[mgrund]

There is but I don’t think this is it.

I’ve worked most of my career in US tech satellite offices and I have not experienced EU team members to be less productive than US team members, nor spend less time on work (if anything, more really since they also need to be available for US time zone overlap).

It’s true there are chill jobs here, as there are in the US.

But ambitious people tend to work as much as ambitious US people (and it’s really more like 40 hours work weeks - 39,5 where I live since lunch is not work time). But again, many are not really counting, it’s just a full time job.

Vacations (typically 3 weeks summer holiday and additional weeks to distribute over the year) does create longer time on skeleton crew. Skilled tech labour is also cheaper so you can just hire more to make up for it.