It's almost like working 60+ hour weeks churning out CRUD apps to get a rich person richer isn't the secret path to happiness or something.

The amount of time spent commuting certainly doesn't help either.

Commute time should really be considered part of work. I wouldn't be making the trip if it weren't for going to the job so why shouldn't it be considered work hours?

Because you have considerable influence over how long your commute time is. I can choose to live in a tiny apartment across the street from my job and walk to work, or I can choose a large house and drive 50 minutes to work. That's a personal decision. The worker who chooses the 50 minutes isn't entitled to anything more than the one who lives close by.

not really, once you have kids in picture its a whole different math. also the whole buying vs renting thing. to drive the seriousness of this home, Elizabeth warren did a study back when she was a prof & found that for every 10 point deviation from median in school performance house prices went up by 20 points.

Just because you do not like the choices that are available to you does not mean such choices do not exist. I have a child so I know all about the different math. We could still choose to live in a small apartment in the city. Some people do that because they want to; others, because they have to.

Yeah the amount of influence you have is very minimal, especially when you consider changing jobs, are you supposed to move each time you do? I think that is an often claimed adage (like the whole trickle down effect one) that is much less true in reality.

Don't change jobs then. You have that choice. There are jobs I will not accept because the commute is not acceptable to me.

Hold on, I need to write that one down...

In your CRUD ToDo app?

I feel like you're judging me and my app.

Of course I am, I'm European!

This is a CRUD app safe-space.

How common is this really? I've worked at three companies. One big, one small, one medium. And at all of them I work around 40 hours making 6 figures, and feel like I'm working more than everyone else at the company.

Where are all these 60+ hour workers? Are they making even MORE money?

Shocking how people accept that.

Shocking how average people accept the salaries they make and tax rates they pay.. smart people know better.

Indeed. Just think of the social safety net and universal healthcare we could have in the US if we taxed the highest marginal income rates appropriately.

EDIT: And how much more holiday/vacation time we'd have if it was mandated at the federal level.

Raising the tax rates to 45% would (optimistically) generate 250 billion in the first year, which is ~20% of just medicare and medicaid. Which is only to say, improving access to health care and making it sustainable in this country is a much more complicated problem.

EDIT: Links:

- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/business/putting-numbers-t...

- https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs...

I agree that we'd also have to drive down healthcare costs using single payer.

You need to tax wealth as well, not just income. Accumulated wealth is what results and continues the inequality, not incomes.

That will disincentivise investment and encourage consumption and emigration once you've made your pile.

that's very socialist approach - excessive taxation on everything only gives rises to tax havens for wealthy ones. who would be targeted is not truly wealthy, but say upper middle class which isn't rich enough to use these kind of services, they are the ones spending most on services, which keep blue collar jobs, like it or not. This layer of citizens is necessary for healthy function of any society. If you strive to destroy them via excessive taxation (ie move them to low middle class over time), you are hurting economy in long run.

Don't forget truly rich have plenty of completely legal companies that advise them how to 'optimize' their taxes. Companies smarter and better equipped than your average lawmaker. I mean look at the presidential candidates - obviously both are doing it. Everybody rich is doing it.

What kind of wealth is currently untaxed?

Stocks or bonds => income tax + capital gains tax

Real estate => property taxes + capital gains tax

Cash => taxed by inflation

Metals => capital gains tax

You do know that the US has one of the most progressive tax rates in the world right?

You mean progressively lower and lower for those with the most?

Leaving aside Wall-street the Tech Bubble where people work grueling hours in the hopes of becoming a millionaire, the rest of the US works grueling hours because they need to in order to eat, pay their rent, etc. Telling someone who is working 40+ hours in order to make ends meet that they need to "work less" is tantamount to telling them to become homeless and destitute.

The point to a more progressive tax system. If the goal is to maximize a number(GPD) then a less progressive tax system makes sense. If the goal is to maximize "total human happiness"(could use a better term here I know) you need a more progressive tax system.

I think the effects of the tax system on GDP and human happiness (defined how?) are still an open research topic.

I don't think people would be telling them not to work; more they'd be telling their bosses not to be such cheap asses.

That is not true. Some tech people go in hoping to be millionaires, but the environment is extremely cut throat, esp with competition like India with billions of people keen on dominating tech, as well as Chinese skill. Many of the tech people end up competing to stay afloat, and to eat the weakest dog in the pack just to stay in that arena.

Silicon Valley and Seattle/Redmond are probably the most cut throat areas you could work in. It gets really nasty there.

That's exactly it. Dutch workers apparently work the least number of hours per year, yet Netherland is one of the richest, happiest and most productive countries in Europe. The country where people work the most hours in the EU is Greece.

(I realize this Bloomberg article has slightly different figures than the one I remember from another study. Maybe they used different ways to measure this, maybe the situation changed. I think the former.)

I'm about to turn 31, and I make a decent salary as a Senior Software Engineer. I'm deeply considering going to live on a few acres and go full subsistence to avoid this rat race. Software isn't fun anymore, our generation probably won't retire.

The worst part is that crippling medical bills and college loan repayment are destroying us financially.

I think I'd be happier surviving what I can do myself than to keep doing this bullshit much longer.

> I'm deeply considering going to live on a few acres and go full subsistence to avoid this rat race. Software isn't fun anymore, our generation probably won't retire.

Have you ever actually worked on a farm? Its not fun either, its actual hard work. Most farmers don't retire either. The historical way this worked was as you got older your family helped more on the farm until one of them took over. You worked till you died though.

> The worst part is that crippling medical bills and college loan repayment are destroying us financially.

You think your medical bills are bad now, wait until you start dealing with industrial machinery and hard work. Not to mention the fact that your insurance will come out of your pocket directly instead of being employer provided. Your college loans are a pittance compared to what it would cost to buy an economically feasible farm in the USA right now.

> I think I'd be happier surviving what I can do myself than to keep doing this bullshit much longer.

I'd recommend trying it for a summer before you burn your bridges in Software (which for the record, might be the cushiest way to make a living of all time).

So thanks for the lecture, but yes I actually have. I like communicating with people, so please don't patronize me as if I'm some child. Try actually having a dialog.

Source: grew up on a farm.

I have no desire to sit in a "cushy" job just because it is one. That lifestyle may be harder, but I strongly suspect I'd get to the end of my life with less regrets about the whole thing.

Spending your whole life doing back breaking hard work, tilling soil, planting seeds, hoeing weeds, harvesting, eating and sleeping. Rinse and repeat for years on end, with nothing to show for it except that you've managed to stay alive, all just to die of skin cancer at the age of 65 from being out in the sun all day (or from being around so much fertilizer and insecticide chemicals). Sounds fulfilling!

Source: I grew up on a farm, too.

Glad to hear you are entering your next profession with eyes open.

My first job at 13 was on a farm and I lasted about a week before I realized I wasn't made for that life and I started planning on going to college. There is a long tradition of people claiming that life is for them without having ever actually done it successfully (I'm looking at you Thoreau).

If you think that you'd be happier living that way I don't see much reason not to go do it. But the complaints in your comment don't seem to be addressed by your desire to work as a farmer. Your debt levels, insurance rates and chance for retirement are all likely to be much, much worse as a farmer (subsistence or otherwise) than as a software developer. In fact, right now, you would be hard pressed to find an occupation that optimizes for those 3 things better than working as a software engineer.

But, of course those things don't have to be tied to someones happiness. If they aren't tied to yours, don't conflate them.

you have loan and big medical bills (ie bad health?) and you want to go to work on a farm doing backbreaking hard work? not a very smart move, but than again you don't describe the smartest software dev out there (you can easily retire earlier in this kind of job if you want and work a bit, if not you are doing something very wrong).

By all means if this is what you desire, go for it. It just doesn't seem like a smart move to many here, me included (but we have very few info, so whole picture might be different)

Do both. Remote work is a thing and it's what my wife and I are currently doing. We have 9 acres and have many agricultural plans on the horizon.

Yeah. What kasey said. I've also considered this-- going down the permaculture route. I'd say, take baby-steps. Try WWOOFing with some of your vacation time. If you like it, get a remote job and start incrementally farming. Raise chickens, etc. Going cold-turkey is probably not a great plan!

I am 32, similar position as you (Lead SE).

Just save 50% of your money, retire cheaply at 45 or 50. It's not that hard to do with 100k+ salaries.

Once you get in the mind-set, the job becomes more fun. You know there's an end to it, and you have enough cash to walk at any time.

In most cases is not like they (the Americans) have a choice to work less hours. Vacation time in North America is significantly under the European norm.

Right. The articles aren't suggesting that Americans choose to work themselves to death, only that it's culturally acceptable. In most salaried office jobs you could set a hard stop at 5pm and refuse to answer calls on weekends, but you'd find yourself quickly replaced by someone who would. So you "choose" to put in the extra hours so you don't find yourself unemployed.

We have more (paid) vacation and more public holidays and sick leave is both paid for and not counted towards the vacation budget, and more maternity/paternity leave, and some countries have extra leave for things like family funerals.

It's not hard to "work less" like that.

I have all this things in the US. Sick leave is not counted in my vacation.

Maternity leave is much longer than paternity. And is paid for in full at my company for a time. FMLA allows 12 weeks total but it can be unpaid.

The main difference I've seen with the Europeans I work with is, they take big chunks off at a time in summer. They pay more taxes but have more time off. Most likely don't get full pay for Maternity/paternity leave.

It's great that you have all things things, but are they standard in the US? I think that's the main issue here, that as a baseline, europeans tend to get more time off.

I haven't seen any US companies offering 25 days of paid vacation a year, plus unlimited sick leave (doctors note required for more than 3 consecutive days), plus extra days off for personal emergencies eg children sick, death in family.

All the money in SV could never make me go there if I never have time to spend it.

A quick google search and I can't find many places in Europe that offer 25 days, not including the national holidays.

If I include national holidays I get 22 days off. No set sick days unless you're out for more than 5 consecutive days.

I'm not sure why you'd move to SV, startup life's seems like hell.

From Wikipedia[1], minimum annual days leave are:

UK: 28

Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden: 25

Iceland, Malta: 24

Portugal, Spain: 22

The EU mandates a minimum of 20 days, so all other EU member states have 20.

Of course, these are just the mandated minimums. Many employers will give more to be competitive.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

8 of those in the UK are Bank Holidays. I'm not sure about others countries because I'm from the UK, but I think other countries get more "real" holiday days than the UK.

Most companies I've worked for offer a little more than the minimum, for example I get 23 days excluding bank holidays and that generally increases by a day per year you've worked at the company or something like that.

> A quick google search and I can't find many places in Europe that offer 25 days, not including the national holidays.

The legal minimum in Europe is 20 days' vacation plus national holidays. Competitive employers offer more.

6 weeks holiday in UK, Germany and Sweden is fairly normal. I don't know about the other countries.

google provides all of these benefits.

What would my commute to Mountain View be like? 10 minutes by train or bus, while living in affordable accommodation?

If only one of the biggest tech companies in the world had multiple offices.

I don't know about mountain view, but on Google's software dev salary you should be able to live within 10 minutes of pretty much all of their US offices. I know for sure it's possible in nyc.

At least in Spain, maternity is full paid by the state

When I think of my european colleagues I'm always struck by a little jealousy. They enjoy an unbelievable quality life. They seem to be on vacation all the time and their cities are incredibly pleasant. The US has so far to go. There is no meaningful comparison that can be made by using currency.

> They enjoy an unbelievable quality life. They seem to be on vacation all the time and their cities are incredibly pleasant.

Er... I think you accidentally dropped a bucket of green paint on the other side of the fence :-)

amount of vacation guaranteed by law is minimum 20/year, most have 25. in US this is considered as a special perk from what I heard. how about maternity leave, social support during unemployment, sickness and so on? Normal americans travel very little before retirement, they just don't have vacation for 2 or 3-week holidays every year, plus more for family visits, christmas etc. I travel consistently +-7 weeks per year, since I take my vacation when public holidays happen. Having 100% perm job. How common is this in US?

In France, you can have up to 10 weeks of paid vacation (that's a bit extreme, but they are western europe commies after all).

Not sure about pleasantness of the cities, each is different, but one feels generally safer here.

>How happy are they working that extra 25%? They are richer, sure. But I don't think being rich is an indicator of your overall state.

They aren't that richer either -- if anything the majority is less rich in standard of living than most western European and nordic countries. Getting some more money in your salary is not worth much if you have to give most of it to medical coverage and basic services.

GDP per capita in the US is more than 25% greater than Europe.

And how is that GDP distributed again?

Which has what to do with standard of living?

Actually, standard of living is pretty heavily tied with gdp per capita, but I'm pretty sure we are talking about which country is richer not standard of living.

Only if the GDP is spread out equally. Income in-equality is a fine way to mask poverty in spite of a huge GDP.

How so? If you take a "cake" of 100 units, let 99 people share 1, and give 1 to 1 person. Then most people have 1/99 units. If your cake is 85, and you give everyone an equal share, everyone has a 85/99 units. Now, the situation in Europe is probably more like having 2 people split 60 units out of 85 - but that still leaves "the rest" way a head of those that only get 1/99...

GDP is heavily skewed towards the wealthy and big business.

It's borderline useless for determining the wellbeing of the average worker.

> the majority is less rich in standard of living than most western European and nordic countries

Blatantly false (see the other comment re: GDP). With a few exceptions[0], the US is very close to the top in terms of overall standard of living.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

First of all, GDP and GDP per capita != standard of living.

Even regarding GDP per capita, most the "few exceptions" you mention that trump the US are western European and nordic countries with the exception of #4 Qatar.

  1      Luxembourg	102,717
  2	 Switzerland	80,603
  3	 Norway	74,598
  5	 Ireland	61,206

  6	 United States	56,084 <---

  7	 Singapore	52,888
  8	 Denmark	52,139
  9	 Australia	51,181
  10	 Iceland	50,277
  11	 Sweden	        50,050

And don't think that a 10% change in GDP per capita (like e.g. from USA to Sweden) means much in terms of standards of living -- there's the distribution of this GDP, the organization of everyday life, work standards, state services, etc.

It seems more interesting to ask Are they any more productive? Even if American companies are more productive, can that be attributed to longer working hours? I'm guessing not, because it is the job if the organization to make its workers more productive. The individual, being locked in his position, has little leverage on his productivity.

How do you measure productivity in an information economy? A failed startup may have been very productive at churning out code at an astounding rate, but the problem it tried to solve turned out to be irrelevant, so all that productivity went into the trash. When talking about the correlation between productivity and the overall efficiency of a society, we always have to know whether the end goals succeed in delivering real value to the society. Otherwise, we are busy, advancing nothing.

I've noticed some people just plain don't understand this mindset. My boyfriend was offered a higher-paying job in a state with lower cost of living but didn't take it. This was an absolute affront to some people we know, because we were turning down "more money!!"

We live more-than-comfortably and are able to save and make stupid impulse buys occasionally. We genuinely love where we live and are happy. For us, it seems just as insane to jeopardize that just for more cash and cheaper rent prices.

> How happy are they working that extra 25%?

Is it even measurable? Some try. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report Americans don't do badly - on par with Germans (who are close to the top as far as Europe goes) and ahead of the UK, France, Italy, Russia (to name the 5 Europe's major economies).

Studying the charts, only 6 counties exist in both info graphics. Some observations;

Switzerland is the happiest country but works the second most hours Belgium works the third least hours and is at 19 on the happiness chart * The US is still in the top 15 happiest countries

What surprises me the most is how much paid vacation time goes unused.

It used to be the case that you could "bank" unused vacation-- often indefinitely. When I started with HP in '92, there were engineers that saved up literal months of vacation time, and would then take it all at once to go spearfishing in the Bahamas or what-have-you.

Then when the .com bust happened, everybody started tightening their balance sheets, and huge piles of unused vacation time was an easy liability to get rid of. So they reduced the max vacation accumulation to 3 or 4 weeks over your yearly accrual in a year (but left you what you had, so you wouldn't gain new vacation if you were at the cap, but you wouldn't lose it either).

Then they tightened further, so you'd only accumulate 2 weeks, then 1 week over your yearly allotment.

It's possible that habits built when vacation was easy to hold on to die hard.

Happiness and even satisfaction are shallow metrics that make wanting to always take on new challenges with real risks seem like an optimization failure.

Or more taxes do good for the community, there are a lot of factors...