Me: I live in Silicon Valley with my wife, child and cat. I have worked at Microsoft since I graduated from College, both in the Macintosh Business Unit on products such as Outlook Express, Entourage, IE, and Virtual PC and in Windows Live on Hotmail, Calendar and People. I am currently a Principal Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Social Networking team. I basically manage a team of Program Managers responsible for delivering features to support our web and client applications. I've been blogging since 2001 and like to play around with .NET in my spare time working on projects such as dasBlog (the blog that powers this site) and Send to SmugMug (an application for uploading photos to SmugMug). I blog about a number of technology and productivity related topics.
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© Copyright 2010, Omar Shahine
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I didn't know France had a 35 hour work week till I was in Paris 2 years ago reading my Lonely Planet in Napoleon's bedroom at the Louvre. 35 hours!!! Well, France finally got rid of it. Now it's 39 hours and there are a million caveats. I think they still get 5 weeks vacation and retire with 80% of their last year's salary in whatever job they are employed. About 1/4 of the working population in France works for the government according to Lonely Planet. Women in France also get up to 3 years off work for maternity leave. In the US you are lucky to get 6 weeks! (Microsoft is very generous and give 12 weeks I think, and men can take 4 weeks paid paternity or 8 weeks with 4 unpaid). I think 6 months maternity leave is probably more appropriate given what it is you are doing.
Well France, welcome to a brave new world...
"Last year, a parliamentary committee reported that the 35-hour week cost France more than $13 billion a year, casting doubt on a labor ministry study that suggested it had created 350,000 jobs between 1998 and 2002. Some also argued that the shorter week hurt living standards because employers froze salaries to make up for lost labor. According to a 2003 OECD survey of 25 industrialized countries, only Norwegian and Dutch employees worked less time each year than the French, who worked an average 1,431 hours. German workers put in 1,446 hours, British 1,673 hours, Americans 1,792 hours and Koreans 2,390 hours." [MSNBC]
"Last year, a parliamentary committee reported that the 35-hour week cost France more than $13 billion a year, casting doubt on a labor ministry study that suggested it had created 350,000 jobs between 1998 and 2002.
Some also argued that the shorter week hurt living standards because employers froze salaries to make up for lost labor.
According to a 2003 OECD survey of 25 industrialized countries, only Norwegian and Dutch employees worked less time each year than the French, who worked an average 1,431 hours. German workers put in 1,446 hours, British 1,673 hours, Americans 1,792 hours and Koreans 2,390 hours."
[MSNBC]
35 hours. Sheesh! My wife has a mandatory 80 hour work week and she gets paid (very little) for 40 of them! How do you like them Apples!