I don't think it's an accident that America is the most rich and powerful country in the world. Or that American Tech dominant the world (except for China). It's because Americans have a protestant work ethic, they're willing to suffer and kill themselves for greatness.
This of course isn't for everyone. But as a highly ambitious person who wants to win no matter the cost, I couldn't imagine ever working in Europe.
Then yeah, that makes sense. Except that this isn’t for everyone and these opportunities are not even common to begin with.
So for regular jobs demanding that the average worker put in 60+ hours a week, with no share of the profits, while senior members of the firm take in millions or more, with intrusive weekends and lack of friends&family time?
The correct response is an honest Glassdoor review and a go-fuck-yourself to management.
A big part of that is the subject matter, and getting to work with (build software tools for) artists and sound designers. It probably helps that the work is a well rounded social-creative-technical experience much of the time. Once I stopped seeing myself as a repository of generic, commoditized skills for sale, and found an actual purpose, the sort of ‘employee mentality’ I used to have vanished and my relationship to work became simpler and more gratifying...and I work a lot harder. And yes, I also get paid a lot more, although that came later and I don’t regard that as a requirement - would much sooner give up the money than the passion. I’ve seen a similar transition happen in others.
To some of the downvoters: we all admire artists and musicians who have totally devoted themselves to their craft, and we don’t condescendingly pity their “unhealthy work life balance”. My hero growing up was Feynman, who was doing physics every waking hour (or so I’ve read). It’s not like his estate is going to reap the economic benefits of his work; so was Feynman a pitiful sucker, abused by his university employers? Why does someone else’s ambition anger you so much?
You were the winners of a World War that left your competitors in scorched ruins, while you hadn't suffered much physical damage.
In the multi-stranded bundle of reasons for American dominance, this is the big one.
If a competitor to Facebook started at the same time in Switzerland, Facebook would have spread dozens of times faster in the states, then given that the internet is global, the network effect would see it defeat competitors one by one.
(You could argue, also, that the immigration situation leads to the US' success, a big chunk of the world's best and brightest migrate to the US. From CNBC: Apple founder Steve Jobs is the son of a Syrian immigrant, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a second generation Cuban immigrant, Google founder Sergey Brin was born in Russia, and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is a Brazilian native.)
I think the VC situation is the other big reason American tech dominates. I don't know enough about how that all works too know why the US succeeds there, but I understand other countries don't have anywhere near the same amount of VC money
At some point it becomes less and less about WW2 and more about the USA’s relentless optimization for economic growth at all costs, often over other things that would make this country more civilized and humane.
For example, a brain drain to the states because it's seen as wealthy and powerful would only compound that wealth.
But also if you're starting with the best technology and a lot of money, you get ahead of others faster.
I'm not about to say that the non aggression pact wasn't a problem, but WW2 finds lots of organizations in the same boat that we can attack in the same way. It was an old system where bodies and land meant power, a system that is really dying.
The US was hardly hurt by the war at all, suffering comparatively few casualties; as their states were never actually attacked their primary contribution in Europe was to ship material from their factories to Russia and the other allies. Factories which after the war switched back to making commercial goods.
The war in the Pacific was a different matter, but again, only some US colonies were attacked and civilian suffering even in those territories was nothing compared to what other countries had to deal with.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworl...
Wall Street also supported hitler until 1941. Hitler wanted to invade America mostly so that he would have to repay wall street.
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-st...
I’m sorry if this seems pedantic since it doesn’t affect your point, but I feel like it deserves some clarification.
Empires and Federations are cool that way - the member states don’t waste resources fighting each other endlessly.
WW2 left us as one of two superpowers, but we have been highly productive for a while, and a lot of that is due to our 'protestant work ethic' that keeps us wealthy but also overworked.
This seems at odds with "I want to kill myself for the firm, and work as hard as humanly possible". That is losing, not winning.
The US does have the highest GDP (by a large margin).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...
GDP per capita is not the same as GDP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
The US, as a nation, has the highest GDP, and therefore is the wealthiest nation in the world. The individual wealth of Americans is lower than some other countries (but not many), but that is hardly relevant in a discussion about the wealthiest country. If OC had said "Americans are the richest people in the world", you would be right. But OC did not, and being deliberately obtuse does not change that.
I realize you were provoked, but please don't break the site guidelines even when another account is doing so. That's the only way to prevent a downward spiral.
You can be highly ambitious and work in a balanced culture and still be successful. The fact that you think ambition and work-life balance are mutually exclusive is pretty sad.
This was really sad to read.
You have confused your carefully selected sample (assorted by profession, employee preferences, and employer preferences) for the general population.
That is a mistake.
He certainly won't complain that your sense of worth is defined by the firm. It's a lopsided semi-co-dependent relationship and kinda weird. I know people like yourself and respect the ethic but there's surely a way to direct that to your own life instead of defining the satisfaction by how well you make another guy money.
Also, the exceptionalism is needless, generalized and is talking down to foreigners as if they don't have similar work ethics. You're not making us look good as Americans by claiming that you'll bend over backwards for bossman and break your back doing so in order to spend an extra dollar at the company store.
I really don’t understand the logic of your comment and most of the others downvoters. He never said his ambition was to make another guy money; perhaps he’s making a lot of it himself, or regards the money as to some extent incidental. The comments about America aren’t in the best taste, but that doesn’t make it okay to put words in his mouth.
There's a distinction to be made in the nature of the output. Feynman's physics work was investigating nature on behalf of humanity. What artists produce is spiritually/intellectually/emotionally edifying for other people. Contrast this with OP's [killing themselves to make a rich banker richer][0], or, say, working on the next addictive mobile game.
This is putting things in the strongest possible light, of course: Feynman also worked on the bomb. Artists can be navel-gazers. And some people break their backs working for a company that is "curing cancer". So it's not black and white.
I do believe that much of the heat he’s taking is from people projecting their own insecurity and lack of fulfillment, or some other form of jealousy. I suspect that, because I used to be ashamed to feel that sickly, condescending impulse in myself, before I had found a purpose (I.e. a domain of application) for my engineering work that I believe in. I used to have the usual bifurcation of work versus life, and y’know what? Turns out it can get a lot fking better! If OP isn’t hurting anyone, more power to him.
Are you new here? A lot of us in this community have found fulfillment and happiness through the opposite mindset of OP. Compounded by his tone it’s not a surprise he’s taking heat.
> If OP isn’t hurting anyone, more power to him.
OP wants to “win”, which is usually a way to say he wants to be above others.
But I can understand how working as a derivative trader with one big number to increase like in a video game can narrow your perspectives, to the point of having the pretention of being a winner on top of that.
Anyway, speaking of projection. I'm not the one that said a single thing about domain or work-life balance. You're making up stuff in your brain based on your just-stated tendency towards a false sense of superiority. Which is funny given the point of my damned original post.
Whatever. I give up. I'm only here because the site for and by hackers doesn't have an account delete button.
Okay... Maybe it came out not as intended, or maybe I misinterpreted it, but this statement shocked me with its (in my interpretation) condescension. “So boring”, ”I feel bad for you,” being I suppose the key phrases. What I had recalled was my own former inferiority complex, of which I believed I saw an echo in your post and many others’ responses. It no longer occurs to me to feel offense (as in many other comments) or pity (as in yours) when someone else speaks in a competitive tone of a singleminded desire to “win,” whatever winning happens to mean to them, and I now regard such reactions as irrational and egocentric, whatever internal mechanism they arise from. To illustrate, I’d predict many of the commenters would to varying degrees celebrate an athlete expressing himself in a similar manner (the most famous example I guess being Muhammad Ali, but there are many other such personalities in individual and team sports), and I believe that is primarily because athletes are in a profession they don’t identify with and therefore cannot locate any basis on which to feel either psychologically threatened or in any other way contrast with their own choices. But I may still be missing nuance in your individual comment.
Both the OC and your assumption that he is “handing [his] life over to the guy [he] works for” seem to me to be speaking pretty squarely of the popular notion of work-life balance. Perhaps I’m again missing some nuance there.
Anyhow, it’s not important. Hope you have a nice week.
P.S. Sincere apologies to clerks, you deal with the shit and are respected. Just using as a point about perception and weird notions of what people wear as badges of honor.
Edit: I also don't believe Feynman or any other scientist would define his life by the uni he researched for just as I don't believe an artist would define himself by his job with coca-cola
Talk about emphasizing your personal narrative.
First of all, such aggressive attitude is certainly not sustainable. Once you break down, the firm will simply replace you with someone else. A professional is someone who functions reliably and efficiently, not some self-acclaimed rockstars who blindly charge into every random things. Such have never been a key factor in businesses. I would call you and your co-workers mere kids in that sense. facepalm
America became rich mainly because of its geopolitical advantages. Were you sleeping in your history class? America isn't tech dominant if you're talking outside IT. Protestant work ethic? Americans are lazy cockroaches compared to Asians. Greatness? Nazi was also after its own greatness.
Ambitious? People like you are merely covering up their own existential crisis with something fancy, like being rich, being a winner, being better, living up to others' expectation, etc. Ambition became such a low thing these days, eh?
You lack vision, kiddo. You don't have clear vision of your life. All you're saying is, if you try hard, you'll live a good life. That's the last thing you should believe.
5 years satisfies the time requirement for American and Canadian citizens (and certain other countries) but they still have to satify the other requirements, the most burdensome of which is learning the local language. In Zürich, you have to learn A2 level German specifically (which actually isn't too hard) but this varies by canton.
> Citizenship is 5 more years after that.
Mostly, just note that in addition, you have to have been living in the canton and commune in which you want to obtain citizenship for a certain amount of time.
Also, integration is a requirement for citizenship. What this means varies by commune but the main thing is that you've learned an official language to a working level (B1 I think).
> For all other countries it's 10+10 years.
As a third country national you can obtain a residence permit (C) within 5 years by integration. Integration mainly means learning the local language to a particular level, which varies by canton (in Zürich it's B1 German).
I believe time spent living on a B permit counts towards citizenship so you can do it in 5+5 no matter where you're from, just like the US.
Unless something has changed?
The other part of making it hard is so that the employer doesn't undertake the effort unless they really need the person and can't do with a local. I know the company made an exception for me, as they did for one other employee, but for the most part their policy is not to hire non-Swiss/EU citizens due to the administrative burden.
If you're goal is to get someone to "admit" that a software engineer can get paid more in San Francisco than Switzerland, I guess you've won your argument. You can still tell yourself America is the Best Country in the World™.
But as the article indicates, the net worth of the average Swiss is twice that of the average American. The Swiss have found a way to leverage a higher tax rate to less out of pocket cost for their citizens. So you get 20000$ more bucks a year as an American, and then you go ahead and spend it on health insurance or driving a car everywhere.
Net income is a better measure than net worth, and net income is higher in the US than in Switzerland -- both in absolute terms and relative to the respective cost of living.
Why is net income a better measure? Well, for one thing, if a country's economy is in danger of imploding and people can guess that that is so, they'll start saving more money. Living from paycheck to paycheck is irrational in any country, but it is less irrational the stabler the government and the economy of your country.
Lack of stability or more precisely the perception thereof is part of the reason personal savings rates are higher in China than in the US for example.
If I wasn't confident in my currency, why would I save in it? The collapse of my government destroys my investment at the same time.
A doctor generally makes more in the US than, say, Norway. The Norwegian doctor, however, doesn't necessarily have a school loan since tuition isn't charged. If they live in a city, they don't need a vehicle, to pay health insurance, and their children's health care is free. The doctor gets maternity leave and they get paid sick leave if needed.
They probably pay a bit more tax, but it isn't crushing.
The entire life cost structure is simply different - without including some of these quality of life things in with the costs, it isn't a fair comparison.
USA on average is cheaper than Switzerland, sure. You are correct on that front. But you never live "in a country", you live in a specific city!
Try comparing Bay Area with Switzerland, or even better, San Francisco with Zurich, and you'll get a very different picture. Let's look at it quickly.
One of the most important metrics to determine real cost of living is "Cost per square foot" (or square meter) to buy a house/apartment in the city center.
San Francisco and Zurich are both at ~$1,200 per square foot [0], but San Francisco is more expensive on pretty much any other metric, and remember that home prices are affected (reduced) by a much higher property tax in San Francisco compared to Zurich.
Renting a 1-bedroom in downtown SF is at ~$3,410, compared to a bit more than half (!) in Zurich at ~$1,790. [0].
In 2019, San Francisco displaced Zurich as the city with the highest salaries [1, page 8].
So, to summarize: San Francisco is actually more expensive than Zurich.
[0]: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/compare_cities.js...
[1]: https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...
You get none of that in the US.
You might actually lose benefits if you switch states, and even when you do gain it isn't generally because everyone gets those benefits, but simply that you get them from one particular company as long as you don't get sick and get fired.
In Switzerland, your neighborhood votes on whether you should become a citizen.
I didn't know that. That's very cool.
You're also the only person who's right about the point of the article. It seems like most people here didn't read it yet responded with half-cocked tribalism.
That said implementation would be difficult. The youngest voting block would need to be inspired en masse to participate in local government. Municipal and County first, then State.
That would be a realistic source of change. The current status quo has no incentive to implement changes like this.
The other hurdle is that even at a local level America has a brand of corruption that blocks this sort of progress if it doesn't have enough popular momentum. It's not just political. It's related to taxes and how money is moved around and handled that the article hints at. For example, America has a lot of small businesses that sell many different things but their one real job is cleaning money.
There's also the fact that historically American culture is more competitive and exclusive socially than places like Switzerland. Getting people here to work together and look beyond their differences for something that's just practical problem solving is easier said than done.
In Switzerland, your neighborhood votes on whether you should become a citizen.
Edit: This is not an opinion, cost of living in Switzerland is highest in the world, twice as high as in the US. Even if you make twice as much money, you're basically making the same amount. And if food cost that much where I live, you're damn right I'm bringing a sandwich to the office. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.js...