How many of you treat conferences as mini-vacations? I find that in my field, going to a couple conferences throughout the year makes up for a couple days of vacation, as long as I don't have any work on my plate.
Also, I find that being single and having friends that (on the majority), make less than I do, makes it difficult to plan trips to places you'd have to fly/rent a hotel for. Trips consist of ten friends carpooling, getting a group rate at a ski resort, and renting out a condo for next to nothing for a weekend.
I have a lot of vacation days through work (6 weeks this year), but have pretty much no desire to go on vacations. I end up using my vacation days to go to Security conferences.
I've found, at least with my favorite conferences (CanSecWest, Shmoocon), that they refill my "info-sec excitement meter" for a good four months before I start considering quitting and going to work in a comic book store.
I think about quitting and working a lower paying job all the time. That just inspires me to sock away more of my excess income for that day when it eventually comes.
One result of this is that businesses chuck human redundancy out the window. Often there's only one person who can do a business critical task, and as they can't really be gone from work for that long, the business gets by.
From an business uptime perspective, forced "downtime" of employees through vacation is actually a good way to force the creation of backup systems for business process.
There are a lot of companies that do force people to take vacations for precisely this reason.
I also recall hearing at some point in time that a lot of financial institutions forced certain people to take time off,as a means to detect embezzling. I'm not sure if that's true or not.
I also recall hearing at some point in time that a lot of financial institutions forced certain people to take time off,as a means to detect embezzling. I'm not sure if that's true or not.
That really makes me think though: If they chucked redundancy out the window, that makes you the only person who can do a business critical task. Shouldn't that give you enormous leverage to negotiate with your employer? It often takes a lot of time and effort to get someone new up to your level. If they can't afford another couple weeks of vacation for you (in exchange for you staying on board instead of having to bring in someone completely new), then they must be doing it wrong.
Replacement cost is often quite high for any employee, even someone working a basic job, as training is expensive.
Thus why many employers don't do training other than the bare minimum - why train someone who might use the training to go elsewhere. This is the "keep them dumb and stupid" approach to employee retention.
Meanwhile, the employer keeps a bunch of "dumb and stupid" employees that they refuse to make better. Those employees that are self-starters will make themselves better and, if they want to, will leave anyway.
Seems kind of silly to me. If your better employees regularly leave your company, than you probably have more deeply-rooted organizational problems that need fixing.
From an business uptime perspective, forced "downtime" of employees through vacation is actually a good way to force the creation of backup systems for business process.
Or, when combined with a minimal vacation time bucket, forced vacation makes sure your employees will be there when you want them to be.
I know an auditor at a Big 4 accounting firm. The employees in her office are forced to take some vacation time during the slow time of the year. That way it burns down vacation time that they could otherwise be using during crunch time and causing short-staffing.
When I complained to an employer that it was too hard to request my vacation time (it's in my contract, they made it very hard to pick dates by always having an emergency deadline, etc) they replied "It's like that everywhere", as if it was a legit answer.
Many employers also lump in sick time with vacation time, as if that's a replacement since you didn't come into work. That would probably be okay, if you had an option to take unpaid vacation time when the time comes. Instead, you're often forced to take a shorter vacation, which doesn't do the job.
And forcing you to work while on vacation is unforgiveable. It shows that the company doesn't understand why vacation time is necessary. (I haven't had anyone do this to me, thankfully. It wouldn't have gone well.)
If taking unpaid vacations was an option, I would probably end up taking about 4 weeks worth of vacations, instead of 2.
Oh wow, that's the first I've ever heard of that. That would not be acceptable for me.
I think I'll be asking for more vacation time in future contracts, too. I managed to secure extra in the first year of my current contract because I had a need (planned trip) but in the future, I'm just going to require more.
Of course, benefits and pay are interchangeable, so I might just request the ability to take unpaid vacation as needed, up to a certain amount.
I've started making vacation time a major part of the negotiation when taking a new position and in all instances I've brought it up during the interview process the interviewer acted alarmed. Even with my current position with a really cool small web shop they ended up interviewing me a 2nd time before offering the position. The key topic of conversation during the 2nd interview was basically the CEO trying to figure out if I planned on taking time off in some unspecified but inconvenient fashion that would leave the company in a bind.
Now there's a piece of subtlety that wouldn't have occurred to me without having it pointed out by another. I guess I've got a bit of a blind spot since I don't care much about what other people in the company are getting compensation-wise.
Sort of. The difference is that some benefits are linked to length-of-service or continuity-of-service, so an unpaid vacation in the USA can scuttle your health insurance, equity vest, 401(k) match, etc.
Bridge-of-service. I've seen someone leave a company (on good terms) come back two years later and the company gave the bridge-of-service with regards to 401(k), vacation, etc. He was really good though and the company really wanted him back.
I don't have holidays count but we have a 'holiday shutdown' for 5 days between Christmas and New Years, mandatory you can't work, but you burn your own vacation time. And I only get 2 weeks! Other options include taking the week unpaid, or working during the the other weeks in the year when you hvae a holiday and 'floating' it to the holiday shutdown. So next week I have memorial day off, but I'll make sure to work >40 hours in the remaining 4 days.
Is 1 extra week of vacation really going to change the productivity of the place?
I started a new job last year with 10 days of vacation. It wasn't until December that I learned that five of those days were mandatory for the week between Christmas and New Year's. If you had no vacation days left, it was unpaid time off.
Since this is HN, there's a pretty good chance you're an Engineer of some kind. Where are you (or what do you do?) that companies can get away with this?
Is it really? My company runs over the holidays and our problem is actually finding people who can work during that time. Surely lots of tech companies have to keep running over Christmas?
Considering the UK minimum holiday entitlement is 4 weeks and there are 2 public holidays there (Christmas Day and Boxing Day), employees only need to take 3 days annual leave (15% their yearly total) and the company can close for one calendar week.
I'm in the US. I work remotely for a large healthcare company. The benefits are terrible, the pay is mediocre, and there are no opportunities for advancement, but it allows me to work from home with limited oversight.
Sure, I can work from anywhere. By 'limited oversight', I mean that I mostly make my own project schedules, but that I'm expected to be available during normal business hours should the need arise. I did a working vacation several years ago (different company). The downside to trying to work from a vacation destination is that you pay an extraordinary amount for travel and lodging, and then lose most of your day to work.
On the bright side, if you take a five day vacation and bookend it with two weekends, that's a nine day trip.
Sounds like a perfect way to game the system and get three weeks off each year. Just take a full two weeks off during the year and then you magically get an extra week each Christmas ;-) If you know you're doing it ahead of time then you can easily factor in the reduction in salary.
Whoa, I've never heard of that before. In my experience, there are company holidays and vacation days and "sick days". All are at the discretion of the employer as to what are observed and given, but I've never heard of them overlapping (ie, if your company observes ten holidays and you have ten vacation days, you get 20 days off that year).
It seems like something you should be able to take up with your employer, because you requested vacation and they're counting holidays (something different) against them. That sees like a bit of a rip off.
Of course, I know that even two weeks of vacation is considered a lot in this country and my mom works in a job where she doesn't get _any_ paid vacation, so . . .
Think about your choice of words up there, and you might just come up with your solution.
Force.
As in, my employer is forcing me to take shorter vacations. My employer is forcing me to work my vacations around their schedule.
That's not what he's doing. He's coercing you. It's different. He's implying that if you take the vacation you want, there might not be a job waiting when you get back. The answer to that is "fine".
If you truly don't care whether there's a job waiting on the other side, he loses all leverage. If you know for a fact that you could pick up another dev job inside of a week with a Facebook status update, he loses all leverage.
In other words, the only reason you think your boss can "force" you to do anything is because you've given him that ability. Quit thinking in those terms and you'll live a much happier life.
or, if the employer knows that if she finds a replacement for you, she will have to find replacements for all her employees, then she won't bother coercing you at all.
> "Quit thinking in those terms and you'll live a much happier life."
I agree in principle, but it's not always so simple. When you're young, have no kids, no mortgage, no car loan, etc, it's pretty easy to just say "fuck off, see ya" when your employer acts abusively.
When you have all of the above, that becomes more difficult. Relocating is more often than not the norm in this industry, and you don't exactly want to sell your house, or move your kids around, etc etc.
Disclaimer: I don't have kids, or a mortgage, and I'm very mobile right now, but I also understand this probably won't last forever.
It's a warning for living beyond your means anyways - I've noticed many people that I work with have huge mortgages out, to the point where the continuous stream of income becomes paramount - even a few months of interruption could possibly mean ruin for them. This strikes me as an idiotic fiscal policy.
For what it's worth, I'm pushing 40 and have a house and kid, and I wrote the comment you're replying to.
I don't consider losing my job to be traumatic in any way. It's nearly impossible to find good developers, so if you have a bit of skill you don't ever need to worry about the consequences of being unemployed.
>I agree in principle, but it's not always so simple. When you're young, have no kids, no mortgage, no car loan, etc, it's pretty easy to just say "fuck off, see ya" when your employer acts abusively.
Even if you have all those responsibilities and you're leveraged up to your eyeballs you can still quit your job. You just need to line up another one first. I've been doing technical work for almost 25. In that time I've quit two jobs because they weren't treating me the way I expect to be treated, but I've never been without a job.
Even if you can afford it you're really hurting yourself by screaming "fuck off, see ya" at your boss and stomping out to look for another job. It's a lot easier to find a job when you already have one, and your negotiating position for salary and benefits is much stronger.
We have zeroed down to what prevents people from taking risks or being happy or being content. Its about slowly walking in debt traps which never go away all your life.
As a kid you are fearless, because somebody else takes care of your finances, you feel no pressure, stay happy and do what you want. Once you grow up, in your teens you take inputs from things around you and try to be like the richest. What you don't realize is that such a life 'loaned' not 'owned'. The day you go to work, you spend your salary like no spend thrift did before.
You change your iPhone every year, because everybody else is doing so. You buy everything from credit from clothes to toilet paper to car. Sometime later a colleague purchases a home and due to peer pressure you just trap yourself into a 20-25 year load on back breaking interest. You pay taxes on property and everything you own.
By the time you are done with all this you are too old to even enjoy what you have. Meanwhile you spend away your whole thinking of clearing the loans, trapping your self in never ending fear 'What will happen if I don't' clear the loan/ or if I loose the job.
This greatly reduces your ability to flexible and agile in terms of taking risks. This also kills your pursuit of happiness, because all the while you are worried of doing something out of compulsion regardless whether you like it or not.
The thing important here is to fix a upper limit and have some attitude for gratitude. A heck lot of people work a day of manual labor and go home with happiness filled in their hearts. While we worry about not having some X gadget which some colleague has. We complain about vacations et al.
Not tying happiness with money can help you get a lot of things in life with little stress.
I'm 32 with 3 kids and a wife, and I literally walked out of a fortune 500 company that is looked at as one of the best places to work. I have no problem telling someone to "fuck off, see ya" if I feel like I am getting mistreated.
Usually the only time Americans can take long vacations is between jobs. I wonder how many actually change jobs just for this reason.
I asked for 4 consecutive weeks off to travel Europe once at a previous employer (I had worked there 5 years with no more then a week and a half off) and they denied the request. So I found another job and made sure I had a 4 week break between the two.
I love my employer. I recently just returned from a five week road trip with my family. I worked remotely for roughly a week (to save PTO for another trip), and they had no problem with it.
It's interesting however--some folks take advantage of the flexibility, while others do not. Just about everyone in the R&D group travels frequently, and the CEO will often go dark for a month at a time, but others in the company don't take more than a week or two of their PTO each year.
I've done this, though I didn't realize what I was doing at the time.
I was working for Sun Microsystems, which gave me two weeks of vacation time. Sun was doing a forced shutdown over the week of the 4th of July, which burned 4 days, and then there was the inevitable "shutdown" over christmas break, which burned another three days. This left me with 3 days of "elective" vacation time. A wedding took care of those.
I quit Sun, and deliberately took off 4 weeks before my next job started. Funny, when the 4 weeks were over, I was ready to go back to Sun. The job I had left was better than the one I was taking. I realized that I had just been terminally burned out. Maybe I should have called Sun back, we were still on good terms, but at the time, I didn't really realize this was an option... and this was the deep tech recession of the early 2000s (which accounts for the forced shut down in the summer), so they were trying to shed employees.
I wasn't a rock star, but I'm pretty sure I was valuable to the company. I'd spent almost three years writing code, learning the structure of sun's data warehouse, getting to know supply analysts, people in sales, people in manufacturing, and understanding the issues in logistics and how to write analytical apps to support these functions. Even if my hard skills could be replaced (they certainly could, by any Industrial Engineering major with intermediate programming ability), the new person would still take years to acquire all that domain and institutional knowledge.
This is why I do agree that it's nuts for companies to be so stingy with vacation time. An extra week or two a year would probably have kept me at Sun. I think the reason this inefficiency persists is that employers just don't see the connection. I didn't even see the connection, and I was the one who quit my job.
It could be that I'm more prone to burnout than most. Maybe so, but I don't think I'm an extreme outlier on this. I suspect lots of job-hopping and burnout does result from such low vacation allotments.
I think this is why Germany, Sweden and other northern European contries are able to compete: americans work many hours, but are semi-burned out, so the total amount of work are the same, vacation or no vacation.
Until today I have never heard of a US company forcing employee's to use "forced shutdown" days - which I'm interpreting to mean the company telling people they have off on a certain day - as vacation days, and this is the second time (at least) it's been mentioned in this thread.
How common is this exactly? Because this sounds like a company that is really, really screwing it's employees.
It's pretty common, actually. They do it for the reasons awa pointed out, as well as to reduce the debt burden for the compan. IANAC [1], but I believe this has something to do with unused vacation leave being charged as outstanding debt. It's also a way of saving money by shutting down operations at a time when less gets done anyway.
Sun, like most companies, did give the option of taking the leave without pay and preserving your vacation time.
Maybe that's one option for US companies - pay for two weeks of vacation time, but culturally allow up to six without pay. Then we'd actually be somewhat more like European countries, but with an option - reduce your salary if you'd like more vacation, but keep working and make more money if that's more your style.
I doubt I'll see this happen - first, "leave without pay" is unusual in the US, typically done medical conditions where the employee wants to return to the job, but will be forced to leave for long periods of time (pregnancy leave is often handled this way). Another problem is that it may actually be inefficient - it would create a financial incentive to take minimum vacation time, and a lot of people believe, with some evidence, that workers are less productive this way.
I've been at a company where even normal holidays (Christmas) were considered vacation (forced for non-scheduled personal - i.e. most IT). They were also one of those companies that combined sick leave and vacation. They really didn't give enough days to compensate (starting people really only had about a week and a half of vacation if they didn't get sick / stuck in hospital).
These furloughs have become absolutely routine for municipal governments. In the (likely) event of a budget shortfall, they just shutdown for one friday a month (or some variation) and take either vacation days or a day of pay away.
There are two types. The 'shutdown', or technically in my companies case the 'plant shutdown', and the 'furlough' day.
At my company, the factory has 7,000 employees in one location. So many people took vacation between Christmas and New Years that the factory simply can not operate. The solution was either to only give that time off for a select group of people (pissing off most of the factory guys), or to make everyone take that time off (pissing off the few that used to come in that week and goof off).
Unfortunately they extended it from the guys in the factory up to the engineers. Which really makes no sense. I'm working on a project that won't hit the factory floor for another year. Why can't I work between Christmas and New Years? I would be amazingly produtive without all the meetings and distractions. Not only do we have to take the time off and use vacation (or not get paid and don't come in), but we are not allowed to come in even if we wanted to. I assume this is all negotiated with the unions, they never want the salaried guys to have perks that they don't have. So for I end up burning 3-5 out of 10 vacation days a year on a week I absolutely do NOT want to take off. But I still get paid for those days at least. And there are ways to get around it (floating holidays, i.e. work 40 hours in 4 days in a week with a holiday gives you the holiday back) which in effect allow you to have your full 2 weeks. If that was not the case I think the salaried engineers would have fought back against the practice more. Although I guess most people with kids like that week off anyway, I just view it as a waste, I like taking my vacation during the times those with kids can't take vacation. Everything is cheaper and less crowded.
A 'furlow' is an unpaid day that the company forces you to take. A lot of government employees have these now, you must take 1-5 days off a year and not get paid for those days. In effect it is a pay cut but in exchance you get more vacation days. The most interesting thing about the furlough is that very often you see people given a choice between everyone taking a few days furlough or a bunch of people getting fired. More often than not, everyone votes to have a few people fired.
I was very bummed that Sun forced me to take off the week of 4th of july for the same reason. I wanted to take a week in San Diego at the beach. That's crowded any time in the summer, but after labor day, when school resumes, the weather is actually nicer in early fall (they call it "june gloom" in san diego, coastal fog is still common in early-mid summer), rentals are way easier to get, and hotel prices drop dramatically. Instead, Sun was forcing me to take my beach week at the most expensive and slightly less desirable time of year. And when you only get two weeks at all, that's pretty crappy.
The amazing thing to me is that that simple little policy - which probably makes a lot of sense to executives with kids at these large companies that take the week off anyway - is enough to drive me away to another company. It is definitely more cost effective to just give people more vacation than to be replacing an engineer.
I think this kind of thing would almost certainly be illegal in the EU. If the company closes it's doors and you're willing to work, then they cannot take that out of your annual leave.
Some countries laws (eg Ireland) explicitly allow forced closure for Christmas, it is also in several contracts (that part of your holidays must be over a certain period). This is the closest it gets in Europe.
Unfortunately, some of use take negative vacations between jobs, cashing out unused vacation on Friday, and starting a new job on Monday. It's only a month or two later that we realize our mistake.
I work for a big financial co. When I asked about five consecutive weeks off they did not like it at first. But HR could not find anything against it in "Employee Handbook" (or whatever it's called). At the end they had to give it to me.
My guess is at the big corporations HR cannot just make up rules as they go. Also, they are all afraid to break any written rules. So a little push from an employee could bring desired results.
There is a good article from another software developer around here who told his boss he was taking a 3 month vacation. He made the point the business needed him more than he needed it; he was a competent developer and could easily get work, didn't have any living/large financial dependencies. At first I thought it was absurd, but the more I thought about it, he was absolutely correct.
Take a long vacation some time. Even if you do have a family, save up enough money and go travel for a while. Take some decent time off work (4+ weeks). Let them fire you if they want. That's (one of my) my goal(s) over the next 2 years: take an extended vacation (I haven't taken more than a week off since I graduated college).
That is a good story, and I know as a manager I granted more than a few unpaid personal leaves of absence for top employees. Way better to have them come back refreshed and productive than to try to replace their domain knowledge with a new hire! It won't work for everyone though...but is a good litmus test of how much your employer values you.
It is also a solid testimony to the fact that for every HR policy there is an exception. If you are valued and make your case in the right way, you can get a lot! (think double-promotions, out of cycle raises, better gear, etc.) HR advises, Managers decide (if your manager doesn't know this, shop for a new one)
Live on less than half of your net(take-home) pay and save the rest. Now for every month that you work, you are also saving a month's worth of living expenses. After two years of this you have two years of fuck you money. Two years is enough time to learn python or something else significant.
Your savings can last even longer if you get a $10/hr job such as waiting tables part-time.
Work daily on developing marketable skills. Work daily on communicating how your work impacts the business you're in. Imagine your boss asks you tomorrow, "Why shouldn't I fire you right now?". What would you say?
Always have a resume prepared.
Once you have done this you can go up to your boss and tell her you are taking two months off and you won't care what she says in reply.
Recent grads are only making ~40k, some times less, some times considerably less (people have posted Ask HNs about this topic before). As someone who used to be in that camp, living off half your net at that salary range is not realistic; living on 75% is barely so, if you're eating bologna sandwiches every night.
Having a second job is a great idea, it's just too bad you can't get a good consulting job when you're a junior dev. Once you have a couple of years of experience you can start to get consulting work and from there you are pretty much set financially. The first couple of years are tough though. Vacations aren't realistic unless you have family that helps you out.
Most undergrads are only making ~$0/year, and seem to get by just fine. Adding an extra $40k into the mix would only seem to help.
I made $37k at my first job, and managed to put $10k of that into the market for the first four years. So yes, it's possible.
Everything the grandparent says is good advice (apart from the waiting tables thing. Freelancing pays 10-30x as much.) Live cheap when you're young, bank away as much as possible, spend your 30s living on a beach. It's very doable if that's what you want.
I just mentioned waiting tables because it was a job almost anyone could do and that pays decently. It's something you could find quickly to stretch savings between jobs. I don't have any experience with freelancing but that's probably a better idea.
Dunno where you are, but in New England $60k seems to be entry level and you can get much more if you're skilled and have good college-age work experience.
Up until January of this year I was making $40,084.00/yr. That means about $2k/month net.
I was paying $156/month on rent by living in a small house with two roommates. I drive a 15yo car that is paid off and I live 3km from work so I don't depend on it.
I can't imagine you were living anywhere desirable that you could pay $156/month in rent.
People living in high cost of living areas can't reasonably live on $12K/year. Luckily, they mostly get paid a lot better $40K/year because they have to.
Feudalism has been eliminated, you could always move. But you're absolutely right. People who choose to live in pricey areas don't get to enjoy extended vacations right out of college. It's your choice to make though.
I visited San Jose a month ago. It's a gorgeous area and the culture is something really special, but it's expensive as hell. But that's fine if you think it's worth it.
Where I live a 3br/2bth house can be rented for <$500. It makes a level of financial independence available that I couldn't have living in CA or most of the east coast.
I don't think people so much "choose to live in pricy areas" as that's where the jobs are. As a result, that's where the people are. As a result, that's where the most expensive living is. You can find a cheaper place to live, but it's likely cheaper, because there's less of a job market there.
Depending on the loan, you may qualify for "Income-Based Repayment" plans, which reduce monthly payments to $0 if you are making little or no money. You still accrue interest, and the crushing psychological weight of all that debt is still there, but it's definitely an option for new grads.
I doubt it. State schools are still pretty cheap. After a minimal scholarship, UIC cost me something like $1300 a semester. That ends up being a not-that-crippling debt.
If you go to a University of California, it costs at least $10,000 in tuition a year alone,definitely more now, that's what it was two years ago. Plus books and rent for most people.
Usually (or at least back when I graduated from college the first time) there was a six-month window before you had to start re-paying the college loan.
I did that as a mid level dev. I had timing on my side though. I waited until we finished a big project, and then I presented my two week letter and went on a month long trip. I came back and found a job almost immediately. My point being that when your body asks you for change, do not hold back, and make that change. Be confident in your skills and don't be afraid of telling your boss that you need a break. Because even though the Germans may think so, we are not robots.
Improve your skills, build a portfolio, and switch into contracting as soon as you can. You make a lot more if you're good, can make your own schedule (including long vacations if desired, or working vacations), and the somewhat higher risk and uncertainty are easy to manage when you're young and without dependents.
You also get more diverse experience and contacts that increase your desirability if you want to return to 9-5 land AND if you're adventurous, you can go live in a developing nation with a low cost of living, which has the same effect as a big income boost, plus you get to spend your time somewhere that isn't yuppie land (and presumably has nice weather).
I took the month of August off from my software dev job between my freshmen and sophomore years of college. That was in addition to ~3 weeks of other vacation time spread throughout that year. I spent the month traveling and volunteering. It was unpaid, but my expenses were pretty low at the time and I had enough in savings to get by just fine. I highly recommend it.
As a student I took time off from class and enjoyed 2 weeks skiing is switzerland, then another 2 weeks in the sun in Uruguay. All while it was -20C at home in Norway. I usually end up working during my normal vacations though, so last summer I had 2 weeks off.
One of the perks I would probably want in my contract when I start working is the ability to take up to 4 weeks of unpaid leave and being able to take all my vacation out in one go.
Also I've been told that in the US you have a limited number of sick days and that they sometimes come as part of your vacation. That's not the case in Norway. In fact, if you get sick for a week while on holiday, then you have the right to another week of holiday.
The sick days part varies by employer. At a previous employer it was 10 sick days in addition to your vacation days, and unused sick days accumulated from one year to the next. When my son was born 8 week early with my wife in the hospital 2.5 weeks before that, I had accumulated enough sick time that I could take 11 weeks off to spend at the hospital (Caleb spent 25 days in neonatal intensive care) and at home after he was released.
What about if you were sick and your doctor said you had to stay home?
In Norway we can take up to 3 consecutive days off due to illness 4 times during 12 months. If you work in an extra exposed environment (kindergarten, old people's home) you have more days. If you need more than that, you have to see a doctor. The doctor can give you up to 12 months of leave. During this period the state refunds your employer for your wages (after 14 days or so). Under no circumstances can you be fired due to your illness, and if you can not return to your position your employer will need to provide a new position. This of course can be very bad for small companies and start-ups. So they tend to use temporary employment to circumvent these issues, though there is a limit as to how long you can employ someone temporarily.
In that instance I pay for long term disability insurance. If I have to be off for medical reasons for more time than my sick days, I get paid by LTD instead of employer.
Past the first 12 months the state (Norway) will start paying you equivalently to your pension. So as a student I too have private long term disability insurance, mostly to cover my student loans, in case I for instance get my fingers cut off and can't do much with a computer anymore.
My wife has freelanced for over 15 years (before I knew her) precisely because of this. She saved up a big stash of cash, set automatic bill pays for her rent and utilities and took a two-month trip to Paris.
You have to keep your expenses low (both at home and abroad) but at least you're not at work.
If you're a dev/designer, the good thing is you can work remotely, thus paying for parts of your vacation. I did the same with a two week foray in Paris: work one and half days for American companies, and then enjoyed the rest of the time there.
I did some work for a start-up while doing my own before taking a month off to travel the world (literally from America > Asia > Europe). They offered to pay me to stay but I thought, "I'd rather have the amazing experience of visiting friends and understanding foreign cultures than remaining comfortable.").
I'm wondering how much of it is because people neglect to negotiate their vacation time when changing jobs.
Most American workplaces start you out with 2 weeks and then usually add a week or so after so many years of seniority. When you change jobs, how many of you ask for that same amount of vacation time at the new company? Or do you just accept that you're new and don't want to push things by asking for more at the onset? Or is it just forgotten until it's too late to ask?
I asked for, and received 3 weeks vacation after a recent job switch. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. The relative value of an extra week of vacation time is far greater than if my salary were bumped by the additional ~2% that I'd get by being there.
I've got a co-worker who negotiated extra time of when he started here (3 weeks instead of the normal 2). Normally, we get an extra week of vacation after 5 years of employment. Unfortunately, they screwed him out of it because he already had 3 weeks, which is the normal amount for someone with 5 years of tenure. :-(
It's kind of interesting that "negotiated five extra weeks of vacation" turns into "failed to get an extra week vacation for every year, indefinitely". I guess it didn't occur to him (or either side, possibly) to specify the difference?
So if he worked there for 10 years he would have gotten 10 x 3 = 30 weeks holiday, however had he not negotiated he would have gotten 5 x 2 + 5 x 3 = 25 weeks.
I cannot see how you consider that he got a bad deal.
Or do you just accept that you're new and don't want to push things by asking for more at the onset?
You raise an important point. There can be a bit of that. For example, negotiating additional vacation time when you start a new job can hurt you a year later when you take that vacation and things aren't going well for the company. It can be viewed negatively by management and it might bleed into other considerations, like raises or promotions. Screwed up, I know, but it happens.
When my old company was going under and a lot of us were looking for new jobs this was a tactic we all used. Go for pay and vacation time increases on offers. Some of us took more pay, some took more vacation. One guy got 6 weeks vacation.
My new company is 3 weeks vacation and 5 days sick/personal for everyone. Instead I just took more money with the understanding that I could get approved for leave without pay as needed.
Of course, that depends entirely on the company/industry. I don't even know that "most" American workplaces start you out with any vacation. In professional fields, they mostly do, I'm sure. My mom has worked at the same place for around twenty years and she has zero vacation. The only way I would be able to get her to come for a visit where I am is if I subsidized the time (ie, paid the money she would otherwise be missing out on, on top of the expense of the travel) -- because either way, she still has bills to pay.
I find that I take a lot of what I have in my daily business life for granted and am often surprised when I'm struck by the reality of how few benefits positions in other places in this country give people.
No vacation really sucks. I took 2 months between jobs once, but I've always been able to take a week or two weeks at a time. Now, we have the same policy as netflix. Basically you take time off when you want it, and you take as much as you want. It's all paid. Our only designer is gone for 3 weeks to get married. We'll struggle a little bit for those 3 weeks, but I'm grateful that when it's my time to take a week or two off, I don't feel guilty or have to beg for it.
The funny thing is, the Netflix policy is tied to a corporate culture that's reputed to be very high stress, performance-focused, and quick to terminate. In such an insecure environment, I would be very surprised if Netflix employees took more vacation than the average industry employee.
I would never want to work for a Netflix-model company. When I take vacation, I want to feel entitled to it (because I am!), and when I forgo vacation, I want to be paid out for that sacrifice when I leave the company.
I think the Netflix model exists more to improve the company ledger by reducing liabilities than to help the employee or promote a healthy work environment. Maybe it's different where you work, but that's my perspective, from my comfortable 12 company holidays, 15 days PTO perspective.
We have the Netflix policy, well almost. We get the time off when you want it, but never more than 5 working days together (Thats a week). Did I mention that a large number of the employees travel abroad to visit family?
The flip side of this is that we have Summer vacation for schools (unlike the rest of the world) and have institutionalized Spring Break for college students. Sadly we see the idea of vacation as being for the very young or the very old who retire.
You have those holiday vacations for schools and students in Europe as well... Christmas, Easter, Summer and some places also have a short break in fall.
I'm not sure if I understand correctly, but in my country (in south america) schools and colleges have around 3 months off every year. As for employees, the usual is 2 weeks vacations + holidays (around 10 days) and sick time. You also have some time off when you become a parent and of course if you're a woman you have several months before giving birth.
Mid-june till september off for schools.
July and august off for college students.
One week prior to christmas and one week some time around easter off for both.
Four weeks paid yearly vacation for the 9-to-5ers.
Two weeks additional paid vacation for working students finishing their graduation works.
National holidays and sickness don't count towards your vacation time.
If a national holiday happens to be in weekend, friday or monday is usually free.
Honestly, the more I read about US working conditions, the more I feel like people there are deliberately misinforming everyone else in attempt to reduce immigration and competition on job market.
Same in Lithuania actually. But.. 9-5ers? Do you really have 35 hour work week as opposed to 40 ( (17-9-1h lunch) * 5) or was it just digested for the American reader?
Digested. Was musing a long time - 'the workers'? 'the drones'? 'blue collars'? In the end, settled on the best non-offensive term my limited vocabulary could come up with :)
That can’t be true. Bavarian schools, for example, have a five-week summer vacation this year and additionally eight weeks of vacation spread over the whole year (one week in spring and autumn, two weeks for Easter, Pentecost and Christmas). There are also quite a few state and federal holidays but, as you can see, vacations are already clustered around those holidays. I think there are maybe two or three additional holidays outside of vacation times (May 1, German Unity Day, probably some weird religious holiday I’m forgetting).
That’s a shorter (but still quite long) summer vacation. Overall, however, vacation times are similar.
As for spring break, here is the situation at my German university: classes end at July 15 this year, exams end at August 20, the next semester starts at October 1. That’s one month and nearly two weeks when you can be absolutely sure that there is nothing to do for you (at least when you finish your papers in time and don’t have a thesis to write) and probably more depending on when your exams are.
We also get two weeks off for Christmas and there is obviously also a shorter break (about one week and up to one month depending on when your exams are) between winter semester and summer semester (but no other vacations, only federal and state holidays).
I don’t know much about US universities (Is there downtime for students between semesters?) but I do know that spring break certainly doesn’t compare. (One or two weeks? Seriously?)
I'm pretty sure German universities suck in comparision to all Anglophone universities when it comes to free time, and I know it's true for Irish and British ones.
You get three months off for the summer (normally June, July and August), a month off over Christmas (though in some universities it may only be three weeks, and you may have to prepare for exams), and various other time off.
It's been a long time for me, but in the US I recall that it covers part of June, July and August — so that has to be at least over 8 weeks. Although maybe the idea that our kids get a longer Summer break is part of the the anti-vacation propaganda?
Yes, and? Are five weeks no vacation or what? This is what you said (just to remind you): “[We] have Summer vacation for schools (unlike the rest of the world).”
In American schools, you have three months off over the summer and a week off over Christmas and a week of for Spring Break. Then you have all the little holidays here and there throughout the year.
Ireland here. Summer holidays for schools are everywhere. Secondary school children (12-18yrs) get 3 months in the summer. College/University students get 2 to 3 months (depending).
Likewise they usually 1 or 2 weeks off at Christmas time, and 1 or 2 at easter time (around your spring break).
I live in Chicago, no one around here would accuse the unions of being weak, but vacation time here is no different than in the south.
Unless you mean on a national level (unions pushing for federal reform and what-not) than yes the unions here are weaker, but the U.S. Also tends to be more opposed to national regulations than Europe as well.
Here in Sweden the government mostly only legislated what the unions and the employer organizations already had agreed to. That went on throughout the 40's to the 70's. At that point the state legislated some things that had no prior agreement and then progress basically stopped.
I have a feeling that there is a bit more to it than that.
In America it is fairly common for employers tack on a little more vacation time every year for both salary and hourly employees. It isn't too terribly odd to have 1 to 1.5 months off a year after working for someone for 5 to 10 years, but Americans seldom stay at the same job for very long. Either you go off for greener pastures, quit out of frustration, get laid off or simply resign because they fear that prospective employers won't hire you because you stayed at one place for too long.
Deep down, I think we have a serious fear of being considered lazy by our peers.
That is definitely the perk that isn't. Imagine a startup offering employees unlimited pay -- "Whoa whoa whoa, you drew $3,000 this month? $3,000!? You're a single guy, what do you need $3,000 for? Don't we give you enough soda?"
My employer has the same policy, and I've enjoyed a ton of vacation time (in exchange for getting a lot done when I'm not on vacation). Unlimited vacation is an awesome perk in the hands of the right employer.
It really is dependent upon your work environment, and the people you work for. When I started at my current job, we had two weeks vacation after 6 months, plus half a dozen holidays. We were a very young company, and I got the impression that policy was created somewhat arbitrarily when we only had a couple of full time employees.
We went to an 'unlimited' policy about 16 months ago, and one of our devs spent almost an entire month overseas earlier this year without issue. He's not too much of an outlier within our company in terms of how much vacation time is taken, either.
It wasn't always like this in Europe. Extended vacation time was one of the many hard-fought rights won by the socialist/trade-unionist movements of the past century throughout the continent. Not even Thatcher dared attacking that right (she dropped a few national holidays here and there, instead).
Things didn't turn out quite the same on the other side of the pond, sadly, and this is the result.
That may be true but here, in Europe (esp. Eastern), many people go years without taking more than few days of vacation. One, you're discouraged to take time off -- you can lose your job if you're not "devoted". Two, you have to work over capacity to support yourself and your family.
I guess that depends on the country. Here in Austria it's the norm to take all 5 weeks of holidays you get each year. If you don't take all of them you can either roll them over to the next year or have your unused days "paid for" by the employeer.
In addition, unused holidays don't really expire. So if you or your employeer terminates the contract, you have the right to be paid for _all_ unused holidays that accumulated during the period of the contract. That's the reason why most employees force you to really take all of your 5 weeks each year.
Edit: Seems that I was wrong and that unused holidays expire after a few years. Still, each employer I've worked for so far "forced" its employees to really take their 5 weeks of vacation.
Well, in Britain the regime is usually fairly generous, with 24 days + 8 national holidays (guaranteed to be working days) being the norm for middle-class jobs and IT.
We already know about France.
Italy, last I checked, had an average of 20 days + 13 national holidays, with teachers being famous for their 3-months summer break (which in practice is little more than a month, but anyway).
Yes, there is always pressure about choosing the right time for the business or public service, but at the end of the day it's a right and if you don't exercise it you're entitled to a lot of extra money -- which is why employers are keen on people actually taking time off.
> One, you're discouraged to take time off -- you can lose your job if you're not "devoted".
I don't know that this is the case in many European countries, including Eastern Europe (at least the part of it that is in the EU). First of all, in most (all?) EU countries all workers get 4 weeks paid vacation minimum. If you do not use up all of it, your employer can offer you to "carry over" the vacation to the next year. If they do not offer you that option then they are obliged to "force" you to go on vacation after it becomes clear that you will not use up all of your vacation days. Some employers will offer to instead compensate you extra for the vacation days you did not use up - this is legal in some EU countries only.
> Two, you have to work over capacity to support yourself and your family.
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but this just doesn't make a lot of sense, since those mandatory 4 weeks of vacation are paid vacation - i.e. you get paid the same amount you would receive had you been working instead of being on vacation.
Just about the only reason why you could potentially make less money due to vacation is if you regularly do a lot of overtime (which you obviously cannot do while on vacation).
Not strictly Eastern Europe (was never part of Warsaw pact, had hostile relations to Soviet Union) but the former Yugoslavian countries today are in this seat:
Slovenia enjoys vacation time like during Yugoslavian times, which means 4-5 weeks at least plus holidays.
Croatia took a more capitalist route and altough workers still enjoy socialist benefits such as 1 hour per day payed for their lunch, and holidays off, the vacation time has been decreased while working time increased (10-12 hours per day are common).
Bosnia has large unemployment but the holidays+vacation are intact for the public offices, while for private employees get 1 or 2 weeks off per year.
Serbia is in a similar position.
Yugoslavia Socialism -> 4-5 weeks at least, plus all religioous holidays and all communist free days.
Capitalism -> 1-2 weeks maximum, religious on, communist off.
This is crazy from our (Western European) perspective.
It was one of my reasons for not taking a job in the USA that was offered me a few years ago. Yes, it paid somewhat more than here in Europe but I'd rather have the benefits such as more free time and better health care than more income.
I plan to move to SF in the following months, but this is one of the issues why I think that I won't stay there permanently, but will move back to Europe after a few years.
In my experience, big companies in the U.S. are often willing to negotiate on the number of vacation days issued. I negotiated 4 weeks of vacation/sick time + 6 holiday days at my last job. I took a a couple thousand dollars less than my target salary, but I was definitely happier.
Also, banks, educational institutions, and government offices are more generous when it comes to vacation days. Tech companies and ad agencies are generally the stingiest.
It strongly depends on the company. Many companies use vacation time as a perk strictly for seniority, and are inflexible about changing it; or if you do get a break, you forego further increases until your seniority has "caught up".
It's pretty stupid, particularly since it's a fairly strong disincentive to relocate: precisely after you've moved away from friends and family, they give you less time to visit them. It was one of the biggest reasons I never moved to CA when I had the offer, H-1B, etc.
I work for a company that doesn't have expiring vacation days. They are payed out at 100% at your current salary the day you quit, get fired, or retire. We have a large amount of employees that use this as an additional retirement account. I can't imagine banking all my vacation time!
Do you have that in writing? I wonder if they think they could simply discontinue that policy.
Actually, I worked a a place that allowed you to "sell back" your vacation time as actual hours worked. They could be made to count for time-and-a-half overtime.
If you did that on a week that also had a company holiday, you'd kind of get into this triple-bonus-category. It was great until some guy sort of abused it and sold back a few weeks while also working a bunch of overtime over a two-holiday pay period.
I have employees that take a lower salary than others, but have up to 7 weeks holiday a year. I'm happy with that. One employee that has 7 weeks holiday has only had 1 day sick in the 6 years I've employed him.
-- Sharpen the Saw --
Once upon a time a very strong woodcutter ask for a job in a timber merchant, and he got it. The paid was really good and so were the work conditions. For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best. His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to work.
The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees "Congratulations," the boss said. "Go on that way!" Very motivated for the boss’ words, the woodcutter try harder the next day, but he only could bring 15 trees. The third day he try even harder, but he only could bring 10 trees.
Day after day he was bringing less and less trees. "I must be losing my strength", the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on. "When was the last time you sharpened your axe?" the boss asked. "Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees..."
I'm a Swedish developer. This year I have 7 weeks of vacation, and I plan to use it all. I normally get the 5 weeks required by law. Last year, I only used 4 of those 5 weeks, so one spilled over to this year. I also got a bonus week of vacation for working a lot of overtime last summer. So that makes 7 weeks.
It's a function of the climate, if you excercise your right to four consecutive weeks, your employer has the right to pick the dates, as long as they are sometime between June and August, since that's when our summer is.
For this reason we have the "industrial vacation" in July when all heavy industry shuts down, since it's easier if everyone and the entire supply chain shut down at the same time.
In the UK these are often called "trade holidays" and used to be set on a city by city basis - this seems to have died out now that we have relatively little heavy industry left.
Hehe no, most often not. If you're a webguy, contact me (nixy at bede dot se). We're hiring in Stockholm! (The e-mail domain has nothing to do with the company, it is my private e-mail.)
I cant imagine Swedish would be much of an issue if you work with software development. Even outside technology, most swedes speak english well enough for basic communication.
Still, if you get a work permit (easy), you get to attend free Swedish lessons.
Actually there are numerous companies in the U.S. that do have maternity leave. I used to work for an agency in NY that generally had less pay but more benefits.
I know a fair few people who work one month on, one month off (pro rata, of course). Even in London or Hong Kong (not Tokyo) a competent developer can earn enough in 6 months to live on for 12.
America doesn't do vacation because of a mistaken understanding of the meaning of the word "productivity".
As long as you have management consultants who specialize in the single metric of productivity (i.e. number of dollars of profit vs. number of dollars spent on people making the profit), you will have miserable people.
Well, in general, I'm in favor of measuring - "thinking" is often a buzzword that means jumping on whichever fad bandwagon you just saw in the airline magazine. It's picking what to measure where some thought is required.
There is also the problem that with an emphasis on "measurement" there comes an associated emphasis on values that are easy to measure. The current example is the difficulty of measuring programmer productivity, especially the weaknesses of LOC as a metric. The classic example of this is the rule of the management dweebs in the Defense Department during the Vietnam war and the near collapse of small unit cohesion and esprit de corps during that time.
Taking control of my own schedule is in the top 5 list of reasons I quit being an employee 4 years ago (constant reorganization was number 1). Now I take all of August off, spend time volunteering in my daughters' classrooms during the day, get all of my errands done while the streets and shops are empty, and generally love life a lot more.
Anyone with dev skills can go independent or strike out with a group of like-minded souls to take control of their schedule. Sure there are downsides to working on your own, and it isn't all skittles and beer, but overall I find it well worth it.
Nitpick: you're referring to at-will employment, not right-to-work. Right-to-work laws mean that you can't be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment. At-will employment means that you can (theoretically) be fired or quit at any time for no reason.
Though the two are related in that almost all of the employees that cannot be terminated at the employer's will are unionized. Even in the right-to-work states, almost all of the employees of governments and universities cannot be fired at will.
The worst part of it IMO is that even if you could pay for insurance without your workplace plan huge numbers of Americans can't get it at all due to pre existing conditions. So this is a serious impediment to workers leaving stable jobs that they don't like to do things like found small startups or even just move to a new job that may not be as stable.
Well, that's just sad. You do know that the rest of the world is having problems at finding a job at all, or at least getting paid on regular basis? Cry me a river.
That isn't a constructive comment at all, not to mention untrue: here in Uruguay we have a record low unemployment, for example (and zero unemployment in IT).
Whether you'd be willing to work for my wage is another problem, but I do have 20 days' worth of paid vacations.
You're right, I wasn't being constructive, but neither is this article if you consider that this isn't US-only. I'm also certain that millionaires also have a lot of personal problems, and yet also find little empathy from other people. I admit, I have not checked the current situation of Uruguay, or many other countries for that matter, yet I'm pretty certain that "I'm afraid to go on a vacation, my boss is treating me bad" is a personal and not a IT issue at all.
Want constructive comments - give constructive topics.
In many European countries if you don't take all your holidays, the company must pay you for them. So companies do not financially benefit if you work more, all they get are employees that are tired and overworked. This is why they would be keen for you to take all your holidays.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 350 ms ] threadAlso, I find that being single and having friends that (on the majority), make less than I do, makes it difficult to plan trips to places you'd have to fly/rent a hotel for. Trips consist of ten friends carpooling, getting a group rate at a ski resort, and renting out a condo for next to nothing for a weekend.
I have a lot of vacation days through work (6 weeks this year), but have pretty much no desire to go on vacations. I end up using my vacation days to go to Security conferences.
I've found, at least with my favorite conferences (CanSecWest, Shmoocon), that they refill my "info-sec excitement meter" for a good four months before I start considering quitting and going to work in a comic book store.
From an business uptime perspective, forced "downtime" of employees through vacation is actually a good way to force the creation of backup systems for business process.
I also recall hearing at some point in time that a lot of financial institutions forced certain people to take time off,as a means to detect embezzling. I'm not sure if that's true or not.
Not only is that practiced, it's the law.
This makes the whole inustial and coorporate sector grind to a halt. A lot of factories literally shut down for a few weeks.
Fortunately, it is rather well coordinated.
What does everyone think?
Thus why many employers don't do training other than the bare minimum - why train someone who might use the training to go elsewhere. This is the "keep them dumb and stupid" approach to employee retention.
Seems kind of silly to me. If your better employees regularly leave your company, than you probably have more deeply-rooted organizational problems that need fixing.
Or, when combined with a minimal vacation time bucket, forced vacation makes sure your employees will be there when you want them to be.
I know an auditor at a Big 4 accounting firm. The employees in her office are forced to take some vacation time during the slow time of the year. That way it burns down vacation time that they could otherwise be using during crunch time and causing short-staffing.
Many employers also lump in sick time with vacation time, as if that's a replacement since you didn't come into work. That would probably be okay, if you had an option to take unpaid vacation time when the time comes. Instead, you're often forced to take a shorter vacation, which doesn't do the job.
And forcing you to work while on vacation is unforgiveable. It shows that the company doesn't understand why vacation time is necessary. (I haven't had anyone do this to me, thankfully. It wouldn't have gone well.)
If taking unpaid vacations was an option, I would probably end up taking about 4 weeks worth of vacations, instead of 2.
I request four weeks of vacation in my contract, but am afraid to use them. That's America.
I think I'll be asking for more vacation time in future contracts, too. I managed to secure extra in the first year of my current contract because I had a need (planned trip) but in the future, I'm just going to require more.
Of course, benefits and pay are interchangeable, so I might just request the ability to take unpaid vacation as needed, up to a certain amount.
Being clear about this with new (and especially young) employees is a good idea as to people straight out of college, it's not obvious.
But there's certainly nothing dodgy about it.
But it's 50% of his total time off. Is that "the norm"?
On the bright side, if you take a five day vacation and bookend it with two weekends, that's a nine day trip.
It seems like something you should be able to take up with your employer, because you requested vacation and they're counting holidays (something different) against them. That sees like a bit of a rip off.
Of course, I know that even two weeks of vacation is considered a lot in this country and my mom works in a job where she doesn't get _any_ paid vacation, so . . .
Force.
As in, my employer is forcing me to take shorter vacations. My employer is forcing me to work my vacations around their schedule.
That's not what he's doing. He's coercing you. It's different. He's implying that if you take the vacation you want, there might not be a job waiting when you get back. The answer to that is "fine".
If you truly don't care whether there's a job waiting on the other side, he loses all leverage. If you know for a fact that you could pick up another dev job inside of a week with a Facebook status update, he loses all leverage.
In other words, the only reason you think your boss can "force" you to do anything is because you've given him that ability. Quit thinking in those terms and you'll live a much happier life.
xnerdr 2 hours ago | link | parent [dead] | on: Why is America the 'no-vacation nation'?
and this is why i'm amazed programmers have not yet formed a union.
I agree in principle, but it's not always so simple. When you're young, have no kids, no mortgage, no car loan, etc, it's pretty easy to just say "fuck off, see ya" when your employer acts abusively.
When you have all of the above, that becomes more difficult. Relocating is more often than not the norm in this industry, and you don't exactly want to sell your house, or move your kids around, etc etc.
Disclaimer: I don't have kids, or a mortgage, and I'm very mobile right now, but I also understand this probably won't last forever.
It's a warning for living beyond your means anyways - I've noticed many people that I work with have huge mortgages out, to the point where the continuous stream of income becomes paramount - even a few months of interruption could possibly mean ruin for them. This strikes me as an idiotic fiscal policy.
I don't consider losing my job to be traumatic in any way. It's nearly impossible to find good developers, so if you have a bit of skill you don't ever need to worry about the consequences of being unemployed.
Even if you have all those responsibilities and you're leveraged up to your eyeballs you can still quit your job. You just need to line up another one first. I've been doing technical work for almost 25. In that time I've quit two jobs because they weren't treating me the way I expect to be treated, but I've never been without a job.
Even if you can afford it you're really hurting yourself by screaming "fuck off, see ya" at your boss and stomping out to look for another job. It's a lot easier to find a job when you already have one, and your negotiating position for salary and benefits is much stronger.
We have zeroed down to what prevents people from taking risks or being happy or being content. Its about slowly walking in debt traps which never go away all your life.
As a kid you are fearless, because somebody else takes care of your finances, you feel no pressure, stay happy and do what you want. Once you grow up, in your teens you take inputs from things around you and try to be like the richest. What you don't realize is that such a life 'loaned' not 'owned'. The day you go to work, you spend your salary like no spend thrift did before.
You change your iPhone every year, because everybody else is doing so. You buy everything from credit from clothes to toilet paper to car. Sometime later a colleague purchases a home and due to peer pressure you just trap yourself into a 20-25 year load on back breaking interest. You pay taxes on property and everything you own.
By the time you are done with all this you are too old to even enjoy what you have. Meanwhile you spend away your whole thinking of clearing the loans, trapping your self in never ending fear 'What will happen if I don't' clear the loan/ or if I loose the job.
This greatly reduces your ability to flexible and agile in terms of taking risks. This also kills your pursuit of happiness, because all the while you are worried of doing something out of compulsion regardless whether you like it or not.
The thing important here is to fix a upper limit and have some attitude for gratitude. A heck lot of people work a day of manual labor and go home with happiness filled in their hearts. While we worry about not having some X gadget which some colleague has. We complain about vacations et al.
Not tying happiness with money can help you get a lot of things in life with little stress.
I asked for 4 consecutive weeks off to travel Europe once at a previous employer (I had worked there 5 years with no more then a week and a half off) and they denied the request. So I found another job and made sure I had a 4 week break between the two.
It's interesting however--some folks take advantage of the flexibility, while others do not. Just about everyone in the R&D group travels frequently, and the CEO will often go dark for a month at a time, but others in the company don't take more than a week or two of their PTO each year.
I was working for Sun Microsystems, which gave me two weeks of vacation time. Sun was doing a forced shutdown over the week of the 4th of July, which burned 4 days, and then there was the inevitable "shutdown" over christmas break, which burned another three days. This left me with 3 days of "elective" vacation time. A wedding took care of those.
I quit Sun, and deliberately took off 4 weeks before my next job started. Funny, when the 4 weeks were over, I was ready to go back to Sun. The job I had left was better than the one I was taking. I realized that I had just been terminally burned out. Maybe I should have called Sun back, we were still on good terms, but at the time, I didn't really realize this was an option... and this was the deep tech recession of the early 2000s (which accounts for the forced shut down in the summer), so they were trying to shed employees.
I wasn't a rock star, but I'm pretty sure I was valuable to the company. I'd spent almost three years writing code, learning the structure of sun's data warehouse, getting to know supply analysts, people in sales, people in manufacturing, and understanding the issues in logistics and how to write analytical apps to support these functions. Even if my hard skills could be replaced (they certainly could, by any Industrial Engineering major with intermediate programming ability), the new person would still take years to acquire all that domain and institutional knowledge.
This is why I do agree that it's nuts for companies to be so stingy with vacation time. An extra week or two a year would probably have kept me at Sun. I think the reason this inefficiency persists is that employers just don't see the connection. I didn't even see the connection, and I was the one who quit my job.
It could be that I'm more prone to burnout than most. Maybe so, but I don't think I'm an extreme outlier on this. I suspect lots of job-hopping and burnout does result from such low vacation allotments.
How common is this exactly? Because this sounds like a company that is really, really screwing it's employees.
Sun, like most companies, did give the option of taking the leave without pay and preserving your vacation time.
Maybe that's one option for US companies - pay for two weeks of vacation time, but culturally allow up to six without pay. Then we'd actually be somewhat more like European countries, but with an option - reduce your salary if you'd like more vacation, but keep working and make more money if that's more your style.
I doubt I'll see this happen - first, "leave without pay" is unusual in the US, typically done medical conditions where the employee wants to return to the job, but will be forced to leave for long periods of time (pregnancy leave is often handled this way). Another problem is that it may actually be inefficient - it would create a financial incentive to take minimum vacation time, and a lot of people believe, with some evidence, that workers are less productive this way.
[1] IANAAC: I am not an accountant ;)
At my company, the factory has 7,000 employees in one location. So many people took vacation between Christmas and New Years that the factory simply can not operate. The solution was either to only give that time off for a select group of people (pissing off most of the factory guys), or to make everyone take that time off (pissing off the few that used to come in that week and goof off).
Unfortunately they extended it from the guys in the factory up to the engineers. Which really makes no sense. I'm working on a project that won't hit the factory floor for another year. Why can't I work between Christmas and New Years? I would be amazingly produtive without all the meetings and distractions. Not only do we have to take the time off and use vacation (or not get paid and don't come in), but we are not allowed to come in even if we wanted to. I assume this is all negotiated with the unions, they never want the salaried guys to have perks that they don't have. So for I end up burning 3-5 out of 10 vacation days a year on a week I absolutely do NOT want to take off. But I still get paid for those days at least. And there are ways to get around it (floating holidays, i.e. work 40 hours in 4 days in a week with a holiday gives you the holiday back) which in effect allow you to have your full 2 weeks. If that was not the case I think the salaried engineers would have fought back against the practice more. Although I guess most people with kids like that week off anyway, I just view it as a waste, I like taking my vacation during the times those with kids can't take vacation. Everything is cheaper and less crowded.
A 'furlow' is an unpaid day that the company forces you to take. A lot of government employees have these now, you must take 1-5 days off a year and not get paid for those days. In effect it is a pay cut but in exchance you get more vacation days. The most interesting thing about the furlough is that very often you see people given a choice between everyone taking a few days furlough or a bunch of people getting fired. More often than not, everyone votes to have a few people fired.
Some countries laws (eg Ireland) explicitly allow forced closure for Christmas, it is also in several contracts (that part of your holidays must be over a certain period). This is the closest it gets in Europe.
My guess is at the big corporations HR cannot just make up rules as they go. Also, they are all afraid to break any written rules. So a little push from an employee could bring desired results.
Take a long vacation some time. Even if you do have a family, save up enough money and go travel for a while. Take some decent time off work (4+ weeks). Let them fire you if they want. That's (one of my) my goal(s) over the next 2 years: take an extended vacation (I haven't taken more than a week off since I graduated college).
http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks-vaca...
It is also a solid testimony to the fact that for every HR policy there is an exception. If you are valued and make your case in the right way, you can get a lot! (think double-promotions, out of cycle raises, better gear, etc.) HR advises, Managers decide (if your manager doesn't know this, shop for a new one)
Your savings can last even longer if you get a $10/hr job such as waiting tables part-time.
Work daily on developing marketable skills. Work daily on communicating how your work impacts the business you're in. Imagine your boss asks you tomorrow, "Why shouldn't I fire you right now?". What would you say?
Always have a resume prepared.
Once you have done this you can go up to your boss and tell her you are taking two months off and you won't care what she says in reply.
Having a second job is a great idea, it's just too bad you can't get a good consulting job when you're a junior dev. Once you have a couple of years of experience you can start to get consulting work and from there you are pretty much set financially. The first couple of years are tough though. Vacations aren't realistic unless you have family that helps you out.
I made $37k at my first job, and managed to put $10k of that into the market for the first four years. So yes, it's possible.
Everything the grandparent says is good advice (apart from the waiting tables thing. Freelancing pays 10-30x as much.) Live cheap when you're young, bank away as much as possible, spend your 30s living on a beach. It's very doable if that's what you want.
They're also generally not supporting themselves on that $0 income.
I was paying $156/month on rent by living in a small house with two roommates. I drive a 15yo car that is paid off and I live 3km from work so I don't depend on it.
You can live on $12k/yr, you just chose not to.
People living in high cost of living areas can't reasonably live on $12K/year. Luckily, they mostly get paid a lot better $40K/year because they have to.
Feudalism has been eliminated, you could always move. But you're absolutely right. People who choose to live in pricey areas don't get to enjoy extended vacations right out of college. It's your choice to make though.
I visited San Jose a month ago. It's a gorgeous area and the culture is something really special, but it's expensive as hell. But that's fine if you think it's worth it.
Where I live a 3br/2bth house can be rented for <$500. It makes a level of financial independence available that I couldn't have living in CA or most of the east coast.
How's the tech/software job market in that area? I can't say I've seen a whole lot of recruiting for jobs in the cheapest towns I've visited.
My biggest life regret was not realizing this at the time. I jumped into the workforce and pursued my career at 95 mph.
I should have spent a year travelling.
You also get more diverse experience and contacts that increase your desirability if you want to return to 9-5 land AND if you're adventurous, you can go live in a developing nation with a low cost of living, which has the same effect as a big income boost, plus you get to spend your time somewhere that isn't yuppie land (and presumably has nice weather).
One of the perks I would probably want in my contract when I start working is the ability to take up to 4 weeks of unpaid leave and being able to take all my vacation out in one go.
Also I've been told that in the US you have a limited number of sick days and that they sometimes come as part of your vacation. That's not the case in Norway. In fact, if you get sick for a week while on holiday, then you have the right to another week of holiday.
In Norway we can take up to 3 consecutive days off due to illness 4 times during 12 months. If you work in an extra exposed environment (kindergarten, old people's home) you have more days. If you need more than that, you have to see a doctor. The doctor can give you up to 12 months of leave. During this period the state refunds your employer for your wages (after 14 days or so). Under no circumstances can you be fired due to your illness, and if you can not return to your position your employer will need to provide a new position. This of course can be very bad for small companies and start-ups. So they tend to use temporary employment to circumvent these issues, though there is a limit as to how long you can employ someone temporarily.
You have to keep your expenses low (both at home and abroad) but at least you're not at work.
And it looks like somebody below has saved me the trouble of pointing you to it.
I did some work for a start-up while doing my own before taking a month off to travel the world (literally from America > Asia > Europe). They offered to pay me to stay but I thought, "I'd rather have the amazing experience of visiting friends and understanding foreign cultures than remaining comfortable.").
Most American workplaces start you out with 2 weeks and then usually add a week or so after so many years of seniority. When you change jobs, how many of you ask for that same amount of vacation time at the new company? Or do you just accept that you're new and don't want to push things by asking for more at the onset? Or is it just forgotten until it's too late to ask?
I cannot see how you consider that he got a bad deal.
You raise an important point. There can be a bit of that. For example, negotiating additional vacation time when you start a new job can hurt you a year later when you take that vacation and things aren't going well for the company. It can be viewed negatively by management and it might bleed into other considerations, like raises or promotions. Screwed up, I know, but it happens.
My new company is 3 weeks vacation and 5 days sick/personal for everyone. Instead I just took more money with the understanding that I could get approved for leave without pay as needed.
I find that I take a lot of what I have in my daily business life for granted and am often surprised when I'm struck by the reality of how few benefits positions in other places in this country give people.
I would never want to work for a Netflix-model company. When I take vacation, I want to feel entitled to it (because I am!), and when I forgo vacation, I want to be paid out for that sacrifice when I leave the company.
I think the Netflix model exists more to improve the company ledger by reducing liabilities than to help the employee or promote a healthy work environment. Maybe it's different where you work, but that's my perspective, from my comfortable 12 company holidays, 15 days PTO perspective.
Mid-june till september off for schools. July and august off for college students. One week prior to christmas and one week some time around easter off for both. Four weeks paid yearly vacation for the 9-to-5ers. Two weeks additional paid vacation for working students finishing their graduation works. National holidays and sickness don't count towards your vacation time. If a national holiday happens to be in weekend, friday or monday is usually free.
Honestly, the more I read about US working conditions, the more I feel like people there are deliberately misinforming everyone else in attempt to reduce immigration and competition on job market.
That’s a shorter (but still quite long) summer vacation. Overall, however, vacation times are similar.
As for spring break, here is the situation at my German university: classes end at July 15 this year, exams end at August 20, the next semester starts at October 1. That’s one month and nearly two weeks when you can be absolutely sure that there is nothing to do for you (at least when you finish your papers in time and don’t have a thesis to write) and probably more depending on when your exams are.
We also get two weeks off for Christmas and there is obviously also a shorter break (about one week and up to one month depending on when your exams are) between winter semester and summer semester (but no other vacations, only federal and state holidays).
I don’t know much about US universities (Is there downtime for students between semesters?) but I do know that spring break certainly doesn’t compare. (One or two weeks? Seriously?)
You get three months off for the summer (normally June, July and August), a month off over Christmas (though in some universities it may only be three weeks, and you may have to prepare for exams), and various other time off.
Also that summer time is free, no papers to write. It is goddamned awesome. http://www2.ul.ie/web/WWW/Services/Academic_Calendar/2012_-_...
That’s blatantly untrue.
Likewise they usually 1 or 2 weeks off at Christmas time, and 1 or 2 at easter time (around your spring break).
I live in Chicago, no one around here would accuse the unions of being weak, but vacation time here is no different than in the south.
Unless you mean on a national level (unions pushing for federal reform and what-not) than yes the unions here are weaker, but the U.S. Also tends to be more opposed to national regulations than Europe as well.
In America it is fairly common for employers tack on a little more vacation time every year for both salary and hourly employees. It isn't too terribly odd to have 1 to 1.5 months off a year after working for someone for 5 to 10 years, but Americans seldom stay at the same job for very long. Either you go off for greener pastures, quit out of frustration, get laid off or simply resign because they fear that prospective employers won't hire you because you stayed at one place for too long.
Deep down, I think we have a serious fear of being considered lazy by our peers.
I would actually say that that's very odd, except in very specialized fields.
We went to an 'unlimited' policy about 16 months ago, and one of our devs spent almost an entire month overseas earlier this year without issue. He's not too much of an outlier within our company in terms of how much vacation time is taken, either.
Things didn't turn out quite the same on the other side of the pond, sadly, and this is the result.
In addition, unused holidays don't really expire. So if you or your employeer terminates the contract, you have the right to be paid for _all_ unused holidays that accumulated during the period of the contract. That's the reason why most employees force you to really take all of your 5 weeks each year.
Edit: Seems that I was wrong and that unused holidays expire after a few years. Still, each employer I've worked for so far "forced" its employees to really take their 5 weeks of vacation.
Yes, there is always pressure about choosing the right time for the business or public service, but at the end of the day it's a right and if you don't exercise it you're entitled to a lot of extra money -- which is why employers are keen on people actually taking time off.
I don't know that this is the case in many European countries, including Eastern Europe (at least the part of it that is in the EU). First of all, in most (all?) EU countries all workers get 4 weeks paid vacation minimum. If you do not use up all of it, your employer can offer you to "carry over" the vacation to the next year. If they do not offer you that option then they are obliged to "force" you to go on vacation after it becomes clear that you will not use up all of your vacation days. Some employers will offer to instead compensate you extra for the vacation days you did not use up - this is legal in some EU countries only.
> Two, you have to work over capacity to support yourself and your family.
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but this just doesn't make a lot of sense, since those mandatory 4 weeks of vacation are paid vacation - i.e. you get paid the same amount you would receive had you been working instead of being on vacation.
Just about the only reason why you could potentially make less money due to vacation is if you regularly do a lot of overtime (which you obviously cannot do while on vacation).
Yugoslavia Socialism -> 4-5 weeks at least, plus all religioous holidays and all communist free days. Capitalism -> 1-2 weeks maximum, religious on, communist off.
In Croatia the country shuts down during the summer.
It was one of my reasons for not taking a job in the USA that was offered me a few years ago. Yes, it paid somewhat more than here in Europe but I'd rather have the benefits such as more free time and better health care than more income.
I plan to move to SF in the following months, but this is one of the issues why I think that I won't stay there permanently, but will move back to Europe after a few years.
Also, banks, educational institutions, and government offices are more generous when it comes to vacation days. Tech companies and ad agencies are generally the stingiest.
It's pretty stupid, particularly since it's a fairly strong disincentive to relocate: precisely after you've moved away from friends and family, they give you less time to visit them. It was one of the biggest reasons I never moved to CA when I had the offer, H-1B, etc.
Actually, I worked a a place that allowed you to "sell back" your vacation time as actual hours worked. They could be made to count for time-and-a-half overtime.
If you did that on a week that also had a company holiday, you'd kind of get into this triple-bonus-category. It was great until some guy sort of abused it and sold back a few weeks while also working a bunch of overtime over a two-holiday pay period.
I have employees that take a lower salary than others, but have up to 7 weeks holiday a year. I'm happy with that. One employee that has 7 weeks holiday has only had 1 day sick in the 6 years I've employed him.
-- Sharpen the Saw --
Once upon a time a very strong woodcutter ask for a job in a timber merchant, and he got it. The paid was really good and so were the work conditions. For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best. His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to work.
The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees "Congratulations," the boss said. "Go on that way!" Very motivated for the boss’ words, the woodcutter try harder the next day, but he only could bring 15 trees. The third day he try even harder, but he only could bring 10 trees.
Day after day he was bringing less and less trees. "I must be losing my strength", the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on. "When was the last time you sharpened your axe?" the boss asked. "Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees..."
Be that training, a vacation, or the literal "sharpening of the axe."
In Sweden, we have five weeks of vacation by law. And, the right to take four of those weeks consecutively.
For this reason we have the "industrial vacation" in July when all heavy industry shuts down, since it's easier if everyone and the entire supply chain shut down at the same time.
google-translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=...
I cant imagine Swedish would be much of an issue if you work with software development. Even outside technology, most swedes speak english well enough for basic communication.
Still, if you get a work permit (easy), you get to attend free Swedish lessons.
It also happen to be a huge lack of IT people on the market at the moment..
The flip side, of course, is that you have to survive our winters. :P
I still think that the major problem is that the US is one of the three only nations in the world that does not have paid maternity leave. Absurd.
As long as you have management consultants who specialize in the single metric of productivity (i.e. number of dollars of profit vs. number of dollars spent on people making the profit), you will have miserable people.
To those without a good understanding of statistics, numbers and graphs are a mystical, magical way to easily improve just about anything.
Anyone with dev skills can go independent or strike out with a group of like-minded souls to take control of their schedule. Sure there are downsides to working on your own, and it isn't all skittles and beer, but overall I find it well worth it.
How many Americans live in right-to-work states and can be dismissed without a reason?
Add that together and you have a lot of fear.
Whether you'd be willing to work for my wage is another problem, but I do have 20 days' worth of paid vacations.
Want constructive comments - give constructive topics.