I feel bad for my friends that are married with kids working at places like microsoft, telling me how their copilot usage is tracked and they fear that if they don't hit some arbitrary weekly metric they will fall victim to the next wave of layoffs.
Many German companies are not, in fact, unionized, and tend to pay 'übertariflich / außertariflich' - instead of union protection, they just pay you significantly more than you'd get with an union job. Which is a good thing 9 out of 10 times.
Which - incidentally - is why such companies advertise paying 'außertariflich' in their job adverts.
Situation might be different for low- and non-skilled workers.
The answer probably isn't American work ethics inspired by American compensation schemes, but rather Chinese ingenuity and grit. But seriously, why can you build so much on 35 hours per week and a mid-five-figure salary?
Let's work 90 hours a week and retire at 80, imagine the growth, big numbers get bigger makes bald monkey happy
that is all you heard in the 80-90s, people over the pond showing off how many hours per week they worked. like... how is that something to be proud of? So wauw, you spend 12hrs+ per day working , had no free evenings, zero paid holidays. And that is supposed to impress who?
please.
Hell, it has been going much longer than only 40 years ago, on "In Praise of Idleness" Bertrand Russell talked about how industrialisation with its automation should be helping workers to work less 90 years ago.
Usually over here we don't dream of making it big with big villas and a Ferrari on the garage, we work to live, not live to work.
Google Gwangju.
EU decided to distribute the productivity benefits instead of hoarding it into stock market gains like US does.
Btw, you do realize that US commodified investing in Us stocks? Whole world can easily invest in US stock market. Basically, instead of taking care of their own citizens, US economy is paying out gains to foreigners.
And if they really tied their livelihood to working at the same company for next decade because they maxed out their lifestyle relative to the income generated by that company, then that falls all on them and I don't actually feel that bad for them.
I'd say that there's some room for nuance there. Tech hiring has slowed significantly, such that even people in senior roles who get laid off may be looking for a long time.
If you work for Microsoft you're not getting top tier comp already (at least as compared with many other tech companies), and then on top of that you're required to work out of a V/HCOL city. Add in the expenses of a family, which have risen dramatically the last few years, and it's easy to find examples of people who are starting to get stretched paycheck to paycheck who weren't having that issue a couple of years ago.
Check the prices in Seattle, SF, LA, DC, and NYC metro areas for 2-4 bedroom rentals and how they've jumped the last few years. You're looking at 35%-45% of their take home pay just on rent even before utilities. I'm not sure the math works out all that well for people trying to support a family, even with both parents working.
If you maxed out your lifestyle relative to your income then yes, that is the case. It will always be, no matter how much you make.
It's also the case for the guy stocking the shelves at your local Walmart if he maxes out his lifestyle. But if you compare both in absolute terms, there are huge differences.
Which lifestyle you have is your choice. How big of a house, what car, where to eat, hobbies, clothes, how many kids, etc. If you max that out, fine, enjoy it. But own that it was your choice and comes with consequences, i.e., if expenses rise more than income, then suddenly your personal economy is stretched. And that's on you.
If my kid places his hands on a hot stovetop then I feel a lot of empathy and will obviously comfort him. But I won't run around claiming to the world that external forces made him do it. It was his choice. If it was his first time and/or nobody told him that it's a bad idea then there is limited responsibility, but otherwise it's squarely on him. Despite me feeling and expressing empathy.
When you dig down into it, there's usually some insane luxury that they're completely unwilling to give up on.
If you're a software engineer in the United States, or in London, you can almost certainly FIRE.
Absolutely not enough to retire early but easily enough to not live paycheck to paycheck. Making 6 figures in the USA and not being able to afford life is so cryptic to me.
It's not just Microsoft. Other smaller employers are aping those guys.
My employer has an utterly ridiculous PowerBI dashboard tracking how much every employee uses LLM-based tools. Make sure to enable the Premium models, because otherwise you won't get credit! There are naughty lists for people whose usage is too low. Luckily the usage goals (for now) aren't very high.
However, they're also getting anal about tracking tasks, and the powers at be have asserted control over all aspects of story creation and work process. There's speculation they're going to start tracking story completion rates, and demanding measured productivity increases.
Personally I want my MSFT position to increase, so I’m cool with whatever the company does to increase the share price.
Or perhaps that's the problem, lacking it.