Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

In The Netherlands I see some similarities, but also a couple of differences. The startups that I have worked for (3) did:

1. Put in long hours (mostly as a result of deadline stress).

2. Have a mission/vision.

3. Acronyms and own company words that they invented themselves. Not necessarily a bad thing, a new word can mean a very specific concept.

But they didn't have:

1. Stock options

2. An explicit company culture

What they did have:

1. More direct than the companies described here. It wasn't brutally honest, but definitely more honest than whatever I read in this blog post.

2. Being more down to earth.

These final two things are also much more ingrained in Dutch culture than in the US culture (and probably Canadian culture).

That's sad to hear. A friend of mine has been trying to get me to work in NL for a while and she says a common hatred of overtime is a big plus. Maybe it's just the company and not the country.

This is true, Dutchies tend to hate overtime and often in the elevator at 16:59. but there are of course exceptions.

The Netherlands is a great place to work though :)

How is that a bad thing though? Why would you voluntarily work for free (overtime is rarely paid in tech) and long for it? Giving away your most valuable hours 5 days a week isn't enough, you should aspire to more? Screw that, you're an employee not the owner.

What?? I view it as a wonderful thing.

Overtime is rarely paid, but the reality is the jobs I see in NL pay a lot less than my current one. Enough less that I haven't moved. I might look in to it in a few years when I'm not at a relatively high-cost stage of life (new family, buying first home, etc.)

I might have replied to the wrong comment by mistake because yes, we're essentially saying the same thing :)

I think a bit more experienced Dutchies have this. The people I worked with in general were all quite young. But there was one senior programmer who has children and was vocal against overtime.

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