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by jedberg 2029 days ago
I had a coworker once who had spent half his working life in Germany and half in the USA (so about 15 years in each). He often liked to compare what it was like working in Silicon Valley to Germany.

My favorite observation of his was that in Germany, he would arrive at work, go to his cubicle, work until 4pm, and then go and get beers with his coworkers until 7pm, when they would go home to their partners.

In SV, he would come in, we would socialize, he would work, we'd have lunch and drink a beer, do some work, take a break for some beer, so some work, and then have a beer at work before heading home at 7pm to our partners.

We'd get the same amount of work done, and the same amount of socializing, but it would all be done at work.

He never understood why we would want to do that, and not just work all day and then leave to socialize.

3 comments

This must have been a very special place. Most people I know in Germany work from 9-5 maybe and then go straight home.
Similar from my experience with family working in a Germany. Cellphone corporate email disabled after 7pm at one firm IIRC.

The crazy thing is French gdp per capita (measured hourly) growth was cited to be higher than America’s in this book by Mitt Romney’s partner at Bain. Aka, hustle porn measures hustle not output. The French just work 1700 hours a year versus the Americans who skewed up towards 2100.

Knowing some people who work in Germany, they are home before 7pm every day, unless they are genuinly working overtime.

Is it possible that your coworker was making choice of going for beer every day till 7pm and other people did not made same choice?

It may have been a generational shift - I moved to Austria (similar culturally in that respect, I have since moved to Germany) in early 2005 and in my first job the "older" coworkers (to me at the time, probably in their 40s then so in their late 50s/early 60s today) would go to have beers after work every day, or almost every day.

In later jobs that didn't really happen & I think I caught the very end of that type of thing.

My coworker would have been working in Germany in the late 80s and early 90s, so this makes sense.
I guess there's a lesson in there about using 2nd hand anecdotes from 30-40 years ago and applying it to current day cultures!
Why would I want to spend 3 hours every day socializing with people who I see all day at work?
I see many reasons why this could be a good option. For example if you moved to SV from far away and have no social boundings.