Americans versus European workers

by philg

I was at an aviation convention last month. A married couple had recently sold a 70-person company, which they had founded and then managed for 15 years. What did they miss the least? “Managing people,” responded the wife. “About half were like family. They were great people and we miss them, especially assembly workers who were grateful just to have an air-conditioned workplace.” How could this then be the least-missed aspect then? “The middle managers were the worst. About half the employees were best at complaining, overestimating their value and competence, and making our lives hell.”

Also there at the convention was the manager of a group of Swiss engineers developing a new business jet. I asked if the American perception of Europeans working smarter than than harder and/or longer hours was accurate. Could they get this plane certified and out the door on schedule via superior competence and organization while working 9-5? The manager simply laughed. It was not a 9-5 job, apparently.

12 thoughts on “Americans versus European workers”

  1. Would say Europeans have pretty reasonable hours. They’re still the mane contributors to open source software. There still is someone working on open source software, despite the mobile app revolution. The 2nd largest population in San Francisco after mobile app developers is still European tourists.

  2. I own a business with twenty-eight employees in southeastern USA. I think overall I’m blessed to have chosen very decent folks to work for my company, but I swear many of these overall pretty good folks would complain about the taxes if they won a nine digit lottery.
    Maybe it’s the spoiled American way, but our country does seem full of superfluous complainers. And many absolutely refuse to work smart. They keep turning full left and wonder why they’re constantly veering off the road…while refusing to heed any advice…while simultaneously complaining that no one wants to assist them!?

  3. My brother (manager for a well know multinational firm) works in Italy. He works 8am to 11pm or midnight every day, and so does his team. Everybody in the team (my brother included) works during public holidays — they only take week ends off (not always) and their own annual leave. That is the standard working culture there apparently — his team is apparently very happy, or so he says.

  6. Wasn’t the last small jet produced by hard working Americans the Eclipse 500? I recall that a bunch of former Microsoft execs applied their skills in developing Windows software to produce a jet that was full of systems that kind of worked most of the time.

  7. ” He works 8am to 11pm or midnight every day, and so does his team.”

    Do they sleep on site in cots? Otherwise they couldn’t possibly be getting enough sleep.

    Do they break for meals, or do they use IV tubes while working?

  9. “[…] The manager simply laughed. It was not a 9-5 job, apparently.”

    Phil, you have a tendency to ask simpleminded questions, esp. in relation to conditions abroad, and then extrapolate the answers or the impressions to be some Valid General Conclusions (on the road to Enlightenment or something). In this here case, how you retell it, when asked about something that involves coordination with half a dozen—if that—outside actors/ control authorities, that engineer could have smiled, sarcastically, ironically or ruminatively in response (there’s a difference). Yet you translate it into just one ominous meaning: FAT CHANCE.

    Without detailed insight, yet as an European, I can assure you that none of the bureaucracies involved work longer than 9–5, half a day on Fridays, and “left for the day” any odd chance they get. Perhaps they internalized the pace that any issue arriving at their doorstep will be dealt with. Perhaps that’s their mañana culture, only they know (and even the Swiss get the blues). Euro commercial clients are at these official behemoths mercies, just as American ditto are contingent on (here) FAA’s discretion and goodwill – and who knows what that depends on? In short: if you really want to discover valid intercontinental differences in your cherished WASP work ethics, learn to ask less vacuous questions. If you want to have your inner suspicions confirmed, just keep going.

    @ Don: dysfunctional is in the eye of the beholder. If you think that traditional(?) American long work hours automatically make them more efficient per time unit, you are badly mistaken. Far more important than the nominal length of a work day is the workplace environment, ambience and culture. In short: better remunerated and cared for worker, esp. one who knows s/he won’t have to work late (again), is altogether more efficient and less wasteful than an ever so well paid but basically feeling exploited one. We can quibble over what is the purpose of life, but I can tell you out right, just as the Frenchies do to their state masters, that it ain’t working to survive to the next working day.

  10. ianf as usual has valid points.

    I have no idea what point Phil was trying to make, but by the twenty-first centuries Americans, to some extent deliberately (I remember a flood of articles in the 1980s arguing that Americans should work more like the Japanese) adopted a Japanese-style work culture where it was important to spend lots of time in the office, often involved in lots of meetings, but not that important to actually accomplish anything. Its actually an evil blend of the Japanese and Latin American cultures since I understand the Japanese do often get stuff done at work.

    As with most of these things, in this Europe vs US comparison, its actually the US that is the outlier.

    ianf’s other point is quite valid. When working in a highly bureaucratized environment, which I have done, you often get to a point where you can’t do anything without some action by other bureaucracy X, and you have no control over how fast X takes action other than periodically reminding them of your request. In these cases, the best option is to do nothing further on the project and wait for X. There might be some unrelated project you work on instead. If this isn’t the case, why not take off early?

  11. Ed, thanks for your kind words, but you’re mistaken in one important regard: whatever practices it is that the Americans are supposed to have adopted (excuse-moi pour mon grammaire), it sure weren’t the 1990s–onwards Japanese work-team practices. At best, they adopted a perverted, shallow version of what at the time was hailed on the network news as the solution to the US automotive renewal problems. I’ve watched several documentaries on Japanese (primarily auto) work practices, and can not say that by and large they would lend themselves to being adopted by the “born free” and “don’t thread on me” American workers. The US airline & space industries seem the closest to the Japanese working ethic, but I suppose that that’s due to their practically every line worker there having a college degree.

    Also, from what I can discern from afar, Japanese shop-floor work practices evolve with changed circumstances with much greater frequency, than either the European or American routines (caveat lector: I had never worked in the USA, not even visited a factory; only been to several large offices like the JC Penney HQ and Madison Avenue ad agencies, plus plenty of small ones besides. Enough to pipe them | diff to see what’s cooking).

  12. On the subject so dear to Phil’s heart, work ethics (if uncoupled from workplace culture), here’s a telling fragment from an essay on Argentine writer’s Jorge Luis Borges’ complex relation to money; esp. the years 1937-1946, when, already in his 40s, he was forced to hold an undemanding day job in which he was highly unhappy. Yet, acc. to his here biographer Elizabeth Hyde Stevens, this dovetailed with the most literarily creative period of his entire oeuvre (cuts and embellishments mine. Perhaps long-term unhappiness with a job IS the key to writing any Great American Novel?)

    Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin

    […] Borges’ first experience with work-a-day living, we can imagine a reliving of his childhood fears, when his meek, bespectacled sympathies were mercilessly bullied at school. He may have been a local literary celebrity, but inside the library, it didn’t matter. He was nothing like the manly hombres with whom he was trying to coexist: “I stuck out the library for about nine years. They were nine years of solid unhappiness. At work, the other men were interested in nothing but horse racing, soccer matches, and smutty stories. Once, a woman, one of the readers was raped on her way to the ladies’ room. Everybody said such things were bound to happen, since the men’s and ladies’ rooms were adjoining.” […] Though emotionally taxing, this job was physically undemanding. The other workers made it a point to never exceed an hour’s work daily—and forced him to do the same. So, after an hour, Borges would steal away to the basement to read and write for his remaining five hours at the library. As far as literary day jobs go, this could have been ideal, if Borges were not such a sensitive soul—if he, essentially, were not Borges. […]

    https://blog.longreads.com/2016/06/14/borges-and-money/

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