> The Netherlands consistently ranks as one of the best places in the world to live.
> However, the Netherlands’ record for getting women into top management roles is dire.
Isn't happiness what's important?
We had a neighbor in our village who had chickens, who always kept the same number of black-feathered and white-feathered chickens. I never saw how this helped with anything. He did it for its own sake I guess. He just liked symmetries and equalities, always keeping his things ordered and aligned, he was kind of obsessive like that.
But that is the point. Why are women happy to sacrifice their career, for the sake of the family, and men not as much. So, is that really a choice for all these women, or perhaps a necessity?
I think the point is the reverse. Why are men happy to sacrifice family and everything else that really matters in life for the sake of the rat race, and women not as much? So, is that really a choice for all these men, or perhaps a necessity? What can be done to make it less of a necessity?
(As I understand it, some Scandinavian countries have brought in the legal right to paternity leave similar to maternity leave, which strikes me as a good start.)
What rat race? The work environment in the NL isn't stressful at all. I would almost call it enjoyable. It's one of the few remarkably pleasant things about living there.
the answer is no, it is exceedingly rare, because women marry up socioeconomically. no matter how successful a woman is, her preference is to marry someone equally or more successful.
people tend to provide extreme counter-examples to argue against this, but in the vast majority of cases, it's true.
This obviously depends on culture, but I think the majority of men and women marry a partner with the same socioeconomical status as themselves.
The highly-visible counter-examples tend to come from fields with high gender imbalance, like your stereotypical doctor-nurse or boss-secretary matchups.
I think it's reasonable to posit that this effect would be weak or non-existent in an equal society.
80% of employed women work part time in the Netherlands. This includes singles, double income no kids, middle aged women whose children have already left home. Only a small percentage of those working part time have young children.
When you ask them about it, they try to justify not working more. "Daycare is so expensive" (in another post I try to demonstrate that this excuse doesn't fly), "Working environment is hostile to women" etc etc.
If deep down inside people didn't feel at least a bit guilty about not working more, they wouldn't try to justify it. In reality, working part-time is a luxury. Americans prefer the luxury of a large home, two cars, air conditioning, maybe a swimming pool in the yard. Dutch people seem to prefer the luxury of few working hours and long vacations.
You're fighting a straw man, read my comment again without pre conceived bias.
A luxury is anything beyond basic necessities like food and shelter. People in poor countries, working 12 hour work days for $10 per day or less, don't have the luxury of working part time.
I'm totally fine with someone choosing to work fewer hours or more hours than I'm willing to do, as long as they're capable of supporting themselves.
I'm not totally fine with people claiming they would like to work full time, but the government is making it impossible by not subsidizing daycare, out of some kind of conservative bias against working mothers, because that is simply a lie.
damn this sounds amazing! working 3 days a week for example, doing adventures & social life in rest (social life = family life). But first let me earn some dough for later...
Missing the main reason: child care is extremely expensive, to the point where a median full time salary would go wholly to child care when one has two children.
For example, I have two children in day care three days a week, and we pay 1200+ euros per month. My friends in Belgium (where I'm from) pay literally 1/10th of that. Those in France and Germany also pay much less than we do, although I don't know by heart exactly how much.
The reason child care is not subsidized (much) is the same as that mentioned in the article though - conservative popular opinion on how parents should be home with their children, and that having children in day care 5 days a week is tantamount to neglect.
That's hardly unique to the Netherlands though. Childcare is even more expensive in the UK: in London I pay £1200 for one child, and a colleague pays £1700.
But the UK doesn't have the same rat of part-time working.
How is it terrible exactly? It's standard practice where I live. My niece went to child care shortly after 1 year and she loves it. I'm sure she would be immensely bored just being home with mommy all day, every day.
This is exactly what i see, we have two in daycare. They are immensely more engaged, and do more activities at daycare. They have a gang of peers to play with all day, they sing and dance. It really quite delightful when our burst into a song we've never heard and starts jumping around to some rythm.
After 1 year its a bit less terrible, I'll give you that. But still: Your kid isn't able yet to talk. If someone touches her/him you'll never know.
But in Holland, its even more worse. The Dutch send them into Day Care after 3 month. Some kids can't even roll around at that time. Then you have a day-care-mommy/kid ratio of 6:1. If you are lucky. Can't see them changing all diapers in time.
And about being bored: Well, if more mommies would be at home, they would eventually socialise more during the day and therefore the kids would have all the social interaction. But at least under the supervision of their own blood. Which loves them and doesn't see them as 'products' for their 'customers'.
Leaving a 1-year-old is typically a very different thing from leaving a 3-year-old to day care. And, even at the same age, children are different from each other.
My own kids are now all adults, but I remember how heart-breaking it was to leave a two-year-old to a day-care place where she did not want to stay. She'd cry all the way when going there, and stick to hug my legs "please don't go" though she could barely speak. It wasn't good.
Later on, she and younger brother were perfectly happy in another day-care place when they were a bit older.
Also, my daughter was all the time sick in her first day care place. She'd pick every infection there ever was around and we had horrible days with day care, horrible evenings queuing in the health center, and horrible nights without sleep. The daughter just had weak resistance as a 18-month-old, but was much stronger when she was 5 years.
My younger son on the other hand enjoyed day care tremendously from the very start, but he only went there at age of 4.
I would say that
1) there is variance in children, as individuals (some of them are naturally more dependent on their parents)
2) there is variance in day-care places (the first one we had was run by the council, the staff was inexperienced and they compensated for their insecurity by being rude; the other was a private one subsidised by the council, and the staff was really nice -- others have reported things being the other way round with very nice council-run places, so I conclude just that the human factor has a big impact).
3) there is variance in parents
(These experiences from the Finnish system which provides very extensive and affordable public service by North American standards).
I can echo that experience. We've been lucky in that our kids have generally really enjoyed going to childcare.
There was one place that my daughter was never really happy to go to. It was fine, and she was safe - she was just never happy there. We moved her to a new place and she loved it from the moment she walked in (though she knew some of the other kids from her first nursery).
I think sickness and childcare just go hand in hand. It flowed on to the rest of the family too. I've been sick so many times in the last few years - though I think we're through the worst of it now. Nothing like the happy embrace of a snotty child to make you ill.
They will develop language skills much quicker by socializing then by staying home all the time with one adult.
Our daughter was in daycare full time after 4 being 4 months old and she became able to verbally express wants and needs using words at around 12 months. Now at 2 she is using full sentences.
I'm in Belgium, with two kids. When they were both in daycare (4 days a week), we paid between 500-650 euros per month, depending on the number of workdays in the month. We were paying the highest price per day, because we both worked.
So it's not exactly 1/10th the amount, but still a lot less.
Also, this was limited to a 1 year period more or less. There is a 2 year age difference between the children, and from age 3, the oldest started going to kindergarten instead of daycare, which is quite a bit less expensive.
"child care is extremely expensive... a median full time salary would go wholly& to child care when one has two children... 1200+ euros per month"
Minimum wage for an adult is 1500 euro per month working full time, so even if you're a single breadwinner family earning minimum wage, you're already exaggerating. You also fail to mention that the government pays for nearly all of this if you're making minimum wage. Calculate it here:
I filled in the numbers for a single parent working full time for minimum wage who sends their two kids for the maximum number of hours per month to an expensive daycare which charges 7 euro an hour. The government subsidizes their daycare for €2894 per month.
A family making €40,000 in taxable income a year still gets a maximum of €2584 per month reimbursed for 2 kids going to that same daycare.
I filled in the numbers for a family making €100,000 in taxable income (about three times the median income) a year, and it looks like they still get about half the costs reimbursed.
It actually looks like the fewer hours you work, the lower the percentage covered by subsidies becomes.
People keep bringing up the cost of daycare as an excuse not to work more, but I don't think it's a very good excuse. I think the actual reason why the number of part time workers is so high, is that people can afford to do it. Outside the Netherlands, if you're not working full time, you're seen as lazy and unambitious. Unless you're doing it for an ambitious reason, such as studying for a degree, you can forget about a promotion or a raise, if your employer allows it at all.
In NL, for some reason, the right to work part time was championed as a women's rights issue. Unless you allowed women to work part time, you were oppressing them. The government also started stimulating part time work to reduce unemployment. Employers were limited in their ability to deny part time employment, to the point that it became very unusual for women to work full time. So unusual, that those working full time are now becoming somewhat socially stigmatized as workaholics or greedy. Some women are also putting pressure on men to start working less to do something about this very unenlightened looking wage gap between full time working men and part time working women.
Correction, that's not "conservative popular opinion". As with many surprisingly conservative elements of Dutch law and culture, it's the result of the coalition-based politics where "non-essential" concessions are made to the (socially, not fiscally) conservative minority.
Basically the "stuff that isn't worth fighting an election over". See also: drugs (we're now falling behind, and even moving backwards), opening hours (most of the country still shuts down on Sundays), or to give a recently newsworthy example: insulting the royal family being illegal.
Mix that with the dominant right-wing urge to "privatise all the things", and subsidised child care gets happily thrown under the bus by various coalition governments, despite what the majority of the population actually wants.
I have friends in Sweden and I've always envied the childcare costs.
In London I pay £170 per day to have my two children in childcare. That's for private childcare, but you have little choice if you want to go back to work (because of the hours). There's a little give in the costs of different nurseries but most have a waiting list to get in where we're based (and the lowest I've seen locally is £75/day/child).
We now receive a £120(ish)/month government subsidy for our oldest child. That's something I guess - doesn't do much to help with the £1300 or so we pay per month.
It wasn't really worth it financially for my wife to go back to work, though it does give a much needed break from constantly looking after children (ironically, she's a speech therapist for small children). By the time you account for transport / lunch etc in London we're about breaking even.
It's pretty depressing when you're trying to get a company off the ground and all your money goes into childcare.
Is child care as expensive as he says? Absolutely, it can easily be €600 per kid.
Thing is, if you make €20k, so €1600 household income, you get €520 or so per kid from the government for every €600 or so you spend. So you end up with €80 per month per kid, very doable for a single parent. No parent in the Netherlands makes €800 on full-time work, so we have to assume €1600 household income is for a single parent.
Even if your household income is €80k, i.e. 6-7k monthly income: typical for both parents working solid office jobs in their mid-late 30s, you still get a little over €200 per kid out of €600 expenses per kid, so €400 out of your more than €6k.
There are various caveats, and paying €80 for a single parent is no joke. But it's not nearly as bad as saying a median salary goes wholly to child care of two children, far from it. And it's unlikely to be the sole or even main reason for child care. In fact, I'd make a cautious bet that you'll see significant part-time statistics for people who have no children.
At the end of the day, the costs per working day per kid after subsidy is anywhere from €4 to €20. So the notion that this prevents people from going to work in order to be with their kid so as not to have to pay childcare, is false.
As on the low-end an individual makes like €13 per hour stacking shelves at a supermarket by age 25, working a 9 to 5 in a low-end job easily nets you €80, easy easy easy, at which point you make €1600 a month and pay the €4 a day rate. If you make say €40k and your spouse does, too, then you make more than €160 a day each, and so the notion that you'd rather stay home to save €20 and earn 0 than to pay €20 and earn €160 is unlikely. Even with two kids or three kids, it still pays off in a huge way to go to work.
Now there are some situations in which it could make sense. e.g. a parent who, somehow, has a 9 to 2 contract (5h a day), and picks up the kid from school. That can make a lot of sense in a family where the husband makes €60k and the wife could make €30k full-time, and €20k part-time in a 9 to 2 job. In this case the household income is such that it costs €20 per kid per day and it can make sense to work the $20k parttime job that allows you to pick your kids up from school (€80 income a working day) instead of the €30k parttime job (€120 income per working day), because if you have two kids, then childcare costs €40 per day, the difference in your working hours. And then it's probably more fun and useful to be with your kids than to pay for someone else to, if it's financially all the same. But 9 to 2 working days barely exist, and this is in the context of a cliched family where the man earns €60k and the woman has €30k max earning potential full-time. In more realistic scenarios the financial incentives are definitely such that it pays off for both parents to work full-time.
> Missing the main reason: child care is extremely expensive
Seems like highly dependent on geography and underlying real estate prices. The private market for child care is fairly open to anyone who's willing to go through proper training and safety rigor.
But let's say you plan a home-based childcare business, an it's in Bay Area, and the first thing you need to take care of is to buy real estate for it (in $2 million range) and child-proof it.
What you then have to charge for it to cover the mortgage, the property taxes, the insurance, the salaries to the employees quickly results in some unrealistic numbers.
Which is why no child-care provider would choose an expensive place to live as launchpad for their business, and expensive places to live have exorbitantly high childcare costs.
The article paints this as pretty positive, as such Britain looks good coming in 5th on the graph. In reality many of the jobs created over the last few years in the UK have been low paid zero hours contracts, not because people want the flexibility, but because employers want top pay as little as possible.
Also, if you have children and register as self-employed, you can claim Working Families Tax Credit. If you work or claim to work from home the required number of hours, even if you don't earn any money, you get (if my fiddling with the DWP calculator is accurate) £~150 a week, much better than the £~70 from JSA, and you don't have to deal with the Jobcentre any more.
Same in the Netherlands. Solution? Create a law that requires employers to hire you on a contract after 3 years of solid work.
Now guess what happened :p
You get fired after 3 years, so they don't have to give you a contract. Then they hire someone new with less skills, but at least for 3 years they don't have to give a contract and can fire you whenever they need to and of course pay you like a temporary external employee instead of a full-time on contract employee.
"... but because employers want top pay as little as possible."
I think this is true anywhere but especially in the UK they 'can' do this because the benefit system (tax credits, housing benefit, etc) tops up the shortfall.
Another part of this mystery is that Dutch people don't really consider a 32-hour work week to be "part-time". Especially since in most sectors the official full-time work week is only 36 hours. I think I'm the only one of my friends working 40 hours.
The popularity of part time work for women may have been a fluke, an accidental mix of choices, culture and circumstances that has lead to the current situation. A situation that is certain downsides.
However, the big upside is still underway: it is becoming increasingly normal for men to work part time. Already it's common for men to work no more than 32 hours, that's not even considered part-time anymore.
If this trend continuous, the Netherlands is shifting towards a much shorter working week than most countries, without any major upheaval or further government intervention. However much by accident rather than design, it does seem to put the country one step ahead of most when dealing with an economic reality in which full employment for everyone is never going to happen.
There is just one downside to working part time when you're young that not everyone seems to consider fully. The tax deductible amount you're able to save for retirement is a percentage of your income. Money saved when you're young accumulates more interest. Basically, the less you work now, the more you will have to work later, when you're old.
Young people don't seem to realize that there already isn't much AOW (social security) left for them. Unless you're 50+ now (the most powerful voting block is usually exempt from cutbacks), you will not be able to retire at 67. The retirement age is officially raised along with life expectancy. The 20 year old of today will not be eligible for AOW until their early 70's.
Because not everyone is physically capable of continuing to work until 70+, and employment opportunities for people over 60 are pretty much zero, you're going to need savings to bridge that gap.
Not necessarily true, a lot of places allow people to work 4 days with a full time salary. In the end its about the job you do, not how many time you spend on it.
> In the end its about the job you do, not how many time you spend on it.
Unfortunately most employers don't see it this way. Especially at corporations where the number of employees is large, I mean like > 1000 headcount. It becomes impossible for HR not to completely manage people's time through strict enforcement of working hours policies.
They employ you for 40 hours a week and thus expect you to be there for 40 hours a week. If you work for less than 40 hours it means either you're overqualified, i.e. being payed too much, they could replace you with someone that costs less and works slower, or they need to give you more work to do to make up for that 40 hours a week they're paying you for.
If this experience applies to the Netherlands you should look for a better employer! In my experience this is perfectly possible at large cooperations (well known names) without any weird looks from HR or management.
It sounds awful that people have to work all of their lives, so they have built up enough social security and pension that they can spend all of this when they're too old and weak to actually enjoy it.
I retired at 30, not willing to take part in this craziness anymore, to live fully now and only work every now and then when I need money, although I'm also working hard on a solution that eliminates the need for money at all (and not only for myself, but for anyone willing to participate).
My motto about the future: If in my life I haven't made such an impact on at least one person that nobody is willing to take care of me when I'm not capable anymore myself, I have either done something wrong or society has become something I'm not willing to live in anymore anyway.
NL is too densely populated to live off the land, and the cost of living is rather high, so I'm not sure how you're doing it. But as long as you're not on welfare, don't have kids in school or use other tax payer funded facilities, I'm totally fine with your choice. It just wouldn't be my choice.
What also helps is that I don't hate my job. Maybe you just chose a career that didn't make you happy. Isn't there another kind of job that would make you want to work more?
We're not meant to 'do jobs', so none would make me happy :) The only think that makes me happy is doing what makes me happy, which currently is travelling and finding a place to start a village according to my philosophy and then doing it in such a way that it attracts more people, including professionals in all possible fields. A society built on cooperation instead of competition and where concepts as career and job do not exist and work is only done because it's necessary, not because some virtual concept (like money) makes it necessary just for the sake of keeping this virtual concept in place.
most jobs are not fun. if it was fun somebody would do it for free. other than that welfare is indeed generous. the state subsidizes rent for those with less money (this and the tax system makes full time employment almost a waste of time). living is not that expensive when the typical lunch is a few slices of bread. a lot of people don't even own a car.
> If in my life I haven't made such an impact on at least one person that nobody is willing to take care of me when I'm not capable anymore myself
Have you ever been taking care about an elderly person? Are you aware what an immense task that is?
And even if you do everything right and do end up with a person willing to do it for you, they also have to be capable to do it right. That's quite a bet to take.
When I'm old and weak, I don't need any perfect life extending care, I just need TLC until I die. My desire is not to get old and needy, my desire is to live a fulfilling life that is hopefully an example and inspiration for many others.
Don't forget to factor health care. It can get REAL expensive REAL fast when old. Something seemingly benign like a fall ends up having a lot of complications.
The vast majority of elders do not want to be needy. They didn't choose to have their bodies betray them and require assistance for everyday life.
The TLC part is indeed spot on. It might be a good idea to plan on having many grandkids.
The whole thing about my life is that I don't factor anything. I live healthy and without plans, what I have now can be gone tomorrow.
In my belief system is included the belief that I'm never ill and that everything I need will always come my way exactly when I need it. This works for me as I'm indeed never ill and even while travelling/living completely without money for a while I managed to always find shelter, rides, food and love. I keep challenging my belief system and am never disappointed.
It may sound ridiculous to a lot of people, but for me it works and I take full responsibility. In case I get sick I will choose plant based medicine (tested and proven for millenia) anytime over modern medicine (which are a lot of times based on the same plants).
In any way, if I'm old and sick and would become dependent on expensive medicine, then I'd rather die and see if there is something on the other side or not.
(By the way, to anyone in general: I don't want to debate my life choices or beliefs, they are mine and no one can convince me otherwise, except experience itself. I will answer any question, but I'm not going to defend myself.)
Not ill for 32 years (except the minor flu/cold once every 2/3 years), and what you feel is delusional, is real to me.
My immune system does what it needs to do and I can eat from the ground, i live a lot from dumpster dived food, have walked barefoot for months through cities and nature. Even when I had an open wound from dancing in glass that I didn't feel at that moment, I have walked all night through dirty discotheque floors, rat infested city squares, before I found out the next morning when I woke up that there was a wound, black with dirt and crap in it.
Anyway, look up information about the power of the mind, you can manifest anything you need and whatever you believe in becomes real. I thought it was the biggest bullshit ever, until I found out it's true by experience.
"The Dutch government has said that by next year 30% of executive board positions should be held by women..."
I wish one day we can do away with this sort of 'reverse' sexism, and I think that next year 100% of executive board positions should be held by capable people, regardless of their sex.
>I think that next year 100% of executive board positions should be held by capable people, regardless of their sex
So, in theory, 50% of capable people should be women, no?
edit: If your point is that we shouldn't be positively discriminating to artificially reach equidistribution of men and women in the workplace, then I agree, but your line of argumentation is often used to imply that women are less competent.
No. Because woman carry kids when they get pregnant and inadvertently will get behind on work experience compared to their male peers when they have to take time off for birth/etc. (Especially in the Netherlands it's common to take a full year off/more)
So clearly your argument is that the most competent people will all be those who have maximized their amount of time in the workplace. We're looking for 70 year olds who never took a day off sick for all board positions.
Surely the worst impact of taking time out to have kids should be a slight delay in the career trajectory of the most talented women, not disqualification from board positions because they've now inevitably and irretrievably fallen behind their male peers.
I don't think so, as more men tend to choose an education that paves an easier path to acquiring a board position. This is not because women are less capable, but because they somehow feel less attracted to this field of work. This of course also has to do with our parents, media and other surroundings teaching us about gender roles and such.
It's only since a few years that for example technical studies try to attract more women, as these were before considered 'a man's thing'.
It's going to take a few generations for all of this to 'even out' and then we might see 50/50, but it could also result in 70/30 or 30/70, if it turns out that in a gender-neutral unbringing, one gender might be more capable of leadership than another.
To me the answer is not gender neutral upbringing, but rather emphasizing that everyone has the dame potential to achieve and make the tools available to everyone.
Let's say instead of gender differences, we had people with different physics handicaps, we wouldn't pretend there aren't handicaps, ache same time we would not steer people but rather provide them all with the same opportunities and not encourage or discourage because of a particular handicap. Let the people, children, figure out what works and doesn't work for them, given their abilities and handicaps.
The biggest problem I see is people steering or lowlighting certain paths because of some preconceptions --a deaf person can't sing well, instead let them prove they can't sing, or that they can sing, regardless of hearing.
instead of gender differences, we had people with different physics [sic] handicaps
That might be considered rather insulting. Having a penis, vagina, or whatever linear combination of the above isn't really comparable to being handicapped.
On the one hand, I feel that positive discrimination is just as bad as the other kind and that its proponents are not thinking things through as clearly as they should.
On the other hand, board members are humans too. Given the choice, and whether consciously or unconsciously, they will typically elect people much like themselves, because that's the kind of person they can understand and relate to. It's an understandable human trait but it does perpetuate the status quo.
I do wish the focus was less on gender and more on diversity in general. We have sizable ethnic minorities in the Netherlands but they are quite underrepresented in upper management and I'm not sure it can be fully explained by the socioeconomic and education gap.
> Given the choice, and whether consciously or unconsciously, they will typically elect people much like themselves, because that's the kind of person they can understand and relate to.
The issue is at what point does the need for diversity kick in? If I start a startup right now with a friend, a person who is much like myself, very few people will criticize us for diversity issues at 2 people. But if we continue to hire friends, when does it become a diversity issue that needs addressing?
I think a good moment to start thinking about this is when you are legally required to have an Ondernemingsraad [1]. Which is at 50 employees.
It's an arbitrary threshold, but seems like a good point in the life of a company where it transitions from a small company to a larger one, where you need to start making various informal policies and company customs and values more formal.
Of course it's implied. The comment makes no sense unless you assume that the target of having 30% women is at odds with 100% of the board being competent.
It's important to realize that when the government makes these sort of comments their intent is usually to enforce it on a per-company basis.
According to Wikipedia the average size of a board is 9.2 members, and as low as 3 members[1]. It's easy to imagine a company where the 3 most competent people all happen to be either male or female.
Statement: The phone should have a glass back.
Response: The phone should be durable.
The only reasonable interpretation of the response is that it calls into question the durability of phones with glass backs. Otherwise, it is a non sequitur.
Similarly, the only reasonable interpretation of the quoted statement is that it calls into question whether a board composed of 30% women can also be 100% composed of capable people. Otherwise it makes no sense as a response.
It's worth noting that this article considers anything less than 36 hours per week to be part time, but a lot of Dutch people don't really consider 32 hours part time. It is very common for young dads to work 4 days a week, and people without children often think 4 days is plenty for a work week.
For the record, I've worked 32 hour weeks for ages now (and I've only encountered one potential employer who had a problem with that, though they agreed my request was totally reasonable). My wife works 36 hours a week, which is standard in government jobs (as well as in many other places).
I've often thought about trying to negotiate a 4 day work week in the US but it wouldn't be worth it. Since my 40 hours turn into 50 or 60 I could see 32 hours turning into 45 easily.
Hey, I know something about this! I moved from silicon valley to NL about 8 years ago.
First off there are two ways to spin this: 1) women are less emancipated in NL because they participate less in the workplace or 2) women are more emancipated because they are able to choose to participate less in the workplace.
I first thought #1 was true, but I'm seeing a lot of new fathers taking advantage of Dutch part-time rules by taking a day a week off to participate in child care. So maybe instead of the measure of emancipation being women's values aligning with traditionally 'male' ones, maybe it's that male values are aligning with traditionally 'female' ones.
Subjectively I can also ay that the Dutch workplaces I've had the pleasure to experience are both more healthy and more 'efficient', and my previous experience has been exclusively in hard-working silicon valley. Plans are important, meetings are avoided unless necessary (and have agendas!), and there is a focus on getting stuff done so that people can leave at six and be with their families. Overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong, and nobody bothers you while you're on your vacation. This culture allows part-time work to be an option... that is, a 32/36/40-hour contract is actually meaningful.
At my previous jobs in the US I wouldn't even think about reducing my hours... a 32 vs 40 hour contract is pointless if you're expected to work 50-60 hours a week, better to take as much money as you can.
LOL, too many meetings, to little direction, too many asshats in attendance. That is the general description of meetings I am in, which unfortunately, is frequently.
Thanks. I'm from Europe, therefore really needing some explanations (to the opposite direction of the title subject of explaining European logic to the non-European readers):
> Overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong
Why are there environments which don't think that the "overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong?" How come that workers don't try to stand to their rights? Specifically:
> you're expected to work 50-60 hours a week
How come, if you sign the contract for e.g. 40 hours? The only thing workers are selling are their work hours, why do they accept to waste 25-50% of that?
The American professional mindset is that you are hired for a role, and a good employee does what it takes to do that role. There are different rules (in California) for professionals who plan their own work and/or supervise others versus those in a service role, but the details are pretty meaningless... the effect is: if you're a professional you do what it takes to make the project succeed and make a good impression.
Combine this with another American trait, optimism, and you end up with over-ambitions projects that genuinely underestimate the effort and underestimate the resources, meetings that last twice as long because the first half was spent eating bagels and talking about something unrelated (oops!), and problems where everyone sincerely believes "we'll be able to solve later", and you end up with mad-dash, please delay your vacation, oh can you come in on Saturday, overtime. I also forgot to mention that you get bonus points for being the first one at work and that last one to leave, even if you're taking an awful lot of reddit breaks.
To Europeans it seems insane, to Americans it's funny but normal. The inverse also applies, it has taken me a long time to adjust to a detailed level of planning based on FTEs, make project plans that include unforeseen absences, and actually truly worry early on in the project.
That may be the case in the City (I have images of interns jumping from City skyscrapers in the back of my mind...) but not in the general labour market in my experience. Generally speaking, unless you've committed to something, screwed up, or contracting (£$£$), then you generally leave at the end of your shift or working day. However, I am genuinely intrigued why you think this - could you elaborate? Maybe I'm overworking without even knowing it.
I do work in an investment bank, but it's not a case of interns throwing themselves out of windows. It's more a case of "I'm a professional, and I gave my word I would complete X by a certain date, and if all that takes is a couple of extra hours then I will stay and complete it, rather than be unreliable."
That's a very... nice way of putting it. One thing I've come across is employers who talk about having "unregulated hours" - you can come and go as you please as long as the work is done! Quickly, you discover that there's always work to be done. If you're done with client work and it's only 3pm, we have some internal stuff you could be working on. What if client work comes in at 4pm? Guess you need to stay later to get it done.
This is what inevitably ends up happening to me. Granted, I do get to go home at 5pm most days, but right now as the busy season is winding down, I find I have more time for duties I have had to let slide. Oh wait, nope, the big boss feels that those duties aren't as important as this pile of stuff he was going to do, but gosh darn it, he needs more time to browse Youtube! So I end up with a stack of BS that's above my pay grade while he fucks off in his office all day. Mean time, my actual duties stay on the back burner, and my other boss rides my ass about that and doesn't want to hear about what I've been forced to do by our big boss.
I'm not quite sure most Americans find it 'funny' but rather do these things more so out of fear. Fear of job loss, fear of missed advancements, fear of missing out, etc. This also seems to explain why Americans as a whole take so little vacation time even when they are entitled to take time off [1].
This is just it - worker protection in the Netherlands is much better than in the US or UK; an employer can't just fire someone, for one. An employee cannot work for more than X hours a week - and if it's requested to work overtime or odd hours, the employer has to pay for it (up to 200% if working Sundays).
And if there weren't laws and worker inspections and whatnot in place already, people would go on strike - and that usually has a major effect, like nationally crippled transportation (of any sort) or rapid accumulation of trash.
Which TBF makes me a bit depressed about the Americans. Have all the Walmart employees unionize and go on strike - there's nothing the management can do, not even enforce their 'you cannot unionize' contract thing, if everyone goes against them.
Some people are afraid pushovers TBF. And the employers slowly turned them into that, by making them poor.
> worker protection in the Netherlands is much better than in the US or UK
I don't think you should lump the UK with the US on this one. You can't "just fire someone" in the UK, most employees can't work more than 48hrs/week, paying extra for overtime is standard, 28 days holiday is minimum¹ and taking it is normal, if you're ill you don't need to use a holiday day, etc.
the UK has FAR better worker protections than the US. These two countries should not be mentioned in the same sentence when it comes to worker protections.
Part of it is that the most of the Walmart employees probably couldn't afford a prolonged strike. The company would hire scabs and wait them out. And the news would portray those people as being "entitled" and "whiny". In America, it's seen as if businesses are allowed to do everything they want, and if you don't like it, then you should quit. Even if what the business is doing is illegal.
As a Dutch person I was under the impression that the Dutch society is less hierarchical than the American society. Perhaps somebody who has worked in both countries can shed some light on it?
I don't think you can compare the US to Europe as a whole either, the workplace dynamic in southern Italy is completely different than in Norway.
My experience is that the Dutch are among the most 'anarchic' people I know. Everyone has an opinion on everything, and bosses try to just be 'one of the guys', and avoid exerting their authority overtly, as it's likely to backfire. Obviously this doesn't apply to all jobs, but I've experienced it a lot.
Americans, but to a lesser degree people from other nationalities too, tend to be much more authoritarian and are less inclined to hide the hierarchies.
I've experienced Dutch bosses struggle with 'being bosses' in Germany, as their 'flat' approach confused their employees. I've also had German bosses try to be 'one of the guys' in Holland, but not quite pulling it off (to sometimes hilarious effect).
I find this all fascinating that resonates well with me. I used to work in Germany but found them too formal and official in both working and personal relationships. Perhaps I should have tried it in the Netherlands.
Oh yeah. After three years I learned to appreciate the Germans to an extent, but I could never shake the feeling that, as a 'group', they're a bit like the boring, responsible, often humorless older sibling to the Dutch.
Both 'groups' have their own pros and cons though, to be fair. The Dutch can be horribly rude and argumentative...
>> The Dutch can be horribly rude and argumentative...
As a Russian, so can I. It can be a useful trait under circumstances, but I generally try to keep it in control.
If I get an idea to work in Europe again, I'll pay closer attention to the Dutch opportunities. It's important for the people to "click" on a cross-cultural level in order to work well as a team, and I'm afraid I didn't click nearly enough back in Germany.
Anyway, no culture is perfect. We're supposed to learn from each other and work on our bad sides as recognized in others and by others.
In my experience the Dutch get along pretty well with Russians. The main sources of 'conflict' I've noticed usually have to do with the fact that the Dutch like to rub their 'liberalness' in other people's faces, and many Russians I've met tend to be a bit more conservative/traditional in their values.
That said, my experience is also that it's more bark than bite. We love arguing and we love telling others our views unasked, but in practice we tend to be pretty, uh, pragmatic about our beliefs. We're essentially a country of merchants/salesmen, we have been for a long time, and getting into real arguments over beliefs is not good for business. It's something I both love and hate about our culture.
(This is generalizing, of course, but I've been shocked to find out more and more how strong a 'culture' can be, even on a national level.)
My dutch manager has a nice anecdote about how he worked in France and got in trouble when he walked to the labs and talked to the analysts there to get an idea of a project. The Project leader felt extremely bypassed and pissed. In Holland, if you would be pissed you would be considered a dick. Surely if your project members can't be trusted to know things about their project and to be positive about you, you should be fired.
In my company our group leader is judged by all employees every year and we openly discuss what we don't like about his management style. He earns a lot of respect by listening and changing or defending why he doesn't change.
The best managers find a perfect balance between competitive behavior, ego, humbleness and the ability to delegate and trust employees. Yes, the silicon valley eagerness is rewarded and encouraged but you really won't get anywhere if you are a dick. Guess that would make a dutch Steve Jobs impossible. Perhaps it is why we don't have a silicon valley equivalent.
Nations under dictators are effective but they are only nice places to be when she/he is benevolent.
I can understand why the Project leader felt slighted. It's their job to know the status of the project and to present that. If someone comes in and bypasses them, you're kinda saying that they're not needed.
He just wanted to get a feel for the problems of the project and the people. What lives in the project, what are the people like.
I guess your reaction illustrates my point nicely I don't even consider this "bypassing". Why not feel proud of your project members? To feel bypassed is saying your are the preferred person for all communication, surely anyone can decide for themselves who they want to talk to. Would you feel afraid they say bad things? Then you are not a good leader. If you are a good leader your team makes you look good. That's how I'd see it. If someone talks to your team he probably has a reason, why even think anything about it?
Those first two American workplace traits won't work well unless you include a third American workplace trait: They're far less subservient to their bosses, if they have bosses at all. Not like how the project is being done? You're expected as an employee to just take control and do it the way you think is better, asking for forgiveness later if needed.
Many top US tech companies truly have no direct bosses at all now, e.g. some kind of peer reviews system combined with whatever measurable results if available, replacing bosses. I suspect that this totally flat approach is only possible for very top-level best employee-quality companies though, as a single bad behaving person can really screw up the peer-review system.
Side note: In the US there's a strong split between "professional behavior" and "personal behavior". In (most?) of Europe that split in personality seems to be nearly non-existent, or even frowned upon. Each person is expected to have only 1 personality. So don't get confused that there's just 1 behavior culture in the US, there's at least 2 that every professional has.
Well, I'm American and it sure seems insane to me, so I choose not to participate, and that's that.
It really is that simple.
Don't believe it is the companies forcing workers to do it as it is my experience that most, but not all of course, American men would rather be "working" then dealing with child raising.
You know what, that's it. People complain all day long, but in the end it is just a choice. Nobody is being held at gun point and being asked to work long hours. Instead people make financial choices that they must now assume by working under terrible conditions, then they go home to complain about it.
While somewhat true, it's pretty bad that you basically have to just roll over and accept it if you want to own a house in an area not in economic crisis. You can live as frugally as you want, but a half-million-dollar mortgage sucks up a lot of income.
I've been seriously considering getting a really really really nice few-year-old RV (one of the 50' bus ones with expanding sides) as my home in order to opt-out of the housing stupidity and apartment renting game. It'd be nice to be able to own my home after just a few years paying the equivalent of what I currently pay for Bay Area rent. I'd still have to pay e.g. National Parks for staying the night, but I'd much much rather have my money go to them vs the slim land owners and apartment places here.
As for the second point, I would strongly recommend against an RV as your primary home. It is very likely to negatively affect your social life and could get into the way of a lasting romantic relationship. Perhaps (and this is just a guess) you would be better off employing your skills and time to make more instead of attempting to save more.
Just because a literal gun isn't used doesn't mean there isn't force involved. If you're not going to be able to pay rent without that job, then that is definitely force.
Sure you could be forced temporarily, but not indefinitely. If the situation persists, it must be somewhat you allowing it.
Note: I am not speaking of extreme cases here. There are definitely situations where some people find themselves in a vicious circle, but I assume that is the minority of cases.
For situation when you'll hear from management that they don't see you as engaged as others I guess your answer would be to just leave, it's that simple.
Thing is not everyone can easily change jobs. And it's not only a matter of (un)sufficient professional skills. (Less money outside of corp. environment or even number of jobs in particular location (and moving is also not on a plate sometimes))
Enjoy your chance not to participate but it's not really that simple
When I was hired, I said "I'm going to make X happen - this will give you Y competitive advantage over competitors Z1, Z2, and will generally do what I can to increase shareholder value". I made no promises about hours worked, and my employer isn't paying attention to that.
I "stand to my rights" when dealing with the police, government and other hostile parties - my employer and I have a collaborative relationship. We create value together and share in the proceeds. If the terms (the vast majority of which cannot be explicitly stated in a contract) no longer are mutually agreeable, we'll separate.
So how many hours per week do you actually work and is there any number of hours stated in your contract? I need these two variables to be able to reason about your claims.
Thanks. Can the other side of your contract complain if you simply don't come to work on some days? If they can complain then I believe you must have something specified, when not hours, then days.
It's mainly semantics, but "shareholder value" sounds a bit narrow for me.
I would say the goal would be to improve the employer's idea/product/business. Or even a step further: society as a whole.
Although shareholder value is the consequence in many cases, I personally wouldn't be motivated if I worded the goal of my collaborative relationship like that.
Also, while money is a useful result of this relationship, creating progress/improvement is the awesome part.
For most people they are doing generic work for a company. If you finish a task they give you another. There is an infinite amount of work to do. Therefore for the majority of people your statement means little. The employer would like them to work all hours to deliver more value. Every hour you work over 40 hours per week is a win for them and they are insatiable.
Because you have guys CEOs like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs that think it's okay to publicly flagellate their employees for missing work to witness the birth of their child.
And unfortunately those brilliant, but cruel, geniuses have inspired an entire segment of unskilled managers and bosses who now think that by cargo-culting dickheadedness they can rise to the top.
The rest of the country can't wait for the bubble to pop in Silicon Valley so we can stop hero-worshipping assholes...
I've never had a "contract" with an employer which specified the number of hours I was to work in a week. At most tere might be a verbal agreement on "core hours" in the office to be available for meetings, but there was certainly no upper limit on the number of hours to be worked and no concept of overtime.
This idea of a detailed employment contract is something I've only heard about from europeans, and I'd love to see what the contracts look like. Generally employment in the USA is "at-will" and either party can terminate the arrangement at any time for any (or no) reason, without further obligations.
>Is it really so common and easy to lose the job "just so"?
That very much depends what the market conditions are in your industry. In good times, even bad bosses will try to act professional, and good bosses are often downright humane. In bad times, there's always someone up the org chart to take the blame so the boss doesn't look like a jerk.
But "no reason" firings are comparatively uncommon. That's really more of a legal classification for, "I fired her because I find her tone-of-voice insubordinate."
Well, one, in America, workers don't have rights to stand up for. If you say no to working unpaid overtime, you're labeled "Not a team player" and fired.
Employers get away with it due to a mix of fear of being fired, and a bunch of people who act happy to give up their lives for the company.
> At my previous jobs in the US I wouldn't even think about reducing my hours... a 32 vs 40 hour contract is pointless if you're expected to work 50-60 hours a week, better to take as much money as you can.
The difference between less-than-full-time and full-time employment is the issue here. If you're a "full time" employee, depending on your local cultural values, you stay until the job is done, within reason. If you're on less than full time, in, I would wager, the vast majority of cases, the position is very closely regulated time-wise, ensuring the employee works their hours and very little more, if any.
Both parents working is a trap. We used to need one parent working, then they changed mortgage lending to incorporate two incomes and surprise: land prices doubled.
Now two people work instead of one and they are no better off. Who is the second parent working for? The banks. Who pays? The kids.
The financialisation of land is a disaster, we are not more free we are enslaved by debt.
This is going off on a tangent but I think you are spot on. It isn't just two incomes fueling the credit increase but also the insanely low interest rates. I don't think female workforce participation will/should go down, but I wonder if interest rates will ever go up to reasonable levels and pop the real-estate bubble (e.g. in Canada)? I have friends with crappy income situations buying houses for 600K+. I've been trying to hold off for as long as possible but we would really like to plant our roots somewhere (poor immigrant to the Western world so owning land in my new homeland was a dream from childhood). In places like Toronto and Vancouver, buying a home for people of modest means seems financial suicide (perhaps only if you have taken Econ courses). We live in messed up times.
can't reply to the throwaway dude as HN threading is nuts so replying here.
Low interest rates allows banks to more efficiently financialise housing (that is to say price housing at the optimal point to extract as much economic rent as possible). You get to spread your repayments over a long time and end up paying lots of lovely interest.
Higher rates (and therefore more wage inflation) quickly erodes the debt whilst putting a ceiling on the asset price bounded by wages at the time you sign the mortgage deeds.
The west has been utterly captured by banks. We've seen politicians walk rates down to zero to allow the asset price bubble to continue to extract value from labour.
This is the issue. It's not off-topic for this - all families are working two jobs for the banks.
I read Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry in the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth but am worried that land-use controls weren't really even on George's radar for obvious reasons; in the 19th C the U.S. was a different place. I don't think the book is bad exactly but much has changed. think the causal issue runs from "land use restriction" -> "higher prices" rather than "dual income" -> "higher prices."
That doesn't sound sensible to me. Land use controls don't force families who want better school districts to pay for housing. It's the differences in schools that make families to seek housing in the most-wanted areas, and most-wanted areas are naturally more expensive.
So, people don't pay for housing or land use, they pay for school district.
Perhaps, in the US, there are indirect ways that land use impacts school quality, but it wouldn't have to be that way.
Yeah, if the school quality is correlated to school financing, and school financing is correlated to property taxes paid, then existing homeowners must have paid a high amount of property taxes to propel their school district into a wealthy one.
Anybody who's overpaying for good school district is chasing home ownership in the area that's expensive to begin with.
Why can't it simply be that as most households moved from 1 to 2 income, the market adapted?
What policies and/or regulations can we make to incentivize a market where house prices reduce over time? Is that the goal? Houses are on average twice as big as they were not too long ago. How much of the increase is due to people wanting bigger homes?
You can't have a free market in land. There are too many constraints such as planning permissions and the fact that the supply is fixed overall.
Therefore to have a free market in credit with these constraints it's inevitable that it will be used for speculation. We should have land value tax to win back our right to exist instead of credit fueled full land enclosure. It's an unmitigated disaster - the defining issue of our times.
Credit is near infinite as thanks to fractional reserve banking banks can create as much of it as demand requires. They are not constrained by savings. Most bank lending is against land, it's how money is being printed.
How has the market adapted when we are working 25 times 2 years for the same pile of bricks our parents worked for 15 years for? It's simply the banks taking more of a share of your labour. You get nothing else back.
There is no point in being more productive. It will feed through into land prices as disposable income (briefly) increases and then land prices go up and we are back where we started. This is how banks capture all productivity.
I once owned a townhouse in South Florida. Here are the sale prices over time:
1999 (built): 99,000
2001: 140,000
2005: 309,000
2010 230,000
I drove by it recently, and can say that the square footage hasn't changed. Don't take anecdote for data, only illustration, but my scenario was repeated hundreds of thousands of times in South Florida alone. (Some) houses are getting bigger, but that doesn't explain house prices.
My parents owned a house in Milwaukee. They paid $30,000 or so for it, in 1980. They sold it for $30,000 or so, in 1988. It's still worth $30,000 or so. This scenario was repeated hundreds of thousands of times in Milwaukee alone.
My parents paid $80,000 for a house in 1988. They haven't sold it, but it's probably worth around $200,000 today, which is an increase very slightly higher than the rate of inflation.
House prices (or, more significantly, house/land/building-permission bundles) where demand exceeds supply (in the US, generally rich coastal areas with tight zoning) are determined by available credit. House prices elsewhere are determined by marginal construction cost.
There are a lot of additional complications, many involving the use of single-family-only zoning and the cost of new construction as an implicit or explicit mechanism of segregation in the fair housing era.
I think easy credit has a lot to do with the rise in housing prices, as does the additional income earned by two spouses, but it's not quite so simple to compare housing, say, 30 or 40 years ago to today. What we call a house, and the amenities we put in the home, are quite different.
I was a kid in the 1970's and grew up in a middle to upper-middle class neighborhood in, what was at the time, a newly-minted suburb of New York City. I was pretty fortunate, but back then I remember neighbors who didn't have central air conditioning, and whose kids slept two to a bedroom (sometimes, three), and who -- if they took a vacation -- went camping for vacations. Hand-me-downs were no big deal. And not everyone drove a new car. The really well off drove Cadillacs. We got McDonalds or Pizza once a week, to give mom a break.
If you take the equivalent lifestyle today, things are much different. Homes are bigger and better equipped. Cars are nicer -- and just about everyone in the family of driving age has one, of some kind. Vacations are more extravagant. People eat out more. Clothes are stylish.
The middle and upper-middle class don't aspire to the standard of living we had 40 years ago. Many of them would turn their noses up at it. But, truthfully, a number of them could get by on one income, if they lived more modestly.
I had a cousin of mine complain, a few years back, about how it takes two incomes to "survive." Do you want to know her idea of "surviving"? They have a big house with an in-ground pool, and an outdoor Tiki bar. They drive Volvos, and take nice vacations.
The land is only part of the equation, as with dense housing you can stack apartments on top of one another and amortize the land cost among larger number of buyers.
"Perhaps the Dutch are happy because they know that one works to live, and that living to work is a perverse waste of life."
This is exactly my statement when I told my boss I wanted to work part-time. Now, I only work around 20 up to 32 hours a week. Also, I feel I'm way more productive this way: I only work when I "feel like working". Because of that, I'm way more productive when I work.
I have dreams for my future. Doing a day-to-day office job isn't one of them. In my "spare time", I'm converting my hobby and passion into my own company so I can, hopefully, earn money with my hobby and stop working completely.
I have a friend who does hiring in Berlin for a tech company. He's complained about not being able to find full-time employees. Lots of talented people, surprisingly few want to be locked in for 40-50h/week, especially when they have 4 other quasi-work commitments (playing in a band, working behind a bar once a week, etc) as well.
That's because experienced software developers know they can only be productive for 4-5 hours a day and any attempt to forcefully extend this time results in lower quality work and hidden bugs. Then you get a senseless situation on your hands - you first waste a few extra hours to make things bad then you spend additional time to correct your mistakes. You might as well just go home and enjoy extra personal time, to come back fresh and energized the next day. In 20-25 hours per week you can actually accomplish a lot. A 40 hour week will wear you quickly. A 50 hour week can bring you one step closer to a burn-out and possibly damage your health in a long run.
Additionally, there might me some cultural issue involved. A few years ago I worked in Germany and the one thing I didn't like about the German workspace is that companies didn't really want their workers to be productive and efficient, they just wanted them to put in all of their official working hours and complete all of the formalities involved, while also frowning upon any activities outside work. That was one of the reasons why I eventually moved out. I wanted to accomplish things and grow, the companies I interviewed at wanted me to stay 9-5 and be satisfied with their routine. I grew to dislike this attitude and eventually made other plans for myself.
The chart / figures are a bit misleading though; it lists an age range of 15-64. People in the 15-25 age range will generally work part-time (if they work) because they're still in school/college/university. Also, people above 55 (iirc) get 'free' days off (because they're old), I'm not sure if that counts as part-time (since iirc they get paid full-time).f
well screw that i'm dutch and i don't get to work part time. would like to though. the new rules are only there 'on paper'. they're not rules as employers can ignore them 'if they have pressing concerns'.
Major benefits like health and child care are tied to government rather than employment. Therefore you don't have to play games with 2nd careers and minimum hours.
Probably a good idea for US to consider.
Dutch person here. The only friends I have that work full-time have partners that are at home for the kids. I don't know any couple that both work full-time. Couples that both have a career they want to keep go for 32 hours each and the kids go to daycare for 3 days. I hardly know anyone working full-time among friends my age (lower 30's), even without kids, they just like 3 day weekends.
When I applied at ASML they asked me: What if it looks like you will not be able to finish your work within the assigned time, what do you do?
I said: I would just work some more, if it doesn't happen very often, not a problem.
WRONG. Go to your project leader tell him: "I have time for either this or this, where should I put priority." We do not want overworked people.
ASML gave employees about 2 months salary as a bonus some time back, this is on top of a customary 13th month in December.
ASML is one of the Netherlands' most successful and profitable companies though, and I can imagine they have relatively few but high-skilled employees, especially in the engineering department.
The large (healthcare) company I work for is the same (minus the bonus).
Maybe the little value that is put in hierarchy (my boss has my respect because he is smart, never just because he is my boss). Displays of hierarchy are very badly appreciated here. We appreciate professors that want to be called by their first name. It balances things more perhaps.
Expat living in Eindhoven, Netherlands here. For expats having new children the dutch IT very strongly discourage taking 32 hour work weeks. They claim that it makes the employees lose highly skilled migrant status.
Unfortunately, in the rest of the world "part-time" is not considered as something professional, but it's reserved for cheap labor force (shop assistants, baby-sitters, call-center guys) or for students. Most of "serious" companies won't even think about hiring a professional for 25h.
Reading some of the comments about child care makes me think that we have perverted the way we raise our children.
Isn't it plain backwards to send a kid to child care and go to work to pay for it? Unless you are earning an awful lot of money at your job, it doesn't feel right. It just makes so much sense to me to have one of the parents stay at home with the kids, spending most of this beautiful time together.
Heck, I want to have kids soon, but first I want to figure out how to earn enough money to maintain my family being the only earner + not working more than 30-32 hours a week. This could mean having a lot less money at the end of month, but it's temporary until the little ones are a bit older.
So you don't imagine you being the one home with your children, day in and day out? Life with children is demanding. It's a bit more complex than what you allude to. Not that I'd recommend not having children, I love mine and love taking care of them, but a more realistic view is appropriate, e.g. try googling "toddlers are assholes". :)
Instead of companies hiring a full time engineer that works 50-60 hours (causing him/her to burn out and quit), how about hiring 2 part timers working 30 hours, allowing more family time.
Paying salary for 1 full timer may seem a little lower than 2 part timers initially. But with better family life, I would think you will get better productivity and recover the investment by retaining workers better.
The bean-counters will throw in fixed costs per head. There are facility costs, IT costs (computers probably can not be shared, nor some software licenses), etc. Overheads from support functions (HR etc) are often allocated per head. There are medical insurance etc costs per head.
So, bean-counting makes you prefer fewer heads, and some of that cost is not just due to bean-counters, but very real.
> Anyone else notice that the United Kingdom is listed as "Britain" in that graphic? I don't think Britain is a country.
"Britain" is, like "the United Kingdom", a common less-formal name [0] for the nation-state whose full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and is the source of the usual adjective form associated with that nation-state, "British".)
Britain, of course, isn't a "country" as that term is used in the UK, of course; England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are the countries of the UK. But the use here isn't to identify a country in that sense, but a sovereign state.
Better pedants, please.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom : "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a sovereign state in Europe."
I'm Dutch and I work part time (32 hours), which was sort of by accident. Since I've started, 5 other people in the company I work for (including the two owners!) have started working 32 hours instead of 40, either to spend more time with their kids or just for themselves. Overall, this makes scheduling work a bit harder for my bosses but other than that there's been nothing but positive results.
This is amazing for me to hear. As an American who is tired of the brainwashed "work at all expenses" cult like mantra here - we've been considering a move to more sane places.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] thread> However, the Netherlands’ record for getting women into top management roles is dire.
Isn't happiness what's important?
We had a neighbor in our village who had chickens, who always kept the same number of black-feathered and white-feathered chickens. I never saw how this helped with anything. He did it for its own sake I guess. He just liked symmetries and equalities, always keeping his things ordered and aligned, he was kind of obsessive like that.
(As I understand it, some Scandinavian countries have brought in the legal right to paternity leave similar to maternity leave, which strikes me as a good start.)
Would a female executive marry a male who works part-time at a café?
the answer is no, it is exceedingly rare, because women marry up socioeconomically. no matter how successful a woman is, her preference is to marry someone equally or more successful.
people tend to provide extreme counter-examples to argue against this, but in the vast majority of cases, it's true.
The highly-visible counter-examples tend to come from fields with high gender imbalance, like your stereotypical doctor-nurse or boss-secretary matchups.
I think it's reasonable to posit that this effect would be weak or non-existent in an equal society.
It's not for the sake of family.
80% of employed women work part time in the Netherlands. This includes singles, double income no kids, middle aged women whose children have already left home. Only a small percentage of those working part time have young children.
When you ask them about it, they try to justify not working more. "Daycare is so expensive" (in another post I try to demonstrate that this excuse doesn't fly), "Working environment is hostile to women" etc etc.
If deep down inside people didn't feel at least a bit guilty about not working more, they wouldn't try to justify it. In reality, working part-time is a luxury. Americans prefer the luxury of a large home, two cars, air conditioning, maybe a swimming pool in the yard. Dutch people seem to prefer the luxury of few working hours and long vacations.
I don't see how a single comment can account for any/all complaints that people in the Dutch workforce might have.
Living (instead of working) is not a 'luxury', as other might say: work to live, don't live to work.
A luxury is anything beyond basic necessities like food and shelter. People in poor countries, working 12 hour work days for $10 per day or less, don't have the luxury of working part time.
I'm totally fine with someone choosing to work fewer hours or more hours than I'm willing to do, as long as they're capable of supporting themselves.
I'm not totally fine with people claiming they would like to work full time, but the government is making it impossible by not subsidizing daycare, out of some kind of conservative bias against working mothers, because that is simply a lie.
For example, I have two children in day care three days a week, and we pay 1200+ euros per month. My friends in Belgium (where I'm from) pay literally 1/10th of that. Those in France and Germany also pay much less than we do, although I don't know by heart exactly how much.
The reason child care is not subsidized (much) is the same as that mentioned in the article though - conservative popular opinion on how parents should be home with their children, and that having children in day care 5 days a week is tantamount to neglect.
You do have to be very careful your income doesn't change while claiming it, but it is quite a big subsidy, right?
(We don't currently claim it and have 1 child in childcare. You're right that it's freaking pricy!)
[1] http://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/b...
But the UK doesn't have the same rat of part-time working.
But in Holland, its even more worse. The Dutch send them into Day Care after 3 month. Some kids can't even roll around at that time. Then you have a day-care-mommy/kid ratio of 6:1. If you are lucky. Can't see them changing all diapers in time.
And about being bored: Well, if more mommies would be at home, they would eventually socialise more during the day and therefore the kids would have all the social interaction. But at least under the supervision of their own blood. Which loves them and doesn't see them as 'products' for their 'customers'.
My own kids are now all adults, but I remember how heart-breaking it was to leave a two-year-old to a day-care place where she did not want to stay. She'd cry all the way when going there, and stick to hug my legs "please don't go" though she could barely speak. It wasn't good.
Later on, she and younger brother were perfectly happy in another day-care place when they were a bit older.
Also, my daughter was all the time sick in her first day care place. She'd pick every infection there ever was around and we had horrible days with day care, horrible evenings queuing in the health center, and horrible nights without sleep. The daughter just had weak resistance as a 18-month-old, but was much stronger when she was 5 years.
My younger son on the other hand enjoyed day care tremendously from the very start, but he only went there at age of 4.
I would say that
1) there is variance in children, as individuals (some of them are naturally more dependent on their parents)
2) there is variance in day-care places (the first one we had was run by the council, the staff was inexperienced and they compensated for their insecurity by being rude; the other was a private one subsidised by the council, and the staff was really nice -- others have reported things being the other way round with very nice council-run places, so I conclude just that the human factor has a big impact).
3) there is variance in parents
(These experiences from the Finnish system which provides very extensive and affordable public service by North American standards).
There was one place that my daughter was never really happy to go to. It was fine, and she was safe - she was just never happy there. We moved her to a new place and she loved it from the moment she walked in (though she knew some of the other kids from her first nursery).
I think sickness and childcare just go hand in hand. It flowed on to the rest of the family too. I've been sick so many times in the last few years - though I think we're through the worst of it now. Nothing like the happy embrace of a snotty child to make you ill.
When I dropped my 1 yo off at nursery this morning she literally ran with open arms and screeches of joy to one of the careers.
Our daughter was in daycare full time after 4 being 4 months old and she became able to verbally express wants and needs using words at around 12 months. Now at 2 she is using full sentences.
So it's not exactly 1/10th the amount, but still a lot less.
Also, this was limited to a 1 year period more or less. There is a 2 year age difference between the children, and from age 3, the oldest started going to kindergarten instead of daycare, which is quite a bit less expensive.
Minimum wage for an adult is 1500 euro per month working full time, so even if you're a single breadwinner family earning minimum wage, you're already exaggerating. You also fail to mention that the government pays for nearly all of this if you're making minimum wage. Calculate it here:
http://www.belastingdienst.nl/rekenhulpen/toeslagen/
I filled in the numbers for a single parent working full time for minimum wage who sends their two kids for the maximum number of hours per month to an expensive daycare which charges 7 euro an hour. The government subsidizes their daycare for €2894 per month.
A family making €40,000 in taxable income a year still gets a maximum of €2584 per month reimbursed for 2 kids going to that same daycare.
I filled in the numbers for a family making €100,000 in taxable income (about three times the median income) a year, and it looks like they still get about half the costs reimbursed.
It actually looks like the fewer hours you work, the lower the percentage covered by subsidies becomes.
People keep bringing up the cost of daycare as an excuse not to work more, but I don't think it's a very good excuse. I think the actual reason why the number of part time workers is so high, is that people can afford to do it. Outside the Netherlands, if you're not working full time, you're seen as lazy and unambitious. Unless you're doing it for an ambitious reason, such as studying for a degree, you can forget about a promotion or a raise, if your employer allows it at all.
In NL, for some reason, the right to work part time was championed as a women's rights issue. Unless you allowed women to work part time, you were oppressing them. The government also started stimulating part time work to reduce unemployment. Employers were limited in their ability to deny part time employment, to the point that it became very unusual for women to work full time. So unusual, that those working full time are now becoming somewhat socially stigmatized as workaholics or greedy. Some women are also putting pressure on men to start working less to do something about this very unenlightened looking wage gap between full time working men and part time working women.
Basically the "stuff that isn't worth fighting an election over". See also: drugs (we're now falling behind, and even moving backwards), opening hours (most of the country still shuts down on Sundays), or to give a recently newsworthy example: insulting the royal family being illegal.
Mix that with the dominant right-wing urge to "privatise all the things", and subsidised child care gets happily thrown under the bus by various coalition governments, despite what the majority of the population actually wants.
If you have more cildren, you'll pay 2% for the second (max 90 euro), 1% for the third (max 45 euros) and nothing for the fourth.
In London I pay £170 per day to have my two children in childcare. That's for private childcare, but you have little choice if you want to go back to work (because of the hours). There's a little give in the costs of different nurseries but most have a waiting list to get in where we're based (and the lowest I've seen locally is £75/day/child).
We now receive a £120(ish)/month government subsidy for our oldest child. That's something I guess - doesn't do much to help with the £1300 or so we pay per month.
It wasn't really worth it financially for my wife to go back to work, though it does give a much needed break from constantly looking after children (ironically, she's a speech therapist for small children). By the time you account for transport / lunch etc in London we're about breaking even.
It's pretty depressing when you're trying to get a company off the ground and all your money goes into childcare.
Is child care as expensive as he says? Absolutely, it can easily be €600 per kid.
Thing is, if you make €20k, so €1600 household income, you get €520 or so per kid from the government for every €600 or so you spend. So you end up with €80 per month per kid, very doable for a single parent. No parent in the Netherlands makes €800 on full-time work, so we have to assume €1600 household income is for a single parent.
Even if your household income is €80k, i.e. 6-7k monthly income: typical for both parents working solid office jobs in their mid-late 30s, you still get a little over €200 per kid out of €600 expenses per kid, so €400 out of your more than €6k.
There are various caveats, and paying €80 for a single parent is no joke. But it's not nearly as bad as saying a median salary goes wholly to child care of two children, far from it. And it's unlikely to be the sole or even main reason for child care. In fact, I'd make a cautious bet that you'll see significant part-time statistics for people who have no children.
At the end of the day, the costs per working day per kid after subsidy is anywhere from €4 to €20. So the notion that this prevents people from going to work in order to be with their kid so as not to have to pay childcare, is false.
As on the low-end an individual makes like €13 per hour stacking shelves at a supermarket by age 25, working a 9 to 5 in a low-end job easily nets you €80, easy easy easy, at which point you make €1600 a month and pay the €4 a day rate. If you make say €40k and your spouse does, too, then you make more than €160 a day each, and so the notion that you'd rather stay home to save €20 and earn 0 than to pay €20 and earn €160 is unlikely. Even with two kids or three kids, it still pays off in a huge way to go to work.
Now there are some situations in which it could make sense. e.g. a parent who, somehow, has a 9 to 2 contract (5h a day), and picks up the kid from school. That can make a lot of sense in a family where the husband makes €60k and the wife could make €30k full-time, and €20k part-time in a 9 to 2 job. In this case the household income is such that it costs €20 per kid per day and it can make sense to work the $20k parttime job that allows you to pick your kids up from school (€80 income a working day) instead of the €30k parttime job (€120 income per working day), because if you have two kids, then childcare costs €40 per day, the difference in your working hours. And then it's probably more fun and useful to be with your kids than to pay for someone else to, if it's financially all the same. But 9 to 2 working days barely exist, and this is in the context of a cliched family where the man earns €60k and the woman has €30k max earning potential full-time. In more realistic scenarios the financial incentives are definitely such that it pays off for both parents to work full-time.
Germany: 300 EUR+
Seems like highly dependent on geography and underlying real estate prices. The private market for child care is fairly open to anyone who's willing to go through proper training and safety rigor.
But let's say you plan a home-based childcare business, an it's in Bay Area, and the first thing you need to take care of is to buy real estate for it (in $2 million range) and child-proof it.
What you then have to charge for it to cover the mortgage, the property taxes, the insurance, the salaries to the employees quickly results in some unrealistic numbers.
Which is why no child-care provider would choose an expensive place to live as launchpad for their business, and expensive places to live have exorbitantly high childcare costs.
Now guess what happened :p
You get fired after 3 years, so they don't have to give you a contract. Then they hire someone new with less skills, but at least for 3 years they don't have to give a contract and can fire you whenever they need to and of course pay you like a temporary external employee instead of a full-time on contract employee.
I think this is true anywhere but especially in the UK they 'can' do this because the benefit system (tax credits, housing benefit, etc) tops up the shortfall.
After the election, there's no reason at all to think this is going to get better.
However, the big upside is still underway: it is becoming increasingly normal for men to work part time. Already it's common for men to work no more than 32 hours, that's not even considered part-time anymore.
If this trend continuous, the Netherlands is shifting towards a much shorter working week than most countries, without any major upheaval or further government intervention. However much by accident rather than design, it does seem to put the country one step ahead of most when dealing with an economic reality in which full employment for everyone is never going to happen.
Young people don't seem to realize that there already isn't much AOW (social security) left for them. Unless you're 50+ now (the most powerful voting block is usually exempt from cutbacks), you will not be able to retire at 67. The retirement age is officially raised along with life expectancy. The 20 year old of today will not be eligible for AOW until their early 70's.
Because not everyone is physically capable of continuing to work until 70+, and employment opportunities for people over 60 are pretty much zero, you're going to need savings to bridge that gap.
Unfortunately most employers don't see it this way. Especially at corporations where the number of employees is large, I mean like > 1000 headcount. It becomes impossible for HR not to completely manage people's time through strict enforcement of working hours policies.
They employ you for 40 hours a week and thus expect you to be there for 40 hours a week. If you work for less than 40 hours it means either you're overqualified, i.e. being payed too much, they could replace you with someone that costs less and works slower, or they need to give you more work to do to make up for that 40 hours a week they're paying you for.
I hate it.
I retired at 30, not willing to take part in this craziness anymore, to live fully now and only work every now and then when I need money, although I'm also working hard on a solution that eliminates the need for money at all (and not only for myself, but for anyone willing to participate).
My motto about the future: If in my life I haven't made such an impact on at least one person that nobody is willing to take care of me when I'm not capable anymore myself, I have either done something wrong or society has become something I'm not willing to live in anymore anyway.
What also helps is that I don't hate my job. Maybe you just chose a career that didn't make you happy. Isn't there another kind of job that would make you want to work more?
Have you ever been taking care about an elderly person? Are you aware what an immense task that is?
And even if you do everything right and do end up with a person willing to do it for you, they also have to be capable to do it right. That's quite a bet to take.
The vast majority of elders do not want to be needy. They didn't choose to have their bodies betray them and require assistance for everyday life.
The TLC part is indeed spot on. It might be a good idea to plan on having many grandkids.
It may sound ridiculous to a lot of people, but for me it works and I take full responsibility. In case I get sick I will choose plant based medicine (tested and proven for millenia) anytime over modern medicine (which are a lot of times based on the same plants).
In any way, if I'm old and sick and would become dependent on expensive medicine, then I'd rather die and see if there is something on the other side or not.
(By the way, to anyone in general: I don't want to debate my life choices or beliefs, they are mine and no one can convince me otherwise, except experience itself. I will answer any question, but I'm not going to defend myself.)
So how is life in your delusional world?
My immune system does what it needs to do and I can eat from the ground, i live a lot from dumpster dived food, have walked barefoot for months through cities and nature. Even when I had an open wound from dancing in glass that I didn't feel at that moment, I have walked all night through dirty discotheque floors, rat infested city squares, before I found out the next morning when I woke up that there was a wound, black with dirt and crap in it.
Anyway, look up information about the power of the mind, you can manifest anything you need and whatever you believe in becomes real. I thought it was the biggest bullshit ever, until I found out it's true by experience.
I wish one day we can do away with this sort of 'reverse' sexism, and I think that next year 100% of executive board positions should be held by capable people, regardless of their sex.
So, in theory, 50% of capable people should be women, no?
edit: If your point is that we shouldn't be positively discriminating to artificially reach equidistribution of men and women in the workplace, then I agree, but your line of argumentation is often used to imply that women are less competent.
Surely the worst impact of taking time out to have kids should be a slight delay in the career trajectory of the most talented women, not disqualification from board positions because they've now inevitably and irretrievably fallen behind their male peers.
It's only since a few years that for example technical studies try to attract more women, as these were before considered 'a man's thing'.
It's going to take a few generations for all of this to 'even out' and then we might see 50/50, but it could also result in 70/30 or 30/70, if it turns out that in a gender-neutral unbringing, one gender might be more capable of leadership than another.
Let's say instead of gender differences, we had people with different physics handicaps, we wouldn't pretend there aren't handicaps, ache same time we would not steer people but rather provide them all with the same opportunities and not encourage or discourage because of a particular handicap. Let the people, children, figure out what works and doesn't work for them, given their abilities and handicaps.
The biggest problem I see is people steering or lowlighting certain paths because of some preconceptions --a deaf person can't sing well, instead let them prove they can't sing, or that they can sing, regardless of hearing.
That sounds rather sexist lol :p j/k
instead of gender differences, we had people with different physics [sic] handicaps
That might be considered rather insulting. Having a penis, vagina, or whatever linear combination of the above isn't really comparable to being handicapped.
On the one hand, I feel that positive discrimination is just as bad as the other kind and that its proponents are not thinking things through as clearly as they should.
On the other hand, board members are humans too. Given the choice, and whether consciously or unconsciously, they will typically elect people much like themselves, because that's the kind of person they can understand and relate to. It's an understandable human trait but it does perpetuate the status quo.
I do wish the focus was less on gender and more on diversity in general. We have sizable ethnic minorities in the Netherlands but they are quite underrepresented in upper management and I'm not sure it can be fully explained by the socioeconomic and education gap.
The issue is at what point does the need for diversity kick in? If I start a startup right now with a friend, a person who is much like myself, very few people will criticize us for diversity issues at 2 people. But if we continue to hire friends, when does it become a diversity issue that needs addressing?
It's an arbitrary threshold, but seems like a good point in the life of a company where it transitions from a small company to a larger one, where you need to start making various informal policies and company customs and values more formal.
[1] http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondernemingsraad_%28Nederland%2...
According to Wikipedia the average size of a board is 9.2 members, and as low as 3 members[1]. It's easy to imagine a company where the 3 most competent people all happen to be either male or female.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_directors#Size
No, it isn't implied at all. (emphasis mine)
Statement: The phone should have a glass back. Response: The phone should be durable.
The only reasonable interpretation of the response is that it calls into question the durability of phones with glass backs. Otherwise, it is a non sequitur.
Similarly, the only reasonable interpretation of the quoted statement is that it calls into question whether a board composed of 30% women can also be 100% composed of capable people. Otherwise it makes no sense as a response.
For the record, I've worked 32 hour weeks for ages now (and I've only encountered one potential employer who had a problem with that, though they agreed my request was totally reasonable). My wife works 36 hours a week, which is standard in government jobs (as well as in many other places).
First off there are two ways to spin this: 1) women are less emancipated in NL because they participate less in the workplace or 2) women are more emancipated because they are able to choose to participate less in the workplace.
I first thought #1 was true, but I'm seeing a lot of new fathers taking advantage of Dutch part-time rules by taking a day a week off to participate in child care. So maybe instead of the measure of emancipation being women's values aligning with traditionally 'male' ones, maybe it's that male values are aligning with traditionally 'female' ones.
Subjectively I can also ay that the Dutch workplaces I've had the pleasure to experience are both more healthy and more 'efficient', and my previous experience has been exclusively in hard-working silicon valley. Plans are important, meetings are avoided unless necessary (and have agendas!), and there is a focus on getting stuff done so that people can leave at six and be with their families. Overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong, and nobody bothers you while you're on your vacation. This culture allows part-time work to be an option... that is, a 32/36/40-hour contract is actually meaningful.
At my previous jobs in the US I wouldn't even think about reducing my hours... a 32 vs 40 hour contract is pointless if you're expected to work 50-60 hours a week, better to take as much money as you can.
Are you saying meetings in SV don't have agendas? Gasp
> Overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong
Why are there environments which don't think that the "overtime is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong?" How come that workers don't try to stand to their rights? Specifically:
> you're expected to work 50-60 hours a week
How come, if you sign the contract for e.g. 40 hours? The only thing workers are selling are their work hours, why do they accept to waste 25-50% of that?
At least Scott Adams gets it:
http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-12-19
Combine this with another American trait, optimism, and you end up with over-ambitions projects that genuinely underestimate the effort and underestimate the resources, meetings that last twice as long because the first half was spent eating bagels and talking about something unrelated (oops!), and problems where everyone sincerely believes "we'll be able to solve later", and you end up with mad-dash, please delay your vacation, oh can you come in on Saturday, overtime. I also forgot to mention that you get bonus points for being the first one at work and that last one to leave, even if you're taking an awful lot of reddit breaks.
To Europeans it seems insane, to Americans it's funny but normal. The inverse also applies, it has taken me a long time to adjust to a detailed level of planning based on FTEs, make project plans that include unforeseen absences, and actually truly worry early on in the project.
And they wonder why I'm looking for another job.
[1] http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workpla...
And if there weren't laws and worker inspections and whatnot in place already, people would go on strike - and that usually has a major effect, like nationally crippled transportation (of any sort) or rapid accumulation of trash.
Which TBF makes me a bit depressed about the Americans. Have all the Walmart employees unionize and go on strike - there's nothing the management can do, not even enforce their 'you cannot unionize' contract thing, if everyone goes against them.
Some people are afraid pushovers TBF. And the employers slowly turned them into that, by making them poor.
On the contrary. Walmart's policy to date has been to simply close the store:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0210-13.htm
They got in trouble for that one, so now they at least pretend to have other excuses:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores-over...
I don't think you should lump the UK with the US on this one. You can't "just fire someone" in the UK, most employees can't work more than 48hrs/week, paying extra for overtime is standard, 28 days holiday is minimum¹ and taking it is normal, if you're ill you don't need to use a holiday day, etc.
The new-ish government website is a bit of a mess for linking to whole sections, but anyway: https://www.gov.uk/browse/working
¹ That legal minimum includes public holidays.
I don't think you can compare the US to Europe as a whole either, the workplace dynamic in southern Italy is completely different than in Norway.
Americans, but to a lesser degree people from other nationalities too, tend to be much more authoritarian and are less inclined to hide the hierarchies.
I've experienced Dutch bosses struggle with 'being bosses' in Germany, as their 'flat' approach confused their employees. I've also had German bosses try to be 'one of the guys' in Holland, but not quite pulling it off (to sometimes hilarious effect).
Both 'groups' have their own pros and cons though, to be fair. The Dutch can be horribly rude and argumentative...
As a Russian, so can I. It can be a useful trait under circumstances, but I generally try to keep it in control.
If I get an idea to work in Europe again, I'll pay closer attention to the Dutch opportunities. It's important for the people to "click" on a cross-cultural level in order to work well as a team, and I'm afraid I didn't click nearly enough back in Germany.
Anyway, no culture is perfect. We're supposed to learn from each other and work on our bad sides as recognized in others and by others.
That said, my experience is also that it's more bark than bite. We love arguing and we love telling others our views unasked, but in practice we tend to be pretty, uh, pragmatic about our beliefs. We're essentially a country of merchants/salesmen, we have been for a long time, and getting into real arguments over beliefs is not good for business. It's something I both love and hate about our culture.
(This is generalizing, of course, but I've been shocked to find out more and more how strong a 'culture' can be, even on a national level.)
In my company our group leader is judged by all employees every year and we openly discuss what we don't like about his management style. He earns a lot of respect by listening and changing or defending why he doesn't change.
The best managers find a perfect balance between competitive behavior, ego, humbleness and the ability to delegate and trust employees. Yes, the silicon valley eagerness is rewarded and encouraged but you really won't get anywhere if you are a dick. Guess that would make a dutch Steve Jobs impossible. Perhaps it is why we don't have a silicon valley equivalent.
Nations under dictators are effective but they are only nice places to be when she/he is benevolent.
I guess your reaction illustrates my point nicely I don't even consider this "bypassing". Why not feel proud of your project members? To feel bypassed is saying your are the preferred person for all communication, surely anyone can decide for themselves who they want to talk to. Would you feel afraid they say bad things? Then you are not a good leader. If you are a good leader your team makes you look good. That's how I'd see it. If someone talks to your team he probably has a reason, why even think anything about it?
Many top US tech companies truly have no direct bosses at all now, e.g. some kind of peer reviews system combined with whatever measurable results if available, replacing bosses. I suspect that this totally flat approach is only possible for very top-level best employee-quality companies though, as a single bad behaving person can really screw up the peer-review system.
Side note: In the US there's a strong split between "professional behavior" and "personal behavior". In (most?) of Europe that split in personality seems to be nearly non-existent, or even frowned upon. Each person is expected to have only 1 personality. So don't get confused that there's just 1 behavior culture in the US, there's at least 2 that every professional has.
It really is that simple.
Don't believe it is the companies forcing workers to do it as it is my experience that most, but not all of course, American men would rather be "working" then dealing with child raising.
You know what, that's it. People complain all day long, but in the end it is just a choice. Nobody is being held at gun point and being asked to work long hours. Instead people make financial choices that they must now assume by working under terrible conditions, then they go home to complain about it.
I've been seriously considering getting a really really really nice few-year-old RV (one of the 50' bus ones with expanding sides) as my home in order to opt-out of the housing stupidity and apartment renting game. It'd be nice to be able to own my home after just a few years paying the equivalent of what I currently pay for Bay Area rent. I'd still have to pay e.g. National Parks for staying the night, but I'd much much rather have my money go to them vs the slim land owners and apartment places here.
As for the second point, I would strongly recommend against an RV as your primary home. It is very likely to negatively affect your social life and could get into the way of a lasting romantic relationship. Perhaps (and this is just a guess) you would be better off employing your skills and time to make more instead of attempting to save more.
Note: I am not speaking of extreme cases here. There are definitely situations where some people find themselves in a vicious circle, but I assume that is the minority of cases.
For situation when you'll hear from management that they don't see you as engaged as others I guess your answer would be to just leave, it's that simple.
Thing is not everyone can easily change jobs. And it's not only a matter of (un)sufficient professional skills. (Less money outside of corp. environment or even number of jobs in particular location (and moving is also not on a plate sometimes))
Enjoy your chance not to participate but it's not really that simple
When I was hired, I said "I'm going to make X happen - this will give you Y competitive advantage over competitors Z1, Z2, and will generally do what I can to increase shareholder value". I made no promises about hours worked, and my employer isn't paying attention to that.
I "stand to my rights" when dealing with the police, government and other hostile parties - my employer and I have a collaborative relationship. We create value together and share in the proceeds. If the terms (the vast majority of which cannot be explicitly stated in a contract) no longer are mutually agreeable, we'll separate.
It's mainly semantics, but "shareholder value" sounds a bit narrow for me.
I would say the goal would be to improve the employer's idea/product/business. Or even a step further: society as a whole. Although shareholder value is the consequence in many cases, I personally wouldn't be motivated if I worded the goal of my collaborative relationship like that.
Also, while money is a useful result of this relationship, creating progress/improvement is the awesome part.
And unfortunately those brilliant, but cruel, geniuses have inspired an entire segment of unskilled managers and bosses who now think that by cargo-culting dickheadedness they can rise to the top.
The rest of the country can't wait for the bubble to pop in Silicon Valley so we can stop hero-worshipping assholes...
This idea of a detailed employment contract is something I've only heard about from europeans, and I'd love to see what the contracts look like. Generally employment in the USA is "at-will" and either party can terminate the arrangement at any time for any (or no) reason, without further obligations.
[1] -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
(not a high percentage overall though)
If it's really common that:
"an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason (that is, without having to establish 'just cause' for termination), and without warning"
then that explains the motivation of the workers to really please the bosses.
Is it really so common and easy to lose the job "just so"?
That very much depends what the market conditions are in your industry. In good times, even bad bosses will try to act professional, and good bosses are often downright humane. In bad times, there's always someone up the org chart to take the blame so the boss doesn't look like a jerk.
But "no reason" firings are comparatively uncommon. That's really more of a legal classification for, "I fired her because I find her tone-of-voice insubordinate."
Employers get away with it due to a mix of fear of being fired, and a bunch of people who act happy to give up their lives for the company.
The difference between less-than-full-time and full-time employment is the issue here. If you're a "full time" employee, depending on your local cultural values, you stay until the job is done, within reason. If you're on less than full time, in, I would wager, the vast majority of cases, the position is very closely regulated time-wise, ensuring the employee works their hours and very little more, if any.
Now two people work instead of one and they are no better off. Who is the second parent working for? The banks. Who pays? The kids.
The financialisation of land is a disaster, we are not more free we are enslaved by debt.
Prices are related to available credit. Wages (and rent) have hardly budged but land prices have rocketed.
Low interest rates allows banks to more efficiently financialise housing (that is to say price housing at the optimal point to extract as much economic rent as possible). You get to spread your repayments over a long time and end up paying lots of lovely interest.
Higher rates (and therefore more wage inflation) quickly erodes the debt whilst putting a ceiling on the asset price bounded by wages at the time you sign the mortgage deeds.
The west has been utterly captured by banks. We've seen politicians walk rates down to zero to allow the asset price bubble to continue to extract value from labour.
This is the issue. It's not off-topic for this - all families are working two jobs for the banks.
ps also dude as you are in Canada (so am I):
http://www.greaterfool.ca/
Vancouver is nuts. Calgary: timber
I'm not convinced this is as true as a separate issues: many desirable cities and first-tier suburbs have implemented severe land-use controls that force families who want better school districts to pay for housing. This is a point Avent makes in The Gated City (http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005...) and Yglesias makes in The Rent is Too Damn High (http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0...).
I read Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry in the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth but am worried that land-use controls weren't really even on George's radar for obvious reasons; in the 19th C the U.S. was a different place. I don't think the book is bad exactly but much has changed. think the causal issue runs from "land use restriction" -> "higher prices" rather than "dual income" -> "higher prices."
So, people don't pay for housing or land use, they pay for school district.
Perhaps, in the US, there are indirect ways that land use impacts school quality, but it wouldn't have to be that way.
Anybody who's overpaying for good school district is chasing home ownership in the area that's expensive to begin with.
What policies and/or regulations can we make to incentivize a market where house prices reduce over time? Is that the goal? Houses are on average twice as big as they were not too long ago. How much of the increase is due to people wanting bigger homes?
Therefore to have a free market in credit with these constraints it's inevitable that it will be used for speculation. We should have land value tax to win back our right to exist instead of credit fueled full land enclosure. It's an unmitigated disaster - the defining issue of our times.
Credit is near infinite as thanks to fractional reserve banking banks can create as much of it as demand requires. They are not constrained by savings. Most bank lending is against land, it's how money is being printed.
How has the market adapted when we are working 25 times 2 years for the same pile of bricks our parents worked for 15 years for? It's simply the banks taking more of a share of your labour. You get nothing else back.
There is no point in being more productive. It will feed through into land prices as disposable income (briefly) increases and then land prices go up and we are back where we started. This is how banks capture all productivity.
Read http://www.amazon.com/Progress-Poverty-Industrial-Depression...
ps in the UK house sizes are falling, in part because of smaller families / divorces but mostly because of land price ramping
I drove by it recently, and can say that the square footage hasn't changed. Don't take anecdote for data, only illustration, but my scenario was repeated hundreds of thousands of times in South Florida alone. (Some) houses are getting bigger, but that doesn't explain house prices.
As you note land prices per square foot have increased massively.
My parents paid $80,000 for a house in 1988. They haven't sold it, but it's probably worth around $200,000 today, which is an increase very slightly higher than the rate of inflation.
House prices (or, more significantly, house/land/building-permission bundles) where demand exceeds supply (in the US, generally rich coastal areas with tight zoning) are determined by available credit. House prices elsewhere are determined by marginal construction cost.
There are a lot of additional complications, many involving the use of single-family-only zoning and the cost of new construction as an implicit or explicit mechanism of segregation in the fair housing era.
I was a kid in the 1970's and grew up in a middle to upper-middle class neighborhood in, what was at the time, a newly-minted suburb of New York City. I was pretty fortunate, but back then I remember neighbors who didn't have central air conditioning, and whose kids slept two to a bedroom (sometimes, three), and who -- if they took a vacation -- went camping for vacations. Hand-me-downs were no big deal. And not everyone drove a new car. The really well off drove Cadillacs. We got McDonalds or Pizza once a week, to give mom a break.
If you take the equivalent lifestyle today, things are much different. Homes are bigger and better equipped. Cars are nicer -- and just about everyone in the family of driving age has one, of some kind. Vacations are more extravagant. People eat out more. Clothes are stylish.
The middle and upper-middle class don't aspire to the standard of living we had 40 years ago. Many of them would turn their noses up at it. But, truthfully, a number of them could get by on one income, if they lived more modestly.
I had a cousin of mine complain, a few years back, about how it takes two incomes to "survive." Do you want to know her idea of "surviving"? They have a big house with an in-ground pool, and an outdoor Tiki bar. They drive Volvos, and take nice vacations.
For me, that about sums it up.
I feel like there's a healthier (both physically and economically) balance somewhere around 50/50.
Average square footage of a single-family dwelling in 1950 was 983 sq. ft. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283 and guess what happened to the square footage once two incomes came into the equation.
This is exactly my statement when I told my boss I wanted to work part-time. Now, I only work around 20 up to 32 hours a week. Also, I feel I'm way more productive this way: I only work when I "feel like working". Because of that, I'm way more productive when I work.
I have dreams for my future. Doing a day-to-day office job isn't one of them. In my "spare time", I'm converting my hobby and passion into my own company so I can, hopefully, earn money with my hobby and stop working completely.
Yes, I'm from the Netherlands.
Additionally, there might me some cultural issue involved. A few years ago I worked in Germany and the one thing I didn't like about the German workspace is that companies didn't really want their workers to be productive and efficient, they just wanted them to put in all of their official working hours and complete all of the formalities involved, while also frowning upon any activities outside work. That was one of the reasons why I eventually moved out. I wanted to accomplish things and grow, the companies I interviewed at wanted me to stay 9-5 and be satisfied with their routine. I grew to dislike this attitude and eventually made other plans for myself.
When I applied at ASML they asked me: What if it looks like you will not be able to finish your work within the assigned time, what do you do?
I said: I would just work some more, if it doesn't happen very often, not a problem.
WRONG. Go to your project leader tell him: "I have time for either this or this, where should I put priority." We do not want overworked people.
ASML gave employees about 2 months salary as a bonus some time back, this is on top of a customary 13th month in December.
Maybe the little value that is put in hierarchy (my boss has my respect because he is smart, never just because he is my boss). Displays of hierarchy are very badly appreciated here. We appreciate professors that want to be called by their first name. It balances things more perhaps.
There are a few exceptions in Dutch IT but, unsurprisingly, they are mostly staffed with internationals.
Isn't it plain backwards to send a kid to child care and go to work to pay for it? Unless you are earning an awful lot of money at your job, it doesn't feel right. It just makes so much sense to me to have one of the parents stay at home with the kids, spending most of this beautiful time together.
Heck, I want to have kids soon, but first I want to figure out how to earn enough money to maintain my family being the only earner + not working more than 30-32 hours a week. This could mean having a lot less money at the end of month, but it's temporary until the little ones are a bit older.
Paying salary for 1 full timer may seem a little lower than 2 part timers initially. But with better family life, I would think you will get better productivity and recover the investment by retaining workers better.
So, bean-counting makes you prefer fewer heads, and some of that cost is not just due to bean-counters, but very real.
"Britain" is, like "the United Kingdom", a common less-formal name [0] for the nation-state whose full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and is the source of the usual adjective form associated with that nation-state, "British".)
Britain, of course, isn't a "country" as that term is used in the UK, of course; England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are the countries of the UK. But the use here isn't to identify a country in that sense, but a sovereign state.
Better pedants, please.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom : "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a sovereign state in Europe."
I'm male by the way.