Sweden has 5 weeks of vacation and a 40 hour standard work week, and pretty successful companies such as Spotify, Skype, Voddler, SoundCloud, Flattr, etc, were founded here. I doubt most of those founders only worked 40 hour work weeks though, as an entrepreneur you decide your own hours, and overtime for regular employees is not uncommon.

It probably varies a lot depending on company culture. A friend working at a startup recently got hi-5's from the bosses when he said he had worked 11 hours a day the entire previous week, no talk about taking compensation leave to rest or anything like that. At my company (not a startup) an 11 hour day would be pretty extreme, and if my boss was aware he would probably insist I come in late the following day.

Old joke: "Being a founder means you can work half-days if you want. The best part is you get to choose which 12 hours that is."

Awesome!

No, our country is notoriously lacking in entrepreneurship, make of that what you will.

We do still manage to have a pretty good economic output and some business success stories though, so there might be something to be said for working fewer hours.

Yeah, I wasn't calling all Danes lazy--just curious if a notoriously overworked sub-culture might exist there.

I think the the start up culture is less prevalent here in the Netherlands than in SV but it certainly exists.

From my personal experience I can say these guidelines are not strictly adhered. The young, university educated people I hang out with all work more then 40 hours and take about 20 vacation days and work 40-60 hours, more if necessary.

However I think direct comparison is pretty hard. What does count towards the total amount worked? For example including social drinks in their total biasing the amount upwards.

Related: http://steveblank.com/2011/10/10/nokia-as-%E2%80%9Che-who-mu...

"Nanny-Culture, Lack of Risk Taking, Not Sharing What makes Finland such a wonderful place to live and raise a family may ultimately be what kills it as a startup hub."