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Comment by tempfile | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, but that is just ideology, not based on any facts.

low eu salaries implies finding job is hard. fact.

There's a higher monthly salary in the US, sure. However, you're expected to work very long hours (60-80 hours per week) and get basically no time off

In my current position I'm hired for an expected 37 hours per week. This can be more if I'm asked to work overtime, but my weekly hours cannot exceed 45 hours per week on average in a 3 month window without additional compensation

Additionally I have six weeks of paid time off every year plus public holidays

If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies

That's not to mention the security of having a legally mandated termination period of minimum 3 months (in which you're, in most cases, not expected to work)

I worked 80 hours a week in medical school, depending on the rotation. From that experience I can tell you, the majority of people that say they work 80 hours a week, don't even know what that looks like.

This 60-80 hrs/week maybe a startup myth. Since Europe in general has far fewer startups than US people hear these wild numbers in Europe far less. For normal big tech worker, or enterprise workers 40 hrs is really the norm. Now many people specially in contracting, consulting can stretch hours for billing purpose or impressing upon clients thats a different matter.

I have never in 28 years across 10 jobs including one in BigTech been “expected” to work more than 40 hours a week.

It’s a bunch of copium thinking that American tech workers are working 60-80 hour weeks.

And I know it’s not the norm, but right now I have “unlimited PTO” and most people take at least 5 weeks a year.

If the average American tech worker is making 2x - 4x the average EU worker, they should be able to save more than enough to have a three month cushion.

And we are talking about Google. They have a very generous severance package. Even Amazon where I use to work gave me three months severance.

"Unlimited PTO" is discretionary in practice, and there are studies showing that it translates to less PTO on average, which is exactly why companies do it.

And I mentioned on average people take 20-25 days a year and managers are dinged if their reports don’t take at least 15 days a year.

I don’t care what the “average” is. I plan on taking 30 days this year.

Your last sentence reads a bit like "I don't care about statistics, I prefer my anecdote".

Okay.

First link -16 days for unlimited PTO vs 14 days without

https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/ive-been-an-hr-professiona...

I'm genuinely curious if you've actually read the article you linked to, given that the line literally above the numbers you quoted says, in large font and bold caps: "Employees don’t get more time off (and may actually get fewer days away from work)". Did it not make you wonder why?

Now if you look at where those numbers come from, this article quotes another article from WSJ (https://archive.is/MVRur) which is also titled "Why You Should Be Wary of the Unlimited Vacation Perk". Hmm...

And the WSJ article, in turn, takes its number from this report: https://www.empower.com/the-currency/work/pursuit-of-pto-res...

Now when you look at the survey, the problem with comparing those numbers is that they are averages for all workers. That is, 14 days without PTO is the average across all companies, not just those that had adopted UPTO. And the 16 days with UPTO is, of course, only for those companies. So the numbers don't actually tell you anything about the effect of "unlimited" PTO adoption in a given company. Those companies where 14 days is the norm are generally not the ones that decide to switch to UPTO because, well, there's no actual benefit in it for them. Companies that do adopt it, like many Big Tech firms in the past few years, are also the ones that had much more generous paid PTO to begin with - at Microsoft, for example, as a senior engineer, I had four weeks of PTO before the switch.

So, you need to look at comparisons before and after UPTO adoption for the same company to see the trend. Conveniently, that very article you linked to has some sources for that, e.g.: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220520-the-smoke-and-...

There are other negative aspects to it, too. For example, when you have guaranteed vacation PTO, it is wholly separate from other things like paid medical leave. But with UPTO, it's that much harder to argue for it to your manager if you have already taken medical leave that year.

None of the BigTech firms have unlimited PTO unless you consider NetFlix “BigTech” and by market cap, they aren’t.

I’m not going to look up the PTO for other BigTech companies. But the one I worked for (Amazon) had 15 days PTO and 5 personal days.

And most people who have defined PTO, also don’t take all of their allocated days off.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/more-than...

That’s not evidence of defined vs unlimited PTO as a limiting factor of UPTO.

And because of laws in different states, companies with unlimited PTO also often have a separate bucket for sick time.

Do you consider Microsoft "big tech"? It switched to UPTO back in 2023, just in time for layoffs. And I can tell you that it was a very unpopular move among rank and file.

This is not what we usually hear about employment in the US. The reason many Europeans think American tech workers are working 60-80 hours per week is not copium, but simply because that's what many Americans tell us.

I will just add another +1 to say it's not common to work 60-80 hours per week in the US tech industry. It's not unheard of, and some companies (Amazon) are notorious for expecting that of their employees. But most of the time what you will see is that most people work 40ish hours (some weeks a bit more, some a bit less), and only a handful of colleagues with an unhealthy relationship to the job will work 50+ hours per week. Management doesn't generally expect people to do that, though of course bad managers do exist and can make your life miserable.

The only time I've ever been expected to put in those kinds of long hours was in case of an emergency. Stuff like, a natural disaster hit the company's primary data center so they needed to be all hands on deck to get services restored. But it's definitely not common day to day, and even in case of emergencies the company generally gives you a little something (extra time off, a bonus, whatever) to compensate you for the long hard hours you had to work.

Why would they be complaining about working 40h a week? You will obviously hear more about bad experiences than the norm.

We hear enough about it that it gives the impression of being very common, even if it might not be the norm.

its not common but i know nothing can convince you of that

How can you know that? Please don't assume stuff about others just to make a rhetorical point. If you say it's not that common as it's often made out to be, why wouldn't I believe you?

Though what would also help if you had an explanation for why we tend to hear these stories mostly from the US and not from other countries.

> Though what would also help if you had an explanation for why we tend to hear these stories mostly from the US

because internet is dominated by 'stories mostly from US'

I see plenty of stories from Europe, and they too complain about work, but never about having to work 60-80 hours. Even if it's rare in the US, it still seems more common than in Europe. Similarly, I hear stories about working 3 jobs in the US which I don't hear from Europe. I do hear people complain about managers, pay, or office politics in Europe.

yes pbly more common that europe . even i worked two jobs at one point to double my income to like 700k/yr but it was very hard to sustain that beyond 1 yr. i know many ppl who've done it for years.

How much content you consume comes from the US vs other countries? The US has a full cultural supremacy in the west. That's why you speak english and read YC.

The world is larger than just the US, though. Even at HN. Just look around you.

U.S. tech worker here. The only time I’ve ever worked 60-80 hour weeks was at a much smaller company, where for a month or two leading up to a trade show a whole bunch of work that had been put off was attempted to get crammed into the product. At my subsequent BigTech jobs I’ve never been asked/required to work more than 40 hours a week. I mean, nobody was tracking exact hours, but nobody was also pinging me at 8PM or on the weekend and expecting me to be working.

My experience is limited - I work in the UK for a US company and haven't spoken to US developers from a wide variety of companies. However I've not heard any US developers talking about working such long hours. Closest thing I've heard is for devs to sometimes work over the core hours to build up time-in-lieu for extra vacation, over and above the paltry standard 2 week holiday allowance.

fascinating. I thought the meme was that FAANG tech workers were all day and lazy and didn't have to work that hard and were grossly overpaid, but that's as much a stereotype as the next one.

never worked more than 40hr/week (including hellhole amazon). i get 28 days pto now and unlimited sick days.

> If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies

prbly not.

What a waste of a comment. Low salaries typically imply finding a job is easier, because more potential employers can afford to pay you. Can you add any kind of evidence, argument, anything? Saying "fact" after an armchair guess does not make it one.

> Low salaries typically imply finding a job is easier, because more potential employers can afford to pay you. Can you add any kind of evidence, argument, anything?

sorry i forgot to add "typically" which apparently is a license to spout any BS .

You started the argument!

> low eu salaries implies finding job is hard. fact.

Does it? Sounds more like an opinion than a fact to me.

If there was demand the salaries would rise. It's capitalism.

Umm... output. Outside of hyperscalers and probably the tier below them, most EU tech companies aren't making the kind of money per headcount to justify huge salaries.

There is demand for tech workers, but the output of EU tech companies can't afford huge salaries. Lower margins.

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