managers and higher ranking people are paid by the day, so their hours are not counted. I have been paid by the hour only the first 4 months in my ~10years of working carrer.
edit: but on a side note France (and Germany) ranked very high in output per worked hour the last time I checked, way higher than the US. Kind of not messing around in the office people.
>on a side note France (and Germany) ranked very high in output per worked hour the last time I checked, way higher than the US.
I am not trying to start an argument with you (and France seems like a great place to live and work) but in Googling around, I found the following, which reports that German GDP per hour worked is .92 of the American and French is .958 of the American:
If you click on the "Show information" tab on the right, you see that "At the beginning of the year 2012, GDP per hour worked was significantly revised for a large number of OECD countries". Could it be that you relied on the "pre-revision" figures?
More generally, do you remember where you got your data?
>managers and higher ranking people are paid by the day, so their hours are not counted
Do you have any more info on this? Are you basically saying that the law is ignored? Because AFAICT the French and EU (working time directive) are both quite strict and there don't seem to be any opt-outs.. their hours would just be logged as '7h' regardless of reality? (and if the employee were to kick up a fuss, they would no doubt win any case?).
(i've been interested in hiring in French jurisdiction, but put off by working time law)
ouch, you're going in very specific here. It's going to hurt.
About the EU law : you are not subject to it, it's countries who are subject to it. It work by fining the infringing country. EU laws generally mandate countries to have national laws in this or that way. If a citizen gets a condamnation by an infringing national law, and after having tried every possible national appeals, he can go to the EU court and get his country condemned. I'll stop here on that subject.
So, on a French level, we have work laws (Code du travail), regulations and "collective agreement" (I hope my google translation is correct). In computer science the collective agreement is called "syntec" it has force of law (it's not the case for all agreements). Collective agreements can offer better benefits than the law, but not worse. In the case of computer science, the employees are classified in 2 layers, basic employees (secretaries etc.) and "Managers and Engineers" (Cadres et Ingénieurs) in startups, almost everybody is an engineer. Then engineers are classified with a number, depending on experience, autonomy, degree of skills the job needs, and people managed. This number (coefficient) correspond to the minimum salary you have to pay them, and the other way around, if in everyday work, their job goes into a higher level, their minimum salary have to be increased (if you were already paying them high than the minimum, you don't care). For computer science we are generally way over the minimum, but it's good to have someone check the employment contract before signing it. Employers tend to give lower number at employment, I tend to raise it to their true level, because I value my team on paper too. People whose number is high enough meaning their seniority is high enough are to be paid by the day and not the hour. Those people are paid to work 218 days a year (waiting for some backlash here:) ).
Then you have the limits on the number of hours worked, like no more than 13h in a row, sleep time etc. It's not really about salary, it's about security and well-being. As far I as know it's not a issue in computer science.
The EU directive put a legal up limit on the number of hours you can work yes. But this limit is quite high. Besides, this limit does not apply when the person goes home and work in the evenings from there on her own will (and for certain positions, that's frequent).
Secondly, it's especially written in the law that with the "cadre" status, you are to work a number of days annually, not hours (it's called "au forfait" if I'm not mistaken).
edit: but on a side note France (and Germany) ranked very high in output per worked hour the last time I checked, way higher than the US. Kind of not messing around in the office people.