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The differences between the benefits packages of say, European countries (or even Australia) and the US are staggering. I was a Global Business Analyst for a dotcom company, and we had 14 international offices (Europe, PacRim, Canada). I often had to schedule calls for early morning or evening in order to accomodate the other person's business hours.
Not only did they average only 4-6 hours of work a day (plus long lunches), many only worked 4 days a week. They had 3-4 months of vacation, unlimited sick time, and maternity leave for a year (some had paternity leave as well). As an American-owned company, they sure knew to keep competitive overseas.
It was sometimes tough having to put in 14-hour days (some longer) so that we didn't inconvenience our international colleagues. Whenever they came to the US for meetings, they'd get stressed out at 9am or 4pm meetings. I remember during 9/11, we had people from several different offices stranded here, and not happy to work the entire week in "US hours". Several just dialed in from their hotel, so that they would actually only end up working the amount of time they wanted to work.
So I wonder what contingency plans they had for the months of regular time off. Maternity leave usually has a end-date (if all goes well), but what about the many vacations over the course of the year? They were allowed to take up to 3 or 4 weeks at a time. One thing I do remember is that on many projects, no one person was responsible for any one thing. So when the primary project leader was out, the other one could manage the progress.
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