In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale?
For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it.
Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We can't have the niceties they are having unless we have huge leaps in overall productivity around the world.
Edit: To explain my point further. Let's say you have a Swiss watch factory that is relaying on export for 90% of its production. With this money it can afford hiring top researchers and paying very high wages even for low-skill positions. This wouldn't be possible if there wasn't a huge market to product this luxury good for (Europe, US and Asia).
But if the export markets were as rich as Switzerland, they would buy even more luxury watches. So I don't see how your point makes sense.
The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA.
You can find a lot of people who write off the Swiss example by just handwaving and saying things like "well it's all stolen money". But the Swiss economy is diversified. The entire financial sector including insurance and pensions is about 10% of the GDP. Private banking is far from the entire financial sector. And in recent years the Swiss have started to give other governments lots of surveillance data on their citizens. You can't get numbered accounts for many many years now, and since FATCA Americans trigger so much reporting that they're being turned away from banks due to the compliance overheads alone. EU governments have benefited from Swiss cooperation too. Still, Switzerland hasn't got poorer since these changes came in.
I suspect the reason so many people ignore Switzerland and fail to learn lessons from it is because one of the most obvious and important causes of Swiss wealth is their rather unique system of government. Lots of people in America in the UK are doubting democracy entirely right now. I see totalitarian worldviews put forward quite openly all over the place in these days. The Swiss have a very weak federal government, a rapidly rotating presidency and a vast number of referendums. It leads to a very stable sort of society with few political issues compared to other western countries. Compare to other parts of the world where often apparent stability comes from simply ignoring political problems in the hope that they'll go away, instead of addressing them early.
Forget about watches and chocolate. Switzerland is one the three most industrialized countries in the world. That is, the industrial output per person is one of the highest (if not highest at some moment). Not services, but real things produced. Maybe this is what makes them quite a strong economy. Surely, their culture adds a bit to that.
Is it scalable? I'm not sure if this is the properly framed question. It implies that other nations are not predestined to be like Switzerland. I think the more appropriate question is: what policies should we implement to be like Switzerland?
One very important factor which hasn't been mentioned yet is the amazing educational infrastructure in Switzerland. There are truly world-class research universities, well connected business schools and a plethora of well-staffed technical colleges and vocational schools/apprenticeships.
Fees don't even reach $2k/year to study at undergraduate/graduate level and children are encouraged to think vocationally from a young age.
Also, teachers are very well paid (my partner is a high school teacher and starting salaries are $6-8k/month) and have to undergo 5 years of training (to teach a subject at high school level you need a master in the subject).
>For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it. Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries.
Well, concerning "match better work culture and comparable or better standards of living than the US" you could use any Nordic country too, which doesn't depend on a specific financial situation like Switzerland does with banking.
An even more apt question: does the American model scale -- without 1+ century of wars, meddling in foreign countries, befriending and installing dictators and friendly lackeys in power, resource grabbing, and the huge military that ensures all that is possible?
For Britain and France, their similar colonial past it didn't work that well in the end.
I think the contention that Switzerland cannot scale (like Singapore) merits serious discussion and can not be dismissed easily.
However, many (if not most) of the benefits discussed in the article are also available in the rest of Europe (at least Northern Europe).
So, what the article talks about does scale. (You could still question whether the lifestyle of "the West" will scale to the globe, and it seems we are about to find out.)
There's no reason why it can't scale, but one problem in implementing this kind of system is convincing the population to accept higher taxes (and Swiss taxes are, overall, still significantly higher than the US despite what the article seems to make out). It is, ultimately a case of the government taking more of your personal wealth to provide services to society as a whole, which flies in stark contrast to the traditional US approach.
Consider this from another PoV: there are a lot of talented people who refuse to join workforce because of those reasons (mentioned in the article). How much a country is losing from such talent loss?
Is this the old "we can't do this because we're too big/diverse/awesome" bogus argument?
Every time it's pointed out that Europe is a much better place for the middle class than America, you get all conservatives and/or all libertarians up in arms making up excuses for why America is supposedly unable to replicate that for various reasons.
With that can't do attitude, of course it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Strictly speaking, in an economy of specialists (which is what the global economy is, we've all become specialists. We're to the point that even 'programmer' has individual specialties), there is no single thing that will scale to everybody.
I don't know enough about economics to know for sure one way or the other if the Swiss model scales. I suspect most people responding don't know enough about economics either. I do know it's worth trying and finding out.
No, it only scales if you have mountains around your small country and do not have wars for 169 years. Their country is very protective and only works if you can ignore the rest of the world.
The U.S. is very behind many European countries in the work-life balance department. It's kinda surprising that America – with its liberal policies for private companies – is so backwards when it comes to caring about their employees.
The points in the article could apply to policies/norms in Sweden as well. Here, we get at least 4 weeks of paid vacation per year, as well as some insurances and a very generous parental leave (1 year for each parent).
"Liberal policies for private companies" really means that companies have less regulation and red tape, and therefore have a less liberated workforce. One of the points the article makes is that the Swiss government have legal mandates on workplace benefits such as time off and maternity leave, which is the opposite of what some refer to as liberal, at least when talking about businesses as opposed to individuals.
I used to work for the US HQ for a Swiss owned company. I worked in both offices on occasion with close interaction with both Swiss and American employees (I'm American).
This article is very spot on. What it doesn't mention much of, however, is the difference in what happens during working time. In a typical US office setting, water cooler talk, filing meaningless reports, etc is common. You'll probably have a guy who you're not really sure what he does. You simply don't see much of that in Swiss offices (at in my limited experiences, I'm sure there are exceptions). When it was time to work it was time to Fucking Work. If you're not adding value it is looked down upon. In the US, you kinda just shrug and go back to filing your TPS report.
This is true for large corporations, but smaller startups that is not the case. Smaller companies have everybody wearing multiple hats. Nobody sits around, and if they do, it's time to ask them to leave.
Sure, the Swiss model is very attractive for a person in a certain phase of life with a certain attitude toward work --- one for whom work is something distinct from life.
Me? I want the freedom to pour myself into something I love. I'd rather spend 60 hours per week using all of my faculties to produce something worthwhile than to spend 35 or 40 hours just trading my time for money, doing something I have to force myself to do, even if I can go swim with the swans on my break.
I've seen people use the concept of "work-life balance" as an excuse to propose caps on the impact a single developer can have. These people want to live in a Harrison Bergeron world where my work beyond 40 hours wouldn't count so that they don't feel pressed to work more than 40 hours a week. I couldn't be more opposed.
When I'm doing something I love, I always think about ways I can do it better. When I'm doing something I hate, no amount of work-life balance will compensate.
I will consider what you said distinctly from the Swiss vs other models problem (because it is only slightly relevant).
I don't know how old you are, but I am assuming you are younger than me, and I would like to offer you some advice without (I hope) sounding patronizing.
Work-life balance is not about what you love vs hate. There are not too many people hanging around in hacker news that hate what they do for work, otherwise they wouldn't be checking here most likely. I would even go ahead and venture to say, around 20% percent of the people love what they do. But work is not the only thing you can love. You can love playing the piano, spending time with your girlfriend trekking, regularly having dinner with your parents every Monday, running a few times a week so on and so forth. Your view of the word 'love' is extremely one-dimensional, and life is too short for that. If developing is the only thing that you love, be my guest. But do not restrict yourself to just that, if you have the financial means.
Work-life balance is about the multi-dimensional aspect of life. You can (and in my opinion should) love many things, because there are so many things in life to love. Then work-life balance becomes about the maximization of an objective function whose variables are the hours you spend for each thing that you love, and the constraints involve (1) the minimum surplus of money you are OK with making given that you spend the hours in the variables, (2) the minimum amount of time you would like to spend for each thing, (3) the maximum amount you can spend. That's essentially life for everyone. The weights and the (1)+(2) constraints are dependent on the person (3) is a limitation of reality. People call the weights and (1)+(2) work-life balance. I hope this gives you a new perspective.
Slightly off topic, but the beauty of Switzerland was such a stark contrast to where I grew up in New Jersey that it almost made me angry. All these people, going about their daily lives in Switzerland seemingly oblivious to the fairy-tale landscape around them!
Well for me a similar dream came true when I moved from third world city where people defecating in open all over, kids playing in overflowing garbage and folks living on sewage pipes to a Chicago suburb.
But in Switzerland, my husband's company gave employees six weeks of vacation a year.
And yet, I find people get used to it and consider it normal rather than a great thing. I give my employees 36 days of paid vacation per year (7.2 weeks) and, yep, got complaints the other day when I suggested making December 22nd a mandatory holiday day(!) :-)
I think the complaint here (if I understand you correctly) is that you are giving a vacation day and then making a certain day mandatory to use it. This practice is common among companies and extremely infuriating and in my opinion should be illegal. Better to have 35 days paid and make december 22nd a company holiday.
While this sounds lovely, can anyone with experience speak to the difficulty of finding sponsored work in Switzerland?
For instance, my wife is a social worker in the U.S. and speaks conversational German - but this is not likely to be considered a "high need" type of job for which a company would hire a foreign worker.
Comparisons between the US and European countries are often useless. Either they pick a rich European country that has restricted immigration for a long time, or they say "Western Europe" while ignoring many of the countries in Western Europe that have some real challenges (like unemployment).
Germany or the UK might be reasonable comparison points. Not perfect, of course (still huge differences), but it's much more likely that there is a real lesson somewhere.
Somewhat expected in the more conservative midwest (the author is comparing her Zürich experience with living in Chicago) but apparently "unlimited vacation" seems to become increasingly common in the Bay Area at least.
I have a former colleague that on looking for a new role was offered "unlimited vacation".
He asked what the limit was. "Unlimited", they replied. "Honestly?", he ventured. "Yes, unlimited".
"OK, then", he said, "I'd like to book the entire year off".
"Oh no, you can't do that!", they replied.
"I thought so. So what's the limit?", he asked again. "There is no limit", they replied. "But you just said I couldn't have a year off", he pointed out. "It has to be reasonable", they said.
This went back and forth. In the end "unlimited holiday" in the UK for this firm was 28 days. That is the statutory legal minimum in the UK. If he went over this, it would likely be accepted at the time, but "noticed" in performance/salary reviews, etc.
So, in short, unlimited vacation is a con, and you should try the above yourself. It'll lead to an interesting conversation, although it may harm your chances of getting an offer if you time it wrong.
From what I see among my friends working in the Bay area, those who moved to startups with "unlimited vacation" are taking less than the few ones who are at generous[1] big corps. And then of course there are still companies like Apple that give 12 days to new employees.
[1] By US standards :) For instance 25 days plus ~10 national holidays.
Unlimited vacation sounds nice, but from what little I read on it, it wasn't really unlimited. Rather, it seems to be based on what's acceptable at your workplace and how much work you can get done.
Hopefully someone with first-hand experience or more knowledge will elaborate a bit on this.
There's another factor here that hasn't been mentioned: Switzerland is only a couple of hundred kilometres across. That makes a difference when it comes to public transport and other infrastructure like broadband. I laugh when I see case studies about high-speed broadband in Europe. Europe is small. If you put my country on top of Europe, the south-westernmost city would be in Portugal and the northernmost in Estonia. And the US is even bigger.
Any time I meet or hear about someone like this, who comes back to the US after living in western Europe, I really have to wonder about them. Especially this one: she's just complaining a lot about life in America not being as great as in Switzerland. Well, that's no surprise. What did she expect? Even worse, she's just in time for Trumpism. She couldn't have picked a worse time to come back.
[+] [-] manarth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manarth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|9 years ago|reply
For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it.
Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall wealth of Europe and many other countries. We can't have the niceties they are having unless we have huge leaps in overall productivity around the world.
Edit: To explain my point further. Let's say you have a Swiss watch factory that is relaying on export for 90% of its production. With this money it can afford hiring top researchers and paying very high wages even for low-skill positions. This wouldn't be possible if there wasn't a huge market to product this luxury good for (Europe, US and Asia).
[+] [-] zigzigzag|9 years ago|reply
The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA.
You can find a lot of people who write off the Swiss example by just handwaving and saying things like "well it's all stolen money". But the Swiss economy is diversified. The entire financial sector including insurance and pensions is about 10% of the GDP. Private banking is far from the entire financial sector. And in recent years the Swiss have started to give other governments lots of surveillance data on their citizens. You can't get numbered accounts for many many years now, and since FATCA Americans trigger so much reporting that they're being turned away from banks due to the compliance overheads alone. EU governments have benefited from Swiss cooperation too. Still, Switzerland hasn't got poorer since these changes came in.
I suspect the reason so many people ignore Switzerland and fail to learn lessons from it is because one of the most obvious and important causes of Swiss wealth is their rather unique system of government. Lots of people in America in the UK are doubting democracy entirely right now. I see totalitarian worldviews put forward quite openly all over the place in these days. The Swiss have a very weak federal government, a rapidly rotating presidency and a vast number of referendums. It leads to a very stable sort of society with few political issues compared to other western countries. Compare to other parts of the world where often apparent stability comes from simply ignoring political problems in the hope that they'll go away, instead of addressing them early.
[+] [-] haddr|9 years ago|reply
Is it scalable? I'm not sure if this is the properly framed question. It implies that other nations are not predestined to be like Switzerland. I think the more appropriate question is: what policies should we implement to be like Switzerland?
[+] [-] louisswiss|9 years ago|reply
Fees don't even reach $2k/year to study at undergraduate/graduate level and children are encouraged to think vocationally from a young age.
Also, teachers are very well paid (my partner is a high school teacher and starting salaries are $6-8k/month) and have to undergo 5 years of training (to teach a subject at high school level you need a master in the subject).
[+] [-] coldtea|9 years ago|reply
Well, concerning "match better work culture and comparable or better standards of living than the US" you could use any Nordic country too, which doesn't depend on a specific financial situation like Switzerland does with banking.
An even more apt question: does the American model scale -- without 1+ century of wars, meddling in foreign countries, befriending and installing dictators and friendly lackeys in power, resource grabbing, and the huge military that ensures all that is possible?
For Britain and France, their similar colonial past it didn't work that well in the end.
[+] [-] FabHK|9 years ago|reply
However, many (if not most) of the benefits discussed in the article are also available in the rest of Europe (at least Northern Europe).
So, what the article talks about does scale. (You could still question whether the lifestyle of "the West" will scale to the globe, and it seems we are about to find out.)
[+] [-] sleavey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6DM|9 years ago|reply
Edit: My reasoning is the result of seeing this type of information everywhere, I could be wrong: http://dy00k1db5oznd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/...
[+] [-] ivm|9 years ago|reply
- have little natural resources
- located far from the big trade ways
- were occupied by neighbors
- did not have colonies or conquered anybody
- do not have a big financial sector like Switzerland or Singapore
Still it's a great country to live in, with an amazing education system (probably the source of the greatness).
[+] [-] zerr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|9 years ago|reply
Every time it's pointed out that Europe is a much better place for the middle class than America, you get all conservatives and/or all libertarians up in arms making up excuses for why America is supposedly unable to replicate that for various reasons.
With that can't do attitude, of course it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[+] [-] ktRolster|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yequalsx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whazor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izacus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johanbrook|9 years ago|reply
The points in the article could apply to policies/norms in Sweden as well. Here, we get at least 4 weeks of paid vacation per year, as well as some insurances and a very generous parental leave (1 year for each parent).
[+] [-] sleavey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robert_foss|9 years ago|reply
No, mandatory EU minimums enforce at least 5 weeks of vacation.
[+] [-] deedubaya|9 years ago|reply
This article is very spot on. What it doesn't mention much of, however, is the difference in what happens during working time. In a typical US office setting, water cooler talk, filing meaningless reports, etc is common. You'll probably have a guy who you're not really sure what he does. You simply don't see much of that in Swiss offices (at in my limited experiences, I'm sure there are exceptions). When it was time to work it was time to Fucking Work. If you're not adding value it is looked down upon. In the US, you kinda just shrug and go back to filing your TPS report.
[+] [-] dennisnedry|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quotemstr|9 years ago|reply
Sure, the Swiss model is very attractive for a person in a certain phase of life with a certain attitude toward work --- one for whom work is something distinct from life.
Me? I want the freedom to pour myself into something I love. I'd rather spend 60 hours per week using all of my faculties to produce something worthwhile than to spend 35 or 40 hours just trading my time for money, doing something I have to force myself to do, even if I can go swim with the swans on my break.
I've seen people use the concept of "work-life balance" as an excuse to propose caps on the impact a single developer can have. These people want to live in a Harrison Bergeron world where my work beyond 40 hours wouldn't count so that they don't feel pressed to work more than 40 hours a week. I couldn't be more opposed.
When I'm doing something I love, I always think about ways I can do it better. When I'm doing something I hate, no amount of work-life balance will compensate.
[+] [-] eatplayrove|9 years ago|reply
I don't know how old you are, but I am assuming you are younger than me, and I would like to offer you some advice without (I hope) sounding patronizing.
Work-life balance is not about what you love vs hate. There are not too many people hanging around in hacker news that hate what they do for work, otherwise they wouldn't be checking here most likely. I would even go ahead and venture to say, around 20% percent of the people love what they do. But work is not the only thing you can love. You can love playing the piano, spending time with your girlfriend trekking, regularly having dinner with your parents every Monday, running a few times a week so on and so forth. Your view of the word 'love' is extremely one-dimensional, and life is too short for that. If developing is the only thing that you love, be my guest. But do not restrict yourself to just that, if you have the financial means.
Work-life balance is about the multi-dimensional aspect of life. You can (and in my opinion should) love many things, because there are so many things in life to love. Then work-life balance becomes about the maximization of an objective function whose variables are the hours you spend for each thing that you love, and the constraints involve (1) the minimum surplus of money you are OK with making given that you spend the hours in the variables, (2) the minimum amount of time you would like to spend for each thing, (3) the maximum amount you can spend. That's essentially life for everyone. The weights and the (1)+(2) constraints are dependent on the person (3) is a limitation of reality. People call the weights and (1)+(2) work-life balance. I hope this gives you a new perspective.
[+] [-] alexmingoia|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _nalply|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cven714|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisper|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvreeland|9 years ago|reply
But remember the US is huge. If you like mountains, Checkout Colorado, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, Washington and Oregon among others : )
[+] [-] geodel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personlurking|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|9 years ago|reply
And yet, I find people get used to it and consider it normal rather than a great thing. I give my employees 36 days of paid vacation per year (7.2 weeks) and, yep, got complaints the other day when I suggested making December 22nd a mandatory holiday day(!) :-)
[+] [-] nwomack|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] germinalphrase|9 years ago|reply
For instance, my wife is a social worker in the U.S. and speaks conversational German - but this is not likely to be considered a "high need" type of job for which a company would hire a foreign worker.
[+] [-] hueving|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffdavis|9 years ago|reply
Germany or the UK might be reasonable comparison points. Not perfect, of course (still huge differences), but it's much more likely that there is a real lesson somewhere.
[+] [-] hedwall|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdavisx|9 years ago|reply
Aren't we (U.S.) the richest country in the world?
[+] [-] bsn54|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musha68k|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulRobinson|9 years ago|reply
He asked what the limit was. "Unlimited", they replied. "Honestly?", he ventured. "Yes, unlimited".
"OK, then", he said, "I'd like to book the entire year off".
"Oh no, you can't do that!", they replied.
"I thought so. So what's the limit?", he asked again. "There is no limit", they replied. "But you just said I couldn't have a year off", he pointed out. "It has to be reasonable", they said.
This went back and forth. In the end "unlimited holiday" in the UK for this firm was 28 days. That is the statutory legal minimum in the UK. If he went over this, it would likely be accepted at the time, but "noticed" in performance/salary reviews, etc.
So, in short, unlimited vacation is a con, and you should try the above yourself. It'll lead to an interesting conversation, although it may harm your chances of getting an offer if you time it wrong.
[+] [-] hocuspocus|9 years ago|reply
[1] By US standards :) For instance 25 days plus ~10 national holidays.
[+] [-] anotherboffin|9 years ago|reply
Hopefully someone with first-hand experience or more knowledge will elaborate a bit on this.
[+] [-] dingo_bat|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] camperman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Arizhel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symbiote|9 years ago|reply