Another company that doesn’t want to waste shitloads of money on an office and force employees to suffer due to poor choices.
Or you can quit so they don’t need to pay severance.
Is this just the new norm for companies?
Looks like it. It’s something you need to negotiate during your job interview otherwise you’re fucked. Every company I looked at during my last round of job search was going for that bullshit 3 days at work 2 at home thing. Infuriating. Meanwhile, having our team leader be in an office on the other side of France and remotely manage several dozen people in a different site is apparently totally fine and not the same at all.
I learned recently that it’s called “unregretted attrition”.
I know this behaviour from big corporations is not exclusive to French companies but my type of work allows me to work from home and I’ve never seen a company despise WFH so much than my once French employer.
This was before the pandemic and I had the habit of working from home with my previous employer when I was sick. When I changed employer to work for a French hosting company in Montreal, they were adamantly against WFH. Even if sick. They preferred that you missed a day (or two, you know, take your time to recover!1!!) from work, taking generous sick days, than letting anyone from the lower ranks WFH. This was a pretty big red flag for me. Anyway their work culture was pretty toxic and I ended up quitting after a few months, but the “no work from home even if sick” policy is the first thing that hit me when I started there.
My current employer allows me to WFH and I’ve been looking a bit around to see if I could find something else, but they mostly all seem to require some sort of hybrid schedules at the office now, which obviously sucks.
My experience with French companies is that they never even work. The French take so much vacation time off you can hardly get anything done. They are regularly out worked by just about every other country on the face of the Earth.
They have the same mandated 4 weeks paid vacation as the rest of the EU. National holidays seems to be 11, which is similar to germany.
I do have the impression of france workers going on a strike a lot though, maybe thats what you mean. If you are from the us, i can see how 4 weeks vacation can seem like a lot, you dont have the benefit of having decent employee protections
No there’s more to it than that. We have 3 weeks of vacation here in the U.S. and don’t have any problems getting things done.
The US has no federal requirement to pay for unworked hours, be they sick or holiday time off work. This is why your people are depressed and seeking guidance from opiods and fascists.
The US has no federal requirement to pay for unworked hours, be they sick or holiday time off work.
“Federal” is the weasel word here. All states have their own requirements, including sick time, holiday time, and how long you can go without a break. Also, I’ve never seen an employer not offer PTO. Even your local McDonalds has paid vacation for full-time employees.
While I wish it was codified into federal law, your implication that nobody has vacation time in the US is patently false.
That wasn’t my implication, it was a statement of fact. You can call it a weasel word if you want but it’s weird given it is true.
Let’s look to maternity and parental leave if you would like, another case where the US is stuck in the stone age…but I am super glad for you guys and how productive you are, it must really help you all bond with your kids.
There’s no federal requirement, yet I still get 3 weeks vacation time, 5 personal days,a week of sick time, and an abundance of WFH. Somehow we manage a good work life balance and still beat out the French in productivity. We’re not even superstar corporate drones. Our office is mostly Gen Z at this point who have no qualms with actually utilizing our time off like some of the older generations.
Sounds very anecdotal and that you are benefitting from all those sub standard non union jobs that have people working two to barely scrape by in the US.
Yes it’s all anecdotal, given that it’s an anecdote. That naturally follows does it not? And no, it’s not including any substandard jobs that you need two of to scrape by. It counts very good jobs that are similar in scope and with at least adequate benefits across multiple countries within the same company.
Somehow we manage a good work life balance
you are delusional, ignorant, or a troll. the united states is regularly cited as one of the top 10 or 20 worst countries for work life balance depending on the source. Try learning facts instead of posting obvious lies.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-countries-with-the-worst-work-life-balance.html
How are you going to tell me how good of a work life balance I have or don’t have at my company that I work for and you don’t? Pretty sure I have all the facts in this case lmao
Four to five weeks of vacation is pretty standard in Europe and I don’t think it has anything to do with productivity. AFAIK, a German or Belgian would pretty much get the same amount of vacation. I’m in Montreal and the standard by law here is two weeks but my contract with a local employer is giving me four weeks. And, I’m still working when I’m working, even if I have some vacation time at some point?!
I took eight weeks this year. So you’re saying I (or a French person?) am not getting anything done when I work, because I took some extended vacation time?
Yeah France remains one of the most productive countries in the European Union, so they must be doing something right
Here’s an interesting report on France productivity from 2019: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2019-11/en_1errapportcnp-10july-final.pdf
It’s not just the vacation. Culturally the French are just slow movers at getting anything done. In a multinational company it seems like France is always playing catch up. Thats isn’t to say France is slowest either. Germany has always been the at very bottom levels of productivity.
But this means they’ll have less time to reveal the map by climbing to the top of towers.
