I wonder where EU tech workers (big or not) fit in this. Certainly pay is less than US, but when I worked in Europe, everyone took all of their vacation time and generally did not work beyond regular business hours. Where I work today in the US, even junior devs (i.e. no on-call or general need to fight fires outside of regular hours) are grinding away on nights and weekends. The only way I can basically take a half-day here and there during the week to ski is because my team would be screwed without me, but it's still a pressure cooker compared to my last job in Europe; "I'm going to be bikepacking in Sweden all of August and won't be reachable" -> guess which OOO notice that job came from? xD

> Where I work today in the US, even junior devs (i.e. no on-call or general need to fight fires outside of regular hours) are grinding away on nights and weekends.

Wow. Most places are not like that. Get out of there.

> The only way I can basically take a half-day here and there during the week to ski is because my team would be screwed without me

lol. No. Your team will do just fine if you dropped dead today. Trust m. Teams are always fine.

Take the time off and get down off the cross.

It's amazing how prevalent this type of attitude is and not only in tech but in like menial jobs I've had when I was young as well. People actually think they are Atlas, supporting the entire operation and without them it would collapse. It's just not true, ever. It doesn't mean people aren't valued and that the organization is better off with them, but just because an individual can't see an organization working without them doesn't mean they can't.

We don't say it out loud because it's not polite but everyone is replaceable. In fact, there's many things we don't say because we are polite but I sort of feel like people tend to mistake politeness for support. But that's another thing all together and I digress.

Maybe find a different company. I ski 2 hours every weekday before I start my work day.

Depends how you define average.

Statistically, the average US workers has a much higher purchasing power than the average EU worker.

Unless by average you meant poor people or workers on minimum wage in which case you'd be correct, but that's in no way average anymore.

I was talking purely about “benefits” by which most people mean things outside of standard monetary compensation.

EU workers have much better vacation, healthcare, parental leave, severance pay, etc than US workers on average.

And I was only talking about the unemployment benefits of laid off big-tech workers. I'm not contradicting you about the rest.