7 ms·

>> have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard) Wait, what? Is it really this bad in the States?

• L_Rahman 11y ago
  Yup. 10 days paid time off is the de-facto standard for just about every company based in this country. Some people negotiate additional PTO as part of their compensation package but I don't need to tell HN that engineers are notoriously bad at doing this.
  • bpicolo 11y ago
    Much less standard for SV engineers. I don't know of any tech company with 10.
  • xiaoma 11y ago
    Everywhere I've worked has had "unlimited" vacation policies. I've actually taken about 4 weeks per year.
  • dragonwriter 11y ago
    > 10 days paid time off is the de-facto standard for just about every company based in this country. Not to mention that tech industry firms are reputed to be more generous than what is otherwise common, that sounds really low even outside of the tech industry; its lower than any company I've seen, and lower than what most sources I've seen indicate is common. [0] [0] e.g., http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm and http://www.salary.com/time-off-paid-time-off-from-work/ http://www.salary.com/time-off-paid-time-off-from-work/
    • pkteison 11y ago
      What's probably happening here is there are company-selected vacation days being left out of the number. You get to choose 10, but another 10 are picked by the company. I worked as a programmer at a big boring company which did this - 10 days of company holidays, 10 days of you-get-to-choose. It's a month off total, but you only have control over 2 weeks, so it's presented as 10 vacation days.
      • dragonwriter 11y ago
        > What's probably happening here is there are company-selected vacation days being left out of the number. The first source I linked provides actual averages for paid holidays, paid vacation, and paid sick leave. 10 paid vacation days is dead average for professional, technical, and related employees -- with only one year of service, and low for such employees with more service.
  • evanspa 11y ago
    Not in my experience for what it's worth. Every software dev position I've held in the last 10 or so years offered 4 weeks.
• scarmig 11y ago
  In my experience in the Bay Area, jobs fall into one of three categories: 1) No paid vacation at all 2) 15-25 days of vacation a year 3) "Unlimited vacation," which is usually a hip facade for 1 or 2.
  • kelnos 11y ago
    2) 15-25 days of vacation a year Really? 25 days is 5 weeks; I feel like the standard for PTO is 10-15 days, and often it's 10 days, but you get bumped up to 15 after you work at a place for a year or two. 3) "Unlimited vacation," which is usually a hip facade for 1 or 2. Is that really true? I have very limited first-hand experience; only two of my employers have offered unlimited vacation. For one of them, it was as you describe. For my current company... well, by the end of this calendar year, I think it'll add up to a little over 5 weeks, which is fairly unusual by US standards.
    • Jagerbizzle 11y ago
      My girlfriend worked for a startup in Seattle that offered "unlimited vacation", mainly because they didn't want to pay out employees that stock-piled unused vacation days. In reality, it was nowhere near "unlimited vacation" as everything still needed to be approved, and it was very common for vacation requests to not be approved for a variety of business reasons. She probably ended up with ~20-25 days off per year, including stat holidays, which is the same as you'd get at Google or Microsoft.
    • enraged_camel 11y ago
      10-15 days is definitely the norm.
    • d4rti 11y ago
      Come to the Uk, 20 days is minimum, 25 is fairly common, plus 8 bank holidays. Sick days are extra, not taken out of holiday. Usual disclaimers about not every company etc.
      • walshemj 11y ago
• georgemcbay 11y ago
  Yes, it is. Even worse than the fact that getting 2 weeks off is considered a pretty good amount of time, there's often lots of subtle pressure (that manifests itself implicitly in project planning) to not use it all at once. This pressure isn't universal, but I'd say the majority of the companies I've worked for hardly anyone ever took more than a week off in a go, and when they did it was the topic of uncomfortable conversation with managers kind of acting like the person taking the time off was doing something wrong (even if just kind of half-joking about it). It really is an entirely weird situation, for all the talk of meritocracy and such the day-to-day reality is you are pressured not to take real PTO (paid time off) and instead just do the Office Space thing where you're at work almost every day even if there are periods of time where you aren't really doing anything productive for a large chunk of most days.
  • duderific 11y ago
    Not to mention, people come to work sick all the time, so they don't use up their precious PTO days.
• merpnderp 11y ago
  My company starts at 10, then after 4 years you get 15, then after 11 years you get 20. This is in addition to 12 holiday days off a year, plus unlimited accumulation of 1 sick day per month, which can be taken any time you feel "sick". So you start with 22 working days off including holidays, plus generous sick time. Not perfect, but could be worse.
• tedks 11y ago
  And yet the USA is the richest country in the world, with a culture steadily dominating and extinguishing all other cultures. There is a McDonald's in Red Square right now. You don't make an omelet without enslaving some chickens their entire lives, keeping them in barely one cubic foot of space from birth to death so they can push out eggs at maximal productivity, killing them as soon as they're no longer at peak performance, and of course, breaking the eggs. In other words, you get what you pay for.
  • buckbova 11y ago
    And now we can serve breakfast all day. Take that world!
• jlarocco 11y ago
  I don't know about Silicon Valley, but in Colorado it's almost never that bad for software jobs. In 12 years I don't recall any jobs with fewer than 15 days. My current job is "unlimited", and I took nearly 25 days one year.
  • xacaxulu 11y ago
    Colorado is culturally much more in tune with work-life balance. Especially in Denver imo. No one brags about working 80 hours a week as that makes you sound like a loser who doesn't ski/hike/bike enough.
    • Ocerge 11y ago
      Same here in Portland. The companies I've been involved with here tend to take pride in their employees being active. I could see this changing as the Valley types continue to move in, however.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• Kluny 11y ago
  It's pretty third world out there.
• whatever_dude 11y ago
  Yes it is. In most companies it's common to start with 10 days and then increase by 5 days with every few years of experience. Some do more; starting with 15 days is generous. But also remember it's business days. So 10 days = 2 weeks.
• stephencanon 11y ago
  It varies tremendously from company to company. 10 days is not unheard of, but for example at my job, new employees get 12 vacation days plus 15 holidays. I've been there 9 years and get 21 vacation days a year plus the same 15 holidays (my long-tenured coworkers and I often struggle to use all of our vacation; we tend to take a lot of Fridays off to stay under the six-week cap). By contrast, many low-wage jobs get no paid vacation.
• kabdib 11y ago
  It's typical. Often you get 15 days/year with several years at a company. National holidays usually don't count. I was at a start-up once where we got a new CEO who essentially canceled a week of "whole company time off" at Christmas. If you wanted that time off, it came out of your vacation. He didn't care . . . and soon after that, I didn't care, either :-) [Didn't help that he was really scarce in the office that week...]
• AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  My current place (not in the Bay Area) gives 18 days after 4 years (I forget what it is before that).