4 ms·

Well I get 23 days off already, I paid extra to get 28, but yeah I hear you.

Crusoe123 4y ago
Sounds to me like a convoluted way to say - unpaid time off.
tharkun__ 4y ago
How about going on strike, unionizing etc. to get the 30 days off that are normal in tech in (parts of) Europe? I know for sure for example that 30 days is the usual everyone gets in most tech companies in Germany. Heck the minimum by law that even a cashier at the supermarket gets is 21 days. I know, very un-American to even think of that. It's so funny (actually, mind-boggling) when you first hear about how time off works in lots of North American companies. You get 10 days and then with tenure you get one more day per year. If you're working for a "good" company, you might start with 15 and get 1 per year. But always only up to a max, e.g. after 5 years of tenure, that's it, no more extra days. And the excuses and explanations employees make for this are mind-boggling. Like "yeah this makes total sense, you wouldn't want to give a recent-grad the same time off as someone with more experience" and such. To which I can just only reply: Why not?
- thunky 4y ago
  > Why not? It usually has less to do with experience than it has to do with "time served". A company wants to incentivise their employees to not quit.
  - buck4roo 4y ago
    A company (read: the employer class) != what employees would choose if they designed an equitable workplace for themselves
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    Same question. Why would you punish an employee that is going to be loyally staying at your company by giving them less and incentivizing them to leave you for a different company that gives more vacation from the start? If I have 10+5 max from tenure and I am in year 2, why would I stay at your company instead of jumping ship to another company that offers 15+5? Or even just flat 15 for that matter. What's next, you incentivise me not to quit by my health plan only paying 50% of the bills, going up by 10 percentage points with each year of tenure? Of course much of this gets muddled up in the general overwork culture. Culminating in the 'unlimited vacation' policies that use social pressure to not be 'the guy' that took the most vacation.
    - thunky 4y ago
      > Why would you punish an employee It's a free market so the employee can go to another company that has a better benefits package, as you implied. It happens all the time, although I would guess that higher pay is a greater incentive than more vacation days (in the US, anyway). And yeah, an employer has the option to give great full benefits from day one if they think it benefits their company. That happens all the time, too. Another example in the US that you probably won't like: as a benefit, your employer normally matches a percentage of 401k retirement contributions. But, if you quit you won't get the full amount they matched unless you're fully vested (normally takes at least 2 or 3 years). Rather than striking or unionizing for better benefits, I would rather decouple 401k from employers completely. For health care, the current situation already stinks. Companies reevaluate their health care plan every year and frequently hop to new providers/plans in order to cut costs. In the meantime employee benefits are always changing. It's not based on tenure, either, so you don't have a sure way to predict what your health care costs will be next year. I would prefer to also decouple health insurance from employers completely. I bet most employers would prefer not to have to deal with health insurance providers and 401k plan providers anyway.
      - tharkun__ 4y ago
        Yikes, that 401k stuff sounds even worse than Canadian group RRSPs. And I agree, I'd also want to decouple the 401k from employers completely. If large unions were a thing in the US they could potentially lobby the government to make that a reality or is it already possible to have your own individual 401k on top? As far as I know there aren't any group RRSPs in Canada with vesting periods. The matched amount goes straight into your RRSP (even if they do show the employee and employer portion separately but it's yours to keep for sure). I definitely would love to have those detached fully from employers in the sense that group RRSPs weren't a thing. The investment options inside those are very limited. Unfortunately so far I know of no company that will send an RRSP match to your own individual RRSP but at least individual RRSPs are a thing and have many providers with lots of investment options to choose from. There are some employers though that have group RRSPs that allow you to transfer out at least your own contribution after a short time frame, thus only keeping the matched part locked up in high fee investments. And yeah agreed on the health plan situation. Same here. Always funny to see the "great news, your health plan got cheaper next year" updates. Never mind that the cheaper plan also pay 80% instead of 100% of certain items. That said, in Canada you aren't completely SOL if you don't have an employer plan and there's still some health care available to you through the provincial insurance programs even if those aren't that great either. While we're comparing and because I mentioned the great PTO landscape in Germany, the above is still much better than what Germany has for retirement savings (caveat: haven't been employed there for a looong time, so maybe this changed and this is just about the private portion. There's still the regular state pension, not that this is to be expected to be much given how the system works and what demographics are doing to that model). There are private, partially tax sheltered ways to save from your gross income but it's all going to be locked up in some insurance company's "product" until retirement. Including high fees, putting all the risk on you etc. Sort of like a group RRSP but with even worse options and conditions and there's no equivalent of an individual RRSP where you can do whatever you want in a tax sheltered way. While we're at it, even though we're going quite a bit off topic by now: Does the US have an equivalent of the TFSA (tax sheltered gains/dividends/interest but you can only contribute after tax money and a max amount per year), which you could use instead of the 401k to some extent? Germany does not for example. Instead you have a measly 801 EUR of "tax free capital gains". That's the amount of actual gains/dividends/interest per year. So in Germany if you did everything right and started saving for yourself early on and your investments are making say 15000EUR in dividends each year, you gotta pay 25% tax on 14199EUR of those and only receive ~11450EUR. If I did the same in Canada inside a TFSA, I get the full 15000CAD to use or reinvest. That's quite a difference over some years.
- dec0dedab0de 4y ago
  I wish there were an IT union. With apprentices and training and the whole bit. I think not tech businesses would go for it, it's so hard to interview/hire new employees, how nice would it be to just have the union send some more over with whatever skills we need. Sure it would cost more, but it would be worth it.

Sounds to me like a convoluted way to say - unpaid time off.

How about going on strike, unionizing etc. to get the 30 days off that are normal in tech in (parts of) Europe? I know for sure for example that 30 days is the usual everyone gets in most tech companies in Germany. Heck the minimum by law that even a cashier at the supermarket gets is 21 days. I know, very un-American to even think of that. It's so funny (actually, mind-boggling) when you first hear about how time off works in lots of North American companies. You get 10 days and then with tenure you get one more day per year. If you're working for a "good" company, you might start with 15 and get 1 per year. But always only up to a max, e.g. after 5 years of tenure, that's it, no more extra days. And the excuses and explanations employees make for this are mind-boggling. Like "yeah this makes total sense, you wouldn't want to give a recent-grad the same time off as someone with more experience" and such. To which I can just only reply: Why not?

thunky 4y ago
> Why not? It usually has less to do with experience than it has to do with "time served". A company wants to incentivise their employees to not quit.
- buck4roo 4y ago
  A company (read: the employer class) != what employees would choose if they designed an equitable workplace for themselves
- tharkun__ 4y ago
  Same question. Why would you punish an employee that is going to be loyally staying at your company by giving them less and incentivizing them to leave you for a different company that gives more vacation from the start? If I have 10+5 max from tenure and I am in year 2, why would I stay at your company instead of jumping ship to another company that offers 15+5? Or even just flat 15 for that matter. What's next, you incentivise me not to quit by my health plan only paying 50% of the bills, going up by 10 percentage points with each year of tenure? Of course much of this gets muddled up in the general overwork culture. Culminating in the 'unlimited vacation' policies that use social pressure to not be 'the guy' that took the most vacation.
  - thunky 4y ago
    > Why would you punish an employee It's a free market so the employee can go to another company that has a better benefits package, as you implied. It happens all the time, although I would guess that higher pay is a greater incentive than more vacation days (in the US, anyway). And yeah, an employer has the option to give great full benefits from day one if they think it benefits their company. That happens all the time, too. Another example in the US that you probably won't like: as a benefit, your employer normally matches a percentage of 401k retirement contributions. But, if you quit you won't get the full amount they matched unless you're fully vested (normally takes at least 2 or 3 years). Rather than striking or unionizing for better benefits, I would rather decouple 401k from employers completely. For health care, the current situation already stinks. Companies reevaluate their health care plan every year and frequently hop to new providers/plans in order to cut costs. In the meantime employee benefits are always changing. It's not based on tenure, either, so you don't have a sure way to predict what your health care costs will be next year. I would prefer to also decouple health insurance from employers completely. I bet most employers would prefer not to have to deal with health insurance providers and 401k plan providers anyway.
    - tharkun__ 4y ago
      Yikes, that 401k stuff sounds even worse than Canadian group RRSPs. And I agree, I'd also want to decouple the 401k from employers completely. If large unions were a thing in the US they could potentially lobby the government to make that a reality or is it already possible to have your own individual 401k on top? As far as I know there aren't any group RRSPs in Canada with vesting periods. The matched amount goes straight into your RRSP (even if they do show the employee and employer portion separately but it's yours to keep for sure). I definitely would love to have those detached fully from employers in the sense that group RRSPs weren't a thing. The investment options inside those are very limited. Unfortunately so far I know of no company that will send an RRSP match to your own individual RRSP but at least individual RRSPs are a thing and have many providers with lots of investment options to choose from. There are some employers though that have group RRSPs that allow you to transfer out at least your own contribution after a short time frame, thus only keeping the matched part locked up in high fee investments. And yeah agreed on the health plan situation. Same here. Always funny to see the "great news, your health plan got cheaper next year" updates. Never mind that the cheaper plan also pay 80% instead of 100% of certain items. That said, in Canada you aren't completely SOL if you don't have an employer plan and there's still some health care available to you through the provincial insurance programs even if those aren't that great either. While we're comparing and because I mentioned the great PTO landscape in Germany, the above is still much better than what Germany has for retirement savings (caveat: haven't been employed there for a looong time, so maybe this changed and this is just about the private portion. There's still the regular state pension, not that this is to be expected to be much given how the system works and what demographics are doing to that model). There are private, partially tax sheltered ways to save from your gross income but it's all going to be locked up in some insurance company's "product" until retirement. Including high fees, putting all the risk on you etc. Sort of like a group RRSP but with even worse options and conditions and there's no equivalent of an individual RRSP where you can do whatever you want in a tax sheltered way. While we're at it, even though we're going quite a bit off topic by now: Does the US have an equivalent of the TFSA (tax sheltered gains/dividends/interest but you can only contribute after tax money and a max amount per year), which you could use instead of the 401k to some extent? Germany does not for example. Instead you have a measly 801 EUR of "tax free capital gains". That's the amount of actual gains/dividends/interest per year. So in Germany if you did everything right and started saving for yourself early on and your investments are making say 15000EUR in dividends each year, you gotta pay 25% tax on 14199EUR of those and only receive ~11450EUR. If I did the same in Canada inside a TFSA, I get the full 15000CAD to use or reinvest. That's quite a difference over some years.
dec0dedab0de 4y ago
I wish there were an IT union. With apprentices and training and the whole bit. I think not tech businesses would go for it, it's so hard to interview/hire new employees, how nice would it be to just have the union send some more over with whatever skills we need. Sure it would cost more, but it would be worth it.