Two weeks is the common American starting allowance, rising with service to three or four. The German statutory minimum alone exceeds the American starting point, and most German collective agreements exceed it substantially — but this is a fact about American practice: the allowance is granted by the employer and begins low.
Hustle culture
Rise and grind. Sleep is for the weak. The grind never stops. Team no days off.
American sayings in wide circulation, and a genre of social media built on them. The counter-movement exists and is loud, which tells you what it is arguing against.
Quiet quitting
An American phrase that went global in 2022, describing an employee who does their job and nothing beyond it. The phrase calls that quitting. Doing what you were hired to do is framed as a partial withdrawal.
The Great Resignation
American quit rates reached record levels in 2021 and 2022, and the phenomenon was widely attributed to a reassessment of what work should cost a person. It was expressed as millions of individual departures rather than as any change in law or policy.
Burnout
The World Health Organization classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon in 2019, and American surveys report it at high rates across professions. It is discussed in the United States as a condition of the individual, with individual remedies — resilience, boundaries, self-care.
The always-on expectation
Company-issued phones, email answered in the evening, and the term work-life integration proposed in American management writing as an improvement on balance. The framing treats the boundary itself as the outdated idea.
The right to disconnect
Several European countries and some American states and cities have debated legislation limiting after-hours contact. In the United States the measures have been introduced in a handful of jurisdictions and have mostly not passed. The idea is live in American discussion and largely absent from American law.
At-will
The default American employment relationship can be ended by either side at any time, for any lawful reason, without notice. There is no equivalent of a statutory notice period accruing with service. Availability is not protected by anything.
Exempt employees
American wage law divides employees into those entitled to overtime pay and those exempt from it, and exempt status covers most professional and managerial roles. For those workers the law places no limit on hours and requires no additional payment.
Unlimited PTO
A number of American companies have replaced fixed vacation allowances with unlimited policies. Research and reporting repeatedly find that employees under them take less leave rather than more, because nobody can say what is normal.