Cities with the Best Work-Life Balance 2021 | Hacker News Reader

Cities with the Best Work-Life Balance 2021

getkisi.com

93 pointsremt174 comments

This list looks to go by a unknown filtering criteria for cities. It includes multiple cities in some countries, and limit it to just the largest city for other countries.

For example, the work conditions in the various cities in Norway are probably more or less the same, and if anything, the criteria by Air Quality, and cost of living should place Oslo further down the list than others. And one can wonder why Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim, Tromsø, Stavanger, Bodø, etc. are not on the list.

The answer to this is sort of implied: This list only includes the cities it includes. The important takeaway is that this isn't a list over the top N cities to work in, but rather how a selection of cities rank in this regard.

Well, one part of the work-life balance is also access to interesting work and opportunities, and a mature market that makes it easy to switch between companies when you want to or need to.

In that way, I think it makes sense to focus on some of the largest job markets, as they explain under "Methodology":

> After reviewing hundreds of global metropolises, a shortlist of 50 of in-demand cities with sufficient, reliable, and relevant datasets were selected. This included cities known for attracting professionals and families for their work opportunities and diverse lifestyle offerings.

This remote work thing throws a new angle on these kinds of surveys.

That quote sure reads like the list is filtered to make it possible to complete the survey, as well as to make it diverse and interesting. There are plenty of cities not in this list that are by no means short of demand.

Trondheim, being the home of Norway's largest technical university actually has a pretty good number of tech companies and startups.

Oslo is more attractive than these cities despite the higher cost of living.

I live in Oslo and not in Tromsø for many reasons. Oslo has a much better weather, and has more sunlight during winter. It's much closer to other parts of the world, thanks to the international airport, the trains, the boats, and the roads. If you travel a bit, it's a huge difference. You have much more jobs in Oslo, so a higher chance to find interesting jobs. You also have a lot more people, and events, and culture. International music bands do live music in Oslo, rarely Bergen or Trondheim for example. And it has everything I want on the outdoor style, beaches, lakes, islands, sea, ski resorts, thousands of paths for biking, hiking, skiing. All that is well connected to public transport. You can take the subway from work to go skiing in the forest, and it's pretty nice.

Sorry, but regarding outdoor experiences Oslo flat out loses to nearly any other city in Norway. And the point of public transport is irrelevant: it's good everywhere, and outside of Oslo commuting by car is much less of a pain as well.

I'm not saying Oslo has the best outdoor activities though. But it has okay outdoor activities, especially compared to most other cities in Europe. You don't move from another part of Norway to Oslo for the outdoor life for sure.

Well you did bring it up as an advantage while comparing with other Norwegian cities.

Really the best Oslo has going for it is the job market, which is a function of population size. In other respects it remains as adoringly provincial as other Norwegian cities. Being the largest in Noway is not enough to have a big city vibe. If that's your aspiration you'll be better served by a number of other cities down that list.

That's completely subjective. Personally I don't find any of your arguments for Oslo compelling. I even enjoy the winter darkness.

One example doesn't refute your case, but I feel compelled to mention that the legendary ambient electronic musician Geir Jenssen (Biosphere) is based in Tromsø (along with some others of similar style nearby i.e. Deathprod). If you're looking for music-to-code-to, I recommend a try.

Recall reading a best places/safest cities list when looking move a few years ago. Too high a percentage of white people disqualified cities.

Only 40 cities. The reality is that the best work-life balance cities are not the biggest cities in the world. You get the best in the middle range. I have been working in Copenhagen, yes, it is a nice city, but you get way better quality of life in a 100,000 to 400,000 city nearly anywhere else in Europe. Even Aahrus has a better quality of life.

The problem of these ranking is that they want to be global, so they take very big cities known by most of the people at the world level, but all the quality of life is in the middle. You will not see Münster (DE), Boulder (CO, US), Lausanne (CH), Nancy (FR), etc. etc.

They are basically the the best from the worse.

I did not feel like I was spending much less money in Copenhagen than I did in NYC. Can't say I was excited to pay $8 for a beer again.

Agree, this is a very incomplete list. Better places at least in Europe are often mid- to small towns. They might be however boring for certain people. But in general, they share most of characteristics with their nearest big city from this presented table.

>but you get way better quality of life in a 100,000 to 400,000 city nearly anywhere else in Europe. Even Aahrus has a better quality of life.

I think you're going a bit far there. Access to a larger international community, international schooling, wider offering of grocery products (e.g. asian supermarkets) and restaurants, diverse music, arts and cultural offering - smaller distance to airport, those are all reasons I'm happier in Helsinki then some random 100,000 person city.

It's weird because in this survey all of those would fall into the 'Happiness, Culture & Leisure', even though it includes a lot more stuff than 'outdoor spaces' for example.

Just FYI, Zurich is a much smaller city than people think. It has a population of only 400k.

The fact that Singapore is even on this list shows how weird these metrics are. Everyone I know who works a full-time job in Singapore, including my wife, is waaaay overworked. 40 hours a week is considered "light" among most companies there.

Well, actually Singapore is listed as #2 in "Top Overworked Cities in the Ranking"

It shows Singapore at number 18 worldwide in this list, of best work life balance. Something definitely does not add up here!

This confused me as well and I came to the comments to see if there was any explanation...

Probably because number of hours worked per week is only one of the metrics involved in the general ranking.

Kinda depends on the life part, too.

The title makes it sound like it's the top 40 best cities but it looks to actually just be 40 big cities ranked in order.

I see Tokyo and Hong Kong in there as well, which seems crazy. I know from experience in Hong Kong, that if you work in a local company, it’s almost expected to work overtime.

Yeah once you Tokyo or Seoul associated with work-life balance, something is not based on data and is based on something else.

There is no way a salaryman life can in any way be associated with quality work-life balance.

Was about to comment the same but wonder that there must be someone else who also saw the anomaly.

I'm surprised that the average number of hours worked per week was not one of the factors taken into consideration.

Uh, Vancouver affordability 83.9/100?

Did anyone making this list try to get housing there?

Maybe they included a lot of the suburbs. Vancouver has a fairly peaky distribution in that areas near it get more affordable faster than many other cities.

This was mostly true until about 5 years ago. Over the past few years, housing prices have gone up substantially all the way through Abbotsford and started affecting Chilliwack.

The source for their cost of living numbers are Numbeo.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Vancouver?displayCu...

$1,342 USD per month is pretty expensive, but the countries ranked below it are even worse.

Cities I thought would have shown up on the list:

- Montreal, Canada

- Austin, USA

Cities I was shocked at how high they were:

- Ottawa, Canada

- Toronto, Canada

Fascinated how Toronto and Calgary are near the same. Those are very different work cultures.

How so?

In Toronto, there seems to be an urgency to everything. Calgary? Nope.

In Calgary, people come in early. In Toronto, people stay late.

Have never encountered a hustle culture here in Calgary. Toronto definitely has one.

Startups in Calgary seem to maintain their distinctly corporate nature.

I haven't had a lot of application experience in Toronto except as a new grad, but anecdotally the hiring process out here is far longer.

Ok that makes sense. You can almost say the same for the difference in the way each drives.

See the top rated comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27343109 Montreal isn't there because it wasn't rated. It would probably be above Toronto and Ottawa but below Vancouver.

This is not actually possible as Ottawa is ranked 6th and Vancouver is ranked 8th.

I missed that detail. I personally would choose Vancouver over Ottawa but affordability can be an issue.

In a lot of ways Ottawa is hard to beat.

But dont tell anyone, the "boring" reputation is a feature not a bug.

Watching the value of my house double recently suggests the word is getting out - although I get it that it's also that there's more realtors than listings, and of course money printer go Brrrr.

Is it a cold place?

Not in July :P It can get very hot (>40C) & sticky in the valley.

Can be very cold in Jan/Feb, but often too cold to snow so it can be more sunny than say Toronto, and there's a ton of outdoor activities nearby to enjoy like ski hills & trails, snowshoeing, and skating.

One of the first comments I heard from coworkers on work-life-balance was "hope you're not working with a team in Mountain View", and they weren't referring to just the time zone difference (we're in Austin). Before Covid the office was empty before 8:30am and after 4:30pm.

I think it's obvious this list doesn't take into account cultural properties or medium sized cities, as others have commented.

Went to Ottawa on a Sunday, everything was closed, pretty shocking.

I'm shocked to see Toronto high because it's gotten completely and utterly unaffordable.

Ottawa? I'm not surprised. I've lived in both places and my take on Ottawa is that it's affordable (though Canadian skyrocketing real estate market is rapidly becoming an issue here too), tons of outdoor activities, city is fairly alive but not crazy busy that it's ever overwhelming.

Work balance even outside of government is very favorable.

It's cold but people embrace winter and generally try to dress around it, very different from Toronto.

I have been living in Sweden for 7 years, I am ready to change it for any English speaking country.

Do not take these as a recommendation on where to settle.

You will be wildly baffled.

Social culture is more important than social welfare.

EDIT : For those that claim X people speak English just fine, I recommend a new metric "Number of English speaking tables at pubs in their top cities"

As someone born and raised here, may I ask what it was you didn’t like?

Not OP but I worked in Sweden for about 9 months before moving on, here's my take:

Maybe related to the local culture, AFAICT Swedes in general avoid conflict and whenever I questioned something at a meeting I was acknowledged and then the issue was quietly dismissed, no one wants to change anything, review processes or engage in a discussion to make things better, people will hear you, not argue back, and quietly move on, I much preferred environments where people were respectful but ultimately entered open discussions where it feels like you can learn more from each other.

Similarly, everyone in Sweden is very nice, up to a point where it's way too impolite not to be nice, everyone was very nice to me and I felt very welcomed and integrated and then I saw everyone was playing corporate chess in the background and complaining about me to my managers for reasons I'm yet to comprehend.

Ultimately I left Sweden because I didn't find it the right fit for me for several reasons combined, climate is of course not the best, salaries are not high compared to the cost of living you get in other European cities. The fact that I didn't enjoy my working environment there was just extra.

I only had one short lived working experience in the city so it might have been an odd case.

> then I saw everyone was playing corporate chess in the background and complaining about me to my managers for reasons I'm yet to comprehend.

Exactly! and with safety net they have, they're able to afford to play political games without the risk of losing their job. I put years of effort into building products only to be discredited because I didn't pay attention on politics & just focused on building stuff.

Then there is also favoritism. They tend to stick with each other. They sometimes openly hire their past-colleagues/friends.

reference; I worked at a couple corporations here, some of the biggest ones.

There are so many things. I am re-writing this answer for 3rd time in hopes of expressing myself in a succinct manner.

I can write pages about it, but I will intentionally cut it short here. Because a lot of the experiences I had are very emotional & vulnerable to me. I wouldn't feel comfortable some random commenter coming and justifying it in all different angles.

There is a HUGE segregation problem in Sweden. Instead of sharing personal anecdotes, I would like to give you an idea how you can observe it. Look around within your Swedish circles, how many expats/immigrants do you have? how many English-speaking ones? Go to a park or a pub, and look around; how many English-speaking tables do you see? Do you observe some ethnical barrier between the tables?

I can barely say I have Swedish friends. I throw parties all the time, I get people from all different nationalities; spanish, italian, french, german. Yet, living in Sweden, I always ask myself "where are the Swedes?". We are not invited to their parties, but they're not even showing up to nomad/expat communities.

Swedish acquaintances (friends) I have; I only see them 2-3 times a year. In the time, I have been here for 7 years, number of times I have been invited to Swedish homes is less than 5.

I indirectly heard; one friend excluded me from a dinner that was to introduce me to their cousin who is also nerdy. Because his girlfriend was uncomfortable with speaking English.

Again, I repeat, these are only some examples. Because once you get anecdotal, people tend to get stuck on specifics and act pedantic.

I have lived in the Netherlands and in Germany and experienced the same issues. The natives will tell you that it is due to the language. The language is surely a huge part of the problem but the cultures are also themselves insular. And in any case having to achieve fluency in the local language just to have some semblance of a normal life is too much to ask, imo; not a good deal for expats. The EU really oversold the who freedom of movement thing. It's never really going to be like the US.

%100 agreed. It has been really challenging figuring this out myself over years when reality contradicts mainstream opinion. Scandinavia, Amsterdam, Berlin etc.; are doing a huge PR campaign to attract foreign talent with "we speak English here, it's fine"... It is all BS. They're slowly becoming more transparent about it, not out of honesty, but because of the rising push from right-wing/populist politics.

Would you say that the advertising is the primary issue? I would be curious about whether there are many places in the world where you don't face these types of issues while not speaking the local language.

It muddies the decision-making for said expats who are taking the decision to relocate.

For some reason most people, including swedes themselves, seem to think that Sweden is the relatively carefree egalitarian welfare state it was 20 years ago. It isn't. Between gentrification, privatization and the rising housing it is all about status these days. Even the middle class in Stockholm have millions in privileged windfall from the housing market they need to protect at all cost. So fundamentally you will always be looked down upon for having to work for it as the prospects are comparatively bad. Most everyone else it no longer part of the main narrative.

You'll find countless anglos all over the internet who'd gladly drop everything if they could live in Sweden.

The grass is always greener.

They should definitely give it a try and see for themselves. I plan to give the alternative a try. Life is not worth living on with "what ifs"

I agree. For me native English speaking and number of annual sunlight hours are the two metrics I care about.

Indeed. It is very important. When you do not speak the native language; the first question always will be "Where are you from?"...then the prejudice that comes with it.

My theory is that there is a strong pressure towards uniformity in these countries (Extreme Janteloven in Denmark). This is often marked out as a reason for their success, however I suspect that the strong affinity biases (to use a loaded term) ensure that the countries lose out in exploring opportunities for innovation in the long run.

What’s left is a focus on economic management, politicians whose main job is to maintain the status quo, and a low appetite for reform. Which I guess is fine for everyone if the money keeps rolling in, but is dispiriting for anyone that wants to try their hand at making something new.

I’m happy to be pointed to links on how Nordics are hothouses for innovation (as opposed to just applying a known business model to a new market), as I would love to have the wrong end of the stick on this!

Might not be exactly what you are looking for but just throwing it out there; Sweden often ranks high on some innovation metrics, like the Global Innovation Index: https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_gii_2020/se.p....

Janteloven is mostly a political talking point. The text itself is being a hundred year old curiosity. Scandinavia have traditionally (in modern history) conformed not because you had to but because most people lived similar lives. When you have similar education, housing and work environment most people are similar even though you might be appreciate different things. There are for example many metal band from the Nordics. Go back a hundred years and that wasn't true. In fact 15%+ of swedes left for the US at one point.

The Nordic countries are known for their Social Democracy where reforms are everything. That of course isn't true anymore, but there isn't much saying that conformity inhibits progress. In most cases you have to get to some good place before you can go somewhere else.

That said, today Sweden is mostly a terrible place for any kind of knowledge work since the housing market is so screwed.

Seems like these comments aren't going through though so... guess that was a waste much like Hacker News.

What this really seems to be is a ranking of “how Scandinavian is each city”.

Helsinki is not Scandinavia, though.

English usage of the term "Scandinavia" is a bit unclear that way - it often is used to mean what locally would be called Nordic countries (i.e. including Finland, Iceland, ...)

It is though?

Some definitions of Scandinavia include Finland, others doesn’t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia#Use_of_Nordic_coun...

Poor Estonia.

Estonia? How do you mean?

Jokingly, as they aspire into Nordic.

Doesn't matter how "livable" a city is if one will never find a place to rent there and buying is out of reach for a salaried person.

Or if the winter is six full months of gray doom and gloom with freezing temperatures like in Helsinki, for that matter...

Unless one was born in the North, moving to Helsinki or Oslo means at least one very harsh winter... and not temperature harsh but lack of sunlight. It's just 4 months gray scale for the day part that ends around 14:45 in December.

And for others, this reads like an ad pandering directly to me.

Yes, one very harsh winter, then you do everything you can to be remote on the job, and you spend your winters in Spain, or in Thailand. :)

This. It's nearly impossible to find a decent apartment to live in Amsterdam for example (not very far away from the city center). Same experience in other Western European cities.

You'll probably get a decent job in a few weeks, but an apartment? A few months if you are lucky. Same goes for almost all the other cities in the list, plus if you look foreigner or don't speak the local language (and only English) add a few more months of waiting.

Sure, if you are willing to throw more than 2000 EUR per month in renting an apartment, then you'll get one relatively fast. But 2000 EUR/month is not what I would call "decent".

This is a very weird list. I'll just comment on the places I've lived and worked in:

- Why is Hong Kong even on the list?

- Sydney and Melbourne: expensive; Internet is both low bandwidth and high latency; lack of travel destinations due to distance; poor air quality due to excessive use of fossil fuels and bushfires (yes I checked, nowadays average air quality across Melbourne is worse than HK); toxic politics. Not to mention lots of unpaid overtime. Why are they so high on the list?

Melbourne and Sydney internet: only true if you're not on FTTP. You can even sign up with providers like Launtel which let you subscribe to FTTP by the day..

The air quality comment is VERY surprising, just checked it myself.. Dead of winter during a lockdown in Melbourne and there's STILL more air pollution than Hong Kong.

EDIT: Having just double checked this, this is incorrect - Hong Kong has triple the average of Melbourne. Was checking point in time vs Melbourne, however Hong Kong gets significantly worse as the day goes on. See historical comparisons.

No Prague = no credibility

Seriously.

What about banglore india? Why is it not on the list of worst cities? It would beat any place else by miles.

I don't think work life balance is even considered a thing here and I'm talking about what are considered to be better companies, like Cisco; where not coming on weekends is most of the times not even an option imo.

This seems pretty subjective to me. Kuala Lumpur is listed as 50 on "Happiness, Culture & Leisure" vs "Helsinki" at 100. I know for me if I had to choose between the two I'd pick Kuala Lumpur of Helsinki any day for "Happiness, Culture & Leisure".

As for city safety, while Singapore being #1 is probably correct I'd find it hard to believe Tokyo is not #2 over Helsinky, Oslo, Zurich, Stockholm. For example checking Stockholm vs Tokyo on Crime via Numbeo

https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Jap...

Shows Tokyo's crime is half of Stockholm's

I'm sure there are lots of other discrepancies

The page lists the sources used for each of the categories, as well as defining in more detail what the category means. The definitions are probably broader than you expect.

E.g. "safety" does not just mean the absence of crime, but "The degree of safety provided by a city in more than a dozen key areas, including environmental, social and infrastructural security. Indicators include statistics on injuries and fatalities, damage caused at an economic level, public opinion data, and data on the vulnerability of a location to particular hazards."

Is it impossible to filter content marketing off of Hacker News?

Interesting data, but I think that the "Best Work-Life Balance" is misleading in this context. Good social security or city livability add greatly to quality of life, sure. But it is kind of perpendicular to the topic of work-life balance.

Out of these statistics "% population overworked" or de facto vacation days taken are a better metric. BTW: does this >48h/week bases on the official contract or an actual state of matter (e.g. expected overtime, paid or not). The later is likely greater in some places. We all know that in many jobs (startups, academia, game industry, a lot of consulting) we often hear "nobody here works 8h for 5 days a week" - as a direct expectation.

This list seems to have some sort of threshold and is only including cities of a population above some size. For the vast majority of people that is going to mean this list is useless. Big cities offer better lifestyles for a subset of the population.

I’m happy and content working and living in Oslo.

No surprise on top pics - we (Scandinavians) forego many things for the security of a good work/life balance, as well as social safety nets. You will see that salaries are quite compressed / centered around a mean.

Their real estate market doesn't care about the equal salary distribution though... and their weather will make one desperate for a cozy and convenient place.

Man, they totally have Sydney wrong. I moved out of Sydney to Melbourne because it was so expensive, it's a never-ending rat race and most of the companies are pretty corporate (meaning a lot of unpaid overtime).

They use country-level data for many factors, including for "Inclusivity & Tolerance". Having also lived in both cities, it's clear why this list is flawed.

This ranking has no factors pertaining to raising children other than those that also pertain to adults. For parents and prospective parents that makes it almost useless. If not for the quality of education in affluent parts of big cities and their suburbs the optimal plan for work life balance is to make bank in the big city then scale back to a nice small town. You can save enough to retire fairly easily given the low cost of living and low housing prices in small towns. But most small towns aren’t great environments for raising a kid.

"But most small towns aren’t great environments for raising a kid."

This sounds strange? What are the negative factors in such an environment? As a parent I happen to live in a city but never considered a small town would be a poor environment for my kids.

Very insular and only one real chance to make a group of friends (especially within an age group). Limited support for hobbies and extra-curriculars due to population density. Difficult to impossible to get around and do things without a car. Often worse education.

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted - this is 100% true. This lines perfectly with my experience.

Upside at least - with small towns there usually isn’t much need for public transit as much because things are closer together if you live near the stuff to begin with. Downside - usually the people you become friends with at school live in the sticks and take a bus or parents car into school. So, if you want to see your friends... you need a ride. It was very common in my small town to pull in people from 10+ miles away for the high school and middle school.

A lot of small towns are also very poor. We only had four day school weeks because they decided to axe the fifth day due to budget cuts. Almost all elective classes were cut as well - which meant as a student who maybe had an interest that lined up with getting out of small town... very difficult to get learnings on.

People who post here are almost 100% unlikely to have their children in such a trap but it’s worth pointing out.

How small is "small town"?

Guess, the trick is to work remote and live where you want.

I certainly wouldn't want to live more north than I already do. But it seems that all cities in warmer regions have bad ratings.

But aren't the Scandinavian countries always on top of the list of happiest countries in the world? E.g. this year the top 3 was Finland, Iceland, Denmark.

So it seems that happiness is inversely correlated with warm temperatures ..

I think, as long as you don't have to be productiv, warm temperatures are good.

These kind of lists only reveal that happiness is related to GDP.

I'd even go so far and say GDP is related to temperature.

Or at least it was until the rise of cooling appliences.

The closer to the Equator I am, the less incliened to productivity I am.

Yeah, could be as well; but then Australia! :)

If you don't have to rely on securing income in warmer cities, it's very workable.

...and for Software jobs with the best work / life balance, I recently launched:

https://4dayweek.io/

Site looks great, congrats on the launch!

Thanks, much appreciated! Lots more jobs coming soon

Not surprised to see Australian cities so high. Most office jobs are a strict 9-5 and not a minute over. For outdoors only beaten by a few places in the US and Canada.

Sydney, nope! Well only if your really wealthy. But otherwise for the regular working person it's a hell hole.

That's why they are all moving to Brisbane. And they shouldn't, because we are full :P

heck, 90& of Sydneysiders live in Western Sydney. Its a trek to even get to the CBD.

I’ve worked in lots of countries but think Sydney nails it for the combination of tech work opportunities and lifestyle. It’s a booming first world economy with lots of modern tech to play with, but amazing beaches, food and nature walkable or a cab ride away.

Would move there from London in a heartbeat, Covid mentalness aside.

Isn't the main factor in work-life balance the nature of the relationship you have with your employer/customer(s), not the physical location? Some employers respect boundaries, some do not, and some staff members are better or worse at enforcing personal boundaries.

This article's premise is befuddling to me.

Culture also plays a big part. For instance, in many Hong Kong companies (where I live) people tend to stay until after their manager leaves. If the boss burns the midnight oil, so do the subordinates. If your boss emails you on Sunday while you are you are playing with your kids, you answer.

Is there any reason to make this by city instead of by region? AFAIK most cities in a wide region (say, India, where I'm from) have reasonably similar work cultures. Frankly, I'd say cities are a rather poor marker for WLB compared to industry and region.

This is the "Top 10 Hottest Women in the World" list. Someone just threw it together.

If I were looking for work-life balance, climate would be a big factor on the life side of the scale. Many of the cities in the top 10 have very long winters which might appeal to some but more warmth would be a bonus for me.

How come weather / daylight is never a factor in these rankings? I come from Spain, live in Germany and I can guarantee you that having just 7 hours of light in the winter fucks up your mental health.

Zürich so far up? Daycare costs are through the roof, so much so that it makes more sense for one parent to quit and stay with the kids fulltime. Have more than one child? You’re in for a world of hurt.

Switzerland being among the most in demand countries can moderate the immigration demographic as they want. They really don't care whether you reproduce.

Switzerland is overrated. It's a beautiful country, but quality of life (if you want or have children) is far from good. It's brutal and backwards. For example, there is a tax "punishment" if you get married (you pay more tax if you get married), so people end up living in partnerships, well into their 60s. Daycare costs are a third of your income per child. I have a friend who has 2 kids and his wife will probably never go back to work, as that would not make financial sense. (more info in German: https://www.familienleben.ch/kind/betreuung/kinderbetreuung-...)

This is a questionable metric. You can have a better "balance" between the amount of work and non-work hours in your day and still live a worse life. You can have all sorts of entitlements in your employment contract and pay for it through high taxes. Of course, you can also have none of the entitlements and high taxes, like in the US.

If you're one of the people who actually have the option to leave, you probably won't want to go to any of these nordic countries, because:

- the weather sucks

- the cities are boring (though perhaps not quite as boring as most US cities)

- you'll probably earn less money (at least in tech) while most goods/services are more expensive

- you're (indirectly) paying for entitlements that you don't get, unless you become a citizen

as a tax-paying resident with a valid working permit you are entitled to all sorts of social security benefits. The only limit I ever had (in NL) was "unemployment benefit" which requires a minimum employment history of 6 months.

Social security benefits are contingent on you having a residence in the Netherlands, but your residence permit may be contingent on not claiming these benefits.

https://www.expatica.com/nl/living/gov-law-admin/social-secu...

Therefore, while you may technically be entitled to the same things as a citizen (or long-term resident), you practically are not. It works similarly in many European countries.

it would be cool to sort it by vitamin-d deficiency/exposure levels.

having to periodically take shots can take a toll in your "life" happiness and balance overall (work and personal)

>Philadelphia is safer than Boston

Huh, that really doesn't sound right.

No doubt winter in Helsinki can be beautiful but it is bloody cold. I always loved going there but how a city with an extreme climate made #1 is puzzling.

Eh, in terms of temperature its not much different than the American northeast. The real problem is the amount of sunlight.

Compare the mean winter temperatures of Helsinki and Boston. Now compare their mean sunlight hours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki#Climate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston#Climate

Still, Helsinki has more hours of sunlight annually than many major cities in Central Europe. Cannot imagine how it would be like to live in a place with solid >>2000 hours... I need a life upgrade...

I think you were reading Boston's numbers. Helsinki has 1,858 hours per year

Yes I meant Boston. Major cities in Central Europe (Hamburg, Warsaw, Kraków, Zurich) are in the 1500-1600 range so are more gloomy than the cities on the Baltic Sea shore.

Ottawa is #6, and Montreal isn’t even on the list ... ok

Exactly. That tells me everything I need to know about adequacy of this list :)

the best cities in the world by work life balance are always the ones where you can happily spend your non-working time freezing to death :)

It's really a pity that this kind of comparison tables don't provide sliders to let viewers change scoring weights.

Wouldn't the first main parameter be the job itself? Followed by local laws and then the options for recreational time?

Fairly happy to live and work in Copenhagen :)

Fairly happy not to. I love visiting Copenhagen, but I see no reason to live there. Travel times in and around Copenhagen are insane, compared to most other Danish cities, and housing is way to expensive.

How is it possible US have less than 10 vacation days taken? Are schools and kindergartens open year around?

I guess that's compensated via salary (they earn around 2x-3x more than their European counterparts).

Well, it might be true for some positions, like engineering, but it definitively does not apply to all of them.

Nope, most schools are not open year round. That's why child care is such a booming and lucrative industry. Many rely on other family members (especially retired) to look after kids, sometimes friends but usually family. Religious communities also setup ad hoc day care systems to my knowledge. If you don't find free or cheap care you pay the piper.

BTW, listing Hong Kong as a country seems to be a bad news to Chinese guys.

In what world does NYC have better outdoor spaces than SF??

I’m surprised to see Stockholm so far up in the list…

Can you elaborate please? I'm curious.

I work in Stockholm and I just have a feeling that compared to other Swedish cities, people here tend to work more and have a worse life/work balance. Dunno about cities outside of Sweden though since I’ve never worked abroad.

Sydney over Melbourne - nah

Yeah, these articles powered by numbeo metrics and surveys from disparate sources really aren't worth the magnetic platter they're stored on.

Bergen in even in the list? Small town where weather is mostly rainy with excessive darkness through the year is somehow good?

Nice to see kisi here.

I had to laugh when I saw Berlin there

How so? Germany has very strong employment laws so I wasn't surprised to see Berlin on the list.

Have you ever lived in Germany? Are suppressed wages a good sign?

It is for sure bad for all other countries in Europe.

Yes, I live in Berlin and I'm very happy here. I have a good work-life balance. Wages aren't worse than elsewhere in Europe excl. Switzerland.

I would think they're significantly lower than what you get in the south where all the major German companies are.

exactly https://www.iamexpat.de/career/employment-news/german-cities...

Not for tech jobs, no. Major German companies do not pay major salaries for engineers and programmers, so the Berlin tech scene is competitive.

"very strong employment laws" is Germany-wide and not specific to Berlin. Berlin has much less holidays than any other place in Germany. Beside that, Berlin has problems in all areas listed under "CITY LIVABILITY". There are much better places to live in Germany other than Berlin. I left Berlin to live in Lisbon, TBH I'm shocked that Lisbon isn't in the list at all, but for sure I would never come back to Berlin. Maybe Freiburg, Nürnberg, Kiel, even Potsdam, but Berlin? No way.

A couple of Catholic holidays doesn't change the situation much. Our own experiences are anecdotal, but I used to live in a high-ranking Nordic city from this list and prefer Berlin myself.

The list doesn't rank any mid-tier cities so that's out of scope. It would be the same for Nordics: medium cities would top the capitals if they were included.

When you say Potsdam is better than Berlin, have you have ever been outside of Mitte, Kreuzberg and Neukölln? Because there are a lot of places in Berlin that are very much like Potsdam. For example Schmöckwitz.

And about public transport: If I travel M10 in the rush hour, its obviously hell. But traveling S5 saturnday night after a very nice concert is pretty hard to beat. But then again, it's the same as Potsdam where you would take S1.

yes, well true, maybe the ranking should be "Best Work-Life balance" for singles/family without kids/U30, etc

When you start a family you can move to a different part of Berlin - quieter, safer, greener, family-friendly. This is what I did, so did some families I know.

We moved from Prenzlauer Berg to Biesdorf. Our friends moved to Zehlendorf. No more loud neighbours running all-night parties, much less people under drugs. You get a sense of community, your neighbours own their houses, do not change every year, and take care of the place.

I would not want to live there, but it is objectively one of the coolest cities on earth.

yes sure. Berlin is cool to visit. But to live there, commute there, use the public services there? Nope.

I think that almost in every city of the world you can find a good chunk of local people who thinks the same about their city. Grass is greener etc etc

Maybe, but probably for people without family, coming from different countries like Berlin. Depending on the ranking (which are like benchmarks), Berlin doesn't even appear in the top 10 cities in Germany https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/staedteranking-2020-...

I wonder what is your concern with public transport, etc in Berlin. The price? IMO they are pretty reliable, and very often partly subsidized by your employer. Lots of of bike lanes too. In 30-40 min you can go anywhere inside the ring.

How so? Currently living there, have a nice park 1 min from the house, few pollution, no crime around here (beside graffit and a fire in an abandoned shack 2 weeks ago), growing bike infrastructure. I can go sailing in 30 min, Skiing and mountain climbing are impossible. Culturally one of the best in the world (and a lot cheaper than say NewYork at that). Job is great with 30 days vacation etc pp, though a little lower than in the US. The motorway is a bit noisy, though I am very strict there. Sure, if you live in a shitty neighboorhood, thats different, but thats different everywhere (as number of remote jobs also doesn't help you if you are not remote yourself)

what would be a shitty neighborhood in your opinion in Berlin?

The places by Warschauer strasse, Wedding. Basically, most of East Berlin.

Edit: removed Neukoelln, it is boring, but not bad.

I am in East Berlin, so I certainly disagree. And most places in the East that are single family housing are nice anyways. For example, the borough Hellersdorf-Marzahn contains the big 12-level blocks of Hellersdorf, Marzahn and Kaulsdorf-Nord with problems up and down, but also ~30k single family houses in Biesdorf, Kaulsdorf and Mahlsdorf (as well as the original village of Marzahn, not much left of Hellersdorf) that are super safe and more and more expensive.

Localities that are not so nice (but again, it depends on the exact location) are Tiergarten, Wedding, Hohenschönhausen, Weissensee, Hellersdorf, Marzahn, Neukölln (the locality). Basically, cheap places are cheap for a reason.

Well, it is of course opinion, in the end, you are right! I just personally strongly prefer West Berlin.

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