>That's not at all the case in the Nordic countries, where you're expected to work hard and produce.
After working in both Germany and The Netherlands I found this to be false as it depends more by company size rather than the country.
In SMEs or family owned businesses people were busting their asses, often longer than 40h/week. In giant megacorps I saw plenty of incompetent clockwatchers, mostly in management positions, where the business could function the same without them but they were inexplicably kept around, at least as long as the business was booming. Often times they would just have their teams switch offices so they would have something to put in their annual performance review ("I optimized personell location, fostering a culture of synergy and creativity leading to future improvements in productivity and innovation").
After working in both Germany and The Netherlands I found this to be false as it depends more by company size rather than the country.
In SMEs or family owned businesses people were busting their asses, often longer than 40h/week. In giant megacorps I saw plenty of incompetent clockwatchers, mostly in management positions, where the business could function the same without them but they were inexplicably kept around, at least as long as the business was booming. Often times they would just have their teams switch offices so they would have something to put in their annual performance review ("I optimized personell location, fostering a culture of synergy and creativity leading to future improvements in productivity and innovation").