The work culture in the Netherlands

I've been working since 2015 in NL and have changed so far 4 companies, startup, scaleups and big corpo, also worked both as employee and freelancer. Generally feeling is that dutch are very competitive, you have here the culture of silicon valley with overtimes, burnouts and all 9 yards except for high pay and stocks. The non-dutch scene is catching up tho if you read people like Gergley Orosz  you will find that there are a lot of companies that pay 2-3x the salary of median dutch companies, but they also expect you to have even more lack of life outside of work in exchange which is generally ok for most silicon valley companies. Every single person so far I've talked to who stated otherwise, is either extremely  naturally gifted and manages to really work 8 hours or is slaving away without rest full working days and evenings and weekends while virtue signalling to the choire. There are a lot of predatory employers who will try to squeeze every cent out of you and will mess with the contract terms to get all the juice out of you while keeping you on slave conditions. Happened to me multiple times, happened to a lot of people I know personally. So you need to be prepared to fight back and stand your ground, fortunately dutch laws are mostly on your side, but lawyers are extremely expensive for anyone earning more than 27k a year. Meticulously double check every single contract and obligation you get into. Dutch are not particularly generous when it comes to spending. Also companies expect you to be extremely loyal which is unhealthy. I mean american companies expect that but they also allow you job hop without stigma, here there is a lot of stigma associated with that here, especially in non-american dutch companies. I would advise to not get stuck in employee position and go for freelance/contract immediately, especially if you still have 30% ruling. Open a one man BV and enjoy life. High taxes will really get to you really fast, because 1 person earning 100k and 2 people earning 100k get home pretty different amounts and it will get depressing over time when realisation hits your hard when you are overworked for many years and you have to make tough decision to just make ends meet while living not even close to Amsterdam... Sorry for a grim picture, but I would've really appreciated this type of feedback myself when I first arrived here and was put down over and over and over again by facts and life here, knowing this beforehand would've made me a little more prepared mentally as an expat. There are a lot of good sides of course too, one of them being able to speak english basically everywhere you work and dutch people seem to be pretty open and friendly if you can ignore their "direct talk" which is basically "I say to your face what I see, regardless if it's insulting and rude", which is pretty hard coming from a high context society myself. Obviously sometimes it spills over and the person is just blatantly toxic individual that has been berating people so much and is herself confused whether it's a "direct talk" or pure toxiciy so beware don't just blindly ignore that because it's a "cultural specificity". Neverthless I feel like by now I have merged pretty well and I try to help as much as I can all the teams that I work with dutch or non dutch and generally it works out pretty well with regards to reputation and friendship.

Hope this helps. Cheers.