alt Hacker News>Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week.
You mean 36h in a full time employment contract or by self reported work hours or is it part time work?
> I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble
Well from where I am in the EU and across other people I know in EU, for white collar jobs 40h contract is the norm in most places for most people I know. 36h is kind of an exception in select few fields in certain high-welfare countries with strong unions(German IG-metal for example in Germany, Airbus in France, etc), so you could simply be biased by a privileged bubble that isn't the norm in all of Europe.
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I'm guessing he means actual time physically working, not the theoretical time in the contract.
It really depends on your bubble but a lot of people have "full time" contracts (meaning 40-ish hours) but real hours vary. You can come later, leave earlier, go do something else in the day, and don't have to report it to anyone. Just make sure you're not missing a meeting and deliver what's needed on time. So in practice you end up working fewer hours on average, as long as you can produce enough on average (which honestly isn't hard in many large organisations, and hard to measure).
It’s interesting that the countries with the weakest economies in Europe work the longest hours.
During the financial crises Greeks were getting a lot of criticism from Northern Europeans for being lazy but the reality was they did far more hours.