[9dev]

My educated guess would be that there are some stark cultural differences that lead to a misunderstanding here. First off, there’s a general and fundamental difference in the way Germans and Americans understand work.

In Germany, you do have a right to at least 20 days of fully paid leave every year; most companies actually even grant 26-30 days off. And you’ll even have to take a mandatory leave of at least 12 consecutive days once per year. As this affects everyone, you don’t have any career disadvantages by going on a vacation- in fact, it’s normal and expected. Additionally, being on sick leave is very much normal and expected, and (other than in toxic company cultures, exceptions do exist) neither do cause you any disadvantages.

And finally, you cannot be fired without a very good reason, and even then, you have at least a month of notice (the period increases depending on how long you’ve been employed by a company, up to four months for 10 year contracts).

So I think it’s safe to say that Germans do take being on a fully paid leave - either on vacation or sick (and I didn’t even talk about parental leave) - as something granted and natural.

And while the distribution of people trying to avoid work as much as possible is probably the same as in the USA, our baseline is very different. So while it may look like people here take pride in not working, that is definitely a flawed assumption. We just have a different legal system.