[mcluck]

It's a tricky thing: my experience does mirror some of the "propaganda" despite coming to Europe with heavily rose-tinted glasses. I'm not going to pretend that my limited data is enough to extrapolate to the whole of the continent but it's still a data point.

The work culture is very different. There's a clear attitude of working until the next holiday and the company never gets one minute more than what they pay me for. That's honestly not a _bad_ perspective to have but it's not ideal if you're trying to build a startup

[Muromec]

I'm pretty sure the attitude to work depends whether you are a startup or not, whom you hire and on what conditions. It makes sense to work 12 hours a day in your 20ies when you have no other things to do and get a piece of what you are building in return. Otherwise, it's just business -- company wants me to work more and pay less, I want the opposite, so I pay my union fees and don't touch work laptop after 6pm ever.