That Cadillac ad is awesome. I'd never seen it before.<p>It watches like a parody, but at the end you're hit by the reality that yes, this guy is being completely serious. The message really is "sure, I traded away my quality of life, but <i>look at all this stuff!</i>"<p>That's actually the notion that Cadillac is trying to sell. Amazing that they're doing such a good job of it.<p>Fortunately, there's no real trick to getting back that quality of life. You just need to take more vacation time. You can negotiate this in to your package, but if you're in as hot a talent market as we are today, you might find more success with simply taking it. "Hey, as a heads up, I'll be taking 3 weeks off at the beginning of June" followed a few months later by "Hey, I'm off to Kalymnos for a couple weeks in October", followed by "I'll probably be out of contact between Xmas and New Years."<p>Note the lack of "asking" above. The correct attitude to take is that it's <i>them</i> who are acting irrationally by suggesting that you shouldn't take a healthy amount of time off to live your life.
Even worse is the new trend in technology companies to eliminate "Set Vacation". It used to be the case that you felt "obliged" somehow to take your 10 days of vacation a year, because you saw it piling up. Even better, if you were laid off, you could get the vacation in cash, and that helped when you were cut off without a job.<p>But now, a lot of technology companies are saying, "No Set Vacation - you need to negotiate with your manager if you want some" - which, in my experience, has resulted in a lot of people over the last two years taking zero vacation. It's not good for them. It's not good for the company. About the only people who are happy about this are Finance who no longer have to carry that liability on their books.
It's frowned upon to take any time off in the US. I've seen it viewed as a sign of a lack of commitment or even laziness. Consequently, we take less time off because we're scared we're going to lose our jobs.<p>No one is congratulated for taking time off in the middle of a project for your 'sanity' or 'to re-charge'.<p>Everyone is scared. There is no safety net. It's no way to live, but it's our reality.
And yet compared to those European countries, the US experiences significantly higher GDP per capita. Doing work and getting paid for it hardly seems like it's hurting the economy. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...</a><p>As to the studies cited in the article I would point to the OECD labor productivity statistics which, in the aggregate, seem to disagree. <a href="http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL" rel="nofollow">http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL</a><p>The fact that Americans seem to only be able to find identity and meaning in their work, so much so as that it causes a psychic crisis to leave even temporarily, is the real problem, if it need be called such, rather than some imagined hurt to the economy. But that problem is so ingrained in our culture it is never going away.
The article focuses on professionals, but I don't know if that's the angle I'm concerned about. American professionals work more, but they are also paid more. They also have much better vacation and leave policies. More concerning is the plight of median workers, who aren't making a lot more these days than their European counterparts, but have much worse vacation policies to deal with.
Often, when articles highlight bad laws or customs, economical arguments are brought up.<p>Workaholism -> backfires and is bad for the economy<p>and in recent threads here on HN:<p>Workplace surveillance -> backfires, people feel controlled and performance suffers<p>Government espionage in USA -> backfires, people lose trust in US businesses<p>I don't feel that this is the strongest argument. "Please treat us better, it is in your own interest!"?<p>Germany's vacation was achieved through politics (labor laws) and unions (labor contracts).<p>The economic argument probably won't work, since economic considerations (real or imagined/short-term/local maximum...) have led to the current situation in the first place.
Even as a trained neuroscientist, I was amazed to learn that even mild stress impairs brain functions involved in memory formation and retrieval, attention, and decision making.<p>If you are working long hours, you aren't really working. On less sleep, your brain has to work harder. With chronic stress, you start to impair your core competencies. Sleep is the body's way of mitigating the effects of daily stress.
While the lack of safety net and fear of being fired are all valid reasons for Americans not taking vacation, what about another reason- they don't know how to vacation.<p>From personal experience, I get twitchy just from being sick/away from work for more than a day. I only take one day at a time of vacation (usually on Friday's to stretch out the weekend, and usually to get extra studying done or run some errands) only to feel like I wasted a day. It could be cultural, my family never took many family vacations (maybe 1 or 2). I'm lucky that my work encourages taking vacations, but the idea of doing so seems so weird for me.
>The United States is the only advanced country that doesn't guarantee that its citizens will get paid vacation time and holidays<p>I find the reasoning consistently maddening. What they should be saying is that there is no federal mandate for private employers to pay workers during vacation/convalescence/maternity leave.<p>In point of fact, for government workers there is paid annual/maternity/paternity leave which ends up being "use or lose" and in effect becomes a mandatory leave - something universally omitted in these articles.<p>I think this just comes back to the classic debate about how the American economy is organized. Our constitution and US Code is not organized such that the government can easily dictate laws to private employers, that is by design.
If you're in tech, the way to do avoid this is:<p>- Develop mission critical systems.<p>- Make sure no one else understands them.<p>- When you're gone, break them so your employer suffers and realizes they can't be without you.<p>- Act like you don't care and want your time off.<p>Works for raises,too.<p>Of course, if you have a good employer, none of that is necessary.
"keep the nose to the grindstone"<p>LOL there's a classism component that a guy spending 60 hours in the office, 30 of them on facebook, twitter, amazon, or HN, is an office overtime hero, but a guy using a shovel 39 hours a week while being paid for 40 is a lazy slacker who should be fired.<p>Aside from the class problem, another big problem is in a euro country with low income inequality, it means something to divide the total pie by the number of roughly equal people eating it. But if you have a pie where almost all the pie will be going to a couple fat guys and half the "eaters" are going to starve then dividing the pie by the number of "eaters" is utterly meaningless, or at least it is not comparable to the more equal country. It is a meaningless math problem.<p>If I bring a pack of oreos to work and serve them at a meeting as a snack/bribe, then dividing the pack by the number of people means something. If I bring in a bag lunch and eat every single oreo by myself other than maybe giving one to my college buddy while everyone else in the dept looks on jealously, then the division result is meaningless, or at least not worth comparing.<p>In a "let them eat cake" scenario if 12 people eat 12 equal-ish sized slices, the average slice size means something. In winner takes all USA, one fat dude eats the whole cake and 11 get nothin and the numerical average means nothing, nothing at all.
Related: "Bring back the 40-hour work week" <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...</a>
It seems like study after study shows that longer working hours don't result in long term productivity increases, but managers aren't listening. Is this an example of market failure or is there more going on?
You know it is very easy to be generous with another person's money. Yet mandating yourself rights to their money will likely lead to less jobs as many can be off shored. I know, what about those service jobs; automation.<p>Guild tripping works to a point. However this is a two way street. Many companies voluntarily offer paid maternity leave, some offer time off and paid time off. Yet who is there to hold the workers accountable? Just the cost of doing business? We all know people at work or have know that so abuse the system it makes your head spin.<p>In professional fields we have a choice who we work for, we can choose the good companies and if they continue to do well that will encourage their competitors to step up their game. However we should never assume we deserve something just because someone else has it or we convince ourselves its a good idea.
One of the things the move towards a socialized healthcare system will do for this country is focus a debate on how to increase overall well-being within the country, and how to balance that with economic output. Something I think this article misses is the effect our work habits have on our health as a country. Studies have repeatedly shown that those last several hours per week are only marginally productive, but how detrimental might they be? I would imagine the health effects (stress, blood pressure, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, etc.) become amplified in those very hours in which productivity becomes nearly worthless.<p>It's hard to quantify any of this, however, so it might be completely glossed over in the article on purpose. I'm sure that thinking like this will become more prevalent...
> Professionals, managers, and executives with a smartphone spend 72 hours a week (including the weekend) checking work e-mail.<p>No, they spend 72 hours a week "interacting with work" in any way. Though the thought of an executive sitting and refreshing an inbox for 10+ hours a day is quite amusing.
Since such trends are definitely harmful, at what point does it become a human rights issue? If so, the UN or some other organization should put their foot down and set some guidelines for which a country's citizens can sustainably achieve value to their employers and the economy.
Overall Americans are not suffering from workaholism.<p>Americans are working less hours than they ever have as a whole.<p>The BLS reports the average is down to 34.5 hours per week:<p><a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm</a><p>The hours per year are comparable to Japan, Italy, Canada, New Zealand, and only 1.4% greater than the OECD average:<p><a href="http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS" rel="nofollow">http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS</a><p>Meanwhile, a smaller percentage of Americans are working than at any other time than in the past 35 years:<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/c5iStWB.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/c5iStWB.jpg</a>
People in tech industry (all I know) tend to call in sick to "recharge" or get things done (that are causing them stress) rather than take vacation. The interesting thing is that this tacitly known to not really be sick and accepted both by peers and management. Vacation == lazy. Sick days == we all pretend we work 60hr weeks non-stop.<p>Cultural anecdote example from <a href="http://maebert.github.io/jrnl/installation.html#quickstart" rel="nofollow">http://maebert.github.io/jrnl/installation.html#quickstart</a><p><pre><code> 2012-03-29 09:00 Called in sick.
Used the time to clean the house and spent 4h on writing my book.</code></pre>
What I find interesting about mentioning the Cadillac ad and workaholism, is how Ford actually found workaholism decreased the efficiency of his workers:<p>> On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day</a>
According to the BLS only 146M people are working in US - 46% of total population or 59% of working-age adults. And 26M of these are parttime. Goes to show you working hours are not evenly distributed among people.
I feel this article is a little weak in one major sense: comparing the US to European countries based on non-working time is okay, but you also need to compare a metric like GDP. Using this, the US is #6 world-wide only behind two European countries. So yes, Euros may get more time off, but the US is a way more economically powerful and productive country economically.<p>Hurting the economy, sure people get burned out, but it is hard to come to that conclusion based on the data given and the authors points.
When you look for jobs find companies that will let you have adequate vacation time and actually make you take it. The older you get you'll start valuing your and your family's time more and more. Making loads of money and then waiting for that 1 week vacation to blow it off, or wait until you are old to travel is not optimal the way I see it. By that time you'll have so many ailments travel won't be an option for long.
There is surely some freedom in being able to set whatever policies you like at your company without having a federal entity stipulate you give each employee X days of paid vacation.<p>If you want to heavily incentivize a cultural shift towards more vacation time for US employees, I don't think a federal mandate is as attractive as just an economic incentive. (Tax break to companies where X% of employees take more than Y days per year etc)
It's actually really hard to find a job that pays a decent wage and gives a good amount of time off. The kind of job where you can 'work to live'.<p>Our mentality of "Americans love to work hard" is misleading. I'd say Americans are just optimistic. We are sort of 'forced' to work hard so we're optimistic and try to make the best of it.
How does this stuff get so popular on YC?<p>Is there a founder anywhere that didn't put in months of 100+ hour weeks? Or, to clarify, a successful founder?
This seems too simplistic. The article focuses on one of the inputs to a nation's economic system -- labor and the price of that labor (wages). It seems to truly answer the question "What is it all for?" in an article whose title refers to "hurting the economy" it would make sense to at least discuss the output of that same system by citing GDP or some similar metric.
Alas, this is about the level of analysis I've come to expect from years of reading <i>The New Republic</i> on issues like this. Neither cultural nor legal conditions surrounding employment in the United States are ideal for workers who have the preferences of the author of this article,[1] but neither are they so horrific that the economy is "hurt" in a big way, especially compared to the economies of other countries.<p>Other comments posted before mine have already pointed out that overall prosperity in the United States is quite high, and I might add that many of the newly industrialized countries of east Asia (which characteristically have high population densities and limited natural resources, and thus are a model of what policies it takes to be prosperous despite a lack of natural advantages) increase steadily in wealth and general prosperity[2] despite ignoring parts of the author's advice.<p>For me, the crucial fact to keep in mind in any of these decry-America threads on Hacker News is that people vote with their feet. The United States continues to be a highly desired country to immigrate to,[3] so whatever trade-offs the United States economy offers, there are still a lot of people who think they are better trade-offs than the trade-offs in the familiar home country they were born in.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/authors/bryce-covert" rel="nofollow">http://www.newrepublic.com/authors/bryce-covert</a><p>[2] <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/17/business/world-rich-list-singapore/" rel="nofollow">http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/17/business/world-rich-list-s...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-dream-life.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-drea...</a><p><a href="http://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born.html</a><p><a href="http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/immigrant-process/petition/file.html" rel="nofollow">http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/immi...</a><p>AFTER EDIT: I note the downvotes indicating disagreement, and I am curious about what you disagree with. Please let me know.<p>And I am amused by this correction to the submitted article: "Correction: This piece originally stated that workers with smartphones spent 72 hours a week on their off time checking work e-mail. In fact, the 72 hours include working hours, and the workers are just professionals, managers, and executives. We regret the error." We are not talking about a strongly numerate analysis here.
The entire first world could get by with 100% time off on the back of the poor of this world. Why not just lose the pretense and admit that the rich americans and europeans can truly afford to spend all their days idle, consuming stuff imported and made elsewhere by people who work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, while you all spend your days debating 35 vs. 40 hours of invaluable pretend work. Such hubris.
Can someone explain to me why paid vacation is ok? If you don't work, in other words contribute to your job, why in the hell should you be paid? By the way that doesn't mean I don't believe in the workers' welfare, but just not in this way.
<p><pre><code> Ninety-four percent of professional workers put in 50 or more hours, and nearly half work 65 or above.
</code></pre>
This sounds crazy exaggerated without any citation. According to wiki, "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average non-farm private sector employee worked 34.5 hours per week as of June 2012."<p>EDIT: reference.. <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm</a>