
Sitzfleisch: The German concept to get more work done - sonabinu
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180903-to-have-sitzfleisch---its-a-professional-compliment
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wirrbel
As a German I spent an abroad term in Canada, so here as a grain of salt the
difference between German and the work ethic across the pond.

9am: I arrive in the lab at around, sit at my desk and set up my stuff.
Unfortunately there was is one around to start the day with a coffee break.
10am: Canadian lab mates arrive, sit at their desks and go on facebook. noon:
After spending three hours reading papers, fitting curves to data, etc. I get
hungry. I go to lunch with a Dutch person I met in the building a couple of
weeks ago. 1.30pm: Back at my desks. Through the towers of take away junk on
my lab mates desks, I can see they made some progress on facebook. 3pm: I try
to convince some of my labmates to go for the coffee place within the building
to have a short communal coffee break. Of course everyone is too busy and
cannot socialize, except for the post-doc from india (who does not facebook)
3:45pm: Back at the desk, wrapping up the results of my day, my lab mates are
still "working". Next morning, they will tell me they stayed till 8pm in the
lab and how increadibly busy they are.

Granted, in between visiting facebook and skipping communal lunch- and coffee
breaks, they got some work done and I don't claim I delivered more results in
terms of research and learning "output".

Yet I think it summarizes my and the experience of other Germans quite well.
In Germany there is much more focus on not working long-hours but spending the
hours you work productively. A German workday of an office worker is limited
to max. 10h per day by law and my employer follows that rule religiously. Many
colleagues contractually have 35 h work weeks and working 40 h requires a
permit from the worker's council. If you are sick, you stay at home on sick
leave, you join your colleagues again when you are better. American colleagues
working here for a year or so as part of their assignment quite often start
out to send an email that they are sick and will work from home. If you are
sick, why do you work? Your job now is to get better. Quite often, breaks for
lunch or coffee are started and ended together. Only few people come into the
office with half-liter coffee mugs to consume on their desks.

Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, and office cultures of individual
companies may differ. My current company's culture is very German if you
arrive before 8am, you might be welcomed with handshakes by your colleagues.

~~~
lnsru
I would say, foreigners always do more than locals. They feel, they have prove
something, maybe less social contacts too. I observe the same behavior like
your Canadian lab mates with my young German colleagues. All day long sitting
in mobile Facebook or drinking coffee for 30 minutes every 2 hours. Germans
aren’t majority among department’s top performing people.

Edit: it’s IG Metall company and you can’t fire people easily. So low
performers accumulate over the time. Talents come and go.

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foepys
> So low performers accumulate over the time.

This is an incredibly offensive statement against unions and I want to see
some proof from you for this. All large corporations in Germany have unions
and Germany is still one of the world's economic powerhouses.

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dmichulke
Sometimes statements of facts may seem incredibly offensive. Others should be
able to mention those in a related discussion, even if offensive, because
otherwise the discussion is biased.

I use the word "fact" above because I think it is obvious that if firing is
hard, low performers accumulate. I'm happy to elaborate if you wish.

~~~
Firadeoclus
So where do low performers come from and where do they go to when you fire
them? What is their flow through the economy? A fired low performer will still
look for, and likely find, another job. The assumption there might be that
they will learn and try harder, but whether that is the actual effect is much
less obvious than you might think.

It's also not obvious at all that churn is good for overall productivity of an
economy. Can you show that making firing harder or easier causally affects
average productivity (or the productivity distribution) in a specific
direction?

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sidstling
Great headline, terrible article. It mostly talks about German words and
almost nothing of German work ethics. The only interesting bit is around the
end where it quickly skirts over the fact that you need to make employees
realize they are unproductive before you can work on their behavior.

All the other stuff is just meh. I mean, the language analysis isn’t even very
good, or in depth, with terrible half-assed English translations.

Basically, don’t waste you time reading this.

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lnsru
Never heard about this “Sitzfleisch” thing living in Germany many many years.
Young people don’t use it. Maybe it’s some old people thing?

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pragmatick
I never use it but know the word and usually when I hear it it's more
negative, e.g. when you have guests who won't leave you might say that they
have Sitzfleisch.

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hodgesrm
This is the only meaning of Sitzfleisch I have ever encountered. It's not a
compliment at least in our house.

~~~
btschaegg
Interesting. I think I only ever heard the term in context with politicians
that that were elected "too many times" by someone's standard. There, it
_certainly_ isn't meant positively -- the funny thing is that this goes rather
well with the phrase mentioning Angela Merkel at the beginning of the article.
There are more and more voices now that would prefer someone new taking her
post.

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mrleiter
Experienced the same thing in Austria: I'm from the most western part, which
mostly has alemannic and rhaeto-romance influence and the work ethic is
"german". You have Sitzfleisch, I go to work/university at 7am and after maybe
5-10mins of relaxing, I get start working/studying. I take a break at midday
and a short one in the afternoon and leave around 5.30/6pm

People at the very eastern end of Austria, like Vienna, are far less "German".
Their work ethic is much more relaxed, and like user _wirrbel_ pointed out,
they stay late to work, simply because they start later and get less work done
in the same amount of time.

~~~
austrianguy
Very eastern end Austrian here:

Working from 7:30am to 5pm. Cannot understand the German work ethic and the
often seen German workaholics.

You work to live, you do not live to work!

~~~
TurboHaskal
I’ve been working in Germany for a decade and I’ve unfortunately never
witnessed this so called German work ethic.

I do hear about it a lot specially when talking about my home country and
ironically during coffee breaks.

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PacifyFish
I love German words.

Disappointingly this article skirts around the obvious English translation:
“ass-in-seat.”

~~~
AstralStorm
English has a slightly more general word. It is "grit". The ability to work
continuously and without being distracted. Perseverance of effort. Ability to
execute on a long term goal efficiently.

~~~
ThePadawan
I would also consider "grit" to be a very appreciative term. "Sitzfleisch" I
would consider more neutral, a person's property rather than a virtue.

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neftaly
Related, the book "Dreams of Earth and Sky" by Freeman Dyson:

"Why did [Oppenheimer] not succeed in scientific research as brilliantly as he
succeeded in soldiering and administration? I believe the main reason why he
failed was a lack of Sitzfleisch. Sitzfleisch is a German word with no
equivalent in English. The literal translation is “Sitflesh.”

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/comments/1k5ihx/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/comments/1k5ihx/why_did_he_not_succeed_in_scientific_research_as/)

[https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5nZoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256&lp...](https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5nZoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=+reason+why+he+failed+was+a+lack+sitzfleisch&source=bl&ots=Zm95CRp9Ev&sig=ZzCpKbJSJAENfEVDd_Ld199eXIE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwibppLBpqPdAhWBKnwKHXikDYYQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=reason%20why%20he%20failed%20was%20a%20lack%20sitzfleisch&f=false)

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toolslive
2 Comments:

\- It's common Chess vocabulary. Sometimes you need to work for hours to be
able to win a technical position. Sitzfleisch is what it takes to do this.

\- The same word (with the same meaning) exists in Dutch: zitvlees.

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parallel
I recently encountered an English equivalent 'ass glue'.

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fogetti
" _Before employees can work on increasing their productivity, they need to
realise that they are underproductive_ "

This is seriously flawed (and over-generalizing). This basically assumes that
the cause of underproductivity lies with the employee. Where are the arguments
which are supporting this??

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falsedan
If an employee is unproductive because they are unmotivated, they do have the
self-empowerment to say “this project isn’t motivating for me, let’s reassign
me/plan for a more motivating project next/go over what the stakeholders need
from this”. If they are lacking the skills required to succeed at the project,
they can go for training/get more experience from completing a similar,
smaller project. And if they are apathetic and feel like they can avoid
redundancy by putting in the minimal effort, they can look for a new job.

Sometimes the cause is external, like poor & changing requirements or wishful
planning, or a bad personal relationship with coworkers, but even then the
employee can feed that back to management. If they choose not to act on this
feedback, see the ‘apathy’ option above.

Source is self-management on solo projects.

