Interesting article with many great points Gokul! Interesting to see an Indian perspective on working in Germany. I have worked with Indians here in Norway so I have some ideas of the differences already.

Norway would probably be a more extreme version of Germany. Norway is richer but also more egalitarian so wages are more compressed meaning you can forget about paying anybody for doing any simple service for you. Scandinavia in general is a do-it-yourself region. IKEA doesn't come out of here for nothing.

Hope you don't mind some constructive criticism. I don't think it is fair to say Europeans don't care about their jobs. In fact I have heard Indians working as managers here in Norway remark on how people don't do their job in India when the boss is not around, while in Norway e.g. people will take pride in doing their job whether the boss is around or not.

But certainly there is not the same desire for advancement and career. People aren't as eager to impress and move up. But that is also partly because status and money matters less to Europeans. However, I think people in general take pride in their job and want to do it well.

Things may be different now but when I studied with many Indians one of the things I noticed was different is that their perspective more about making a career, earning money and make it. I was personally driven much more by an genuine interest in my topic of study. I think in Europe people are more likely to do their job because they like it rather than because want to get somewhere in particular.

Say you like writing code, why would you want to hustle to become a manager? It is not the kind of job you wanted to do. In a more egalitarian and richer society making it to the top is less important. It is more about finding happiness where you are. In partcular because it is indeed possible to do so.

How India and China will perform relative to Europe in the long run will be interesting to see. No doubt all areas will change profoundly over that period. I think Indians and Chinese as they get richer will value more leisure and shorter work days, hence becoming more like Europeans. But that will also come with better educational systems.

I don't think performance is really about how hard people work. Most wealth today is created by skill and machinery not hours worked. We can look at countries like Findland which outperforms most other school systems despite having the shortest school days.

Anyway if India or China "wins" should it really matter to us? If they are richer they will more and higher quality products and services we can all enjoy. It also means more customers for our goods and services. I cannot really see any downsides except for people who have a desire to be ranked as number one. That seems to me more like an American obsessions. Europeans have long ago accepted we are not number one anymore. A lot of us live in relatively small states who naturally never had aspirations to be number one.

I think we Europeans can leave the fight to be number one to India, China and the US ;-)