Comment by joe_mamba

>Nobody at Anthropic is taking a 5 week summer break or working a 35 hour week

The people working at Mistral, Expedition 33, or other top successful software coming out of the EU, most likely also aren't working only 35 hours/week either. In fact some probably squeeze some work on weekends too out of dedication and pressure to meet deadlines.

In a lot of Austrian SW companies for example, have "all-in" contracts where you waive your rights to the scrutiny of the standard 38,5h/week in exchange for a "higher" salary with longer work hours and less time tracking. Similar cases in France I believe.

The 35h/week European meme people here parrot, you mostly see only in civil servants, old established monopolistic companies with moats and strong unions, not in scrappy start-up trying to make it and fix a bug before release, or semiconductor companies fighting a tape-out.

So no, work hours aren't what's limiting EU startups.