In Europe we have a rather healthy conversation on 4-day work weeks and 40h maximum. Why is the US tech industry so rooted in Presence culture?
Yet the standard working week in the Netherlands is just 38 hours (per Wikipedia), and in Germany it could be argued that the economically most successful states have a catholic majority (although this shifted after WW2, for instance from Saxony (protestant) to Bavaria (catholic)). I think the idea of "Protestant work ethic" is mostly bullshit these days, and it's more about worker's rights.
The above creates a dynamic where people will still work 40h to hit breakpoints, or will drop down as much as possible to stay at their current breakpoint (because working more isn't getting them there anyway). Doubly so because income tends to be a far bigger decider for things like housing and rent (highest expenses) than budgeting.
However poverty and appearing to work hard to be at the top of an extremely competitive scramble out of poverty is my rough idea that isn't too hand-wavey in the direction of religion or culture.
And other SE Asian countries (poorer than Singapore) have more of a reputation of "work shy" cultures. If you can work enough so you're not starving and have a house and beer to drink, why work harder?
So clearly the link between poverty and a "work hard" culture is pretty weak.
EU funding is typically small government grants or seed money. Investors are culturally a _lot_ more risk averse if comparing with the US.
None of the tech sector in the US would exist without NSF, darpa, and NY,SV investors.
Most of the success stories in the EU have been with companies that secured capital from US funds. The only exception I can think of from the top of my head is Nokia and ASML.
"None" is probably a bit much but I agree it rounds to a number close to zero.
It's only a shadow of its former self.
It's one of the reasons why embedded gigs pay so little in the EU.
Can you prove that there’s a meaningful relationship between people having to spend less time in a physical office and tech company annual revenue? ( spoiler alert: you can’t)
Also, why didn’t you just clearly outline your argument? It seems you’re implying that America is more financially successful than Europe because the US has a toxic addiction to perceived ‘work ethic’.
Not a great example, considering the recent Axx SoCs and M1 SoCs that have transformed Macs as a product and differentiated iPhones from Android were entirely developed in Silicon Valley. Most of the software and hardware engineering happens in the Valley as well.
I found the Austrian/German management culture to be far more conservative and attached to measuring productivity by butts-in-seats time or your clocked-in time, than the US management which just looked at your outputs and doesn't care you've only been doing 3 hours of actual work and playing videogames the rest of your day, as long as you delivered what was agreed upon, VS my German manager who gave me a dressing down for seeing me spend "too much time scrolling on HN", despite me shipping everything on time.
Also most EU tech and white collar workers still work 40h/week. Those who work less are a fringe but very loud minority but they're not the norm. Even my friend at BMW Munich has overtime hours in his contract and never does less than 40h/week.
Even looking briefly at job listings in my area, most places are either fully or partially remote, and even those that are partially remote sometimes have a note saying that they'd accept fully remote candidates if they were good enough.
As to the 40h/week thing, I don't hugely keep track of my colleagues' hours, but my impression is that averaging 40 is the norm, but most places I've worked don't track that explicitly, so working about that or less seems to be the norm. In places where you record explicit overtime hours, I know a couple of people who do more than 40h/week, but they tend to also take extensive holidays off or travel a lot on long weekends. I wouldn't say that's the norm though.
Can I ask which area that is?
Come join my team, people are productive and go climbing in their extended lunch break.
US tech workers are free to unionize and demand EU levels of PTO but it seems like the absurd levels of TC is a better deal for them.
I hope you don't get diagnosed of cancer at 45 when following such a strategy.
Having said that nobody needs that insane amount of money to own a property comfortably in Europe. 80k/y is way enough.
Baring some exceptionally shitty companies where the top management can't figure out computers and think everyone just slacks off the whole day from home, or companies in sensitive sectors ( defense) partial remote work is the norm now.
They probably get comp time in a much more formal way when days or week run long. In my US office, you just take your own comp time.
The whole concept of Economy is slavery in a way, economy will grow if people work (or increase productivity), something we have to participate unfortunately. There is inflation making sure you will not have enough tomorrow. The only people are making out of the loop is people working in tech industry.