Comment by Arjuna | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Arjuna | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for the link to that study.

In "europe" a two week vacation (10 work days) is common/standard. As opposed to American's "long weekends."

To that point, if you've ever wondered (as I have) about the differences in philosophy on the topic of vacation between America and Europe, you may enjoy this paper [1]. It attempts to examine those differences. It's entitled "Europeans Work To Live and Americans Live To Work (Who is Happy to Work More: Americans or Europeans?)."

Interesting paragraph: "This is the first study to test empirically whether working more makes Americans happier than Europeans. This study suggests that as the number of work hours increases, Americans become happier about life than Europeans. The purpose of this study was to document this relationship. More research is needed to find out why working more makes Americans happier than Europeans. I just note here one possible explanation: Americans may work more because they believe more than Europeans do that hard work brings success."

I'm American, and I love taking time away to recharge. I'm fortunate enough to be able to completely break away and unplug. I don't work while I'm on vacation, and I don't check email either. Again, I'm quite fortunate, as I know a lot of people simply can't do that for various reasons. I do wish our culture placed more emphasis on the importance of down-time. It just makes so much intuitive sense to me, and my personal productivity seems to corroborate the intuitive feeling that I have about the topic.

[1] http://people.hmdc.harvard.edu/~akozaryn/myweb/docs/final_wo...

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Edit: Here is another interesting article on the topic. "Reluctant Vacationers: Why Americans Work More, Relax Less, than Europeans"

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/reluctant-vacatio...

I think for many Americans, work is life. You get up, you spend an hour in the commute to work, you spend your 9 hours at work, you spend some more because overtime is expected, you commute home, you watch some reality television and go to bed.

At work you have made friends, you spend time browsing the internet, following up on your hobbies, etc. This is where life ends up happening. 8 hours consumed by sleep, or the avoidance of sleep, 3 hours in the process of getting ready and getting to and from work, 10 hours of work. When you're at home you're too tired to do much in the way of hobbies, so instead you do the few things that you're not going to get away with doing at work, maybe you have a drink, play video games, watch TV. But hey, maybe your work has a facility to let you play video games and watch TV anyways when you're working overtime. So instead of getting home and doing things for 3-4 hours, you stay at work with your coworker "friends" and spend your time knowing that if you want to take a break, there is a break room right there. You don't use it for those 4 hours, but you know you can, you know, if you weren't so busy, or if you really need it.

Contrast that to somewhere like Germany, which is where this article was written. Work days end early. The culture in Germany is not to live at work. Work is for working. You come to do a job, not to have interpersonal relationships with co-workers. The average work week in Germany is the lowest of all OECD countries at 25.6 hours per week according to a 2011 study.

I think the reason that Americans live to work is not because of something specific to Americans, but rather that workplace culture demands that Americans spend so much time at work that their work BECOMES their life. I mean, if you are working 80 hour weeks and commuting, and actually sleeping, it's impossible to have a life outside of work, but we need to have a life, so that life takes place at work.

So when Americans work more, they see their associates more, they are in the environment that they're most familiar with, they are basically at their home. On the other hand, when Germans work more, they are away from home.

I guess the question is which is better for people, and which is better for industry. Germany's industry is doing well, and I think that with shrinking demand for human resources, a more efficient, but shorter individual work week is a better long term scenario. It would be a big cultural shift for something like that to happen in the US though.

> Contrast that to somewhere like Germany, which is where this article was written. Work days end early. The culture in Germany is not to live at work. Work is for working. You come to do a job, not to have interpersonal relationships with co-workers.

Apparently I need to move to Germany because this is exactly how I work and like to work.

It's true for most of the world, actually.

Most of europe anyway. Not so sure about e.g. Asian countries, especially the poorer ones.

I came to say exactly this.

I'm an American, and this is true for me.... /but/ -

It's true because I wanted it to be. I look around at my artistic friends, and I see that they live what they do, and I wanted that. It only works because I (mostly) love what I do (and the stock); so now, "work-life balance" means finding things I want to do that don't have anything to do with work, rather than making sure I have the time to do them.

To reiterate: Working more generally makes me happier because I'm doing something that I love, and that I can take (some) ownership of.

On a somewhat related note, one of the things that irks me the most (working in Germany) is that I have to take a 30 minute break after 6h of work and another 15 minute break after 9h and can't work more than 10h without someone signing off on it. I can't even opt out of this.

This seems totally broken, especially since you are not technically supposed to take other breaks without signing out of work. As someone using the Pomodoro Technique I just don't fit into the system. I obviously don't consider those breaks as work-breaks but rather as stuff that makes me more efficient overall and thus benefits my employer greatly.

It blows my mind that there's even work time regulations in pure "knowledge worker" fields. I tend to trust people to be interested in optimizing their workflows however they see fit.

Note: 40h is the standard work week here, we get 30 days of paid vacation (which is handled very differently in the US).

Surely you could go self-employed with contract in the same company. This way you can follow your own path while everybody else can use what os provided by the law. You would also earn more per hour to compensate for holidays you would normally be entitled to.

You can't self-employ in Germany without actually working for more than one company. (It was abused too much to get around employee protections.)

There are lots of ways around this, including just forming your own company and then exclusively working for another.

It is still abused in many ways (for example Rossmann chain), not only in tech sector - you can always work through an agency).

that 30 minute break after 6h of work is other wise known as Lunch :-)

Yeah that's obviously the reasoning behind it however the specific structure with the forced 15 minute break as well has lead (unintentionally I assume) to a structure of work 9h on Monday-Thursday and 6h on Friday for most employees. So basically everyone generates roughly 2h of OT every week then takes a Friday off once they hit 6 (or saves up).

And I tend to eat a "power breakfast" and smaller snacks (apple etc.) during the day so I can live with a later lunch break. However if you don't check out after 6h the system automatically checks you out. So technically you can't just take the lunch break after 7h (you can take it after 5h).

In practical terms it's a nonissue really but the overall design just upsets me for some reason :D

er that's a tea break and these sort of breaks are supposedly for the blue collar workers (eg working on the line at audi ) if your salaried you are supposed to be adult enough to manage your own time.

> This seems totally broken, especially since you are not technically supposed to take other breaks without signing out of work.

That really depends on your employer. Plenty of companies have Vertrauensarbeitszeit (~trust-based working time) where nobody writes down when or how long employees worked. However, it's usually seen as a bad thing because people tend to over-correct on the breaks they took and under-correct for the overtime they worked.

> This study suggests that as the number of work hours increases, Americans become happier about life

This makes sense. From a very early age, Americans are inundated with the idea that their worth is tied to if they work hard and have a job. Those that don't have a job or those that aren't perceived as working hard are below them. The worst thing they can say about someone is they are lazy.

I work from home 2-3 days a week. My in-laws believe I goof off and play games (which they also disapprove of) or watch TV all day. Nothing will dissuade them of that belief unless I change to working at the office for long hours.

My husband and I work from home, and my inlaws can't figure out why we also send our toddlers to daycare.

> their worth is tied to if they work hard

The stress being on working hard. Efficiency is less of a priority.

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