28 ms·

It is unfortunate that so many people are stuck in jobs that don't offer sufficient time off. It seems fairly common for employees to "start"* with just two wee

by glesica 13y ago

It is unfortunate that so many people are stuck in jobs that don't offer sufficient time off. It seems fairly common for employees to "start"* with just two weeks of paid time off (and many, I think, even lack access to unpaid leave for non-medical reasons). One might argue that two weeks is sufficient for a week-long vacation every six months, but most people I know use most of their time off for family obligations and "work outside of work" like home repairs. This is a crap situation. * Quotes because it is becoming less and less common to work for a company for decades, so the traditional system of awarding vacation based on length of tenure is becoming more and more insane. How many people never even get past the initial level of paid time off before switching jobs?

pionar 13y ago
However accurate I think you are, I think the point of the article was that one shouldn't feel guilty for taking time off. I know that every time I do, I feel extremely guilty.
- acadien 13y ago
  When I take vacation I get anxious if I haven't touched a computer in 24 hours, although it goes away after a couple of days. The worst part is coming back from vacation, often can't sleep or work effectively the first week back because of the stress I've had about not working. I'm sure something like this is universal, no one likes coming back from vacation but I wonder if there is a way to avoid it.
  - saryant 13y ago
    That re-entry stress can be killer. I recently took 3.5 weeks off to travel around Japan and I didn't take a laptop. The company I work for was okay with that but when I got back my work seriously suffered for about two weeks. It just took me that long to get back into things. I'd lost a lot of those "unsaid practices" that tend to accumulate.
  - mixmastamyk 13y ago
    That means the vacation probably wasn't long enough. It takes at least two weeks to really clear your head. If you're really that stressed about not/working you could really use 3-6 months off. I do it every 3 years or so am not "rich."
  - HarryHirsch 13y ago
    Because of the stress I've had about not working Dude, it's a fine prison you built for yourself. This from a guy in tech, tech being one of the few areas where labour supposedly still has negotiating power.
    - acadien 13y ago
      I'm in the final year of my PhD, but yes I agree I should probably look into better ways of handling work. I'm thinking of changing things after finishing, this is not a good way to live life.
      - afterburner 13y ago
        Oh, a PhD... well that's different, yes, a grad student always feels like they should be working on their thesis. I've done this, and regret not taking a month off once for a trip. I wouldn't have had a hard time with it once I was actually on the trip, but I couldn't justify taking it in the first place. Productivity-wise probably would have been close to a wash.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
mikestew 13y ago
I can't think of any place I've worked in the last 15 years that didn't start with at least three weeks vacation and a couple weeks sick time. Then again, I may be just self-filtering out those places by not even interviewing at the kind of place that would give two weeks vacation. 'cause if we got to the offer stage and I was offered two weeks vacation, I'd laugh and walk out.
- prawks 13y ago
  A lot of jobs out there give 2 weeks PTO to entry-level employees. It's mainly "blue collar" (for lack of a better term) jobs like trades (I suspect due to many being smaller family-owned "Father & Sons" businesses), or jobs with very low barrier to entry for applicants (no degree requirements/past experience, for example). A large portion of my extended family works in retail where 2 weeks is pretty standard for entry-level positions. It's tenure-based all the way.
  - aneisf 13y ago
    Dang, I work in software and get a week every year--not including Year 1.
    - yread 13y ago
      Are you sure that you work in software and not cotton plantation in 18th century? Have you thought about coming over to Europe? I have 52 days off
      - aneisf 13y ago
        Ah, I wish. I'm not in a financial position to relocate to even a better US city right now. In time, perhaps.
        mcb3k 13y ago
        Some employers offer relocation assistance. So, if you find a position that you think you'd be a better fit for or would enjoy more, but it's far away from where you live now, you may want to ask about that.
Touche 13y ago
Yes, also there tends to be a stigma against using vacation time until you've been at a job for a while. You might have worked for 6 months but the other people in the company still see you as the new guy. This stigma, coupled with changing jobs semi-frequently has led me to not having a week-off vacation for over 2 years. And before that it was probably another 2 since my previous one. I have taken a few long-weekends though. Point is, there's always a reason to hold off on the vacation and waiting for the "perfect timing" isn't a good idea.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  The problem is that it's hard for most people to tell if someone's capable and belongs on the team in the first few months. Since ability and contribution are hard to measure, most human groups assess people based on shared suffering ("being a team player"). That creates a lot of the vacation-hostility that, after a while, people start internalizing. It's ridiculously stupid and utterly counterproductive. Total productivity is actually maximized (for most of the work we do) around 6 weeks off per year.
  - jorgem 13y ago
    > Total productivity is actually maximized (for most of the work we do) around 6 weeks off per year. How do you measure this?
- byoung2 13y ago
  This stigma, coupled with changing jobs semi-frequently has led me to not having a week-off vacation for over 2 years Pro tip from someone who has worked for 4 companies in 6 years, and taken 6 weeks per year of vacation: once you have been offered the job, tell them you have a vacation already planned (approved by your last job) and it can't be rescheduled. This gets you an exemption from rules like no vacation during the first 6 months of employment, and it sometimes also lets you get your 2 weeks upfront, instead of having to accrue them. This is also your opportunity to get a longer vacation approved (e.g. my last job offered 3 weeks, or I had 3 weeks banked up that I had to use).
michaelochurch 13y ago
The EU mandates a 20-day minimum. A country that doesn't require 20 days of vacation (and not the pooled bullshit that combines sick leave and vacation) can't get into the EU. In that context, a 2 week per year limit is positively inexcusable in 2013, when the civilized world (which the US ought to join, but hasn't; see also, health insurance) knows better.
- _delirium 13y ago
  The gap is even bigger if you consider that most EU countries also have ~2 weeks of fixed statutory holidays that aren't included in the 20 days, while most U.S. companies give only between 0 and 3 "free" fixed holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas are the most common; sometimes there's a 3rd floating one that can be used for a holiday of the employee's choice, such as Yom Kippur or Good Friday). So more or less all Europeans get at least 6 weeks off per year. In the wealthier EU countries it's often 7 or 8, if you count both fixed and movable vacation (e.g. the legal minimum in Denmark is 5 weeks movable + 9 fixed days).
  - derekp7 13y ago
    Almost all the companies I've worked for gave Christmas Day, New years day, Thanksgiving, July 4th, Memorial, and Labor days. Many also through in Christmas Eve, and day after Thanksgiving, plus 2 floating holidays. One thing I'm not sure how I feel about, is the combined sick/vacation PTO -- you end up with a larger number of days that you can use as vacation, but usually a smaller number of days overall (my current company is 18 days total PTO, previous company was 5 weeks). This works out great for people like me, who never need to take sick days (if I have a bad cold, I can work from home usually). Now what would work really good (and what I think my current company had before I started), is one vacation pool, which us use when you are going to be off for 2 or more consecutive days, and a separate large pool of PTO days for either under-the-weather days, actual illnesses, or "fix the garage door / wait for Cable installer" days. Another thing to look for, is how the vacation is rolled over. The best is where you earn X.something hours every paycheck, and can be sitting at any one time on what you would earn in 2 years. So a previous employer (Motorola) gave me 3 weeks a year, but I was always sitting on 6 weeks available until I had to take some time off to avoid losing new accumulation.
cookiecaper 13y ago
I think it's true that we're stuck in an uncanny valley between the old ways of lifelong employer/employee commitment and the more modern ways of transitive, as-needed-type employment. The old way was always dangerous, but there was a strong social expectation that you'd take care of your people. Now no one has "people" any more per se, so the social expectations of committed employment have dissipated. However, I _don't_ think the answer to this is to depend on companies to issue more vacation time. That's expensive for everyone, and it's hard for little guys to compete with the bigger guys who can afford to pay 6-12 weeks of salary to someone who isn't working. The answer, I think, is for each individual to take more individual responsibility, save their money, work in contracted increments, and go on vacation between contracts. We should complete the transition and get out of the uncanny valley.
- mackwic 13y ago
  And only the executives and high-end employees will be able to save money for vacations. Brilliant. Strongly disagree with you when you say that no one can pay 6 weeks of vacations, using this as an argument to say "no one can pay vacations at all". It's clearly the question of our social model that you are asking and I will say that: the social model I want for me, my children, and the others, is a world where you don't have to sell yourself as a work slave if you don't want. Paid vacations are not perfect, they are expensive, but they also are a not so bad approximation of a world where you can live your life outside of the work if you want (at least periodically).
  - matwood 13y ago
    Actually vacations are more affordable than ever with the rise of companies like AirBnB and other VRBO websites.
- glesica 13y ago
  That would be nice, but as long as healthcare is also tied to employment, it won't happen. Those same people who have their time off eaten up by obligations generally can't afford to be without health insurance for two weeks every few months. Additionally, they can't justify paying for private health insurance when their employer forces them to accept its own coverage (and won't give them the cash equivalent). Also, I think that while "contract" employment is nice for programmers, there are a large number of jobs (majority?) for which that simply doesn't make much sense because it increases training costs for employers. It is still, to this day, very common for employers to look for employees who plan to stick around for awhile. They want the best of both worlds, basically, long-term employees who can be laid off at a moment's notice.
derekp7 13y ago
Here's a tip that a lot of people don't realize. When negotiating salary, quite often you if they won't give you what you want in pay, you can probably squeeze an additional week or two time off. Esp. if they are trying to head-hunt you from somewhere else, and if you've been working for a number of years/decades.
- afterburner 13y ago
  I've experienced the opposite of this; since the number of weeks people get tends to be very standardized, there is extreme reluctance to give anyone a special perk like extra yearly vacation.
- barrkel 13y ago
  I found that vacation was the least flexible part of negotiation, because it was explicitly tied to tenure with the company. It was enough to make me decide to stay in London when my H-1B came through. Very short-sighted for a CA company trying to attract international talent too, since the biggest cost of moving is the lack of ability to easily visit loved ones, and short holidays make transatlantic trips uneconomical.
- mh_yam 13y ago
  This wasn't the case for me. I managed to get a 30%+ salary increase (alas, the new company didn't have bonuses so this wasn't a ridiculous increase) but I had no room to negotiate vacation days.
lowmagnet 13y ago
I wanted to 'not get paid' instead of going negative on my PTO. (I don't like any form of 'negative' debt) I was told I couldn't do that without quitting and coming back because the benefits system was all wired up wrong. This would of course reset everything in the system. If I had an ACA-based health insurance policy, I would be covered there, but any other benefits via the company would be canceled for the time period. I think there needs to be a bigger push for benefits that we select and maintain ourselves with companies just contributing some sort of minimally mandated stipend related to salary level. I value the freedom of my time over wage (salary, but still) slavery the older I get.
- glesica 13y ago
  I agree 100%. I used to work in an IT job for a school and there was very little for me to do for most of the summer. I asked if my contract could be adjusted so I could have a month or two off during the summer, unpaid and, like you, I was told that just wasn't feasible due to various bureaucratic concerns. I like the idea of benefits that are not tied to the employer but to which the employer contributes some amount of money. Although at that point, might as well just pay me more and let me take care of it.
- tomkarlo 13y ago
  If you're going to go into "debt", vacation debt is the right kind. It doesn't accrue interest, it doesn't impact your credit rating, and they can't subtract it from your paycheck in most states (like CA) if you leave the job - they have to chase you to pay it back, and many companies don't bother.
justrudd 13y ago
Here's how I deal with family obligations, home repairs, etc. - I do them as needed and take no PTO. I'll email my team and say "Garage door getting replaced. Be checking email sporadically". Now if the company I'm working for says nothing, that's good. If the company I'm working for says "You need to log those X hours as PTO", I give notice. It's expected that we (employees) put in a little extra effort when at the end of a project or the end of the fiscal month or whatever. And I don't ask to be paid for that extra 4 to 12 hours of work. So if I take 4 hours here and there, you'd damn well better NOT bitch at me. Edit: fix some grammar
- glesica 13y ago
  I like that attitude, but not everyone can afford to follow through and actually quit, that's part of the big problem, most people have relatively little leverage and can't afford to "take" leverage.
  - SoftwareMaven 13y ago
    You don't have to quit the next day. It's indicative of a poor working environment, and means it's time to start looking for a new job.
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      Also, it's indicative of poor management skills, what means that your job may stop existing at any time.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  I do the same thing, but I ask upfront in the interview instead of spontaneously quitting the job after the fact.
  - justrudd 13y ago
    Absolutely. I'm much more selective in where I work now so I've not had to do this for the past decade. But the first decade I was working, I was drawn to money figures without paying a lot of attention to the work environment. With that said, I would still walk out on an abusive employer...
wil421 13y ago
>most people I know use most of their time off for family obligations and "work outside of work" like home repairs. This is a crap situation. Some companies are changing this approach and allowing remote working. Many people on my team will work remote and a day they need to get the garage repaired and just work around their work requirements. Combine with flex time it works out pretty good.
afterburner 13y ago
This is exactly why we should adopt the same minimums as Europe: 5-6 weeks usually, and on average people get 7 weeks. This allows for family, seasonal trips, and random time off. There is too much silence on this topic though.
- xacaxulu 13y ago
  Don't forget how much paid maternity leave the US kindly bestows on it's female population (none).
enraged_camel 13y ago
>>It is unfortunate that so many people are stuck in jobs that don't offer sufficient time off. This is because outside of Silicon Valley, and outside of software development in general, corporations have been gaining more and more power over their employees. You can see this when you look at stagnating wages for everyone outside the executive class. Don't like your job? Too bad. You should just be grateful that you have a job in the first place. Don't have a job? Better go door to door begging everyone to employ you. Haven't had a non-minimum-wage job for the past year? Good luck convincing any HR person that you're worth even an interview. Etcetera. What this country needs is another labor movement. The first one gave us things like healthcare and retirement benefits, improved workplace conditions (especially safety), and the five-day workweek (down from six). Hopefully, the second one will give us remote work, paid paternal leave, 30-day minimum vacations every year, and a hard cap of 50 hours per week.
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  Absolutely. Everything else mentioned on this page is palliative. This addresses the root cause. Well, closer to the root cause. The root cause is culture. (Well, actually the root cause is human nature, when placed in certain circumstances. But that's too theoretical to be useful in political practice.)
- ux-app 13y ago
  "What this country needs is another labor movement" Totally agree. Trade unions and collective bargaining can produce some outstanding results for workers, but the only way they can have any teeth is through a coordinated "attack" against hostile work environments. It's hard to imagine how a loosely coupled workforce like IT professionals could effectively "wage war" on their employers. Words like "attack" and "war" might sound like hyperbole, but these types of disputes can get ugly; when describing the 1984 Miner's Union strike in the UK, Margaret Thatcher characterized the situation as: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty." There are countless other examples of openly hostile responses to unionization across the world. Part of the solution to this adversarial standoff between employer/employees might be a move to normalizing and standardizing the collective bargaining process. As a high school teacher I work as member of a heavily unionized workforce. Disputes about pay and conditions are baked into the system and occur on a rolling basis. In South Australia, where I work, our enterprise agreement is renegotiated on a rolling 3 year basis. The last agreement took a year longer to finalise which means that negotiations for the 2012,2013,2014 enterprise agreement overlapped the 2015-2017 negotiations (which went on in parallel). From my perspective I see a functioning system which brings great results for me as an employee while protecting my right to a safe workplace. To give an example of the conditions which teachers in my state have fought for: - 13 weeks paid vacation - 10 paid, no questions asked sick days - Excellent salary. I'm earning 20%-30% more as a teacher than I did as a developer - 2 weeks paid paternity leave - 14 weeks paid maternity leave - 22 hours of class time per week - Tight unfair dismissal laws - Ongoing unconditional pay increases that outpace inflation. "...corporations have been gaining more and more power over their employees." absolutely agree with you there. There was a lively discussion on HN a while ago about whether making salary information public is a good idea. Employers don't want employees to have this information because one of the things it can lead to is collective action along the lines of "...hey we all want to get 110k/yr just like Joe over there..." I'm not sure how exactly the lessons from not-for-profit, tightly regulated workplaces like schools can be applied more broadly to the rest of the economy, but what I do know is that my standard of living, autonomy and ability to actually stop and smell the roses has increased immeasurably since I became a teacher. I think the labour movement that you're calling for needs to be broad based. Instead of a teacher's union and a miner's union I think a broad based worker's union regardless of sector needs to arise which demands that the fruits of our collective labour need to more evenly and fairly be distributed. The 1st world is a rich place, but you'd have trouble spotting with much of the modern day wage slavery that must be endured.
kenko 13y ago
"It is unfortunate that so many people are stuck in jobs that don't offer sufficient time off." If only there were some kind of national organization that could mandate that all employees receive a certain minimum amount of time off per year!
- Peaker 13y ago
  The US has a ridiculously low minimum for PTO and sick days. Israel has 12pto + 18 sick days iirc and I wouldn't work for an employer that gives so few days off.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Implying that most Israeli employers give more?
    - Peaker 13y ago
      In the high tech sector? Definitely. The norm starts at 18pto for juniors and then it climbs up annually.
- smsm42 13y ago
  If only there were some kind of national organization that could solve the problems of people entering into voluntary contracts that you don't like! And, in general, doing anything you do not approve. The same national organization, while at it, could also mandate minimum salary of $200K and minimum vacation policy of 50% of the business days, not including holidays of every religion, sick days and days where going to work just doesn't feel like something one would enjoy. I think such national organization would be a huge thing, can't wait for it to appear.

by glesica 13y ago

pionar 13y ago

However accurate I think you are, I think the point of the article was that one shouldn't feel guilty for taking time off. I know that every time I do, I feel extremely guilty.

acadien 13y ago
When I take vacation I get anxious if I haven't touched a computer in 24 hours, although it goes away after a couple of days. The worst part is coming back from vacation, often can't sleep or work effectively the first week back because of the stress I've had about not working. I'm sure something like this is universal, no one likes coming back from vacation but I wonder if there is a way to avoid it.
- saryant 13y ago
  That re-entry stress can be killer. I recently took 3.5 weeks off to travel around Japan and I didn't take a laptop. The company I work for was okay with that but when I got back my work seriously suffered for about two weeks. It just took me that long to get back into things. I'd lost a lot of those "unsaid practices" that tend to accumulate.
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
  That means the vacation probably wasn't long enough. It takes at least two weeks to really clear your head. If you're really that stressed about not/working you could really use 3-6 months off. I do it every 3 years or so am not "rich."
- HarryHirsch 13y ago
  Because of the stress I've had about not working Dude, it's a fine prison you built for yourself. This from a guy in tech, tech being one of the few areas where labour supposedly still has negotiating power.
  - acadien 13y ago
    I'm in the final year of my PhD, but yes I agree I should probably look into better ways of handling work. I'm thinking of changing things after finishing, this is not a good way to live life.
    - afterburner 13y ago
      Oh, a PhD... well that's different, yes, a grad student always feels like they should be working on their thesis. I've done this, and regret not taking a month off once for a trip. I wouldn't have had a hard time with it once I was actually on the trip, but I couldn't justify taking it in the first place. Productivity-wise probably would have been close to a wash.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

mikestew 13y ago

I can't think of any place I've worked in the last 15 years that didn't start with at least three weeks vacation and a couple weeks sick time. Then again, I may be just self-filtering out those places by not even interviewing at the kind of place that would give two weeks vacation. 'cause if we got to the offer stage and I was offered two weeks vacation, I'd laugh and walk out.

prawks 13y ago
A lot of jobs out there give 2 weeks PTO to entry-level employees. It's mainly "blue collar" (for lack of a better term) jobs like trades (I suspect due to many being smaller family-owned "Father & Sons" businesses), or jobs with very low barrier to entry for applicants (no degree requirements/past experience, for example). A large portion of my extended family works in retail where 2 weeks is pretty standard for entry-level positions. It's tenure-based all the way.
- aneisf 13y ago
  Dang, I work in software and get a week every year--not including Year 1.
  - yread 13y ago
    Are you sure that you work in software and not cotton plantation in 18th century? Have you thought about coming over to Europe? I have 52 days off
    - aneisf 13y ago
      Ah, I wish. I'm not in a financial position to relocate to even a better US city right now. In time, perhaps.
      - mcb3k 13y ago
        Some employers offer relocation assistance. So, if you find a position that you think you'd be a better fit for or would enjoy more, but it's far away from where you live now, you may want to ask about that.

Touche 13y ago

Yes, also there tends to be a stigma against using vacation time until you've been at a job for a while. You might have worked for 6 months but the other people in the company still see you as the new guy. This stigma, coupled with changing jobs semi-frequently has led me to not having a week-off vacation for over 2 years. And before that it was probably another 2 since my previous one. I have taken a few long-weekends though. Point is, there's always a reason to hold off on the vacation and waiting for the "perfect timing" isn't a good idea.

michaelochurch 13y ago
The problem is that it's hard for most people to tell if someone's capable and belongs on the team in the first few months. Since ability and contribution are hard to measure, most human groups assess people based on shared suffering ("being a team player"). That creates a lot of the vacation-hostility that, after a while, people start internalizing. It's ridiculously stupid and utterly counterproductive. Total productivity is actually maximized (for most of the work we do) around 6 weeks off per year.
- jorgem 13y ago
  > Total productivity is actually maximized (for most of the work we do) around 6 weeks off per year. How do you measure this?
byoung2 13y ago
This stigma, coupled with changing jobs semi-frequently has led me to not having a week-off vacation for over 2 years Pro tip from someone who has worked for 4 companies in 6 years, and taken 6 weeks per year of vacation: once you have been offered the job, tell them you have a vacation already planned (approved by your last job) and it can't be rescheduled. This gets you an exemption from rules like no vacation during the first 6 months of employment, and it sometimes also lets you get your 2 weeks upfront, instead of having to accrue them. This is also your opportunity to get a longer vacation approved (e.g. my last job offered 3 weeks, or I had 3 weeks banked up that I had to use).

michaelochurch 13y ago

The EU mandates a 20-day minimum. A country that doesn't require 20 days of vacation (and not the pooled bullshit that combines sick leave and vacation) can't get into the EU. In that context, a 2 week per year limit is positively inexcusable in 2013, when the civilized world (which the US ought to join, but hasn't; see also, health insurance) knows better.

_delirium 13y ago
The gap is even bigger if you consider that most EU countries also have ~2 weeks of fixed statutory holidays that aren't included in the 20 days, while most U.S. companies give only between 0 and 3 "free" fixed holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas are the most common; sometimes there's a 3rd floating one that can be used for a holiday of the employee's choice, such as Yom Kippur or Good Friday). So more or less all Europeans get at least 6 weeks off per year. In the wealthier EU countries it's often 7 or 8, if you count both fixed and movable vacation (e.g. the legal minimum in Denmark is 5 weeks movable + 9 fixed days).
- derekp7 13y ago
  Almost all the companies I've worked for gave Christmas Day, New years day, Thanksgiving, July 4th, Memorial, and Labor days. Many also through in Christmas Eve, and day after Thanksgiving, plus 2 floating holidays. One thing I'm not sure how I feel about, is the combined sick/vacation PTO -- you end up with a larger number of days that you can use as vacation, but usually a smaller number of days overall (my current company is 18 days total PTO, previous company was 5 weeks). This works out great for people like me, who never need to take sick days (if I have a bad cold, I can work from home usually). Now what would work really good (and what I think my current company had before I started), is one vacation pool, which us use when you are going to be off for 2 or more consecutive days, and a separate large pool of PTO days for either under-the-weather days, actual illnesses, or "fix the garage door / wait for Cable installer" days. Another thing to look for, is how the vacation is rolled over. The best is where you earn X.something hours every paycheck, and can be sitting at any one time on what you would earn in 2 years. So a previous employer (Motorola) gave me 3 weeks a year, but I was always sitting on 6 weeks available until I had to take some time off to avoid losing new accumulation.

cookiecaper 13y ago

I think it's true that we're stuck in an uncanny valley between the old ways of lifelong employer/employee commitment and the more modern ways of transitive, as-needed-type employment. The old way was always dangerous, but there was a strong social expectation that you'd take care of your people. Now no one has "people" any more per se, so the social expectations of committed employment have dissipated. However, I _don't_ think the answer to this is to depend on companies to issue more vacation time. That's expensive for everyone, and it's hard for little guys to compete with the bigger guys who can afford to pay 6-12 weeks of salary to someone who isn't working. The answer, I think, is for each individual to take more individual responsibility, save their money, work in contracted increments, and go on vacation between contracts. We should complete the transition and get out of the uncanny valley.

mackwic 13y ago
And only the executives and high-end employees will be able to save money for vacations. Brilliant. Strongly disagree with you when you say that no one can pay 6 weeks of vacations, using this as an argument to say "no one can pay vacations at all". It's clearly the question of our social model that you are asking and I will say that: the social model I want for me, my children, and the others, is a world where you don't have to sell yourself as a work slave if you don't want. Paid vacations are not perfect, they are expensive, but they also are a not so bad approximation of a world where you can live your life outside of the work if you want (at least periodically).
- matwood 13y ago
  Actually vacations are more affordable than ever with the rise of companies like AirBnB and other VRBO websites.
glesica 13y ago
That would be nice, but as long as healthcare is also tied to employment, it won't happen. Those same people who have their time off eaten up by obligations generally can't afford to be without health insurance for two weeks every few months. Additionally, they can't justify paying for private health insurance when their employer forces them to accept its own coverage (and won't give them the cash equivalent). Also, I think that while "contract" employment is nice for programmers, there are a large number of jobs (majority?) for which that simply doesn't make much sense because it increases training costs for employers. It is still, to this day, very common for employers to look for employees who plan to stick around for awhile. They want the best of both worlds, basically, long-term employees who can be laid off at a moment's notice.

derekp7 13y ago

Here's a tip that a lot of people don't realize. When negotiating salary, quite often you if they won't give you what you want in pay, you can probably squeeze an additional week or two time off. Esp. if they are trying to head-hunt you from somewhere else, and if you've been working for a number of years/decades.

afterburner 13y ago
I've experienced the opposite of this; since the number of weeks people get tends to be very standardized, there is extreme reluctance to give anyone a special perk like extra yearly vacation.
barrkel 13y ago
I found that vacation was the least flexible part of negotiation, because it was explicitly tied to tenure with the company. It was enough to make me decide to stay in London when my H-1B came through. Very short-sighted for a CA company trying to attract international talent too, since the biggest cost of moving is the lack of ability to easily visit loved ones, and short holidays make transatlantic trips uneconomical.
mh_yam 13y ago
This wasn't the case for me. I managed to get a 30%+ salary increase (alas, the new company didn't have bonuses so this wasn't a ridiculous increase) but I had no room to negotiate vacation days.

lowmagnet 13y ago

I wanted to 'not get paid' instead of going negative on my PTO. (I don't like any form of 'negative' debt) I was told I couldn't do that without quitting and coming back because the benefits system was all wired up wrong. This would of course reset everything in the system. If I had an ACA-based health insurance policy, I would be covered there, but any other benefits via the company would be canceled for the time period. I think there needs to be a bigger push for benefits that we select and maintain ourselves with companies just contributing some sort of minimally mandated stipend related to salary level. I value the freedom of my time over wage (salary, but still) slavery the older I get.

glesica 13y ago
I agree 100%. I used to work in an IT job for a school and there was very little for me to do for most of the summer. I asked if my contract could be adjusted so I could have a month or two off during the summer, unpaid and, like you, I was told that just wasn't feasible due to various bureaucratic concerns. I like the idea of benefits that are not tied to the employer but to which the employer contributes some amount of money. Although at that point, might as well just pay me more and let me take care of it.
tomkarlo 13y ago
If you're going to go into "debt", vacation debt is the right kind. It doesn't accrue interest, it doesn't impact your credit rating, and they can't subtract it from your paycheck in most states (like CA) if you leave the job - they have to chase you to pay it back, and many companies don't bother.

justrudd 13y ago

Here's how I deal with family obligations, home repairs, etc. - I do them as needed and take no PTO. I'll email my team and say "Garage door getting replaced. Be checking email sporadically". Now if the company I'm working for says nothing, that's good. If the company I'm working for says "You need to log those X hours as PTO", I give notice. It's expected that we (employees) put in a little extra effort when at the end of a project or the end of the fiscal month or whatever. And I don't ask to be paid for that extra 4 to 12 hours of work. So if I take 4 hours here and there, you'd damn well better NOT bitch at me. Edit: fix some grammar

glesica 13y ago
I like that attitude, but not everyone can afford to follow through and actually quit, that's part of the big problem, most people have relatively little leverage and can't afford to "take" leverage.
- SoftwareMaven 13y ago
  You don't have to quit the next day. It's indicative of a poor working environment, and means it's time to start looking for a new job.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Also, it's indicative of poor management skills, what means that your job may stop existing at any time.
joezydeco 13y ago
I do the same thing, but I ask upfront in the interview instead of spontaneously quitting the job after the fact.
- justrudd 13y ago
  Absolutely. I'm much more selective in where I work now so I've not had to do this for the past decade. But the first decade I was working, I was drawn to money figures without paying a lot of attention to the work environment. With that said, I would still walk out on an abusive employer...

wil421 13y ago

>most people I know use most of their time off for family obligations and "work outside of work" like home repairs. This is a crap situation. Some companies are changing this approach and allowing remote working. Many people on my team will work remote and a day they need to get the garage repaired and just work around their work requirements. Combine with flex time it works out pretty good.

afterburner 13y ago

This is exactly why we should adopt the same minimums as Europe: 5-6 weeks usually, and on average people get 7 weeks. This allows for family, seasonal trips, and random time off. There is too much silence on this topic though.

xacaxulu 13y ago
Don't forget how much paid maternity leave the US kindly bestows on it's female population (none).

enraged_camel 13y ago

>>It is unfortunate that so many people are stuck in jobs that don't offer sufficient time off. This is because outside of Silicon Valley, and outside of software development in general, corporations have been gaining more and more power over their employees. You can see this when you look at stagnating wages for everyone outside the executive class. Don't like your job? Too bad. You should just be grateful that you have a job in the first place. Don't have a job? Better go door to door begging everyone to employ you. Haven't had a non-minimum-wage job for the past year? Good luck convincing any HR person that you're worth even an interview. Etcetera. What this country needs is another labor movement. The first one gave us things like healthcare and retirement benefits, improved workplace conditions (especially safety), and the five-day workweek (down from six). Hopefully, the second one will give us remote work, paid paternal leave, 30-day minimum vacations every year, and a hard cap of 50 hours per week.

Florin_Andrei 13y ago
Absolutely. Everything else mentioned on this page is palliative. This addresses the root cause. Well, closer to the root cause. The root cause is culture. (Well, actually the root cause is human nature, when placed in certain circumstances. But that's too theoretical to be useful in political practice.)
ux-app 13y ago
"What this country needs is another labor movement" Totally agree. Trade unions and collective bargaining can produce some outstanding results for workers, but the only way they can have any teeth is through a coordinated "attack" against hostile work environments. It's hard to imagine how a loosely coupled workforce like IT professionals could effectively "wage war" on their employers. Words like "attack" and "war" might sound like hyperbole, but these types of disputes can get ugly; when describing the 1984 Miner's Union strike in the UK, Margaret Thatcher characterized the situation as: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty." There are countless other examples of openly hostile responses to unionization across the world. Part of the solution to this adversarial standoff between employer/employees might be a move to normalizing and standardizing the collective bargaining process. As a high school teacher I work as member of a heavily unionized workforce. Disputes about pay and conditions are baked into the system and occur on a rolling basis. In South Australia, where I work, our enterprise agreement is renegotiated on a rolling 3 year basis. The last agreement took a year longer to finalise which means that negotiations for the 2012,2013,2014 enterprise agreement overlapped the 2015-2017 negotiations (which went on in parallel). From my perspective I see a functioning system which brings great results for me as an employee while protecting my right to a safe workplace. To give an example of the conditions which teachers in my state have fought for: - 13 weeks paid vacation - 10 paid, no questions asked sick days - Excellent salary. I'm earning 20%-30% more as a teacher than I did as a developer - 2 weeks paid paternity leave - 14 weeks paid maternity leave - 22 hours of class time per week - Tight unfair dismissal laws - Ongoing unconditional pay increases that outpace inflation. "...corporations have been gaining more and more power over their employees." absolutely agree with you there. There was a lively discussion on HN a while ago about whether making salary information public is a good idea. Employers don't want employees to have this information because one of the things it can lead to is collective action along the lines of "...hey we all want to get 110k/yr just like Joe over there..." I'm not sure how exactly the lessons from not-for-profit, tightly regulated workplaces like schools can be applied more broadly to the rest of the economy, but what I do know is that my standard of living, autonomy and ability to actually stop and smell the roses has increased immeasurably since I became a teacher. I think the labour movement that you're calling for needs to be broad based. Instead of a teacher's union and a miner's union I think a broad based worker's union regardless of sector needs to arise which demands that the fruits of our collective labour need to more evenly and fairly be distributed. The 1st world is a rich place, but you'd have trouble spotting with much of the modern day wage slavery that must be endured.

kenko 13y ago

"It is unfortunate that so many people are stuck in jobs that don't offer sufficient time off." If only there were some kind of national organization that could mandate that all employees receive a certain minimum amount of time off per year!

Peaker 13y ago
The US has a ridiculously low minimum for PTO and sick days. Israel has 12pto + 18 sick days iirc and I wouldn't work for an employer that gives so few days off.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Implying that most Israeli employers give more?
  - Peaker 13y ago
    In the high tech sector? Definitely. The norm starts at 18pto for juniors and then it climbs up annually.
smsm42 13y ago
If only there were some kind of national organization that could solve the problems of people entering into voluntary contracts that you don't like! And, in general, doing anything you do not approve. The same national organization, while at it, could also mandate minimum salary of $200K and minimum vacation policy of 50% of the business days, not including holidays of every religion, sick days and days where going to work just doesn't feel like something one would enjoy. I think such national organization would be a huge thing, can't wait for it to appear.