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Yes and no. I was once in a HR seminar where they welcomed you to the company. When the woman said "we get 19 days PTO a year", you'd be surprised how many peop

• jkaplowitz 7y ago
  For vacation days, your point makes sense to me. For sick days, people don't get to choose when they get sick. Someone can just as easily get sick on day 1 or 2 of a job as on day 401 or 402.
  • kbenson 7y ago
    I've seen and heard about many different sick pay schedules because of this. From ones that accrue like vacation and PTO from zero as hours are worked, ro ones where the days are all allocated on the first of the year to be used (I assume pro-rated for mid-year hires) to ones that are a hybrid where some portion of the yearly sick days are allocated at the beginning of the year and the rest are accrued. There are benefits and drawbacks to each, and probably a lot of interesting behavioral nudges in each scheme that affect different types of work in different ways.
  • WalterBright 7y ago
    I once talked to a manager about how he handed out raises. He mentioned one engineer who was sick exactly 10 days out of each year. Coincidentally, the company offered 10 days of paid sick leave a year. He laughed, and said she wasn't fooling anyone, and didn't give her a raise.
    • jacquesm 7y ago
      Here in NL employees get 2 full consecutive years of paid sick leave before you are allowed to terminate the contract.
      • deogeo 7y ago
        I honestly think that's a terrible idea, and that paid sick leave should be paid not by the employer, but from taxes. Which should be raised slightly to cover such a policy. Otherwise, hiring someone presents a gigantic risk for smaller companies. Getting unlucky even once with someone that will use 1-2 years of sick leave (legitimately or not) would be enough to bankrupt them. In general I think making employers pay for a safety net, instead of funding it from taxes paid by those employers, is universally bad. What it does is make employers discriminate against potential hires likely to need that safety net, which makes those in need even worse off.
        • Sebb767 7y ago
          I like the way it's handled in Germany: Your employer is on the hook for 6 weeks, after that insurance takes over. Cases like being sick for the same reason again are covered as well. And the employer may demand a signed statement from a special doctor if he suspects cheating (this will only say wether the person may work, no details). It could however be that he's talking about firing the person, in which case it's pretty hard in Germany as well. As far as I know early retirement or a termination from the employee are pretty much the only way. Social security mitigates this risk, however, and the protections are lower for part time/student jobs, so hiring is not made too risky.
        • Retric 7y ago
          Risks like that are begging for insurance policies. Net result it may not actually change much in practice.
        • jacquesm 7y ago
          You can insure against the risk.
        • merb 7y ago
          to add to the other german poster. in germany you are required to see a doctor to have a sick day. because a signed statement is needed for the company. they get money back from the insurance for the singed doctor statement.
    • jkaplowitz 7y ago
      I'm not defending that kind of employee misbehaviour, but how to handle that doesn't need to be factored into the sick leave policy beyond making the allowed usage clear and reserving the right to ask for proof when the company has reason to be suspicious. How to handle that, more broadly, is the same as how to handle any other pattern of employee misbehaviour: some appropriate level of employee discipline according to the misbehaviour's severity and the history of past incidents, ranging from an informal conversation to what the manager in your story did to firing, with many intermediate possibilities.
      • WalterBright 7y ago
        Asking for a doctor's note is for children. These are professional adults. Often people who behave unethically at work believe they are getting away with it. But then they wonder why they don't get raises, are passed over for promotions, are let go in the first round of layoffs, and don't have the respect of their peers.
        • wool_gather 7y ago
          I mean, if that's the path we're going down...is telling someone they can only be sick for 10 days in a year treating them like a professional adult person in the first place?
          • giaour 7y ago
            You can take an unpaid leave if you need more. If you have temporary disability insurance through work (and I would imagine most US software developers do), you can file a claim to compensate you for lost wages due to a medical condition.
            • jkaplowitz 7y ago
              I've never in my full-time tech industry career had government-mandated disability insurance with a maximum benefit anywhere near my actual earnings, and voluntary plans were not offered at most of my smaller employers. Additionally most disability insurance has a nontrivial waiting period that only covers cases where it's a single absence lasting weeks or months.
    • lkey 7y ago
      So he decided he'd figured out her scam without ever bringing it up in yearly or monthly review. He also never asked for proof of the 10 days of sick leave after the first year, which is reasonable to do if he had a suspicion she was flouting a rule. If he wanted to factor sick days into his pay decision, he had a responsibility to make sure he was correct using the proper internal channels. An alternate and equally plausible view is that she had a condition that rendered her borderline ill more than 10 days a year, but couldn't afford to take unpaid leave. So she just 'toughed it out' instead for the remaining days. Laughing vindictively as you deny a raise to someone isn't something be lauded or emulated under any circumstance.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • capex 7y ago
        I come to HN for comments like this.
      • WalterBright 7y ago
        Fair enough, I agree he was being passive aggressive, but on the other hand, if someone is doing something that has the appearance of impropriety, it's a good idea to proactively bring it up with the boss to head off the suspicions.
        • CPLX 7y ago
          There’s not a fucking thing that’s even slightly improper about taking your allotted PTO days.
          • WalterBright 7y ago
            It is improper to take sick leave if you're not sick. It wouldn't be improper if it is labeled PTO. I.e. it depends on how the policy is written.
            • 7y ago
    • chrsstrm 7y ago
      We seem to believe that sick always means some type of physical illness that means we can't work, which is completely wrong. Taking a sick day for mental health is totally OK. Taking a sick day to deal with a sick child or spouse or s.o. is totally OK. Leaving sick days on the table at the end of the year is not something that should be valued, whether they are paid or not. I'm sure HR makes every attempt to spend their entire budget before the year is out, so why should employees be held to a different standard? If you get 10 days, take all 10 days. If your bonus is determined by the number of sick days you take vs. the number given, then you need to find another employer. We need to stop letting this bullshit slide - you should never be penalized for accepting and using the resources given to you.
      • MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        > If you get 10 days, take all 10 days. So you don't agree with vharuck who said If a person's sick, they're sick. If they're faking, they're faking? Are you really suggesting faking sickness, or am I misreading you?
        • Retric 7y ago
          Taking a sick day and calling on sick are two different things. I had a job where all unscheduled days off where taken from sick days based on company policy. Vacation days needed or be scheduled ahead of time therefore people valued sick days a little more than vacation days. Others just put them all into the same pool. It’s more about what the policy actually is than what you call it.
          • MaxBarraclough 7y ago
            > Taking a sick day and calling on sick are two different things. I think there's a locale difference here. Here in the UK, they very much are the same thing (faking sickness could get you fired if you're somehow found out), and we don't generally treat sick days as a pool to be drawn from.
        • chrsstrm 7y ago
    • barrkel 7y ago
      I reckon results should be rewarded, not presenteeism. I might be more interested in results, who knows.
      • WalterBright 7y ago
        I'd be the first to agree with you. However, allowing a stellar performer to come and go as they please tends to have a bad effect on morale of the rest and impairs team cohesiveness.
        • fountainofage 7y ago
          Sounds like they're not a stellar performer then? Unless they're a solo founder with no funding, they don't work in a vacuum. Edit: changed you's to they
        • barrkel 7y ago
          I guess it depends on the team dynamics. If someone's good and show up for the big pushes, I'd take a lot. We had a chap on our team at my current company who worked from home every Friday, even though it was sub-optimal for planning meetings around sprint boundaries. But he was very productive. One of the reasons I decided not to move to the US after I got my H-1B was because of the parsimonious approach to vacation days. Only 10 days of paid leave, for someone who's moving across the Atlantic. If I wanted to spend some time with my friends and family, it would need to be two weeks to make the flight time worthwhile, and that would take 100% of my vacation for a whole year. And it was non-negotiable. Vacation increases beyond a one-off for the first year was a perk for tenure, not a negotiable form of compensation. And even if I didn't want to come back to Europe; why would I take a job that only gave me 10 days a year to do with what I want? Life is for living, not just working. It was a crunch point, a decisive factor in not moving to SV for me.
    • jetti 7y ago
      That seems plausible to me, especially if they have a chronic illness. Places I have been would make you use PTO if you had no sick days so then it becomes a cost/benefit analysis. Do you feel bad enough to use up PTO or can you "suffer through it".
    • zarify 7y ago
      I can believe someone taking 10 sick days off a year and no more. You take the paid time off if you're sick without much hesitation, and after that you weigh up whether you're sick enough to cost you a day's pay. People should use their sick leave - that's what it's for. This "no raise for using sick leave" argument is no better than the overwork culture that's been discussed at length lately. Mind you, I'm not an engineer, I'm a teacher. Unless it's seriously contagious or I'm basically unable to function I don't tend to use my sick leave because it's more work to prepare lessons for a replacement teacher than it is to come to work and teach.
      • track_me_now 7y ago
        Well, I'm an engineering manager and there's a little more to then someone just taking 10 sick days per year. I see when my direct reports are run down or if they're fighting something, versus if they're always "sick" on Monday morning. I known when they stay home because they don't want to get everyone else sick but they are still in contact; that's different from when they call in sick, I hear nothing all day and then they're fine the next day and back at work. I keep a tally of when someone who's never sick is really down for an entire week vs. those who consistently get "food poisoning". The whole reason I have a job is because we're a tight-knit team that works closely and there's no room to bullshit. It would be like faking out your parents when you're a kid; you could get away with it for a day or two but I'm going to be able to tell when you just want to stay home to play video games. I don't think this makes me passive-aggressive or a shitty manager; we're a tight team that cares about each other and as a result we know when people are treating each other with respect and honesty. I give people a lot of leeway and ask them not to wreck it for everyone. If someone threatens this it makes me both mad and sad, because once it's gone we'll never get it back.
    • fountainofage 7y ago
      Lots of comments, but no one has just come out and said it: Fuck. That. Manager. They care about butts in seats more than results, and they've deliberately sought out the metrics to justify it.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    • rolltiide 7y ago
      Paid sick days aren't just for when someone is contagious Taking all 10 and just those has no indication on anything
      • track_me_now 7y ago
        however taking exactly one sick day a month sure looks suspicious
    • newshorts 7y ago
      Sounds like a horrible manager.
    • buro9 7y ago
      Wow. A male manager denies a raise to a female engineer on the basis that the female engineer takes 10 sick days per year that their contract says they are entitled to. Why is it important to emphasise sex in this? Periods. The experience is different for each person but the fact that they didn't feel able to take 12 may itself be a problem. And even 10 would only allow the taking of a single day each month during the worst symptoms. Whilst at the same time leaving yourself with no days were you to get a cold later in the year.
    • cambaceres 7y ago
      I'm from Sweden and I used to work at a warehouse before and between my stuides. Here, everything if focused about the rights for the employee. As soon as you have worked for 6 months at one place, you have what we call "permanent employment", which basically means that you can't be fired unless you repeatedly fuck up big time (coming drunk to work repeatedly, steal from the company etc). Anyway, here you can be sick for 5 days in a row (and get 80% of your salary), after that you have to go to a doctor and get a paper that you are in fact sick. Futhermore, you can be sick for 6 times a year, after that you have to talk to the boss and explain yourself. People used this to the maximum, meaning that on top of the 5 weeks per year people got payed vacation, they were all "sick" an additional 6 weeks, always 5 days at a time. The employers can't do anything, as people with permanent employment can't be fired.
    • coldtea 7y ago
      Then he is an absolute idiot. The engineer could be sickly and be sick 20 or more days in a year, but only take the minimum allowed (to not lose her paycheck). I'm down with flu, stomach issues, gout and a few other things far more days in a year than the company's paid sick leave. And while I might not take all of them, and go to work sick, it's within the rights of anybody to do so. If the company is offering 10 paid sick days, and he is discriminating based on using those, then he should be sued to extinction...
  • Kye 7y ago
    A new environment with exciting new microorganisms seems especially likely to cause this.
• throwawayjava 7y ago
  Seriously? That's the first/only question I ask about vacation policy because it's usually the only detail that isn't included in the first draft of the offer letter. Of course, I also ask before signing the contract. PTO is a significant part of your total compensation. Not clarifying how accrual works is just irresponsible. I honestly don't see how this is any different from asking about other time-based things, such as: - whether your salary is paid every other week or at the end of the month. - when your signing bonus is paid and how long you have to stay to keep it. - when your stock units are granted and how long you have to stay to keep it. - when the company's 401(k) contribution will hit your account. All of which you should definitely be asking... and preferably before accepting the position.
  • chasd00 7y ago
    " Of course, I also ask before signing the contract." I can't stress enough how important that is. You better know what you're signing.
  • JetezLeLogin 7y ago
    "How does it accrue?" might be a better way of asking than "Can we start taking it right now?"
    • lonelappde 7y ago
      It's a warehouse job, not the PR department. Maybe pay a little better if you expect employees with refined diplomatic skills.
      • JetezLeLogin 7y ago
        I have absolutely no skin in this game.
    • Aloha 7y ago
      The worst place I was at treating vacation as if it was granted (it expired at the end of the year) but actually accrued it to you
• fzeroracer 7y ago
  You're making a few massive assumptions here. The first is that PTO is accrued by hours worked. This is not the case everywhere, some places refresh your PTO allowances at the start of the year and some will give you partial PTO when you start working. The second is you assume that they, literally, want to take it right now. They might want to start making plans, or they might've been hired close to a holiday etc. Also the way you phrase it as 'entitled' is worrying, because it's a two way street. I signed an offer letter because I felt working at X company would be beneficial for me. If a company is giving me PTO, then I'm going to use that PTO and I want to know when and what restrictions there may be. I'm owed whatever the company decided to offer me during the process of interviewing and recruitment.
• joe5150 7y ago
  entitled? PTO is part of my compensation, of course I'm entitled to it.
  • lotsofpulp 7y ago
    As MuffinFlavored wrote, not unless it is accrued.
    • NotSammyHagar 7y ago
      some companies let you take your 3 weeks off in a calendar year so you can actually start taking them your second day.
• goldcd 7y ago
  PTO is a very strange concept for much of the world. I'm in the UK and get work full time and get 25 days holiday to take, plus the national/bank holidays. If I'm sick I take a sick day. If I take a significant number of sick days, I'll be asked to produce a note from my doctor confirming that I'm sick. If I get really sick, then myself and my employer both contribute to insurance that (I think, not checked for a while) gives me 75% of my salary until I'm well. It's not quite a socialist paradise - but the general idea is that if you're an employee, there is a collective system that doesn't punish you for being ill. Vacation days are for vacation. I do work for an international company, so was interested to note on my portal (where I can check my benefits) - a new metric of "15 unused sick-days" had appeared... ..maybe my hay-fever is more debilitating that I thought...
  • chasd00 7y ago
    typically there's a sick and vacation subset for "PTO". like you get 2 weeks vacation and a week of sick days. Sometimes they're interchangeable sometimes not. It all depends on where you work. My employer only deals in vacation days, sick days are basically "don't abuse it and we don't care" similar to your setup.
    • wirrbel 7y ago
      here in Germany that's the legal framework, i.e. you have a balance of vacation days (I get like 3 every month when starting a new contract, and after a year I get the whole allowance of vacation days in january). Sick days are sick days and are not taken from that balance, I think a doctor's not is required after about 3 days of sickness, some employers demand it on the first day. Also: With a doctor's note, you can also reclaim vacation days when you have been sick. So, suppose you took one week vacation, but you contract let's say pneumonia the week before, you get a doctor's note on your sickness, and neither go to work or on vacation but can reschedule these vacation days. I do think its a fair system overall, employers are typically large enough to buffer the risks, and I think there is a difference between being employed and being contracted.
  • markdown 7y ago
    We have this in Fiji, plus a new one that started this year called Family Care Leave. Family Care Leave is 5 days/yr you can take off to care for a family member. There's still some uncertainty about how it can be used... some employers don't require a sick sheet (of your family member), so you could use it to support a child on a day they're playing a rugby match, or when you can't get a babysitter. Other employers require you to present your family members' sick sheet.
• YZF 7y ago
  What if you need to take some time off? Your brother is getting married? Or you just haven't had a vacation in a while? You take your PTO now, and you don't take it later. If you leave the company before that PTO accrued it's taken off your salary. Yes! you can take vacation before it's accrued in any normal workplace.
  • jax2Brian 7y ago
    One of the surprises I had when I was first hired and introduced to the benefits package I would be receiving was the fact that not only would I be receiving Paid Time Off (PTO ) but that I'd also receive a paid Vacation time on top of it all. This was a surprise b/c usually you either receive Vacation time that you gain a certain amount of allotted time from the start or you get PTO, or time that accrues over each work week. Here at Amazon we receive both on the first day of employment. Although they both are accrued over time, each Amazon employee starts off with 10 hrs of PTO each year while it will begin to accrue on top of that. - BrianD.J, Amazon FC Ambassador
• lsllc 7y ago
  Did you know that 40% of sick days are on a Monday or Friday!