The Germans are lazy and don’t work enough: a columnist for the American news agency Bloomberg made headlines with this statement a few days ago. Similar tones could also be heard from German politics, for example when Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) said on the talk show “Caren Miosga” that he wanted to “woke people up for working overtime”. Rainer Dulger, President of the German Employers’ Associations, told the “Bild” newspaper: “We need an increase in the working hours of the people who already work here.”
Now Carsten Maschmeyer joins the discussion. As an entrepreneur he has earned billions. Many people may also know him as an investor in the Vox program “The Lions’ Den”. In an Instagram posting, Maschmeyer describes his views on the subject of working hours. The article says, among other things: “Anyone who measures work performance purely in hours worked is really living in the last century. Because results count, not the working hours worked.” The 64-year-old describes calls for increased working hours as “sham debates that miss the core problem.”
He cites Cambodia and Myanmar as examples of the countries with the highest number of hours. “That’s what we want to measure ourselves against?” asks Maschmeyer. He also has a suggested solution: “We need something completely different: the will to perform and the renaissance of the idea of performance. But all of this is not measured in working hours, but in results. It is not time that finances our prosperity, but success.”
Maschmeyer’s comments are well received by his 178,000 followers. “I wish more employers had such a great attitude. People would be happier and Germany would be more successful,” writes one user. Another commented: “Performance counts. There are still a lot of jobs where you ‘serve’ your time, especially in the public sector. I find that absolutely out of step with the times. There needs to be a rethink here.”
In some cases there are critical voices. A follower notes: “Unfortunately, traditional trades and service jobs are measured by working hours regardless of success. If the bakery, supermarket or pharmacy is not open from around 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., many customers have a problem. The same applies for hairdressers, social workers, nurses, daycare teachers, doctors… the list is long.”
Maschmeyer also publicly supports the four-day week. In an article for “Zeit Online” in February of this year, he wrote: “It may surprise many people, but as an investor I am not afraid of the four-day week. It will come anyway and I am convinced that everyone will benefit from it.” He says it is “completely irrelevant” how many days a company’s employees work, “as long as the goals are achieved.” “The four-day week finally makes work more attractive again. (…) Many younger people also want to work like this – they are not lazy, as their generation is often told,” says Maschmeyer.
