[dathinab]

fun fact

did you know that in EU way back in imperial times some of the worker protection rules where not introduced by angry workers by companies which realized that having well rested and healthy worker will long term produce much better results and then countries following up by enforcing it to boost their countries productivity (and internal stability)?

(and yes I _very_ grossly oversimplified it including lumping all EU countries together even through they had very different inner political histories)

The reason I'm pointing it out is because recently some people seem to be forgetting that at the core a lot of work protection isn't rooted in "being social/nice to your citizens" but in "having a more internal stable and international competitive" country.

[Clubber]

Henry Ford was largely responsible for the popularization of the 40 hour work week and paid his factory employees nearly double of what they would ordinarily get.

1926: Henry Ford popularized the 40-hour work week after he discovered through his research that working more yielded only a small increase in productivity that lasted a short period of time. Ford announced he would pay each worker $5 per eight-hour day, which was nearly double what the average auto worker was making that time. Manufacturers and companies soon followed Henry Ford’s lead after seeing how this new policy boosted productivity and fostered loyalty and pride among Ford’s employees.

Of course, this is a rarity. Most employee concessions in the US were earned with blood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

[hadlock]

I don't think he did it out of the goodness of his heart, the calculus just happened to work out in favor of the worker in this singular case. With large factories you have training costs, retention costs etc. Paying higher than the going rate meant you had higher quality workers because you could select the best ones from a larger pool. This caused manufacturing defects to go down and remanufacturing costs (extremely expensive) to shrink. Paying more for better workers reduced costs. Limiting hours worked per week reduced costs as well as those workers made fewer mistakes reducing remanufacturing/rework costs. Stable employment, good wages and short(ish) work weeks resulted in worker retention going way way up which meant less churn, less training expenses etc.

TL;DR Henry Ford realized car manufacturing was a semi-skilled job, not an unskilled job, and hired and paid for it accordingly, quality went up and costs went down. It's not rocket science.

[clown_strike]

> I don't think he did it out of the goodness of his heart, the calculus just happened to work out in favor of the worker in this singular case

It wasn't a singular case.

He was principled enough about it that Dodge sued to compel him to put shareholders' interests ahead of employees and customers-- a suit Ford fought against, and lost.

[Clubber]

>I don't think he did it out of the goodness of his heart

Not sure why that matters. Enjoy your 40 hour work week 100 years later.

[AnimalMuppet]

Not just "in this singular case". I don't think Ford's assembly lines needed uniquely skilled people; most assembly line work would be the same, with the same calculus.

And the calculus was not just "the most skilled workers". It was also "diminishing returns".

[toomuchtodo]

Healthy, happy, rested workers are more productive, full stop. Folks who force the grind are eating seed corn but don't care, they'll be gone by the time it matters.

[Aeolun]

The Netherlands may have a per capita GDP of (only) $65000, but people tend to forget that we work on average 5.5h a day.

Compared to the US’s $65875, and 6.7h worked on average.

[alephnerd]

GDP per Capita is a metric for value of production as a whole.

Much of that GDP per Capita for NL can be attributed to high margin industries like Oil Refining (Royal Dutch Shell, Dutch Disease), Financial Services, and Biochemicals Manufacturing [0], which are not industries where at 5.5h workday is realistic.

And once you remove part-timers, the hours worked in Netherlands are comparable to the US [1].

The bigger question should be why part-time labor participation is significantly high in Netherlands, as part-timers and youth appear to earn at least half of full-timers [1], but this could also be confounding due to age along with gender [2].

Imo this makes Netherlands' job market look similar to post 2010 Japan's labor market, which isn't a great thing.

That said, it does go to show that median income and personal living standards are not tied with GDP per Capita.

[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/528/export-basket

[1] - https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/en/dataset/81431ENG/table

[2] - https://theworld.org/stories/2014/10/01/why-do-so-many-peopl...

[Aeolun]

> And once you remove part-timers, the hours worked in Netherlands are comparable to the US [1].

Sure, if you remove 40% of all the people working (maybe more?) then you are left with the people working full weeks. That’s… not very surprising? The point is kinda that so many people work part time that it significantly skews the average number of hours worked.

It’s kinda wonky that the average for full-time still sits at 40 hours though. I know very few people working 5 day weeks (e.g. 60 or 80%), and I’d assume they’re still classed as full-time due their contracts.

[alephnerd]

> Sure, if you remove 40% of all the people working (maybe more?) then you are left with the people working full weeks. That’s… not very surprising?

And how many of those 40% are working at an Oil Refinery owned by Shell PLC, an assay workbench owned by Solvias, or working on Clearing or ForEx at Goldman Sachs Amsterdam?

The majority of Netherlands' GDP is derived only from those kinds of activities in ONG, Biopharma, and Finance (also agricultural exports but that's a whole other story).

Not all jobs are made equal, and this is where productivity (as is defined in economics) comes to play.

It's the same in Japan with almost all economic activity being derived from automotive, medical device, and biopharma manufacturing along with financial services [0]. Most other roles are cost centers in some shape or form, and even Japanese companies have been offshoring roles not associated to those sectors to the rest of Asia.

From a competitiveness standpoint, it's not good, as it prevents other industries from being sparked and prevents economic diversification. If there's an ONG glut, or the EU signs an FTA with a major pharma manufacturer hub like China or India (as is the plan this year), or trade normalization between the EU-UK finally happens, then major sectors of the Dutch economy can become extremely wobbly, and reduce the ability to provide a social safety net, as those cost money. There's a reason why it's called "Dutch Disease".

Even the TNO [1] and CBS [2] has pointed out this issue, as the rise of part time labor in the Dutch economy seems to have been sparked by the Eurozone crisis.

> It’s kinda wonky that the average for full-time still sits at 40 hours though. I know very few people working 5 day weeks (e.g. 60 or 80%), and I’d assume they’re still classed as full-time due their contracts

If you are on HN, most of your peers are probably also working in tech or chill white collar jobs like government or back office work.

[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/392/export-basket

[1] - https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/dutch-productivity-growth-require...

[2] - https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2024/42/netherlands-lags-behin...

[dekhn]

Ernst Abbe at Zeiss played a big role in this- helping to introduce an 8-hour work day along with employer co-ownership.

[kolanos]

Here is an excellent video on the history of work. In short, the Dutch screwed it up for all of us. [0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo

[feoren]

> having well rested and healthy worker will long term produce much better results

You said the two words which will ensure this never happens in the US: "long term". Most companies have zero decision-makers who care about the "long term". They are not the company's stewards, they are its parasites. Despite popular belief, most American corporations are not ruthless money-making machines, they are festering husks being ruthlessly parasitized by sociopaths while they slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean.

[damnitbuilds]

And the European equivalents of Tesla and Spacex's sucesses are where exactly?

Paypal? X even?

I am totally not hardcore, I value my free time, but driving the staff like this seems to have worked very well for Musk's companies.

[stephenhuey]

Confinity created its PayPal product in 1999 and Musk's company got merged into Confinity in 2000 because Thiel said they were both working crazy long hours and it would be more beneficial for everyone to join forces into a monopoly instead of compete with one another. Then Musk got kicked out of the company because they didn't think he was doing a good job, and he was fortunate to benefit financially when they sold to eBay. So it's a pretty classic case of survivorship bias, and the fact that he invested into an already innovative electric car company does not mean his taskmaster leanings are assuredly the key to success. For every one of Musk's companies, there are countless others enjoying a healthy amount of profit without the excessive hours.

[CharlieDigital]

The How I Built This episodes with Max Levchin are a good listen.

https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-pay...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/affirm-max-levchin-par...

[toomuchtodo]

Paypal is not some monument of success (how much did Adam Neumann make from WeWork?), nor is X, he just bought Twitter by borrowing against his Tesla shares at an inflated valuation (inflated by sentiment and hype). Is he good at slave driving people who mostly care about mission? Yes. Does that mean it is what we want to optimize for at scale? I argue no. Important to be mindful what we are and what is worth optimizing for collectively and how that changes over time.

If I drive my workers to various flavors (emotional, physical, etc) of failure to succeed economically, are you going to look up to me? If so, you've failed the litmus test. Progress is nice, but so is a reasonable balance for our short existence on this rock. Be Woz, not Jobs or Musk.

(high empathy human, early TSLA investor, own Teslas, know people at SpaceX, etc)

[damnitbuilds]

You did not answer my question.

If Europe wants to be "more internal[ly] stable and international[ly] competitive", then its 40-hour-per-week, 5-weeks-holiday-per-year companies have to compete with Tesla, Spacex, Paypal, X etc.

And they are clearly failing to do so.

[toomuchtodo]

Europe has SEPA for instant value transfer, they do not need paypal. AT Protocol can replace X, no need for Europe to have their own X ("protocols, not platforms"). Europe can eventually build EVs faster and/or better (~20 moving parts in a drivetrain) and improved space vehicles when they're ready, they're not trying to live on Mars.

What has US tech built that Europe needs? Europe has services and great quality of life, the US has performance art capitalism paperclip maximizing for shareholder returns and is a third world country [1] [2] [3], broadly speaking. The race is not what you think it is. What are you building for? To just keep grinding or building? Or for people to live happy, healthy lives at scale? Engineering is fun, and leads to progress, but it is a means to an end, not the point of life.

[1] https://worldhappiness.report/

[2] https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings

[3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o...

[Aeolun]

> Europe can eventually build EVs

Bosch has been building EV’s for literal years. Just because they’re selling them as parts doesn’t mean they’re incapable.

[toomuchtodo]

I don't disagree with this (love Bosch except my dishwasher IoT annoyances), but OP believes you need to be Tesla or BYD to be "successful." You can always succeed if you get to define success. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and life is meant to be lived, not brutish and short grinding for silly KPIs.

[WorldPeas]

good luck getting Linus Torvalds back from us! Jokes aside, i think the EU needs to reach consensus on a new operating system if you want digital sovereignty. So far I know of a few nations doing so for law enforcement/military, and I know of Jolla or webos, but I am unaware of any efforts like Huawei and harmonyOS to create a sovereign unified ecosystem.

[damnitbuilds]

"What has US tech built that Europe needs?"

Oh, come on.

And you are confusing personal happiness with company success. Europe prioritises the former, at the expense of the latter.

[toomuchtodo]

If you believe in optimizing for company success at a macro level from a mental model perspective, why are we talking? Go grind and be prepared to make peace how you wasted your life on your deathbed. I have attempted to show you a different perspective, whether you internalize it is up to you. I've been down that road, and caught myself in time with some life left to be lived. Never stop asking "why?" OODA loop style.

> Oh, come on.

I stand by my assertion.

[Aeolun]

I’m fairly certain this is because nobody feels the need to, combined with a dose of old money.

[ethbr1]

Old money is a toxic accretion of capital: because it optimizes for "not losing" as opposed to "maximally investing"

There's a reason the British industrial revolution was funded by new, sugar/slave-trade money -- because it went to people open to investing in this new, weird steam power thing.

[dathinab]

this is a pointless argument as close to all US mega cops have been quasi subventioned until they became monopolies, not sure how you expect a proper competition there (specifically subventioned by a few very wealthy entities, not the state).

in addition many of them did end up where they are by taking advantage of a major technological change, while being quasi subventioned, while being in a huge country which has until recently exported it's culture and tech, while systematically breaking all kinds of (non employee protection related) laws and regulations (including US laws/regulations, through seldomly with consequences in the US)

there is little which indicates that mistreating your employees was overly relevant for them to get where they are in most cases

actually it's even the opposite to some degree, multiple of the US mega corps have been known to be quite good employers (e.g. MS, Google). Microsoft was also one of the first huge companies which tried out a 32h week in some of their offices (and the results of that study indicated that it was leading to improvements).

and in general I think most people have no issues with highly payed highly skilled people "working hard like crazy" if

- it's well payed (i.e. you work "crazily hard" a few years and then can lay back for years after

- it's fully free of your choice to end up there

- you are also fully free to leave if you realize it's hitting your health to hard

Like company founders working "crazily hard" at the start of their journey is as normal in the EU as it's in the US. And paying people which work "crazily hard" extra, often in form of annual Bonus payments, is also in some markets not that uncommon in the EU. Also jobs which people very often don't do for more then a few years, because it's just not healthy.

But what Musk is pursing is so far beyond that on the unhealthy spectrum.

And a more normal employees has to be able to work their job without larger gap for like what 50 years at least. That just isn't compatible with "working crazily hard".

But Musk is just an extreme example of what you see in in general more in the US:

Indirectly force people to work harder then long term substainable and when it start causing chronic issues take "medicine" to fix it.

And then be surprised if your country has pain killer/drug addiction epidemic which doesn't just affect the people which did fall through society but like all levels of society.

And wrt. internal stability, have you looked at the US recently!? It's more unstable then it ever has been since the civil war.

[FireBeyond]

Musk's operational involvement in PayPal was 4 months (though he remained on the Board for a while, IIRC).

He didn't create it, it was a (pre-release) working thing when his company (which was failing at building an online bank) merged. He was made CEO, and spent his tenure trying to throw away the working app because it was Java on Solaris for ASP because that's what he knew.

Four months in, he gets married. The BoD attends his wedding on the Saturday, and on the Monday morning when he leaves for his honeymoon, they fire him in absentia. Not "other priorities", "family time", but "fired on your honeymoon".

Since then, most of Musk's "contribution" to PayPal has been cashing the dividend checks.

[dboreham]

PayPal isn't necessary in Europe because banks are properly regulated and hence provide the same service for free.

[SirMaster]

You can pay at most online websites straight from your bank account in Europe?

[Symbiote]

In some countries it's common, in others it's not.

Stripe has a list of what they support: https://stripe.com/en-dk/pricing/local-payment-methods

[root_axis]

Yes. U.S. is way behind in banking tech. Even in poorer countries like many of those in latam, you can easily do direct bank transfers. It's pretty common to see e.g. street vendors with QR codes that you can scan to send money directly without the need for a non-bank intermediary.

[disgruntledphd2]

I'm not sure that it's entirely that the US is behind, it's that they introduced credit cards so early that they've ended up with those dominating the space.

And now because of that, there's lobbying against direct bank transfers and capping of interchange fees.

[root_axis]

That explanation makes sense to me, but I'd still consider it accurate to say that the U.S. is behind in this regard since credit cards are pretty ubiquitous in most of those countries as well.

[dathinab]

yes kinda, it's complicated (as in depends on country and in some countries is still can involve a 3rd party "middleman" even through you do auth with your bank and don't need an account with the middle man)

through what matters is that in the end you can pay on most EU sites without having either paypal or a credit card

so that use case really doesn't need paypal

and for the p2p money sending you need it even less

and if you buy stuff from outside of the EU you most times can pay with both paypal or credit card, so if you have a credit card you don't need paypal for that either

[FireBeyond]

In Australia too. And not just recently, you could do it when I left Australia for the US in 2006.

[tjelen]

Umm, yes? Not sure about the rest of Europe, but here in Czechia most of merchants have a direct payment method based on QR code.

Basically: 1) you select your bank at the checkout; 2) you're redirected to the bank's payment page with a QR code; 3) you scan the code from your banking app and confirm it; 4) the bank redirects back the merchants page with the payment status confirmed/declined. No payment processor involved and the money goes straight from your account to merchant's account.

[disgruntledphd2]

> the money goes straight from your account to merchant's account.

For the financial systems version of straight away (2-3 business days, weekends & holidays excluded) ;)

[DonHopkins]

[flagged]

[SirMaster]

Why are you turning a simple question about online payment methods into something political and completely unrelated?

[consteval]

Because it’s directly related - the US’ political strategy is why PayPal exists. Politics is inseparable from economics.

We prioritize the private sector politically and there’s a lot of benefits, and a lot of detriments, to this.

One of the downsides is we have hundreds of more or less identical companies doing the same thing that don’t need to exist. This breeds inefficiency into systems we use, thereby opening the door for even more useless companies that just reduce friction. Friction that we decided we needed to have.

The most obvious example is healthcare in the US, but every industry experiences these detriments.

[DonHopkins]

Why did you think he was lying?

Edit: Then why did you put a question mark at the end of a statement of fact instead of a period? What he said was true, has been true for a long time in fact (not just Europe, but a lot of the rest of the world), and you can easily google for evidence if you don't believe him, without questioning his honesty. Were you honestly that surprised that you had to ask?

The US lags so far behind other so-called "third world countries" not only in banking, but also health care, freedom from gun violence and school shootings, and now also civil rights and freedom of speech and democracy. I don't think Canada or Greenland would vote to give up their advantages and freedoms to become US states, but if they did, they sure wouldn't vote for the current administration.

[prybak]

Yes, at least in Poland. You can either use Blik (mobile payments integrated with your bank account) or get redirected to your bank website for fast wire transfer.

[otikik]

Yeah but we don't have a Musk either. One compensates the other.

[consteval]

It works of course but it’s a short term solution. Because you’re trading off long term success for success right now.

It’s like a cash advance on a credit card. Great for getting 500 bucks in your pocket, but the interest is steep.

People, like most resources, can be extended past their maximum value at the cost of longevity.

[root_axis]

Working long hours is not a sign of success, it means things don't get done on a normal schedule so everyone has to bust their ass to meet the deadline. Working this way in perpetuity is wasteful and totally stupid.