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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 consecutiv

by ry0ohki 15y ago

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.

bmj 15y ago
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.
rmc 15y ago
You should have asked the new employeer for more time off aswell
geebee 15y ago
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.
- silvestrov 15y ago
  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.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  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.
  - awa 15y ago
    I think its common during recession period when companies are looking to save costs (better than firing people right) and also reduce inventory
  - geebee 15y ago
    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. [1] IANAAC: I am not an accountant ;)
lurker20 15y ago
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.
woobar 15y ago
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.

by ry0ohki 15y ago

bmj 15y ago

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.

rmc 15y ago

You should have asked the new employeer for more time off aswell

geebee 15y ago

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.

silvestrov 15y ago
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.
brown9-2 15y ago
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.
- awa 15y ago
  I think its common during recession period when companies are looking to save costs (better than firing people right) and also reduce inventory
- geebee 15y ago
  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. [1] IANAAC: I am not an accountant ;)

lurker20 15y ago

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.

woobar 15y ago

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.