13 ms·

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing int

> “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” The fact that this attitude is common scares me when I'm doing interviews. Time off is incredibly important to me. What's the use of making a great income if you can't get the time off to enjoy it? The culture about the use of PTO varies wildly between companies. A friend of mine worked somewhere that supposedly gave 20 days PTO per year, but trying to actually use more than a single day at a time was always met with denials, and even if you did take a Friday off, you were expected to work 10 hours/day the other 4 days of that week to make up for it. So yeah, when I'm interviewing, I want to know how much time people are taking off, but I don't want the interviewer to think I'm lazy and will be trying to avoid work as much as possible.

chaoticmass 5y ago
And then there are cases where you can take PTO, but you end up having to work during that time anyway.
aosmond 5y ago
As I once told a boss who tried to cancel my already approved vacation in a former job/company, you can't stop me from going. You can only stop me from coming back. Let me know which you prefer. (I really needed that vacation and I was done with bullshit.)
- eloff 5y ago
  Well put. I'm guessing there were no consequences, other than to lower your already low opinion of the company?
  - aosmond 5y ago
    No consequences. I think my opinion truly hit the gutter when I got that boss from hell :).
- thanhhaimai 5y ago
  I had a manager who tried to cancel my vacation the day I was at the airport for the flight. I had given advance notice, and they agreed to it, especially when my vacation days have been maxed out for months. Obviously I went for it anyway, and left the team as soon as I come back.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  I recently had a job offer taken away for other atupid reasons that we discussed, but conveniently after I brought up how I should handle billing for time away. Maybe I dodged a bullet.
bartoszcki 5y ago
Thank God I was born in a poor socialist country and I don't have to think about obvious stuff like my days off Edit: sorry if that sounded offending but I can't wrap my head around the fact that people in US have problems of this kind
brundolf 5y ago
Yeah, if I ever discovered that a potential employer took this view of PTO then I wouldn't want to work there anyway. Huge red flag.
- gregd 5y ago
  Small point: The author of the article does NOT have this attitude. He's calling it out as a bullshit attitude...FWIW
  - brundolf 5y ago
    Whoops! I should have read the article. Edited.
ghaff 5y ago
This is especially true if the company uses "unlimited"/not-tracked/etc. time. Otherwise, unless you know someone at the place (and even then it can vary by group), you're left with making assumptions about norms that may not be accurate. Personally, I've never not used all my PTO in a given year and would consider being unable to do so a show stopper.
- hinkley 5y ago
  Unlimited just means they don’t have to pay out when you quit or get laid off, doesn’t it?
  - coliveira 5y ago
    Bingo.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yes, but it also doesn't give any indication of norms around the amount of time off people take. Expectations may differ from how much time is in a traditional PTO bank but at least in general, it's OK to take accrued time off barring special circumstances.
    - hinkley 5y ago
      I worked at a place that gave us 2 weeks and then took an act of Congress and months of social engineering to take even a day. We got bought out and the new overlords announced they were going to give us five weeks of vacation. There was actual laughter in the room. We can't even use 2 weeks, what's 5 gonna do for us?
      - zoomablemind 5y ago
        Wonder what did you guys produce that required all hands on deck at all time non-stop?
      - HolidayguyNOR 5y ago
        In Norway you're required by law to take four weeks and a day vacation every year. Almost everyone has five weeks vacation time in total. Both you and your employer can demand that three of those are continuous during summer, and most of the country shuts down three weeks in July.
ferrumfist 5y ago
There's a delicate balance. I've worked on teams where it felt like I could never rely on one team member because he was using sick leave, personal days, PTO, and going to appointments at every opportunity. I don't hold it against him personally, but professionally it's hard to estimate workload for a given task if one person on a team of 5 is hardly ever actually doing work. I've also worked on teams that, same as your friend, heavily implied that taking longer leave breaks were a no-go. As with all things, it's a balance.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
linuxhansl 5y ago
Usually I am more inclined to hire someone who discusses time off during an interview. It shows that they think about their life-work balance. I do not need heroes, I need reliable folks who do not burn themselves out. Or to put it in a cliche... I need people who work to live rather then live to work.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  and also importantly people who have family to take care of. If someone comes to me and asks for time off because they have children or partners or parents to take care off and they take that seriously that certainly deserves some respect would make a better impression on me than someone showing up with a Patrick Bateman business card in hand
  - cat199 5y ago
    plenty of people have families and abuse the crap out of them, and people without families that want one still need to socialize enough to meet people to eventually have a family book != cover
    - bluGill 5y ago
      We interviewed someone a while back and she said (without being asked - asking questions on this line is illegal) she was prepared to leave her husband and kids to move here. It didn't affect our results, but we all agreed in the discussion after that was a negative sign if we were allowed to consider it. She probably would have been good, I hope her search went well.
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        If you say that during your interview unasked, what kind of company are you looking for?…
      - lostlogin 5y ago
        > It didn't affect our results I laughed - HR and legal approved this comment?
mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
Someone who replies with that kind of hyperbole is just saying they don’t want anyone who is going to take more than a bare minimum of PTO. If you’re dealing with a reasonable person, you should be able to preface the question by explaining how having sufficient time off helps you do your best work and avoid burnout, and that you want to clarify expectations up front to make sure that you and the company are an ideal match. It’s also of course a bit less risky to bring up this sort of thing a bit later in the interview process when you’ve built a bit of a rapport with the interviewer and ideally demonstrated your value somewhat.
- thomasahle 5y ago
  > If you’re dealing with a reasonable person, you should be able to preface the question by explaining how having sufficient time off helps you do your best work and avoid burnout If you are dealing with a reasonable person, hopefully you want have to explain any of that.
  - mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
    Sure, I've just found that it can be helpful to clarify intent is all, especially when you're dealing with someone you've just met - e.g. maybe the interviewer is mostly reasonable, but is scarred from past negative experiences with colleagues who were legitimately lazy. This phrasing might help such a person understand where you're coming from a bit more easily.
    - Cyph0n 5y ago
      If you need to clarify intent for something as fundamental as work/life balance, wouldn’t that be (at best) a yellow flag?
      - redisman 5y ago
        This needs to not be a taboo. It’s very important how many days I get off, how many hours I’m expected to work and if I’m expected to work nights and weekends. Those are like my top 3 concerns, I don’t really care about your snacks or vision or stack to be honest.
_dw7s 5y ago
Spot on. I always ALWAYS ask about time off during interviews. But I don't ask the manager because I found they always try to stretch the truth or reframe shit. I just ask the individual contributors how much PTO they've taken in the past 12 months. It's more or less an open question, doesn't necessarily means I'm interested in taking too much PTO. You'd be surprised of how honest people are. I had interviewees even start venting about burnout. Someone from an e-commerce company (not Amazon) told me he's gonna take a month off as he took 0 vacation days for the past 1.5 years (!!!). He admitted he's probably going to get in trouble but he doesn't care anymore.
- bluGill 5y ago
  You should ask about vacation and sick leave both, not generic PTO. The two can be very different, or the same thing. I get vacation that I'm required to take every year. I have unlimited sick leave - but I actually have to be sick to use it (going to the dentist for a regular checkup counts as sick though)
didibus 5y ago
Your quote of the article made me think I was going to hate the advice, but then I realized you quoted it out of context, here's the full quote: > People might claim they have “signals” for these things… “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” But these are all bullshit. If you’re using signals like these you’re just guessing and turning away good candidates
- gshulegaard 5y ago
  I had the same thought process.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Maybe we should all ask this question in our interviews so we can avoid these shitty teams that way!
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    Unfortunately, there are too many different ways to be shitty, so while it would filter out a few, a lot of shitty teams wouldn't be detected by that particular question.
    - colecut 5y ago
      So you're saying we need more questions
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - suzzer99 5y ago
    I like to ask if their health insurance covers drug rehab. That goes over well.
  - France_is_bacon 5y ago
    I think that people should ask whatever they want to ask. If the interviewer doesn't like it, then it's not a good fit. For example, I would never agree to an interview if I don't know the pay range. I'm not going to sit through 5 interviews to make $30,000-ish when I am expecting $90,000-ish. I don't want to go to an interview if the company has less than gold level insurance. No way am I going to wait until the last interview to broach the topic, I don't care what is standard. If I apply to a job, I call up the department and say that I am considering applying for the job, but I want to know about x,y, and z first, because I don't want to waste either of our time. If they push back and say that we don't give out that information, then I just say, "I understand. I also don't give away my time, in order to find out after 15 hours of interviewing for your company that you want to pay $40K and I expect $80K. All the travel time, parking, preparation - why do it if there is a complete mismatch of the most basic things? Maybe you can bring this up to management, that your policies are not realistic. Good luck, hope you find a candidate." And then just hang up. Now, I know this wouldn't work in a huge Fortune 1000 company. I work in small- and mid-sized companies where pretty much I can reach decision makers. I don't know what I'd do in a large enterprise company. I guess that is why I would never apply to one in the first place.
Spooky23 5y ago
The context is key. First interview. The issue isn’t taking time off, it’s that the prospective employee’s head is up their proverbial ass. First interview is propspecting. If you were selling a product, if the customer is asking about the return policy before even selecting an option, it’s a similar signal. When you’re in a subsequent interview talking about the benefit plan, salary, etc, that’s where that sort of question is appropriate - you’re finalizing the deal.
- shoemakersteve 5y ago
  I find this line of thinking incredibly bizarre. If PTO is important to the candidate, why should they waste their time spending hours interviewing only to find out that the work-life balance in this position isn't going to work for them? To you that's having their head up their ass? God that's strange to me. I'm sure glad I don't work for people who make sweeping judgements like that.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    You’re looking for a job. You have 10 minutes to ask questions that make you stand out, to a individual who probably cannot answer the question. You do you.
    - xyzelement 5y ago
      That's so spot on. Your Q&A session is your chance to learn something real and convey what you care about. A good question might me like "what's the hardest thing you had to do this year" or "how did you make decisions in cases of disagreement?" or something like that. It shows you're thinking about the job and whether you're a right fit. High quality questions say something about you. Low quality questions do too. Would you ever hire someone whose question is like "so, do a lot of hotties work here?" Probably not, because ... what kind of person is this? Similarly, if the person who doesn't have an offer and doesn't know much about the role is hyper-focused on their time-off, something is off too. PTO is important, it's just a thing you need to be thinking about once you have an offer and think the job is otherwise a match, not as like the #1 question.
xwolfi 5y ago
The problem is not what's important to you when you do an interview. It's not a friendly club, it's the guys who will pay your rent for a while, just act like you pretend to understand this, and ask by side channel, out of sheer strategy. You CAN refuse once the contract arrives for signature, the interview is a lot also for the company to have argument to sell you to management as a worthy investment. I admit I never take a guy talking about time off myself, because while I agree it's an important contractual part and something we must give as generously as we can, the fact he asked the first minute of our relationship means it's going to be painful for him and for us, because we're not a paradise company, things can be tough and high pressure (investment bank), people not nice on purpose and sometimes you have to do the right thing rather than the perfect thing, so compliant positive nearly sacrificial profiles will be happily surprised by what's still good while a dude asking "and holidays, 20 or 25 days" the first day will be very sad and burnt out by all the shit.
- heartbreak 5y ago
  > things can be tough and high pressure (investment bank) > people not nice on purpose Sounds like a miserable place to work.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    I've considered places like that - but none would offer me 5x market pay. If they would pay me 5x what I'm worth - I can save the extra for 5 years and then retire. I'm not sure if I'd take such a job if it was offered, but at least it would be an interesting offer.
- rnotaro 5y ago
  Sounds like a toxic workplace environnement. I'm grateful that my bank/employer cares about our work/life balance. A burnout employee is not a productive employee. I've stopped applying to place where they are not upfront with their PTO / Salary brackets. It sounds like you don't want people to take their PTO.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  This sounds absolutely dreadful. You’re doing everyone you turn away a huge favor, and I feel bad for anyone you don’t. If I got even a hint of this in an interview I’d be out the door without letting you complete a sentence.
30minAdayHN 5y ago
I'm hearing answers about why they would be either inclined to or not inclined to hire based on that question. My opinion is that it's just a question. Answer it and move on. Don't read for patterns where they don't exist. This also reflects lot of unconscious biases we might be nurturing by having strong opinions about these.
coliveira 5y ago
I think time off is very important, but you don't need to ask it during the interviews. Just wait until they give an offer and then ask for what you want.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  agree: if you don't get the job it doesn't matter, and until they offer you the job you don't have any leverage.
- chrsig 5y ago
  so spend how much of my time and theirs going through the entire interview process to find out the answer to a trivial question that could make or break any final decision? ....Or...and hear me out here...fuck that noise. if people are making snap judgement about candidates from asking a basic company culture/hr question during the interview question, then the candidate winds up having dodged a bullet one way or the other.
- bbarn 5y ago
  Nah, just like salary, I'm getting a ball park range on that topic before bothering to come into the office for an interview. Otherwise, you're wasting other people's time and your own.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Maybe it’s just where I’m at in my career and priorities, but I’m way more inclined to put work/life balance first and leave comp discussion for negotiation. I make plenty. I could make more, sure. Could I be more aggressive at making more? Absolutely. But I care far more about being happy where I work. And anyone trying to hire me knows or should know the market well enough they’re not going to make an absurdly lowball offer.
skeeter2020 5y ago
If the company thinks they have a good story around PTO they will sell it in the first interview. As an interviewee it's very important to me and I will definitely ask questions, but later in the process when I have more leverage. I don't think someone asking in the first interview is lazy, just perhaps naive. They'd be better to ask about work/life balance and expectations in general and then probe what the interviewer answers back.
- bluGill 5y ago
  At my company you get one interview, if you get a second interview it is because we liked you but someone else was better and passed your resume on to a different team. One thing we do is take every candidate to lunch (COVID has changed this of course) with someone who doesn't have input into if you are hired: so feel free to ask those questions that you are not sure about. Having done a few interviews, nobody knows what questions to ask.
  - swader999 5y ago
    I always leave time off conversations to the offer negotiation stage when I make it past the interview stage. I want my time off in writing and if it's not enough I'll ask for much more money before I accept.
  - adrianmonk 5y ago
    > lunch ... with someone who doesn't have input I think part of this could be that they don't know whether to believe that you truly have no input. When I was an interviewee, my lunch escort told me they didn't, and I was pretty sure it wasn't a devious trick to get me to let my guard down, but I had no way of knowing for sure. I also thought, if there isn't a formal process, maybe if I say something too dumb or wrong, they would still mention it to someone. So I stuck to really superficial topics. Then I got hired and later served as a lunch escort. Now knowing the process and knowing there truly is no input, I tried to convince the interviewee, and he didn't seem to believe me just like I didn't when I was in his shoes.
    - 5y ago
5faulker 5y ago
Agree. If I were the interviewer I would probably do the same. Asking about how people spend their life can also reveal a lot about their personality as well.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Asking about how people spend their life is often illegal to ask. If you don't know the local laws only ask job related questions. This is why my company gives me a script of questions I'm allowed to ask - to get the conversation started on legal topics in ways that are unlikely to stray into illegal areas. (more than once I've had illegal information given to me - but I didn't ask so that is okay) Illegal information isn't anything that will affect how someone does the job in general. You learn about personality, but I hope you can deal with those personalities anyway.
sly010 5y ago
Think about it the other way, if they reject a candidate for asking, it's their way of saying "The PTO situation is terrible here".
m463 5y ago
I remember a friend who wanted to work for apple. He wanted to take time off before he started. They said "hey, we shutdown anyway during the holidays you can take it then, just start now" and of course, did he get to take that time off? NO.
wirrbel 5y ago
This is so strange. I have 40 hrs /week (registered, if I work over time I can take days off to compensate for) and 30 days of vacation per year (on doctor's note sick days are not taken from the vacation-days account). It's plenty of time for my employer to extract value from me. If the org wants me to work more, they can make me be in meetings less.
DeathArrow 5y ago
It seems you live in US. In other parts of the world it's perfectly normal to have time off and benefit from it. But as a compensation wages are higher. However, I prefer having some free time for myself than accumulate a large amount of money.

chaoticmass 5y ago

And then there are cases where you can take PTO, but you end up having to work during that time anyway.

aosmond 5y ago

As I once told a boss who tried to cancel my already approved vacation in a former job/company, you can't stop me from going. You can only stop me from coming back. Let me know which you prefer. (I really needed that vacation and I was done with bullshit.)

eloff 5y ago
Well put. I'm guessing there were no consequences, other than to lower your already low opinion of the company?
- aosmond 5y ago
  No consequences. I think my opinion truly hit the gutter when I got that boss from hell :).
thanhhaimai 5y ago
I had a manager who tried to cancel my vacation the day I was at the airport for the flight. I had given advance notice, and they agreed to it, especially when my vacation days have been maxed out for months. Obviously I went for it anyway, and left the team as soon as I come back.
brailsafe 5y ago
I recently had a job offer taken away for other atupid reasons that we discussed, but conveniently after I brought up how I should handle billing for time away. Maybe I dodged a bullet.

bartoszcki 5y ago

Thank God I was born in a poor socialist country and I don't have to think about obvious stuff like my days off Edit: sorry if that sounded offending but I can't wrap my head around the fact that people in US have problems of this kind

brundolf 5y ago

Yeah, if I ever discovered that a potential employer took this view of PTO then I wouldn't want to work there anyway. Huge red flag.

gregd 5y ago
Small point: The author of the article does NOT have this attitude. He's calling it out as a bullshit attitude...FWIW
- brundolf 5y ago
  Whoops! I should have read the article. Edited.

ghaff 5y ago

This is especially true if the company uses "unlimited"/not-tracked/etc. time. Otherwise, unless you know someone at the place (and even then it can vary by group), you're left with making assumptions about norms that may not be accurate. Personally, I've never not used all my PTO in a given year and would consider being unable to do so a show stopper.

hinkley 5y ago
Unlimited just means they don’t have to pay out when you quit or get laid off, doesn’t it?
- coliveira 5y ago
  Bingo.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Yes, but it also doesn't give any indication of norms around the amount of time off people take. Expectations may differ from how much time is in a traditional PTO bank but at least in general, it's OK to take accrued time off barring special circumstances.
  - hinkley 5y ago
    I worked at a place that gave us 2 weeks and then took an act of Congress and months of social engineering to take even a day. We got bought out and the new overlords announced they were going to give us five weeks of vacation. There was actual laughter in the room. We can't even use 2 weeks, what's 5 gonna do for us?
    - zoomablemind 5y ago
      Wonder what did you guys produce that required all hands on deck at all time non-stop?
    - HolidayguyNOR 5y ago
      In Norway you're required by law to take four weeks and a day vacation every year. Almost everyone has five weeks vacation time in total. Both you and your employer can demand that three of those are continuous during summer, and most of the country shuts down three weeks in July.

ferrumfist 5y ago

There's a delicate balance. I've worked on teams where it felt like I could never rely on one team member because he was using sick leave, personal days, PTO, and going to appointments at every opportunity. I don't hold it against him personally, but professionally it's hard to estimate workload for a given task if one person on a team of 5 is hardly ever actually doing work. I've also worked on teams that, same as your friend, heavily implied that taking longer leave breaks were a no-go. As with all things, it's a balance.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

linuxhansl 5y ago

Usually I am more inclined to hire someone who discusses time off during an interview. It shows that they think about their life-work balance. I do not need heroes, I need reliable folks who do not burn themselves out. Or to put it in a cliche... I need people who work to live rather then live to work.

Barrin92 5y ago
and also importantly people who have family to take care of. If someone comes to me and asks for time off because they have children or partners or parents to take care off and they take that seriously that certainly deserves some respect would make a better impression on me than someone showing up with a Patrick Bateman business card in hand
- cat199 5y ago
  plenty of people have families and abuse the crap out of them, and people without families that want one still need to socialize enough to meet people to eventually have a family book != cover
  - bluGill 5y ago
    We interviewed someone a while back and she said (without being asked - asking questions on this line is illegal) she was prepared to leave her husband and kids to move here. It didn't affect our results, but we all agreed in the discussion after that was a negative sign if we were allowed to consider it. She probably would have been good, I hope her search went well.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      If you say that during your interview unasked, what kind of company are you looking for?…
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      > It didn't affect our results I laughed - HR and legal approved this comment?

mandelbrotwurst 5y ago

Someone who replies with that kind of hyperbole is just saying they don’t want anyone who is going to take more than a bare minimum of PTO. If you’re dealing with a reasonable person, you should be able to preface the question by explaining how having sufficient time off helps you do your best work and avoid burnout, and that you want to clarify expectations up front to make sure that you and the company are an ideal match. It’s also of course a bit less risky to bring up this sort of thing a bit later in the interview process when you’ve built a bit of a rapport with the interviewer and ideally demonstrated your value somewhat.

thomasahle 5y ago
> If you’re dealing with a reasonable person, you should be able to preface the question by explaining how having sufficient time off helps you do your best work and avoid burnout If you are dealing with a reasonable person, hopefully you want have to explain any of that.
- mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
  Sure, I've just found that it can be helpful to clarify intent is all, especially when you're dealing with someone you've just met - e.g. maybe the interviewer is mostly reasonable, but is scarred from past negative experiences with colleagues who were legitimately lazy. This phrasing might help such a person understand where you're coming from a bit more easily.
  - Cyph0n 5y ago
    If you need to clarify intent for something as fundamental as work/life balance, wouldn’t that be (at best) a yellow flag?
    - redisman 5y ago
      This needs to not be a taboo. It’s very important how many days I get off, how many hours I’m expected to work and if I’m expected to work nights and weekends. Those are like my top 3 concerns, I don’t really care about your snacks or vision or stack to be honest.

_dw7s 5y ago

Spot on. I always ALWAYS ask about time off during interviews. But I don't ask the manager because I found they always try to stretch the truth or reframe shit. I just ask the individual contributors how much PTO they've taken in the past 12 months. It's more or less an open question, doesn't necessarily means I'm interested in taking too much PTO. You'd be surprised of how honest people are. I had interviewees even start venting about burnout. Someone from an e-commerce company (not Amazon) told me he's gonna take a month off as he took 0 vacation days for the past 1.5 years (!!!). He admitted he's probably going to get in trouble but he doesn't care anymore.

bluGill 5y ago
You should ask about vacation and sick leave both, not generic PTO. The two can be very different, or the same thing. I get vacation that I'm required to take every year. I have unlimited sick leave - but I actually have to be sick to use it (going to the dentist for a regular checkup counts as sick though)

didibus 5y ago

Your quote of the article made me think I was going to hate the advice, but then I realized you quoted it out of context, here's the full quote: > People might claim they have “signals” for these things… “if they ask about time off in the first interview then they are never going to be there!” But these are all bullshit. If you’re using signals like these you’re just guessing and turning away good candidates

gshulegaard 5y ago
I had the same thought process.
ramraj07 5y ago
Maybe we should all ask this question in our interviews so we can avoid these shitty teams that way!
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Unfortunately, there are too many different ways to be shitty, so while it would filter out a few, a lot of shitty teams wouldn't be detected by that particular question.
  - colecut 5y ago
    So you're saying we need more questions
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- suzzer99 5y ago
  I like to ask if their health insurance covers drug rehab. That goes over well.
- France_is_bacon 5y ago
  I think that people should ask whatever they want to ask. If the interviewer doesn't like it, then it's not a good fit. For example, I would never agree to an interview if I don't know the pay range. I'm not going to sit through 5 interviews to make $30,000-ish when I am expecting $90,000-ish. I don't want to go to an interview if the company has less than gold level insurance. No way am I going to wait until the last interview to broach the topic, I don't care what is standard. If I apply to a job, I call up the department and say that I am considering applying for the job, but I want to know about x,y, and z first, because I don't want to waste either of our time. If they push back and say that we don't give out that information, then I just say, "I understand. I also don't give away my time, in order to find out after 15 hours of interviewing for your company that you want to pay $40K and I expect $80K. All the travel time, parking, preparation - why do it if there is a complete mismatch of the most basic things? Maybe you can bring this up to management, that your policies are not realistic. Good luck, hope you find a candidate." And then just hang up. Now, I know this wouldn't work in a huge Fortune 1000 company. I work in small- and mid-sized companies where pretty much I can reach decision makers. I don't know what I'd do in a large enterprise company. I guess that is why I would never apply to one in the first place.

Spooky23 5y ago

The context is key. First interview. The issue isn’t taking time off, it’s that the prospective employee’s head is up their proverbial ass. First interview is propspecting. If you were selling a product, if the customer is asking about the return policy before even selecting an option, it’s a similar signal. When you’re in a subsequent interview talking about the benefit plan, salary, etc, that’s where that sort of question is appropriate - you’re finalizing the deal.

shoemakersteve 5y ago
I find this line of thinking incredibly bizarre. If PTO is important to the candidate, why should they waste their time spending hours interviewing only to find out that the work-life balance in this position isn't going to work for them? To you that's having their head up their ass? God that's strange to me. I'm sure glad I don't work for people who make sweeping judgements like that.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  You’re looking for a job. You have 10 minutes to ask questions that make you stand out, to a individual who probably cannot answer the question. You do you.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    That's so spot on. Your Q&A session is your chance to learn something real and convey what you care about. A good question might me like "what's the hardest thing you had to do this year" or "how did you make decisions in cases of disagreement?" or something like that. It shows you're thinking about the job and whether you're a right fit. High quality questions say something about you. Low quality questions do too. Would you ever hire someone whose question is like "so, do a lot of hotties work here?" Probably not, because ... what kind of person is this? Similarly, if the person who doesn't have an offer and doesn't know much about the role is hyper-focused on their time-off, something is off too. PTO is important, it's just a thing you need to be thinking about once you have an offer and think the job is otherwise a match, not as like the #1 question.

xwolfi 5y ago

The problem is not what's important to you when you do an interview. It's not a friendly club, it's the guys who will pay your rent for a while, just act like you pretend to understand this, and ask by side channel, out of sheer strategy. You CAN refuse once the contract arrives for signature, the interview is a lot also for the company to have argument to sell you to management as a worthy investment. I admit I never take a guy talking about time off myself, because while I agree it's an important contractual part and something we must give as generously as we can, the fact he asked the first minute of our relationship means it's going to be painful for him and for us, because we're not a paradise company, things can be tough and high pressure (investment bank), people not nice on purpose and sometimes you have to do the right thing rather than the perfect thing, so compliant positive nearly sacrificial profiles will be happily surprised by what's still good while a dude asking "and holidays, 20 or 25 days" the first day will be very sad and burnt out by all the shit.

heartbreak 5y ago
> things can be tough and high pressure (investment bank) > people not nice on purpose Sounds like a miserable place to work.
- bluGill 5y ago
  I've considered places like that - but none would offer me 5x market pay. If they would pay me 5x what I'm worth - I can save the extra for 5 years and then retire. I'm not sure if I'd take such a job if it was offered, but at least it would be an interesting offer.
rnotaro 5y ago
Sounds like a toxic workplace environnement. I'm grateful that my bank/employer cares about our work/life balance. A burnout employee is not a productive employee. I've stopped applying to place where they are not upfront with their PTO / Salary brackets. It sounds like you don't want people to take their PTO.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
This sounds absolutely dreadful. You’re doing everyone you turn away a huge favor, and I feel bad for anyone you don’t. If I got even a hint of this in an interview I’d be out the door without letting you complete a sentence.

30minAdayHN 5y ago

I'm hearing answers about why they would be either inclined to or not inclined to hire based on that question. My opinion is that it's just a question. Answer it and move on. Don't read for patterns where they don't exist. This also reflects lot of unconscious biases we might be nurturing by having strong opinions about these.

coliveira 5y ago

I think time off is very important, but you don't need to ask it during the interviews. Just wait until they give an offer and then ask for what you want.

skeeter2020 5y ago
agree: if you don't get the job it doesn't matter, and until they offer you the job you don't have any leverage.
chrsig 5y ago
so spend how much of my time and theirs going through the entire interview process to find out the answer to a trivial question that could make or break any final decision? ....Or...and hear me out here...fuck that noise. if people are making snap judgement about candidates from asking a basic company culture/hr question during the interview question, then the candidate winds up having dodged a bullet one way or the other.
bbarn 5y ago
Nah, just like salary, I'm getting a ball park range on that topic before bothering to come into the office for an interview. Otherwise, you're wasting other people's time and your own.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Maybe it’s just where I’m at in my career and priorities, but I’m way more inclined to put work/life balance first and leave comp discussion for negotiation. I make plenty. I could make more, sure. Could I be more aggressive at making more? Absolutely. But I care far more about being happy where I work. And anyone trying to hire me knows or should know the market well enough they’re not going to make an absurdly lowball offer.

skeeter2020 5y ago

If the company thinks they have a good story around PTO they will sell it in the first interview. As an interviewee it's very important to me and I will definitely ask questions, but later in the process when I have more leverage. I don't think someone asking in the first interview is lazy, just perhaps naive. They'd be better to ask about work/life balance and expectations in general and then probe what the interviewer answers back.

bluGill 5y ago
At my company you get one interview, if you get a second interview it is because we liked you but someone else was better and passed your resume on to a different team. One thing we do is take every candidate to lunch (COVID has changed this of course) with someone who doesn't have input into if you are hired: so feel free to ask those questions that you are not sure about. Having done a few interviews, nobody knows what questions to ask.
- swader999 5y ago
  I always leave time off conversations to the offer negotiation stage when I make it past the interview stage. I want my time off in writing and if it's not enough I'll ask for much more money before I accept.
- adrianmonk 5y ago
  > lunch ... with someone who doesn't have input I think part of this could be that they don't know whether to believe that you truly have no input. When I was an interviewee, my lunch escort told me they didn't, and I was pretty sure it wasn't a devious trick to get me to let my guard down, but I had no way of knowing for sure. I also thought, if there isn't a formal process, maybe if I say something too dumb or wrong, they would still mention it to someone. So I stuck to really superficial topics. Then I got hired and later served as a lunch escort. Now knowing the process and knowing there truly is no input, I tried to convince the interviewee, and he didn't seem to believe me just like I didn't when I was in his shoes.
  - 5y ago

5faulker 5y ago

Agree. If I were the interviewer I would probably do the same. Asking about how people spend their life can also reveal a lot about their personality as well.

bluGill 5y ago
Asking about how people spend their life is often illegal to ask. If you don't know the local laws only ask job related questions. This is why my company gives me a script of questions I'm allowed to ask - to get the conversation started on legal topics in ways that are unlikely to stray into illegal areas. (more than once I've had illegal information given to me - but I didn't ask so that is okay) Illegal information isn't anything that will affect how someone does the job in general. You learn about personality, but I hope you can deal with those personalities anyway.

sly010 5y ago

Think about it the other way, if they reject a candidate for asking, it's their way of saying "The PTO situation is terrible here".

m463 5y ago

I remember a friend who wanted to work for apple. He wanted to take time off before he started. They said "hey, we shutdown anyway during the holidays you can take it then, just start now" and of course, did he get to take that time off? NO.

wirrbel 5y ago

This is so strange. I have 40 hrs /week (registered, if I work over time I can take days off to compensate for) and 30 days of vacation per year (on doctor's note sick days are not taken from the vacation-days account). It's plenty of time for my employer to extract value from me. If the org wants me to work more, they can make me be in meetings less.

DeathArrow 5y ago

It seems you live in US. In other parts of the world it's perfectly normal to have time off and benefit from it. But as a compensation wages are higher. However, I prefer having some free time for myself than accumulate a large amount of money.