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Comment by daft_pink | Hacker News Reader

Something I think is shocking in Europe compared to the US is the way no one is willing to work more than their contract states and people complain if they have to stay like half an hour later. People don’t work outside of their work hours in Europe

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LOL massive sweeping generalisation there. I’m European and have worked all kinds of overtime, sometimes willingly, sometimes coerced. You are aware “Europe” isn’t some monogamous state right?

You mean monolithic.

Both?

I just think if you've spent time in Europe and you've spent time in the United States the difference is very striking, but fair. Probably overgeneralizing a bit.

This isn't really true. It depends on the type of person you are and also in which European country you are in. In both Western and Eastern Europe I've had colleagues that would stop everything they do at 5 pm. and leave and colleagues that would stay with me until 8 pm. fixing a bug.

Others mentioned that it depends on the company, but in my experience it also really depends on the country. Paradoxically, it’s much more common to work overtime in Italy than in the Netherlands (where many people even work 32 hours a week)

>> no one is willing to work more than their contract states

I mean that's a crazy oversimplification. I work at a British company where we work with Americans a lot and it's not uncommon for people to work late at night just to stay in contact(even I did some work at 11pm last night to speak with someone).

>>People don’t work outside of their work hours in Europe

I'm curious how many people from Europe have you actually met. Working outside of your hours "just to finish that one spreadsheet that the boss is prodding me for" is extremely common everywhere.

I laugh at Americans mocking Europeans because "they're not willing to work hard" - two reasons:

1. Salaries are shit here anyways, and any additional money you make beyond say 60k (!) is taxed at 40% or higher. 2. For compliance reasons, if you spend more than 8h in the office between "badge in" and "badge out", HR will tell you to work less because the company will get into legal trouble otherwise. It is just prohibited and you will just create headaches for everyone including yourself.

Depending on which European country it's not necessarily forbidden. "Compliance reasons" may also mean "the company must pay overtime at the appropriate rate" and they just don't want to deal with that.

This must be based on company. At my previous position I worked with MANY Europeans (mainly Munich and London, but also Poland and France) and they all worked late hours to overlap US tzs. I was always so impressed by how little they complained about doing so.

Yeah, having kids and working till 23:00 perhaps ain't possible.

For Europeans and Americans;)

Typically you don't work straight till 23:00, you just might log back on later in the evening (perhaps after putting the kids to bed) to finish up something when you know you'll get quiet time, or to align with colleagues in the AMER or APAC regions etc.

Working remote from Europe in the US is like that, with similar hours

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