Big Thing)
- Higher compensation means the best world-wide come work in that ecosystem
Less regulation. Facebook would've hit multiple EU privacy laws before it got even medium-sized.
Uber, Doordash and others would've never gotten past EU labor laws. They're having trouble even now.
And yes, the US has a huge concentration of enthusiastic talent willing to do pretty much anything as long as it's "disruptive". Also the US has ridiculous amounts of people wit millions to waste on said disruptive ideas. (Like over-engineered juice presses).
But who cares.. I like the low-pressure life here. Rents are lower than the US too. We have socialised healthcare, safe gun-free cities. That's worth a lot more than a number on a bank statement.
I hear that in the US people will lose their healthcare when they lose a job and it could cost $1000 a month (which is more than my monthly rent)! Here it's simply free. That brings a lot of peace of mind.
But I suppose wages take this into account. High rent prices, healthcare etc. Otherwise people wouldn't be able to live off their wage.
Going off the 2019 numbers, so pre-pandemic: 10% of Americans have a negative net worth. 30% of americans are on means-tested benefits: Medicaid, foodstamps, TANF, WIC, welfare, or section 8. An additional 20% on top of that, or more than 50% of Americans, receive federal subsidies, so do not fully pay for their own insurance.
Even for those who qualify as "with insurance", for the above specification, do not possess insurance nearly to the scale that is implied in the above quote of $2500 per month. Of the 86% insured (the number rose from 10% in 2018 to 13.7% in 2019), 20% are on individual plans with a deductible over $5000.
Fewer than 40% of Americans actually have healthcare insurance of the quality implied above -- which makes sense, because $2500 a month is actually a reasonable figure, and that exceeds wages for 40% of Americans. Reminder that 30% of Americans live at or below the poverty line, and receive government assistance for basic needs of food and shelter.
If you are free to set metric arbitrarily, you can always ensure that majority of Americans do not meet it. For example, fewer than 40% of Americans drive cars that are younger than 5 years old. Does it mean that driving is out of reach for most Americans? Clearly, it's not.
More concretely, despite that "fewer than 40%" have healthcare coverage of the sort you arbitrarily chosen, it turns out that 70% of Americans rate their healthcare coverage as either excellent or good ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar... ), and this figure has been stable for last 20 years.
The US tech sector is _perfect_ for a single male engineer, who doesn't have any health issues. You can work 16 hour days, sleep on the office sofa and earn six-seven figures before you're 30.
But as someone who's definitely not 30 any more, with a family and health issues there is no way I'm even considering moving to the US.
I could easily triple or quadruple my take-home pay, but I'd be taking all the safeties off my, and my family's, life. Not a fan.
It depends on your income. Here in Maryland, families of four making up to $70,000/year are eligible for childcare subsidies.
These numbers come from high income people who try to imagine what it would be like to be low income but don’t actually know about all of the programs the US, especially blue coastal states and the Midwest, have for people under a certain income level.
For higher income people like engineers, their employees will pay for their healthcare. Things like daycare can be a stretch, but you only pay that for a few years before the kids are eligible for free per-school. Say you have 2 kids and they need $1,500/month daycare for four years. (That’s more than I pay in Maryland which is a high cost state.) That works out to about $3,600 per year over a career. Two people working will absolutely make that much more in take home pay the US than in Europe.
From ages 0-5 you need to pay for childcare, pre-school starts at 6 and that's free. Pre-school isn't 8 hours a day though, so you need to pay around 100€ to supplement it with childcare.
After that it's school, high-school and university, all free again. High-school & university require you to buy the books though, which do have a cost, but nothing like the US schoolbook prices from what I've gathered. It's hundreds of euros per term if you buy new.
We implemented a sweeping healthcare reform a decade ago now. You can't just pretend that never happened.
That's not true in most of the states where people actually live. For example where I live in Maryland: https://www.marylandhealthconnection.gov/lost-your-job-you-c...
> Yes, you have 60 days from the date of losing your job to enroll in health coverage through Maryland Health Connection. You do not have to wait for open enrollment. A special enrollment period allows you to enroll in a health plan
Eligibility for free or subsidized healthcare depends on income. Here are the income limits in Maryland: https://www.marylandhealthconnection.gov/how-to-enroll/medic.... For a family of 4, if you earn less than about $36,000 a year you qualify for Medicaid, which provides free healthcare, including prescription drugs. For a family of four, you can enroll your kids in Medicaid if your family makes under $55,000 per year.
Above that it's a sliding scale based on household income.
It provides free health insurance; as Maryland Medicaid has cost-sharing requirements, it is not completely free health care. Prescription drugs, in particular, are not free for Medicaid recipients, though they are subsidized ($1-$3/prescription).
https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/premium-an...
Retail health care is not where the expense insanity in the US system kicks in.
The US health care system has deep, systemic problems! It's just probably not the copay problem.
It’s a couple of hundred dollars a year more than Finland or Sweden, but nothing dramatic.
And the fees/co-pays are of course not the end of the road. People in Sweden and Finland pay a lot more taxes. They pay thousands of dollars more every year, even when they don’t get sick. Median after-tax disposable income, according to the OECD, is $14,000-16,000/year more in the US than Finland or Sweden.
Now, of course, Americans spend a significant part of that difference on deductibles, premiums, etc. But in most states it’s a few thousand dollars a year on average. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
In the sunny day scenario. Why can't you stop cherry-picking?
> And the fees/co-pays are of course not the end of the road. People in Sweden and Finland pay a lot more taxes
It's the end of the road with regards to the topic. point-of-service fees. Taxes are assumed already - you get something obvious in return, you do not need to worry about healthcare for you entire life, even if you've been unemployed for a long time.
> Median after-tax disposable income, according to the OECD, is $14,000-16,000/year more in the US than Finland or Sweden.
Given the US's lack of welfare services this also seem to be a sunny day scenario. Your costs for daycare, education, rents etc are significantly higher and require that kind of disposable income to just save up to. Furthermore, this is only relevant if you think that more disposable income somehow automatically translates to more happiness and quality-of-life, which we know that it doesn't beyond a certain point.
This is true with some caveats:
If you lose your job, you lose health insurance from the job by default. But in general you have a choice to buy the same plan you had, at the full cost (including whatever the employer used to pay), which can, yes, be $1000/mo — or significantly more.
However, you will usually also then have the option of buying a plan from your state’s healthcare exchange, which may not be as good as your employer plan, but the lowest cost options will come consistently be far less than $1K/mo. [0]
And depending on income and other factors, you may be eligible for subsidies to pay part or all of the cost of an exchange plan, or you may be eligible for public insurance via Medicaid.
[0] https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/average-ma...