CULTURE SHOCKS working in the Netherlands as an American! 

People in the Netherlands take lunch brakes. That they don't do it at your place is pretty exceptional. A 30 minute lunch brake is even mandatory according to the Arbeidstijdenwet (the law that covers work hours).

For the ones reading this after listening to Ava.. Ava is listing a lot of things but that is not reality for all jobs. Yes part time work is common in the Netherlands in young families with kids. Child care is limited and expensive so usually nowadays both parents work a shorter week. And yes that means not a top salary. But parenting actively your kids is more appreciated. If you move to a higher level in a company people work usually longer than 40 hours. And then absolutely no one is looking at the clock to stop at five. Another aspect is that working contracts can state the number of hours in a working week but again in a management position no one is counting hours including evenings and weekends. And yes I stay at home when sick but I still will work to relief the pressure on collegues. If you think Dutch people are lazy... Think again!

about being sick … when you’re sick and still go to work, you could make your colleagues sick and the company may “suffer” because of that. So it’s better for your job if you stay home till you’re totally recovered.

In Norway your workplace cannot contact you after working hours - intrude on your privacy - unless there is some emergency

Ever heard the phrase: you work to live, you don't live to work. And don't forget to have the potatoes ready by 5.30 pm.

I began with a 40 hour workweek, then after a couple of years I decided I needed more free time, so I went to a 36 hour workweek (I wasn’t the only one - some chose to work 9 hours per day, so they had a day off every week). And then I went to a 32 hour workweek. Feels like a nice balance between working and living. 😊

Having worked for an American company for about 10 years and lived in Long Beach, CA for about 4 months my experience was that my American coworkers didn’t work very hard at all; they made long office hours but they worked with less focus and weren’t very productive during that time; lunch breaks lasting over one hour and a half were the norm.

40 hour a week Dutch office worker here. I have lunch away from the keyboard. And I've always done that. I need my downtime.

When it comes to directness, there's indeed a cultural difference. I remember reading an example once of a Dutch person going to either the UK or the States (can't remember which one, but both have the same "evasiveness"). He submitted a draft for something and as feedback he got a "I like it, but I'm not sure about these things". While that's code for "well, this is completely wrong" he just went with "they like it, so it's fine", because, you know, honesty, and then was genuinly surprised when it got refused. Here in Belgium (and the Netherlands), when someone criticizes your work, it's just your work, not you as a person, while in the States, it seems the moment you say something bad about their work, it's like you kicked their puppy after you ran it over with your car.

I moved to France 20+ years ago. I worked in an international environment with people from all over Europe. Each country has so much to offer, but all came from countries that have rules to protect workers. This approach to a shared way, encourages managers to have respect for the Colleague's they work with. All are insured with healthcare, each country has a different approach, but one never have to worry that sickness will put them in bankruptcy. Should life be difficult, there is a helping hand, additional training for a better position, education for your children, child care, work balance, sharing the benefits of an economy realizing more than just the investment class should benefit from a nations economy. If I knew what i know today, I would be out on the streets demanding the USA politicians put the people above the corporate class.

Email after 16.30 are for tomorrow. Change my mind

A 30 minute lunch break is actually mandatory for working days over 6 hours long. I think some people just keep working, so they can leave at 5 instead of 5:30. There is a difference in work culture between government jobs, like at a University, and corporate jobs in The Netherlands, when it comes to working hours.

There has been research done with the outcome that the less hours you work those hours are almost all productive. So paying as a boss for 6 hours where the productivity is 5 hours where as you pay for 9 hours the productivity will be 5,5 hours, something like that. So it makes sense to reduce working hours, they are smart, those companies.

Heyy Ava, I'm dutch recently started a job at an international team (40 hours a week). I love the different cultures and we do have 2 coffee breaks and one lunch break. But everyone is way less social than at all the dutch companies I worked parttime before. Oh, one of the reasons females work less hours here because they are needed to take care of the children, because its cheaper to take a day off than daycare 😉 loving your video, and fresh perspective on things!

Im Dutch and i work in a office now and before in a bakery. You are describing a OFFICE week. People who work with their hands at gardens or construction areas make 40 to 50 hours. Its not really realistic what you are saying. Its your personal experience in the city area.

Night owl reporting :P I tend to start later than most of my colleagues, however I also stay on later while they check out around 4-5 in the afternoon. Bonus is the drive to and from the office is once the rush hour is done, which means I don't lose as much time in transit.

about work here in the netherlands, it is more about quality than quantity. less hours but in those hours you do work pretty hard, in terms of sick days, people would rather have you be healthy and work well feeling good, than be sick and doing the bare minimum

About not making friends at work: I've never felt like that. I truly made great friends over the years and often have a beer after work.

I'm a Swedish citizen, I work from 07:00 - 16:00. And we get 4 weeks of paid vacation that you have to take out, if you don't take it the company will send you home with pay for 4 weeks near the end of the fiscal year. I am Dutch, by the way, and when I was working in the Netherlands, people definitely demanded you go in to work on Friday. I guess what you mentioned only applies to office jobs and not production/grunt jobs.

I have Mondays off and it’s glorious. It makes the weekend so much better.

We have an American colleague and it took time for her to get used to the idea of long holidays and part-time work too. Hugs from Almere 🏡 🤗

Just wait when you get sick during your vacation days... It will blow your mind that, sickness during your days off will refund the days off and these days will be treated as if you were sick during a working day. You have to notify your company ofcourse. There is a rule for sick days though, most companies don't pay the first day of sickness, so that will cost a vacation day. This makes it so that most employees take at least 2 days off. Companies are coming back from this rule nowadays, paying any sick day. We also don't have to use time for appointments most of the time.

Heel grappig hoe jij dit ervaart, als je in een kleiner bedrijf gaat werken zal je dit heel anders beleven. Kinderen tot 12 jaar hebben op woensdag vanaf 12 uur vrij inderdaad. Veel mensen plannen hier hun vrije dag. Anders moet het kind naar de opvang en dat is soms duurder dan 4 uur minder werken. En maar zelden werken beide ouders 40 uur dus meestal is dit wel te regelen. Worden de kinderen ouder dan zijn de ouders gewend aan deze vrije dag en houden ze dit gewoon aan. Op vrijdag kan je lekker je weekend boodschappen doen en gezellig het weekend in gaan. Naar mijn ervaring werken de meesten wel op maandag. En als de werktijd om is gaan we graag gelijk naar huis, met heel het gezin gezamenlijk avondeten vinden wij belangrijk.

I’ll just remember these are your personal experiences, mine were really different. We certainly always took lunchbreaks

Dutchie here! I think a few things really differ per branche. For example, yes, in general people don't expect you to answer emails off the clock, and yes you won't receive as many emails. But I have definitely sent emails at midnight and received a response at 1 am (working as a political assistant). And at universities, the professors and researcher do so much in evenings and weekends (such as conferences, lectures and meetings), and tend to work ovetime quite a bit, with 50+ work weeks being quite normal. I've been asked to do something 'tomorrow' on Friday-evening while being overworked (which was known). Also, I've definitely made friends (and relationships ;)) at work and I don't think that's an exception at all, though it very well could be less frequent than the US. And for example working in the restaurant business, you can work 12 h shifts with barely any breaks. When I worked at a call center, people did tend to leave quite strictly at the the endtime of their shift, but you're also expected to be very precise with everything, from the amount of minutes you take for your breaks to how long you spend on going to the bathroom, it's all monitored. And you need to be in at least 15 mins before your shift starts. And if you have a call at the end of your shift, you obviously finish it even if it takes an extra 30 mins. Not to mention fields like medicine (hospital staff, doctors) with very long hours and journalism which can be pretty round the clock, and you leave when you've finished your work and met your deadlines, not when 'it's time'. As for being sick: dutch also have been know for a 'don't complain, take an aspirin and suck it up attitude'. So while of course the whole sick day things is absent and as an employee you don't have to think about having enough days, there was definitely the culture of: you don't call in sick with a bad cold, only when you really physically cannot work. I've seen people at work with severe pain or fevers. I think covid changed that quite a lot, as it made people aware you can infect the whole office when you come in sick. Also, people leaving the office doesn't equal no work, there's many fields where people continue working at home.

Honestly Ava, you crack me up! 😂 I’m very Dutch, I lived in other EU countries quite a bit but I love the mirror you give me on our Dutch culture. So many things “we” do differently, like the seats on the train or the work culture. I work for an American company and your views help me again in understanding why my coworkers respond in a particular manner to things I say or do and find totally normal. Keep it up! Have you passed your drivers license test yet? Maybe you can vlog on that experience too; driving through Dutch traffic 😁

About lunch: everywhere I worked (5 employers of 25+ years) it was normal to have lunch in the lunchroom, at desk is often a minority. There's often a few that also do a small walk.

Being an engineer the office work culture sounds totally alien to me. I work full time, I totally hate meetings (they make me feel wasting my time). When I call in sick, there’s panic right away because my coworkers need to do my work aside. But we do take an hour for lunch. I don’t have extra vacation days and the end of the year I always have days left because the amount of work didn’t allow me to use them. But office work would drive me nuts pretty fast so I don’t complain.

We are always in the top 5 in the world happiness report. So enjoy your stay here!

yes some meetings are like battles lol but at the end everything is cleared up and we can go on, no hard feelings !

Everything about this sounds perfect. I cannot wait to get to The Netherlands!

The discrepancy between male and female working hours is really simple. A lot of women work part time only. This is in large part due to them taking care of the kids. I guess people who see this as a problem that they want to "solve" are hoping that mothers start working fulltime as well. I can imagine big business likes that idea.

I start at 7 so im off early. But I always take time for my lunch. At home with my partner and at work with my colleagues. We often go for a stroll during our lunch. After work, I work out, play board games, do some gardning (summer time), watching a movie .... a lot of things to do 😊

The lunch break thing isn't true. Most Dutch people absolutely DO take lunch breaks.

Loving hearing your perspective! Nice to see our country from a fresh viewpoint.

As a Dutchie, what you're saying about American work culture sounds so exhausting, glad to be here!

Belgium here but working at a new company for 3 months now. I knew NOTHING about the job. The boss explains things to me and often tells me to feel free to disagree with him. We had a lot of discussions that basically end with that my boss isn't correct and I'm wrong, but that the way my boss does it does work and has it's advantages over my suggestion. Neither of us are idiots for disagreeing with the other. I have 0 fear to go "wait a minute, explain that point." or "I think you might be working completely wrong here, would this be better?" It's happened he's giving a big explanation and I pop up with a "hold on, that makes 0 sense." And again, dude working there 3 months now with 0 experience on the job. And he's perfectly fine to actually discuss his side. And obviously they're thought out, he has the experience. So I'll never go and say "you're an idiot". I assume he has his reasons. But I often want to know those reasons. I don't always agree with him but I can see where he's coming from.

I worked in Amsterdam at a dutch research collaboration with Belgium. The culture between the 2 countries - separated by a mere 200 km, and speaking the same language (yet a slightly different accent ) was striking...

Happy easter, kitty kat!🪺

Lunch: wrong, it's illegal to work through lunch, and most people take their 30m-1h lunch break as a moment to go for a walk with colleagues. Colleagues/friends: partially wrong, it'll depend on the environment.

Wow! I really enjoyed it. Thank You for sharing. And am also a new subscriber 😊 👋

About getting fired. In the Netherlands, you don't get fired easily. Lots of rules.

Hours worked are just hours paid by the employer. Look at productivity - what gets done - in those hours. The danger is though that we don't have enough time to recuperate from the weekend with these short working weeks.

There are many companies in Netherlands (or rather, teams) where they take a communal walk during lunch time.

"at five, everyone just wants to leave and cook potatoes", that took me by surprise in it's concise description of the spirit of dutchies, so very apt 😂

I recognize so much of what you mentioned, it's hilarious and so accurate. You'll understand that all this very much depends on the branch you're working in. Hope you enjoy your time here!

After I immigrated to Canada (from Netherlands) I noticed that people there made long days but also that they were not very efficient with their time at work. Most things could be done a whole lot quicker or simpler (which would make it quicker again) 😉

Thanks for sharing this.

Since Corona, I work from home 90% of the time. When I'm at home, I work from around 8:30 till 18:00 and when I go to the office, I work there from about 7:30 till 15:00 and leave before traffic becomes bad. Then I work from home again, until around 18:00. Often I work till later, to compensate for time wasted during the day, like when I watching too much RU-vid. It's so much different than before Corona, when I would wake up every day at 5:50, work from 7:30 till 16:30 and spend an hour getting home. I'm not tired all the time anymore.

I worked for a Dutch company for nearly 15 years, and my experience is vastly different.

On a serious note though: you work at a university, which means you are like a civil servant. Dutch Universities are funded by the government by a large part, yet still retain a lot of independence. What they do share with goverment jobs though is the very lenient work culture, which is an exaggeration of what you see elsewhere in the Netherlands. There are also other reasons why you would flourish in this environment, but it might be a bit too early in our historic development to tell you exactly what. Enjoy what you have for now :)

Very nice to see that you are having a good time in the most beautiful country in the world. Wishing you lots of happiness and fun. It was nice to see you so enthusiastic

The polder model originates from their namesake, Polders, dry land below the surrounding water level. If people missed something, or went rogue, everyone would drown, hense the trend towards collective decisionmaking. I'm a manager, and i tell my team (international software developers) during planning, raise any ideas or improvements you can think of. worst that can happen is that we decide not to use them. If you want me angry, wait till i hear later you had a better idea but didn't speak up.

I assume you moved there by getting a work visa? Was that process easy or hard for you? I'm starting to apply to places over there so I can move by the end of the year and am looking for some insight on the topic!

No disrespect but it is probably the bubble you live in. For me (and undoubtedly that still goes for many people in the Netherlands) a 45 hour work week was normal and yet also quite unique because we would work saterdays as well and thus never only worked 45 hours a week. People actually doing physiscal work, not sitting behind a desk but getting their hands dirty from early norning till late in the evening. Building, transport, roadworkers, mechanics, cleaners, docters and surgeons.

In Belgium how you take your lunch breaks depends from work place to work place. I've had jobs where I eat alone at my desk but also where I eat together with co-workers. One job I had was a few minutes walk from the city center of Brugge (Bruges) and I would regularly go either eat my lunch in a little park nearby with a book or go with co-workers to a nearby café with an outside terrace (we'd eat our sandwiches on the walk there).

My work is very different. But I am a secondary school teacher in The Netherlands. I work 0,76fte, which is 32 hours a week. But of course I need to be at work for four days. Also I do have friends at work and we do hang out outside of school. And also the emails never stop, outside of the summer break. I do get a lot of days off though.

Don't forget! If you get sick during your holiday, you can still call in sick and get those vacation days back.

you describing people at work sprinting towards the end of the day is really funny. Can you please make a comedy show with this in mind? Like Monthy python style. Would really be fun.

I guess i'm an exception to so many things... 1. I try to make fun at work, and make sure my co-workers have fun too... 2. Lunch, when i had an office job, i would take my breakaway from my desk & in summers, i would go outside for 30 to 40 minutes.. 3. I made some friends at work, most of them faded over time, but one became (one of) my (two) best friends. 4. I never brought cake to work on my birthday, cause i usually take the day off on my birthday. :D :D ..

A few years ago I went shopping in a grocery store. And I saw how the manager of that store was handing the cardboard boxes with milk cans to his employee and the employee put them in the cooling. So much about Dutch hierachy.

From 1988 till 2002, I worked 4 x 9 hour weeks, so this is not something of the last couple of years. So 36 hour work week, in 4 days, that leaves 1 day of the week that you are off. That day progressed by 1 day per week. This weeks day off is Tuesday, next week it will be Wednesday, the week after that Thursday. And then the fun starts, cause the next week, you'll have the Friday off and the week after that, the Monday. Yes long weekend of 4 days, woohoo :) What you could do, when for example having a dentist appointment on Tuesday, you could trade your day off with a co-worker who had his day off on Tuesday. That led to people not taking their vacation hours, cause no need right. Then another thing popped up, every 8 hours of overtime, could be converted to 9 hours free time. Long story short, somewhere in 1998 in October, HR said that I had too many vacation hours and I could only take 3 days to the next year. Ehm......... but I had something like 3 months in free time, haha.. And it was busy at work, no way I could get leave from work : "Pay it out", reply : "Too expensive" 'Well, you ain't going to take it from me, cause I'll call the union if you do. Up-to you, either I take all the free time and just disappear for the coming 3 months or you pay it out or I take it with me to next year.' The solution came in parts, half was paid out before taxes but onto a saving account (spaar-regeling) where it stayed for 7 years. I got 2 weeks off around Christmas and I bought a new bicycle (mountainbike) where the bill went to my employer. All was fine and I was happy.

Interesting listening to different people's opinions on different places.

Because we are honest and direct at work we do not waste not only our own time but also the time of each other. So we can do the same amount of work in our working day as people who keep things to them self and guessing what their colega’s realy mean or need in their much longer “working” time.

Hi. Geweldig kanaal heb je. Over de werkcultuur… vergis je niet in het verschil tussen overheid en semioverheid enerzijds en commerciële bedrijven anderzijds. (Semi)overheid staat ook in nl bekend zoals jij beschrijft. Bij commerciële bedrijven gaat het er echt anders toe. Niet zoals in Amerika maar wel meer die kant op.

Some things are job specific, feels like the startup where I work is definitely different from the university where you work. I've been in a few work environments where people are really disappointed if you don't want to have lunch together. I actually saw that as very Dutch: Between 12:00 and 14:00 at a max, not earlier, not later, sit down: boterhammen met kaas or hagelslag. I pretty much started my career in the US after college. It was some adjusting going back, working for an American company, yet still seeing Dutch work culture mostly.

We do take lunch breaks and sit down for lunch with our colleagues. Also we have a lot of 0,8 an 0,6 fte’s but we do work over the weekend or in the evening but do that at home. (Because the office is closed) I think it depends on the kind of organisation.

In The Netherlands people go to work not for friends and fun, but to do actual work and they work very hard, even overtime if needed, or work from home in the evenings if shit needs to get done. However, the work hours situation described here is typical for office clerks and civil servants (ambtenaren), where people come in at 9 and leave at 5 and have a contractual 36-hour (sometimes 38-hour) working week, because everywhere else the norm is 40 hours. When our daughter was born, my wife stopped working on Wednesdays and I on Fridays so we only needed daycare for 2 days (my wife's parents were babysitting one day a week). Now she's almost turning 14, we still both work 32 hours, there is no need to work 40 hours because we can cope financially and on our non-working days we can do housekeeping, get groceries, make private appointments (e.g. get a haircut, take the car to the garage, etc.) without interfering with our busy work schedules. 14 years ago it was easy for a woman to get a parttime job (especially in education and healthcare) but when I as a man asked for a 32 hour working week in 2010, I got declined at many job interviews, 40 hours with unpaid overtime was the norm, this is probably causing the difference in the statistics. Obviously I'm not a civil servant nor an office clerk, but nowadays no one bats an eyelid if a man is asking for a 4-day working week even in my line of work (IT development). Of course the pay is also 80% but I'm making enough money to live a comfortable life with enough quality time.

In regards to lunch, in my experience that highly depends on your team. I have been at jobs were everybody had lunch at the desk, were most of the team went out for a walk or where the team was kind of expected to eat lunch together. Mind you, it is at most 30 minutes, which I think is lower than in most other countries (I have worked with a few Americans in the USA, but that was only for a very short period, and I don't know they made more time available for lunch to show the foreigner the best places to lunch or that it was a regular thing).

As an tunneling expert / geoscientist (55yrs) working a lot abroad (6 days x 12 h a week) and outdoor guiding stuff to be produced, but also interacting with scientists, politicians and civil servants : I have some questions: Do you think that Americans are effective from your experience? What about Dutch? I'm talking here about the real output which is the final product produced / hour? It's not about services only. I see that the Netherlands is following southern Europe and the West is generally spiraling to a lower level and the Bric - countries have been improving a lot.

About the being ill, it's even better: if you happen to get ill during your days off, you can call in sick! Then they register those days as bring ill, and they don't count as days off anymore. The reasoning being that when you are ill, you're not relaxing and recovering from working. So while in US you trade days off in when you are sick, here you can do the opposite.

The official workweek at my work is 38 hours a week. Because I'm an older employee (I'm 63) a had the opportunity to go work 32 hours per week at 95 percent of my income before taxes. So that's a 5 percent financial reduction. However, because I'm in the highest tax bracket, after taxes the difference is a little over 2.5 percent. I don't even notice this difference. It gets even better. I extendend my 32 hour workweek to 34 hours, working 8.5 hour per day. In return I also have 96 ADV hours annualy on top of my annual 28 vacation days.

Thanks! You made the Netherlands Great again!

Hiya Ava (Eva?) my experience is rather different but maybe that’s because I’ve a job in higher management. I have always worked at least 80 hours a week bcus else there’d wouldn’t be money be made, right? Days off were my own risk, no such thing as sick days. They’d make me pay for those. I guess it all depends on what kind of enterprise you’re working.

There is a huge difference what kind of work you are doing. In some companies workweeks are > 60 hours per week, emails are continue. Also the workload is high with a high level of efficiency. So, it’s of everywhere like you describe.

Great video ! Nice to see an outside view of our working environment. I think your co workers not taking a lunch break is pretty unique because I have never seen that in 30 years of working. And I think Dutch people work quite hard and focused. From what I heard about countries where people make more hours they are not working hard. So in the end of the day both may have done the same amount of work or we even did more and delivered higher quality work.

I would say the not taking a lunch break bit is the exception at your employer. At every job I’ve had everyone takes their 30 minute break somewhere around noon. At my current company we usually lunch together as a team and my employer also takes care of supplying lunch on company costs.

Not to mention that short workweek.. well.. don't tell anyone but I don't do much when I work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays. The job gets done, and I do a little extra when necessary, but if the time allows me, I relax a little on those days lol. So even though I work fulltime, I also don't. And I agree with you on the increase of longer working days and the jobs available. It's a double edged sword. For me, working fulltime, I struggled to find a job because there weren't as many available as fulltime jobs. But now it's much easier. However if I want to work less when I get older I can imagine this could leave an impact later on so we'll have to see how it goes. I just try to work hard now so I can relax a little later, hopefully.

Hi Eva, I like your video. Maybe nice to know that when you're sick on a vacation day you can call your employer to register it, you get the vacation day back and use it for another day.

Did you ever realize that in the US the workforce is either late, to the doctor, out for lunch, not coming in because of the weather, left early, running an errant (what ever that might be) I have been to the US a lot (for business) and it annoyed the hell out of me that, even though you had an appointment, there was always a lame excuse to not be there or not be ready with what was promised. I love the US, dont get me wrong. It has great outdoors.

One part of women working shorter weeks that brings perspective, is that the Netherlands has the highest percentage of working age women in Europe. Women are gainfully employed at a higher rate than the average population of every country I could find except Switzerland. Men having a shorter work week on average might fits with a more shared work load.

I'm a Dutch male working 24 hours a week, 5 day's a week I'm starting at Seven Thirty. 3 x 4 hours & 2 x 6 hours and taking time for lunch.

HI Eva, or is it Ava? I work at the office 1x sometimes 2 x a week (corporate lawyer) but prefer Monday and Wednesday because there less people and its more relaxed (can continue without being distracted). The board / directors also like to work (at the office) this days. But let’s say the majority and back offices mainly work Tuesday and Thursday. Also the traffic to work is more relaxed. If you’re sick you’re actually not really allowed to work. So it’s not like you take days off. And if your sick on your holidays you can inform your work and so your can keep your free days.

In 1970 I worked for a month in an industrial chocolate factory in Zaandam. Five 10 hour days (w/ lunch). On my last day the owner came up to me and thanked me for the effort. I told him his factory sucked, trying to impress my drinking buddies who were laughing behind his back. I'm sure things are better now. The family I lived with had potatoes every night with meat ball(s). At my first dinner I requested a second meat ball and was told very directly 'you get one'. Yogurt for desert with a different fruit every meal. I loved this family and still do to this day. I looked for them in 2017 and they were gone of course. Why I didn't try to revisit earlier seems to me to be very American.

The days I'm at work I always (!) ask people to join me for lunch! It's so much nicer to talk to each other about other things than work

The lady apparently works at a university, which means the labor hours are structured such as in the public sector.

Where i work we have a whole different work balance. We do not have real coffee breaks, i decide when i need coffee and just go have a cup. And a lot of time i have a walking meeting with someone during the take on high level. Lunch, well we have an own cafeteria. Today i had some soep and a nice bread with warm meat and have some nice conversations with colleagues. But if the weather is nice i also have a little walk after lunch. And since i started before 8:00 (i was a bit early) i stopped at 15:00. When you do your job good, it is ok. And i work around 40 to 45 hours a week. For my job i have the opportunity to begin early if i want have some breaks inbetween but also work in the evening if i want that. And do my job for 70% at home if i want. That freedom gives me more motivation and i can concentrate much better. Oh and we have a pooltable, table football, some games a bar and a fitness.

Great video, thanks for pointing this all out. As for Dutch directness, I would advise my fellow Dutchies to balance it out and choose your battles. Your opinion is not always the only truth that should fill up a space. It's ok to be nice. I got scolded recently for being positive about the world, something I picked up in the States...

Maybe i have an old fasion job as a dutchman. I have a contract of 40 hours but i mostly work 50 hours a week becouse its not possible to get my work done in 40 hours.

It totally depends in what field of work you're doing. I worked overtime in 5 shifts and my friends and family thought I was joking. When in 3 shifts I was doing over 60 hours when from day to dogwatch (62 hours and 5 nightshifts on top).

The Netherlands is consistently in the top 5 or 10 for having the most productive workers. Last year, it ranked 4th in labour productivity per working hour... the USA ranked 12th. Also, there are sectors/domains in the Netherlands where working fulltime is 36 hours, not 40. That can skew statistics if you simply look at the number of hours people work. Also the sectors that statistically employ mostly women, often don't have 40-hour/fulltime contracts (anymore) like healthcare and teaching. In my experience, women in the aforementioned sectors often have contracts for 24, 28 or maybe 32 hours. It is not necessarily because they take on more childrearing/-caring duties. Of course, they could take a second job if they wanted to work fulltime but unlike in the USA, it is often not benefical tax-wise to do so. You'll end up paying more taxes and having less take home pay, which makes working two jobs unattractive. Exception being if you have 0-hour contracts, IIRC. In my personal experience, women tend to work 3-4 days a week and often start working 1 day less if they have children, whereas men often work 4-5 days and then start working 1 day less if they have children. The latter only being when they're raising the children as a family, single fathers generally work 4-5 days a week and either only have their kid(s) every other weekend or co-parent 3 full days (inlcuding weekend) and one half day before/after school.

I work 4 days a week as a Dutch clinical microbiologist (MD, PhD). That's enough. I'm 58 years old and want to enjoy my pension when it arrives (when I'm 67). When I was younger, 80 hours per week didn't bother me. I don't need to prove myself, I did it when I was younger. That's the Dutch mindset. Love your videos, they're spot on.

Hmm, I guess it differs from work place to work place. Nearly every job I've had, most definitely had lunch breaks and at least half of the people I consider my best friends I have met through work...

What is your background? What do you do at university? Do you teach? How do your colleagues view your videos? What do they think?

another great video ! keep making 'm ! seeing that theres a new video I make myself a coffee (8th one orso) after telling everyone what I think of them and cant stop from laughing listening to what you say.. but remember that all you experience have been different, all this great welfare of today was build by people like my grandfather who had to go to the factory when he was 13 and to wake him up in the morning he was put on a wet cold towel.. thats just 1 expample... dutch should really appreciate what they have today 😊

How do you learn Dutch, any recommendation to improve it?

The hours are one factor, but how about productivity? And if they “don’t go to work”, do they work from home?

Its a common rule here that employees are not to be bothered about work related things outside of working hours. That means no calls, no emails. Especially if you have an office job. This is to keep a healthy private life and work balance and recharge yourself.

The dutch dont work less then most Europese landen. You work till your 67years old.in Frankrijk 64.

I work 24hours a week at night, so you get a lot of extra money. Saturday on sunday it is 60 procent extra. Then I also have 3 hours a week at daytime. With me 27 hours I can live easily here in the Netherlands. And after my working block of 5 nights, I have 10 days free... 🎉