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by Barrin92 2950 days ago
You have to take into account the different workload and priorities. The average annual rate of hours worked in Germany is 1300 hours roughly. In the US it's 1800 hours, eclipsing even Japan. That's more than three full months of additional work.

Germans usually express a preference for long-term stable employment and work-life balance rather than skyrocketing salaries. The same is true for a lot of European countries.
2 comments
twblalock 2950 days ago
Keep in mind that the "official" work hours reported in Japan are bogus because many Japanese workers do not report overtime, nor do they report the hours they feel obligated to spend with their team after work hours.

Work-life balance for software engineers is a bit better in the US than it is in Japan.

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tatami 2950 days ago
No way you can use 1300 hours average to compare with 50~60K average salary.

I just assume you took this number off the OECD chart which explicitly states that you can't compare between countries because they have different methods of evaluating the numbers. (Ironically I have only seen country-comparisons from this data)

You won't get anywhere near 1300 hours without counting all part-time, half-time workers who obviously don't get the full salary. The standard is 40 hours per week (37.5 if generous) with 30 days of paid vacation. That is 1700+ hours per year.

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