It's 7h50 of work/week but we usually have a long lunch break so we end up the day quite late anyways, and we generally work 8h and take some complete or half days off (Friday afternoon is a common choice) to make up for the time
As an American, that is such a foreign statement to read. I literally laughed out loud when I read it. The craziest part to wrap my head around is the concept of working during the week, then saying, "I have worked too many hours, I have to go home Friday afternoon". I can only imagine the work that isn't being done and being left behind.
Do CEOs and investment bankers only work 50 hours a week? What about investment managers?
[ADDED question]
So the hours rules only apply to hourly workers? If that is the case, it is similar to America because companies have to pay overtime for hourly workers so they try not to let them work past 40 hours anyway.
That's not at all how it works. This is completely absurd.
First, you need to plan your days off. So in reality, you will work 40hrs 1 week and 32 the next one for instance.
Secondly, when you have a certain status (called "cadre"), you are actually giving away the exact count number of hours for a number of days of work. Those work days can be (but not necessarily all the time) more than 8 hours. Actually, any work days is usually more than 8 hours because, like the previous poster says, we take a long break for lunch and that's not part of the hours.
Finally, Americans always have this idea that the French are super strict with their hours, but that's true only in jobs where they are actually clocked by the hour. There a many job where it's not the case and someone committed won't mind staying a few hours extra a week if it means having the job well-done.
In contrast, I've been working in the Netherlands for 6 years now, and I see this behavior much more often : after having stayed the mandatory 8.5 hours (30 minutes lunch break), the person will leave, no matter what.
managers and higher ranking people are paid by the day, so their hours are not counted. I have been paid by the hour only the first 4 months in my ~10years of working carrer.
edit: but on a side note France (and Germany) ranked very high in output per worked hour the last time I checked, way higher than the US. Kind of not messing around in the office people.
>on a side note France (and Germany) ranked very high in output per worked hour the last time I checked, way higher than the US.
I am not trying to start an argument with you (and France seems like a great place to live and work) but in Googling around, I found the following, which reports that German GDP per hour worked is .92 of the American and French is .958 of the American:
If you click on the "Show information" tab on the right, you see that "At the beginning of the year 2012, GDP per hour worked was significantly revised for a large number of OECD countries". Could it be that you relied on the "pre-revision" figures?
More generally, do you remember where you got your data?
>managers and higher ranking people are paid by the day, so their hours are not counted
Do you have any more info on this? Are you basically saying that the law is ignored? Because AFAICT the French and EU (working time directive) are both quite strict and there don't seem to be any opt-outs.. their hours would just be logged as '7h' regardless of reality? (and if the employee were to kick up a fuss, they would no doubt win any case?).
(i've been interested in hiring in French jurisdiction, but put off by working time law)
ouch, you're going in very specific here. It's going to hurt.
About the EU law : you are not subject to it, it's countries who are subject to it. It work by fining the infringing country. EU laws generally mandate countries to have national laws in this or that way. If a citizen gets a condamnation by an infringing national law, and after having tried every possible national appeals, he can go to the EU court and get his country condemned. I'll stop here on that subject.
So, on a French level, we have work laws (Code du travail), regulations and "collective agreement" (I hope my google translation is correct). In computer science the collective agreement is called "syntec" it has force of law (it's not the case for all agreements). Collective agreements can offer better benefits than the law, but not worse. In the case of computer science, the employees are classified in 2 layers, basic employees (secretaries etc.) and "Managers and Engineers" (Cadres et Ingénieurs) in startups, almost everybody is an engineer. Then engineers are classified with a number, depending on experience, autonomy, degree of skills the job needs, and people managed. This number (coefficient) correspond to the minimum salary you have to pay them, and the other way around, if in everyday work, their job goes into a higher level, their minimum salary have to be increased (if you were already paying them high than the minimum, you don't care). For computer science we are generally way over the minimum, but it's good to have someone check the employment contract before signing it. Employers tend to give lower number at employment, I tend to raise it to their true level, because I value my team on paper too. People whose number is high enough meaning their seniority is high enough are to be paid by the day and not the hour. Those people are paid to work 218 days a year (waiting for some backlash here:) ).
Then you have the limits on the number of hours worked, like no more than 13h in a row, sleep time etc. It's not really about salary, it's about security and well-being. As far I as know it's not a issue in computer science.
The EU directive put a legal up limit on the number of hours you can work yes. But this limit is quite high. Besides, this limit does not apply when the person goes home and work in the evenings from there on her own will (and for certain positions, that's frequent).
Secondly, it's especially written in the law that with the "cadre" status, you are to work a number of days annually, not hours (it's called "au forfait" if I'm not mistaken).
sometimes we compute "fake hours" for people working by the day but it's for administrative purpose (like tax stuff, or unemployment benefits).
I think in the context of the mathematician during the war, we can assume he was thinking of a worker in an factory in peace time or something very cliché like that. At the time, 40 hours weeks and paid vacations were a quite "new" (like less than 10 years) thing.
As an American, that is such a foreign statement to read. I literally laughed out loud when I read it. The craziest part to wrap my head around is the concept of working during the week, then saying, "I have worked too many hours, I have to go home Friday afternoon". I can only imagine the work that isn't being done and being left behind.
Do CEOs and investment bankers only work 50 hours a week? What about investment managers?
[ADDED question]
So the hours rules only apply to hourly workers? If that is the case, it is similar to America because companies have to pay overtime for hourly workers so they try not to let them work past 40 hours anyway.