
Why Germans have higher productivity and longer vacations - y2002
http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/lifestyle/article/why-germans-have-longer-vacation-times-and-more-productivity-glen-stansberry
======
jasonkester
Reading the comments here, I'm surprised to see so many people defending the
2-week-vacation policies in America, rather than trying to figure out ways to
get 6-week-vacations implemented over here. Doesn't anybody think they'd be
happier with more time off? Enough so to make it a priority?

I tend to take a _lot_ of time off, and one thing I notice when I come back
from a trip is how much more productive I feel. It's like there's all this
pent-up brainpower waiting to get out, and none of whatever baggage was
clogging it up before I left to get in the way.

I used to work 3 month contracts at this one shop, with 6 to 9 month breaks in
the middle. I actually alienated some of the developers there because I'd show
up and be 10X - 50X as productive as the next guy (measurable in things
delivered), mainly because I was so stoked to be back writing code. I know
that if I'd stayed there an entire year at a stretch, my throughput would have
come down to a similar level as the rest of the team. But because of the way I
worked, they'd get 3 months of _fast_ , and then I'd be out the door.

I notice the same thing with my own projects when I'm travelling. If I dip out
of internet coverage for a week or so and then get a day to run, it's amazing
to see how much I get done in that day. I imagine that you could get similar
results at a regular company by taking 3 or 4 short breaks over the course of
the year.

~~~
ovi256
If the sheep are trained well, you don't need fences.

------
ShabbyDoo
What is the marginal cost to an employer in Germany of an hour of labor? And,
in the US? The article did not explicitly state the metric used to quantify
"output", but, given other similar studies I've seen, I must presume that
profit/employee across the economy is a likely underlying metric. Given such a
metric, could labor cost differences explain this "efficiency"? Let us
consider a contrived example where, in Ohio, construction workers earn
$20/hour and, in New York, $60. If we examined the techniques used (by
capitalists) to build a structure, we would surely observe more capital-
intensive but labor saving techniques in New York when compared to Ohio. Does
this mean that the New York workers get more done? If you measure output
(yards of concrete spread per day or whatever), then yes -- using a really
expensive robotic concrete spreader allows the $60/hour employee to produce a
lot of output. However, it might also be rational in Ohio to forgo the machine
in favor of more labor-intensive methods. The profitability of the Ohio
construction company might actually be higher, but the laborers in New York
are "more productive."

I know little of Germany's regulations w.r.t. employment. Are labor costs (due
to not only wages but taxes paid by the employer and other non-wage burdens)
higher? Do employers in Germany rationally select higher levels of automation?
Could this explain the disparity between countries in such a metric?

~~~
wheels
Wages are in general lower, and on the whole the spectrum is compressed -- so
low-paid jobs tend to be a big higher, but a software developer in Berlin
makes about half to a third of what they would in Silicon Valley.

Also, the article is a bit off on some of its numbers -- 6 weeks of vacation
aren't required by law, 24 days are (i.e. just under 5 weeks), though 6 is a
common perk.

Additionally, at least in the software industry, I've commonly seen people
reporting fewer hours than they actually work because by law overtime must be
compensated by money or vacation, which is often an annoyance for the employer
and employee (i.e. you're working late to get something done, by choice, and
your boss is annoyed because now they're supposed to give you vacation time
for that), so I got in the habit of always just reporting 40 hours.

In general I'd take this article with a grain of salt; it's not that it's
mostly wrong, but it's clearly written in fandom, rather than a quest-for-
understanding sort of way.

~~~
ido
Why would you compared Berlin (one of Germany's poorer mega-cities) to pretty
much the best paying area for tech workers in the states?

It's true that you'd still see a huge salary disparity even if you compare SV
to Hamburg, Munich or Frankfurt, but comparing to Berlin is still a bit
disingenuous.

Also, I believe SV (especially for tech workers) is the outlier here - there
is no other place in the world where developers are so highly payed, and the
highest average wage earners among professionals in Germany are not people in
the software industry like in SV (they are probably the people working in
finance & banking in Frankfurt).

~~~
wheels
The example holds for Hamburg, and is pretty close for Munich or Frankfurt.
(I've spent four years working in Baden-Württemberg and four in Berlin.) Tech
salaries are just a lot lower in Germany. In comparison, in the US, there are
a number of cities where wages are pretty close to Silicon Valley. I believe
NYC is a bit higher. If you want to compare finance to finance, I assure you
that salaries in New York are higher than they are in Frankfurt.

------
hugothefrog
I just returned from Berlin a couple of nights ago, and met an English guy
(I'm a New Zealander living in London) who'd worked there for a few years. He
is an aerospace engineer working for a very famous English engineering firm in
their German office.

He was of the opinion that German productivity, at least when compared with
other European countries, was a myth. He told exactly the same anecdotes about
German individuality as this article mentions, but gave it quite a negative
spin.

When handing out bits of work to fellow engineers, the Germans would tend to
put their heads down and start work immediately, instead of consulting with
colleagues about previous solutions to the same problem, etc. Basically he
said they did quite a lot of very efficient, very correct, very over-
engineered re-inventing of the wheel.

Particularly he pointed out that to a German engineer, every part of the
solution was equally important, where as to an English engineer, it was
obvious some parts where more important than others. Focusing on those gave a
better quality end-result when faced with a limited budget, but a German with
a unlimited budget would give you an absolutely fantastic end-result.

~~~
hga
R. V. Jones made a similar observation in _Most Secret War_ (WWII) about
collaboration between the operational and R&D branches. The Germans would
build to spec without interaction with the requesting organization producing a
fine piece of engineering whereas in the U.K. there would tend to be back and
forth on the requirements and so on, with the U.K. device being less polished
but more flexible and more likely to satisfy needs current and future. And I
think often more quickly developed, since the R&D types would say "Well, can
you relax this requirement?" and so on.

So this sounds like a long established engineering culture.

~~~
Vivtek
Germany is _the_ long-established engineering culture, building on the old
guild system of craftsmen. (Which still exist - the craftsmen's guilds, I
mean. You aren't allowed to fix musical instruments until you've gone through
your apprenticeship and journeyman's year.)

~~~
zeemonkee
Well, the UK was there first, with the Industrial Revolution.

It subsequently lost that lead to Germany - I don't have the link to hand, but
one possible reason was the lax copyright laws in the German states allowed
easier re-publication of technical manuals.

More recently British engineering ability has criminally been allowed to
wither on the vine, but that's another story.

------
jacobolus
_“Geoghegan believes Germans understate their work hours, and Americans
overstate work hours. Yet both countries are getting roughly the same amount
of work done. This means that Germans are actually doing more, while working
less.”_

Is it just me, or does the claim about over/understating work hours run
exactly contrary to the subsequent claim? (To be explicit: Germans understate
their hours ⇒ they work more hours than they say ⇒ statistics showing Germans
with higher productivity are exaggerated. And similarly Americans understate
hours ⇒ they work less than claimed ⇒ they are more productive than statistics
would suggest.)

~~~
timr
The author got the original statement backwards, partly because the original
quote was confusing. From the Geohegan interview:

 _"Look at their productivity rates. They’re like ours. I think we understate
our hours and they overstate them, because they take so much time off and
sneak off early from work. If the productivity rates being reported are
officially the same, and if they’re understating and we’re overstating,
they’re probably working more efficiently than we are, and maybe the fact that
they’re taking time off has something to do with that."_

Sounds like Geohegan himself made a mistake in the second sentence, which
could have led to the confusion.

------
ugh
I think it’s funny that productivity is often the only frame which is used to
discuss Germany’s mandated vacation [1]. That’s not at all the intent of the
law, its purpose is not increasing productivity. It exists because German
lawmakers think that every employee deserves at least four weeks of paid
vacation the same way US lawmakers think that every employee deserves at least
$7.25 per hour [2].

I [3] am completely willing to accept possible adverse effects of mandated
vacations on productivity as long as they are not too drastic [4]. I don’t
view vacations as a means of improving productivity. (They might well be but
the evidence I know of doesn’t do a good job of convincing me either way.)

[1] The law mandates 20 days if you work five days a week so it’s actually
four weeks, not six.

[2] Funny enough, Germany doesn’t actually have a minimum wage.

[3] Just so you are not confused, I’m German.

[4] Germans are extremely wealthy so I’m not exactly concerned.

~~~
halostatue
A discussion I had with a German couple in Verona while I was on vacation
suggested that German companies don't generally give sick days and that the
mandated vacation time had to be used for sick days. Was what I heard correct?

As a comparison, the American company I work for (in Canada) provides a
default of two weeks vacation with two weeks PEL (Personal Emergency Leave)
that can be used for doctors' appointments, etc. That's twenty days, although
only ten of them can be used for vacations.

I realize that not every company in America provides sick days, but that's IMO
a different issue.

~~~
yardie
They don't have sick days. When you are sick you are sick it could be 1 day or
6 months. They don't give sick days because the government pays for your time
off. So while they may miss out on your productivity, financially, they've
lost little.

As an American I've encountered far too many Americans coming into work with
just "a little cold" and getting the rest of the office sick. Dragging
everyone else down with them because they can't afford to take time off to see
a doctor and get medicated.

~~~
ulf
"They don't give sick days because the government pays for your time off."

That is not true. The employer pays the salary for six weeks of sickness.
After that, the health insurance provider takes over. I believe that the
american sick-day-model could never work here because of unions and other
employee-interest organizations. So it is not really up to the company, they
have to pay you your salary and cannot take vacation time away from you
because of sickness. However, ongoing sickness can be a reason to fire an
employee.

~~~
eru
> However, ongoing sickness can be a reason to fire an employee.

Are you sure about that?

~~~
ulf
There are some very strict requirements, but yes, it can be a reason for
termination. The requirements are things like future prognosis of the
employee's health, and undoubted negative impact on the economic situaion of
the employer because of the illness.

~~~
eru
OK. But isn't there a clause, that when you already knew when you hired the
guy, that you can't fire him? (Or was it the other way around, and you were
barred from knowing when hiring? It's all complicated.)

------
Vivtek
My first job out of college was in Stuttgart, Germany. The boss apologized in
the orientation meeting that as a small company, they could only provide 28
paid days of vacation.

He wasn't sure why I was laughing.

------
JustAGeek
I'm a bit late to the party but whatever, just wanted to let you know that us
Germans don't have 6 weeks federally mandated vacations, it's 24 days:
[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesurlaubsgesetz#Gesetzliche...](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesurlaubsgesetz#Gesetzlicher_Mindesturlaub)

That's the minimum, most people I know have 28-30 days. On top of that you can
get up to 5 days of paid educational leave.

The article as a whole is quite superficial, imho.

Not sure if those working in big companies like Deutsche Telekom or Daimler
would agree to the claim that Germans don't have many meetings, for example...
;)

~~~
danielh
Actually, it's only 24 days if you have six work days in a week. For a 5-day-
week, it's 20 days per year minimum.

~~~
JustAGeek
Ah, didn't know that, thanks. In fact, I haven't even known the 24 days before
I looked it up in Wikipedia... :D

------
raphman
The article has some facts not completely correct: "The government provides
citizens with free healthcare, free university education, and childcare."
Healthcare plans are mandatory for most but not paid by the government.
University education at public universities costs between 0 and 500 EUR per
semester, childcare is subsidized but not completely free.

~~~
nickik
500 EUR per semester is not mutch in America you pay like 5000$ or something?

------
flannell
As a Brit who used to work in New York, for an investment company, I have a
different view. While I agree my US fellow workers are very sociable during
the day, they do tend to run off 5pm sharp! There's no "go for beers after
work" environment. I spoke to them candidly about this and they said their
real friends are the ones they grew up with and tend to hang out with them. I
also had a colleague at HSBC and another at JPM who also expressed the same
view, but added that's why brits do well over in the states because they are
used to working longer hours and this appears favourable to the bosses.

Anyway, not trolling, just thought relevant.

~~~
zeemonkee
That's what I found working over on the West Coast some years ago - the guys I
socialized with after hours were fellow-non Americans. The impression was that
Americans form their strongest relationships in their high school/college
years and stick to their cliques. That may be a generalization though.

------
tptacek
There's no such thing as a free lunch; whether or not we're less productive,
nobody's paying you for the hours you don't work. And, indeed, aren't
Germany's wages, by sector, consistently lower than those in the US?

~~~
yummyfajitas
According to Max Klein, that is certainly true for programmers. Based on the
numbers he gave, "a good programmer" in Germany gets paid less than a fresh
college grad in the US.

<http://maxkle.in/giving-up-on-europe/>

~~~
auston
I have different experience (lived in Germany for 10 months),
JavaScript/Ruby/Python developers make roundabout 35-55 euros per hour.

Additionally, this article rings true for my experience both living in Germany
& working with Germans in the US (especially here); They bust ass & are
amazingly productive.

~~~
ptomato
Contracting or salaried? Because that's _very_ low at least for contract Ruby
developers in the US.

------
gaborcselle
There is no data backing up the claims and stereotypes in this article.

~~~
lenni
I'm German I find the recent sentiment towards Germany enjoyable but a bit
surprising. Not long ago we we're the sick old man of Europe and Ireland was
the European tiger.

I like life in Germany but it all seems like flavour-of-the-month journalism.

~~~
mhd
Ireland has the same problems that the US has right now: Not enough industry.
Germany actually produces a lot, which made the crisis less severe, even
considering that the German finance sector basically did everything wrong they
could do wrong. The boom in Ireland was founded on the service industry, with
huge tax breaks to finance it. And the US has been moving more and more
industrial jobs offshore.

I don't want to over-simplify. The US has a higher population and thus doesn't
need to export as much. But actually manufacturing something ain't that bad.
Didn't someone complain recently that even Silicon Valley is doing that less
and less?

~~~
anonymousDan
Don't know about that, a large part of the boom in Ireland was founded on the
construction industry, fuelled by an oversupply of cheap credit. As far as I
know its service industry (and exports in general) are holding up pretty well.

------
vegasbrianc
I'm not joining the battle on which country is more efficient but I do think
it is important that you can disconnect from work with vacation/holiday. Born
in the US and now living in Europe for over 6 years I've worked in both
environments. I do have to say when returning from a long vacation you are
ready to hit the ground running with your batteries fully charged.

------
mhd
Hmm? That's news to me, I thought the US had a higher productivity overall.
Hourly Germany might be better, but considering that you'd have to go to Korea
to find people putting in more hours, the US comes out ahead.

And while France was behind Germany, they do even fewer hours.

Whether that matters a lot is a different matter altogether. Life-work balance
is one issue, job satisfaction another. Working more hours vs. wanting to work
more hours etc.

And in my experience, the IT industry is a bit different anyway, never mind
the entrepreneurial sector thereof. So does this matter a lot to the usual
HackerNews reader? Probably not.

------
GiraffeNecktie
According to this table Germany actually has LOWER productivity than the
United States

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OECD_Productivity_levels_2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OECD_Productivity_levels_2007.svg)

Or MUCH lower according to this table
[http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_ove_pro_ppp-economy-
ov...](http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_ove_pro_ppp-economy-overall-
productivity-ppp)

~~~
varjag
You don't really think we in Norway are 20% more productive than people in the
US, right?

The graph is just a rephrased GDP per capita. For a small nation with massive
oil sector you have a huge distortion of metric it supposed to illustrate.

------
JohnIdol
Even if it's true that from europe the impression is that ppl in the US have
no holidays and do less in more time (here we go, appreciate the honesty pls),
I think it's wrong to generalize based on a few examples, as a lot of it
probably depends on size and philosophy of the company and, obviously, on how
you measure productivity.

------
fauigerzigerk
I wonder why the term productivity is even used in this article. The debate
about how much vacation time people should get has very little to do with
productivity in my view. Productivity is output per hour worked, no matter how
many hours are actually spent working.

------
known
47% of people in Germany are receiving a monthly unemployment or social
security pension from the government. <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-
bin/eo20060903a1.html>

------
rjurney
Because they measure productivity in an unAmerican way.

------
sasvari
more discussion here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635385>

has been around here lately quite a lot ...

------
charlesju
My counter argument:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

USA GDP - 14.2 T Germany GDP - 3.3 T

~~~
fforw
Of course you also have 3.5 times the population

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita)

difference only 26%... guess you should move to Qatar or Luxembourg though --
but when you're not rich from oil or moving large sums of bank money around,
that high GDP is not actually helping, is it?

And then there is stuff like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-
life_index>.

~~~
BrandonM
> And then there is stuff like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-
> life_index>.

Wow, that article looks pretty bogus. Here are their factors:

 _2\. Family life: Divorce rate._ My parents are divorced and they both seem
pretty happy. This metric seems very biased and not clearly beneficial. Is it
better to keep an unhappy marriage together or to create two new happier
marriages?

 _3\. Community life: country has either high rate of church attendance or
trade-union membership._ Seriously? Apparently freelancing atheists are
miserable.

 _6\. Climate and geography: Latitude, to distinguish between warmer and
colder climates._ It's ridiculous to claim that latitude is a prime determiner
of quality-of-life. Some people prefer tropical beaches, but others love
changing seasons and still others like ice fishing. As far as climate and
geography are concerned, would you rather live in a Saharan desert or Crete?
Places with similar latitudes can have vastly different climates, anyways.

 _7\. Job security: Unemployment rate._ Fair enough, but low unemployment rate
isn't necessarily an indicator of job security: there could still be high
churn. Also, a nation that provides a sufficient level of services means that
the unemployed are never too badly off, while a country that provides none
could see its few unemployed living in misery. Serious question: would a
country with single-worker households have an unemployment rate near 50%?

 _9\. Gender equality: Measured using ratio of average male and female
earnings._ Terrible. Does this even factor in number of hours worked? It
certainly doesn't account for differences in the work being performed or for
cultural differences.

By my count, about half of those metrics are crap. Creating an index from that
is basically hokum. Anyone could tweak the metrics to almost arbitrarily
reorder the rankings.

~~~
varjag
> 9\. Gender equality: Measured using ratio of average male and female
> earnings. Terrible. Does this even factor in number of hours worked? It
> certainly doesn't account for differences in the work being performed or for
> cultural differences.

This is still a useful metric, cultural reasons or not. Half of the world's
population are women.

~~~
BrandonM
The problem I have with it is that it implies quality-of-life is tied to
earnings. That's like saying a single mother working two jobs has a better
quality of life than a rich socialite. I know plenty of women who are
perfectly happy to be homemakers, work part-time during the day, or teach so
that they can enjoy family life.

"Gender equality" the way they measure it here seems to be saying that men and
women should ideally live the same. Freedom of choice and equal rights is what
matters, and I don't feel that this metric even comes close to measuring that.

~~~
varjag
Money is a good first approximation of freedom and independence however. And
while the extremes you used to illustrate might indeed be uncommon, when we
talk about statistics in magnitude of national populations they are not going
to distort overall picture.

