<story><title>Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)</title><url>https://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-balance</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jjcm</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve experienced a lot of these things since leaving the bay area and moving to Australia. The thing that surprised me most was similar to point #3 - in Australia the less fortunate are taken care of. One big mental drain I had in America was when my friends were sick but could do nothing about it. I had a roommate in Seattle who had severe dental problems and chronic tooth pain, but could do nothing about it because he simply couldn&amp;#x27;t afford it. I had another friend who had an oblique fracture in their arm, but &lt;i&gt;set it themselves and never went to the doctor&lt;/i&gt;. All because healthcare was not only expensive, but &lt;i&gt;randomly expensive&lt;/i&gt;. You never knew if you&amp;#x27;d be leaving the hospital with a $100 medical bill or a $10,000 medical bill. I had great healthcare for all of my working career, but my friends often didn&amp;#x27;t, and it ate at me mentally. In Australia that&amp;#x27;s never been a point of stress. If you have a cold, you go to the doctor, and you always knew it&amp;#x27;d be less than $200ish. There were no orders of magnitude more expensive surprises.&lt;p&gt;The rest of the points resonated highly with me as well, as aside from the maternity leave I&amp;#x27;ve experienced them all. I have to move back to the Bay soon and I&amp;#x27;m not looking forward to it. Every time I visit there&amp;#x27;s more homeless who&amp;#x27;ve been pushed to the streets because the system in place simply doesn&amp;#x27;t work - Nordic countries, Switzerland, and Australia are simply better in so many aspects. There&amp;#x27;s a reason why the USA has fallen to #13 in HDI[1] and continues to fall.&lt;p&gt;The people of the USA have too much pride to change - we&amp;#x27;ve been on top for so long that we often think we can&amp;#x27;t learn from other countries, and that we have everything figured out. The intro speech Jeff Daniels did in Newsroom [2] resonates here. It&amp;#x27;s time we looked at what policies actually work for the best of the populous.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=RyzDRc34l2g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=RyzDRc34l2g&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)</title><url>https://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-balance</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>falsedan</author><text>I recently moved from working for a US company to working for a CH one. There’s some disadvantages, like people not giving their all at work slowing things down. Compared to the previous role, it’s glacial. But no on call, 6 weeks vacation, and 8% pension contribution from the company that I don’t even have to match is a good trade-off. Work is always going to be frustrating, but I’m at a point in my life that I’d rather be frustrated at being forced to work a maximum of 37.5 hours per week (tracked with timesheets) than frustrated at unrealistic deadlines and the cult of appearing to get things done.</text></comment>