However, I have always found employee satisfaction and employee-management relations to be far worse in the large union workplaces.

I believe it is due to the fact that having a big, strong union that is capable of basically strong-arming the employer through the threat of job action (if you operate a nuclear power plant, having your engineers go on strike is not really an option) forces management to concede benefits they don't truly believe employees deserve, and that leads to clawbacks of, well, pretty much everything that isn't in the collective agreement. So you might get your 18 sick days (which you can never use without lying because no one who is not chronically ill gets sick for 18 working days every year), but you might have to fill out a multi-page form to get a new notebook (a paper notebook not a notebook computer).

Look at the sort of treatment that contract or temp employees get in big unionized workplaces - generally awful, and that reflects the company's true attitude toward it's employees.

I'd much rather work in a non-union workplace where I get benefits above the statutory minimums because the company truly values it's employees and understands that people who are treated well are more productive than one where everything I get was a concession to avoid labour strife.

If non-unionized company X gives 3 weeks paid vacation per year (2 weeks is the mandatory minimum in Canada) because they want to, that's much more likely to translate into a great workplace than the 4 weeks company Y gives because their employees are members of a massive national labour union and demand it.

Just my $0.02 from personal experience.

Agreed, but do take notice that most people, in most industries, generally don't have that choice

And just to clarify on the use of the term 'engineer', I am an electrical engineer specializing in protection & control. I have worked alongside a variety of electrical, civil, mechanical and industrial engineers in power generation, transmission and distribution. I long for the day when there is a company in my field with a startup mentality.

Oh, Germany.

Where I grew up there is not a single open grocery store anywhere after 8pm or on Sundays for hundreds of kilometers. That makes a difference to places where stores can legally remain open longer.

I’m currently living in Thuringia where stores can be open until 10pm on weekdays – and sure, many smaller stores and even the big shopping mall still opt to only open until 8pm, but thee are always one or two big grocery stores that are actually open until 10pm.

The quantitative difference between no open stores and one or two open stores may be small, the qualitative difference, however, is big.

Grocery stores are even better, generally either closing at 12am or not closing at all. Wal-Mart, for instance, is mostly 24 hours, and Wal-Mart is very widespread.

Regarding the "supposed" part. I don't know exactly but I don't think there was some coordination or agreement between nations on who would do what.

† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_hours#Germany

But then you have to account for the higher cost of living, transportation (even if you don't drive, French employers pay for a part of your public transportation tickets), and all the other perks that are inherent to your job (insurance, subsidized lunches,...) and inherent to the country (better public education, etc.).

So I think it's hard to say empirically that engineers are better off in one country rather than the other- although I'd be tempted to say that very high end engineers are better off in the US rather than Europe, and the average engineer is better off in Europe rather than the US.

...better public education...

Um, no. Better students, but a considerably worse public education system.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...

The cheese, however, is considerably better in France, as are the women (fatties over here drag our average down).

[1] Since I'm too lazy to switch to windows and open up the Penn Table in Excel, I backed the numbers out of GDP tables: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...

[edit: Hi downmodders, sorry for providing facts. I'll try to avoid that in the future.]

Based on my very subjective experience living in both countries (France growing up + undergrad, US as a graduate student+working), I would say much depends on the size of the city where you live.

Living in San Francisco definitely costs much more than living in Lyon (2nd largest city in France) for me- if you look at the apartment alone, I'd have to shell out $2k+ for something I'd easily have in France for under a thousand euros in terms of size + proximity to businesses.

But then for the food + basic expenses (clothing, etc.) I feel like I spend about the same, although some things are more expensive in the US (public transportation, cell phone plans,...).

When I lived in Grenoble I lived a comfortable student life on 1000 euros a month- this would be nowhere sufficient to live comfortably with in SF. But of course the cities are of different sizes, so again this is very shaky grounds for accurate comparison.

I don't want to end up posting a novel here, but it's definitely an interesting topic on which I'd love to hear more insights from european expatriates in the US (or the opposite).

As for the cheese, you are completely right– and regarding the women, I don't want to belittle my fellow French women, but I would be lying if I said I hadn't found delightful ladies in SF :)

You have two sides, with U.S. on one side where workers just work, with little thought for quality of life, and the other side is Europe, where they get paid a bit less, but they have 4 weeks vacation and much less demanding work load.

I dunno about you, but I'd gladly sacrifice $10K(which is pretty much the whole difference between the two) to get all the perks that europeans get

I'm not quite sure why more people don't do this. Bank a bunch of money at a nice professional job, then quit and be funemployed for 6-12 months while they do lots of cool, life-affirming things. A bunch of my friends have done it - either backpacking around the U.S, or buying a Eurail pass and traveling around Europe, or vacationing in Thailand, or helping orphans in Uganda, or joining the Peace Corps - and have said it's one of the best things they ever did. It doesn't even take much money - most of these are liberal arts majors, not computer programmers, and make much closer to $50K/year than $100K/year.

Yes.

There are all sorts of creative ways to get around HR.

Hate the game, not those who must survive within it.

It's currently pretty hard to get a job again on the other side of the vacation. Plus for most people in the USA wages are so low it's hard to even save $10K. 48% of the population are living on or below the poverty line.

According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate was 15.1% in 2010.

Source: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2010/...

Has it somehow managed to more than triple in the last year?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/12/census-says-...

Plus, when your audience is the Hacker News readership it would seem to make little sense to draw conclusions based on the bottom 48% of the population.

Or, perhaps, you'd like to make a supposition that smart people can never be poor?

I think that if you want job security, you're much better off at developing the skills to interview well and the resume to make people sit up and take note of you. You can take that from job to job with you, and know that if you ever get laid off or fired, you can just get another job.

- Germany: 1 month in first 2 years, 2 months for years 5 to 8, ..., 7 months from year 20 on.

- Switzerland: 1 month first year, 2 months for years 2 - 9, 3 months from year 10.

And (at least in Switzerland) a dismissal notice is void if you're on vacation and were not able to receive the registered letter.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/27/jobs/in-high-technology-th...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_emplo...

The US has 0 (zero!) mandated days off. Even China gives people 5-15 days minimum.

Holidays and sick days are cumulative too, and you're entitled to be paid for untaken ones when you leave your job, so log as you've worked there a minimum of 1 year

A typical American gets 2 weeks of stat holidays on top of their 2 weeks of personal holidays, so that's almost the same as the European getting 4 weeks.

(Again, this varies. In Germany it is usually around 28-30, in Spain around 22)

Currently I get 25 days per year not including 6 days stat, for 31 days total or just over 6 weeks total. This is considered average for London and the UK, I would consider 5 weeks to be the absolute low end in the UK. At the upper end in London the news about the Tube Drivers strike disclosed that they have 40+ days holiday, which is just over 8 weeks.

When I lived in Sweden the numbers were higher, with it being compulsory to take a fortnight in a contiguous block in the summer. The UK is the worst of the lot, and we have it OK.

Just my experience, but it varies so greatly from what you're quoting that I felt obliged to respond.

I can't wait for the day all trains are auto pilot.

I think you miss the point, this move from VW is actually acknowledging that taking time off is a step toward more productivity. I also think that having time for family, culture and further education on non related topics is the best way to make you a round person and thus someone who will be highly efficient in its job life. If that's how you would define Europe, it hasn't worked that bad... I mean, there have been centuries some people are saying the demise of Europe, but it's still one of the richest big area in the world.

Europe has gone through so much more worse crisis than the debt crisis, it will take its game together and solve it.

I knew a guy who emigrated to the USA and was working for CITI and was paying a bigger % of his pay just for his health cover.

It is 13.8% for employers!