Working in the U.S vs Europe (The American Dream)

I really enjoyed putting this episode together. I've lived both in the U.S and Europe, and I've always been intrigued by the cultural differences. I thought it would be interesting to explore some of these differences, specifically around work. I think there's a fundamental difference in philosophy when it comes to this topic and understanding where it comes from gives us a good idea of how we can navigate it.  

+ We'll explore how the idea of "The American Dream" really became so widespread, by understanding how the events of the Second World War shaped the world.

Let me know if you enjoyed it!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

On this episode of English with Dane, we are going to take a look at some of the cultural differences around work in the United States versus Europe. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know I moved around a lot as a kid, and I've had the chance to experience life in both of these places. If you're not aware of where I grew up, I was born in Argentina. Then when I was two, we moved to Peru, and then when I was five, we moved to the US, and then back to Peru when I was 10, and then when I was 13, we finally moved to Spain, to Madrid, and I've lived here ever since. And it's where I feel most at home. But I've also always kept up with, or followed closely, I've always kept up with American pop culture, politics, sports, etc. And by American I mean estadounidense, okay, not American as in belonging to the continent of America. I feel obligated to clarify that because every time I say American to refer to people from the US, people get upset and they write to me and tell me it's actually not correct to say American to refer to people from the US. And then I have to explain that there is no other gentilicio or demonym in English to refer to people from the US, and it's a whole back and forth. So moving forward, when I say American, I mean estadounidense. Okay. So I wanted to put out an episode about this topic because in the group sessions that we've been doing, it has come up, ha surgido, it has come up quite a bit. Well, it comes up because I bring it up, if I'm being honest. But it's something I like to explore because I've been immersed in both cultures, and I think it's fun to really take a look at how differently they operate. Also, I have several Spanish and Latin American students who now live and work in the US. A few of them have lived there for a year or two and have expressed that they've experienced a bit of a culture shock while others have lived there for more than 10 years, and although they've adopted some of the cultural nuances, they still can't get over, no pueden superar, they still can't get over others. So I thought it would be cool to cover some of the things that have come up talking to these students, as well as reading some research that has been conducted regarding these cultural differences around work and see what we find. So let's do this. You are listening to episode 49 of season two of English with Dane. Hit it. So I've compiled this information by reading through a bunch of different articles while also sprinkling in some anecdotal stuff from people I've spoken to. To sprinkle in is a great phrasal verb, by the way. Sprinkles are those sweet, colorful little bits that we like to put on our ice cream, frozen yogurt, etc. is the word here in Spain. To sprinkle in means to add small amounts of something throughout something else, usually gradually or naturally. You can say something like she sprinkled in some humor throughout her presentation, which made it more fun. In Spanish, I'd say like ir metiendo, añadiendo poco, or something like that. I don't know if there's an exact translation, but if you think of one, please leave a comment because I am stumped. Well, to be stumped, spelled S-T-U-M-P-E-D, means to be unable, said Inca Paz, to be unable to figure something out or come up with a solution, let's say. Like when someone tells you a riddle, un acertijo, and you can't figure it out, you are stumped. So yeah, help me out. How would you say sprinkle in in Spanish? Alright, so before we dive into this, I'm obviously generalizing and just using Europe to group a bunch of different countries together. So we of course have to take into account, debemos tomar en cuenta, we have to take into account that there are also differences between European countries too. But for the sake of putting this episode together and finding reliable data, we are going to go with USA versus Europe. Okay, the first aspect we're going to tackle is work-life balance. The first thing that comes to mind is that classic thing people say in the US, people live to work, while in Europe, people work to live. I feel like the sentiment is probably right, but it is of course an exaggeration. So let's see what these articles say about that. One of the most significant differences between Europe and the US is the approach to work-life balance. European countries, especially in regions like Scandinavia and Southern Europe, tend to prioritize a healthier work-life equilibrium. In many European countries, employees are entitled to four to six weeks of paid vacation annually, and working hours are often capped at 35 to 40 hours per week. Many countries also have strict laws protecting weekends and evenings from work-related interference. In contrast, the US has a more work-centric culture, with fewer mandated vacation days, typically two weeks, and longer working hours. While U.S. companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of work-life balance, the quote always-on culture remains prevalent, with many employees expected to respond to emails or calls outside regular hours. Work-life balance is a complicated relationship in America. It is no secret that the US is unique in its aggressive approach to work, which results in its impressive productivity. This, however, comes with downsides, con suspuntos negativos, downsides, to the jundo. Americans often feel guilty about using their leaves, they work more hours and often skip lunch breaks. Leaves, spelled L E A V E S, is the word people use for authorized time away from work. We say things like paid leave for time off work that you get paid for. We say sick leave for like estar de baja, maternity leave, etc. And you are on paid leave or on maternity leave. Let's keep going. A 2024 survey showed that over 40% of its American respondents work 41 to 50 hours a week. Meanwhile, only 26% of the European respondents reported the same. When asked how many work more than 51 hours per week, the results were 8% of Americans and 5% of Europeans. Additionally, in the United States, the law does not require paid time off for employees. Leaves are to be decided by employers. Meanwhile, European Union policies require at least four weeks of paid annual leaves. The mentality on vacation time is evidently different between the two. That is why it comes as no surprise that 51% of the European survey respondents agreed they are happy with their work-life balance, a far cry from the Americans 34%. These numbers show that Europeans focus on rest and slow living, which helps workers avoid burnout and ever-increasing complaint from the US. I spoke to a friend recently who told me that he feels guilty every year when he takes his two weeks because he feels like he owes it to the company to always be killing it and overperforming. I think he's gonna burn out in a year, but hey. Let's talk about job security for a second. An article I found says this one of the biggest differences between the United States and Europe is the idea of job security, which often affects people psychologically more than they even realize. It changes how people think about work, ambition, risk, stress, loyalty, and even identity. The US has what's called a much more flexible labor market, which sounds positive, but which also means jobs are generally less protected. In most American states, companies can fire employees relatively easily under something called at-will employment, which basically means your employer can usually let you go, echarte can let you go, without needing this huge legal process. It also means you can leave your job more freely too. This creates a constant underlying feeling in American work culture that your position is never fully guaranteed, and you therefore must remain valuable. This pressure becomes deeply embedded into people psychologically. Americans are often encouraged to constantly improve themselves professionally, network, self-promote, build skills, take opportunities, move cities, switch companies, and ask for pay raises. There is a sense that standing still is dangerous, especially if we take into account that in the US, healthcare is often tied to your job too. So losing employment can feel really high stakes in a way that many Europeans don't fully relate to. The upside of this system is that it creates a dynamic economy. Companies can grow quickly, restructure quickly, hire people quickly, as well as fire quickly, and people can switch careers with less friction too. The system is built to favor rapid movement and growth, which allows for more innovation and entrepreneurial energy. People are culturally more comfortable gambling on opportunities because instability is already built into the system and internalized. The downsides are apparent too, like the feeling of always needing to be proving your worth. Europe, meanwhile, went in a different direction after the 20th century. Many European countries, especially after the wars and the economic instability of the early and mid-1900s, built systems designed more around protection and stability. Countries like Spain, France, or Germany tend to have stronger labor protections, more paid vacation, stronger severance systems, universal health care, and generally provide more rights for the worker. This is one of the main philosophical differences. In Europe, we see a general sentiment that society should protect people from total economic instability. I think sometimes Americans see Europeans as less ambitious professionally, while Europeans sometimes see Americans as overly obsessed with work. But of course, both perspectives are probably oversimplified. I think what's really happening is that the two societies are like optimized for different things. The US is optimized for more opportunity, movement, and growth, while Europe is more optimized for stability and like quality of life. I think there's a feedback loop, and then those priorities really start shaping the personality of each culture. But I don't know. This next part is about mentality at work. Okay, people's mentality at work. It says, there is a general strong focus in the US on productivity and hustle culture. Yet, despite the intensity of work in the US, Americans tend to be far friendlier in the workspace than their European counterparts, but not in the way you think. Americans frequently adopt a positive feedback mindset, opting for frequent praise. Meanwhile, Europeans are less likely to give out praise. To give praise or to praise, spelled P-R-A-S-E, means to express admiration or approval or respect for someone, okay, or something. So you praise someone's effort or you might receive praise for the quality of your work. I think elogiar, I guess, in Spanish. Seguimos. As the European Business Review puts it, this doesn't mean that Europe is hostile. Rather, they are simply less prone to excessive geniality. To be prone to something means to have a tendency to experience, do, or suffer from something easily and frequently, to be prone. So in Europe, we are less prone to excessive geniality. Geniality is not a word you'll encounter often. It's not a word you'll find often. So maybe a better way to say this is that Europeans are less prone to forced friendliness or artificial charm, which honestly checks out. As in, that has been my experience and something that American friends have often mentioned. It continues and says, European mentality and self-image are also less focused on what someone does for a living. While in conversation in the US, someone's job is often used to define that person, whereas in European countries, they tend to view someone's job as simply that, a job, not a particularly defining feature or a deep insight into who someone is. This mindset is an easy way to grasp the European relationship to work. While Americans heavily identify themselves with their career and productivity, Europeans simply don't. American companies are frequently adjusting to better match their European counterparts and their hope that the country's relationship to work will eventually be settled. Gen Z and millennials have a very different view than their baby boomer parents when it comes to work, and this is in large part due to the awareness of European working culture. A student in one of my group sessions was telling me that when she first got to the US, she would be at a social gathering and people would sometimes receive work emails, which she thought was crazy, but what was even crazier to her is that people would actually answer outside of work hours at a house party type situation. I don't know what your experience is with this, but let me know. Leave a comment. Some of you, I'm sure, work for American companies or live or have lived in the US at some point. This next aspect of work life I think is really interesting. It talks about attitudes towards risk and innovation. Here's what I found. In the US, there is a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and risk taking is often encouraged. The American work culture embraces innovation and is more likely to reward employees who think outside the box, take initiative, and even fail in pursuit of new ideas. In fact, it seems like the idea of the American dream supports the notion that hard work and risk can lead to success, making the US an appealing environment for startups and high growth industries. Real quick, entrepreneurial. Practice that pronunciation because it can be pretty tricky. The key is to keep your mouth small, okay? Entrepreneurial. Don't open your mouth too much. In contrast, European work culture tends to be more cautious when it comes to risk. Companies in countries like Germany, Switzerland, and France may adopt a more methodical approach to innovation, carefully weighing the potential outcomes before making decisions. While innovation is still valued, it is often more controlled with a focus on long-term sustainability rather than rapid growth. This is a really interesting angle, I think. The American dream is such a thing, isn't it? It's so deeply rooted in their culture. It's not like other people in other countries don't think hard work and perseverance are important, but in the US, it's like in the DNA of the culture. And when you think of the US, you have that idea in mind, don't you? It's a powerful tool, I think. I wanted to explore this idea a little bit more because I think it helps us to get to the root, to get to the root of these cultural differences. So excuse the tangent we're about to go on or the change of direction. So the American dream is at its core the belief that through hard work, risk, ambition, and persistence, you can reinvent your life. So apparently the idea of the American dream became especially powerful because historically the US was unusually fluid compared to Europe. And what do I mean by fluid? I mean that it was easier for people to move between social classes, between professions or identities than in many older European societies. In these older European societies, especially before the 20th century, class structures were much more rigid, meaning your social position was often just inherited. Aristocracy, old money, family profession, and social rank, and those things mattered a lot back then. And the US kind of marketed itself as pretty much the opposite. They didn't have kings or aristocracy. Instead, they sold the idea of having a vast territory of which you could have a peace. They sold the idea of westward expansion. And most importantly, I think they sold the idea of self-made worth. You didn't have to come from money to make money. And this mythology became deeply tied to the national identity. We can't forget that the US was essentially born from this kind of startover mentality, right? Everyone who went there could have a fresh start on their life. What I find really fascinating though is how the US exported this idea so successfully. So let's do a quick history refresher. After the Second World War, the US had this almost mythical status, right? And that's in big part because of how the war unfolded or how it happened or went down. At first, the United States stayed out of direct involvement, right? They stayed out, or they watched from the sidelines, as we say. They waited actually a few years. So the war officially begins in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland on the first of September, which made Britain and France declare war on them immediately.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

I am speaking to you from the cabinet room in Downing Street. This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

They declared war on them the same day, in fact, September 3rd. I remember that from history class because I had a good teacher. At the time Germany and the Soviet Union had signed, Abjan Friedemalo had signed a non-aggression pact, so they were also just chilling, watching from the sidelines. But then Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941, and the Soviet Union joined the Allies to fight against Germany and would later become like the central battlefield against Nazi Germany. Also, people forget that China had been fighting Japan since 1937 in a really, really brutal conflict that later kind of merged into or joined, let's say, the Second World War. So this was all going down in 1941. Everyone was really deeply involved in the war. Meanwhile, the US still remained officially neutral, but I mean it did support the Allied countries economically and militarily, but from a distance. But then what happened? Well, as I'm sure you're aware, thanks to Josh Hartnett, Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, and Jennifer Gardner. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December of 1941. And the US says, okay, too far. And they officially declare war against the Axis powers. The US entered the war fully, they mobilized enormously and became one of the decisive forces in the Allied victory just through sheer military power and industrial production, weapons manufacturing, etc. Like an all-out economic capacity. And here's the thing: they were in a unique position because they never fought a war at home. Well, excluding Pearl Harbor, of course. But let's say mainland USA didn't get bombed or invaded, is my point. Why am I telling you all of this? Because, well, first of all, I like this part of history, but because it's one of the biggest reasons the United States emerged from World War II so powerful and with this mythical or utopian status. Their cities and factories weren't bombed, their infrastructure didn't collapse, their food logistics systems didn't break down, and they didn't have entire neighborhoods disappear, and they didn't have millions of civilians die. We forget that the Soviet Union lost around 25 million people, and around 13 to 18 million of those deaths were civilians, just unfathomable numbers. From a total population of around 168 million, by the way. So almost one out of every seven people died. That's an insane figure to wrap our heads around. To wrap your head around something means to comprehend it, to assimilate it, or to grasp it. So in contrast, the US had around 400,000 total deaths, of which only a few thousand were civilian. And these were people on boats and other situations like that. So extremely, extremely different situations, which meant that the US, again, emerged or came out of the war with advantages that most other major powers simply no longer had. They no longer had. Oh, and probably the biggest thing that they didn't have to deal with, that they didn't have to deal with, was having an entirely traumatized population. So back to the American dream. During those post-war decades, the US became synonymous with victory and with production and optimism, you know, a leadership, which they are still obsessed with. They looked rich, they looked modern and untouched, which just played into or built upon that whole idea of having vast unclaimed land and unexploited territory ready to be settled. The middle class exploded because housing was affordable and people had money, and the suburbs started expanding really quickly. And that's when we started really getting that image that is still associated with the US today. The white picket fences, green lawns, jardines, green lawns, the nuclear family, you know, the shiny cars and TVs and shopping malls, and for millions of people around the world, it seemed almost unreal. And this was when televisions started to become popular in homes too. So the American dream became really easy to export. It was like the perfect storm. And if you were a kid in some random Asian city and you had a TV at home, you had a glimpse into paradise. So we can tie all of this into the DNA of a population and how it operates. Because after a few generations, the ideas stop feeling like ideas and start feeling normal or natural and invisible. They become part of the cultural operating system of a country. And in the case of the US, people grew up for decades being surrounded by the same message over and over again, right? You can make it, you have to prove yourself. Ambition is good, success is admirable, even virtuous. And that seeps into how people behave and how they think about things like work, and of course, work-life balance. To seep into something, seep spelled S-E-E-P. To seep into means to gradually spread into or influence or become part of something slowly and most often invisibly. If you use to seep into literally, you can say water had seeped into the walls, and if you use it metaphorically like I did, you can say something like that mentality seeped into the culture. So sorry about the history lesson, but I think it's really interesting to look into where these concepts that affect the world and our lives and our psychology come from and how they spread. We have a tendency to not look back at history, and I think that when we have a better understanding of how these events unfolded and how they influence the current shape of the world, we are able to operate better within it. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you got something from it. If you are currently living in the US, I'd love to hear your perspective, or if you're planning on moving there too. I'd also be interested in how you view the US culturally, regardless of if you have lived there or not. So let me know in the comments. Don't be shy. And if you don't follow the show already, make sure you do. If you like the episode, share it with someone who would also enjoy it. And as always, thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time. All right, talk soon. Later,