It's a common misconception that eight-hour work day means 9-17 everywhere. In Sweden, the common work day is from 8-17, meaning 8 hours paid time and 1 hour non-paid lunch hour. To my understanding, it's more or less required by law.
So if you look on how many hours we will be "at work", we will go from working one hour more than Americans to one hour less.
:/
In the US (at least for office jobs), full time is 40 hours, either 8-5, 9-6, or somewhere in between. Because of the 1 hour break.
I think that 9-5 is a total acceptable amount of time to work.
In Germany you are required by law to take at least a 30 minute break during an eight hour work day, but that break is not paid. You have to clock out. (I suppose employers could pay employees for that time, but they don’t have to and they usually don’t.)
In fact, at my last internship the system automatically subtracted 30 minutes from the work time at the end of the day if you didn’t manually clock out for more than 30 minutes, assuming you just forgot to clock out. After all, the employer can’t pay you for eight hours of continuous work, that would be admitting to illegal wrongdoing.
Employers can also require employees to clock out for shorter breaks, though they usually don’t when you are just chatting a few minutes with your coworkers in the office kitchen while getting coffee or something like that. (General, uhm, personal maintenance like just getting something to drink in the office kitchen or going to the toilet is not considered taking a break and employers can’t force employees to clock out for that.)
I never even considered that it could work any other way … (My dad is a civil engineer and always has too much work. However, during my childhood I vividly remember him coming home every day at 1pm until about 2pm to eat lunch at home. His office is only about a seven minute drive from home. He was and is often at work until 8pm, but he hardly ever missed lunch at home. I know that’s not the norm even for Germany – most people find some place to eat around the office or bring something to eat to the office – but that may explain my perspective on this.)
Most office workers go 9 to 6 or 8 to 5.
This is at a big company in the US.
Also what kind of words would the employer use to describe these working conditions (looks like its beyond normal "flexitime" arrangements) so that others might find them too?
The employer doesn't use any words to describe it, its just part of the culture I guess. Just get your work done, no one cares when you're in the office. We have a scrum meeting we're expected to attend and a few sprints meetings/allhands, but everything else we are free to schedule whatever suits us best. Initially I was a little disappointed about how little vacation time I was getting, but I've taken a few days off and have never been docked days from my balance.
This system has very deep historical roots, and is something that the social democrats (that dominated swedish politics for a long time) and the unions are very proud of. Because of this Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage, for instance. It could be argued that this is a more liberal (in the classical sense, not the us meaning) way to go than what most of the US has done, which is a bit interesting.
(We do have laws about paternity leave, vacation time etc, so it doesn't encompass everything.)
The union system is also much more highly coordinated, though part of that is indeed traditional rather than in law. Rather than every union having to negotiate its own conditions, some conditions are agreed at the central level, in framework agreements reached between the Confederation of Danish Employers (DA) and the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO). The minimum wage is one of those: effectively all Danish workplaces have a minimum wage of 109 DKK/hr, the amount agreed to in the last framework negotiation.