4-6 weeks?!
We Indians have 12 paid leaves per year.
Govt jobs in India have 30-40 days, which is 6-8 weeks. But the private sector will riot if you try mandating anything close to that.
Yes. In Germany 30 are quite common. A fried of mine additionally changed some bonus for 5 extra days this isn’t the normal case but she has 35 days off
HR had some bug in their system and I got about two extra weeks (7 total) for a few years, but I didn’t complain about the bug.
American. I’m one of the lucky few who have unlimited PTO. I’m seriously underpaid though.
So how many days do you take a year? As the other comments also touch upon, it becomes an outperform thing with co- workers, to take the least amount to “perform better”. Also how easy and often do managers then deny requests?
With a fixed set it has an actual value, at the company they can’t deny PTO’s as they are yours. Of course planning comes into play a little bit, but if you let the company know that 2 months from now you take 4 weeks off for a good long summer holiday, that is what you will be doing then in those 2 months.
ps. I have 25 personal paid days, a bunch of public holidays. Doctor’s appointments are on the ‘please try to schedule them outside working hours if possible, otherwise, well, that’s life, you need to visit that doctor’. Full travel reimbursement (fixed amount per month, can spend however i want), A lot of secondary items in my contract as well dealing with having to take care of partner / children if they become sick (is paid time off), etc etc.
I do not take as much as I should. 5 weeks last year? For doctor’s appointments and stuff like that though, no one cares. You just let your boss and your team know. I am on salary, not contract.
i think that’s really the point - unlimited isn’t actually unlimited. unlimited means unspoken, and often variable limits based on the mood of managers
5 weeks is… pretty minimal
5 weeks is… pretty minimal
15 days is the limit at my job that you only get after 7 years working here. Seeing comments like this make me sad… Happy for you for sure, but sad for me cuz Murica’…
i guess the point is not to brag - it’s to rattle the cage and yell “THIS IS NOT NORMAL” and “IT DOESNT HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS”
… there are lots of americans that just consider what they experience as normal, and that’s absolutely not normal for similarly privileged countries
… then you unionise and this forms part of your demands ;)
I have never been turned down for PTO in 7 years at this company, for what it’s worth. I just don’t take enough vacation. It’s my own fault.
Is that really a thing? I’ve seen it in a few job offers but I have trouble understanding how it works…
As I understand it you can take as many days as you want and it works on the company’s trust, but that system sounds really toxic to me, isn’t it?
Edit: I’m European with almost 7 weeks off a year for context
I’ve never experienced it but the somewhat obvious trick is that it turns into a race to the bottom, where if you want to outperform your peers (or even meet the expectations of the company), the number of days off you freely decided to take turns into a KPI.
So, people take even less days off when they are made free to take any amount.
It’s why in Italy, for example, you can not refuse to go to holiday.
I have unlimited and I’ve seen a few people take 2 weeks off consecutively. So it seems like the company is pretty flexible and doesn’t put artificial limitations on it. That said, I’m pretty sure even a month off wouldn’t fix the damage that’s been done to my brain from years stacked upon years of redlining it to write code and solve problems. I find as I get older I need more time off to truly disconnect.
It’s a lie.
By making it “unlimited” they don’t need to pay you out of you don’t use all of PTO days.
If you use it more than they think you’ve earned you get terminated.
Employees end up afraid of taking their PTO days and typically end up taking even less time off than if they knew there was a expectation of 3 weeks or whatever.
I don’t think payout is a factor for salaried positions
I currently have a paid leave balance of more than 30 days, what should I do with them?
Took 3 weeks of vacation around midsummer, then another two weeks at the end of the summer and I still need to use another week or it will expire.
We are allowed to carry over “only” 5 weeks of PTO.
I get 4 weeks, plus sick days, plus parental leave, various types of training days and charitable days, plus a 2 week carry-over and I’m neither American nor European.
I realized how I am biased when i thought “how can he be neither American nor European?”
I was married to someone from a “third world” country and boy americans have so much worst than them. If I were american I would reather live there than in the US just to get all the benefits
That’s almost exactly why our
brainwashingelementary schooling is spentindoctrinatingteaching us about how we’re The Best, Most Free, Country In The World™©® and that all “3rd world” countries are war torn shitholes with nothing but cartels and warlords.Can’t let the peons learn it’s actually much better elsewhere…
Parental leave, sick days (unlimited), 10 national holidays, and 52 vacation days for me. And I am European. Edit. And two days telework a week.
I only got 7 a year and I live in Europe…
The European minimum is 10 I think
Which country has such a low minimum? Or was that not a full time job?
He means weeks, not days
That’s 7 more than most Americans get
No but jokes aside where are you from so I don’t move there
The average American has 11 vacation days a year.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/pto-statistics/
I have unlimited plus my birthday off, once a quarter we all take off, a week for 4th of July, two weeks for Christmas and new years plus twenty holidays.
This is pretty standard for any job I’ve had.
I’m an electrician. How am I supposed to do this?
I work for a well known (international) business in the USA that used to be known for it’s good benefits. Man are they ass now. 14 days a yr, 21 after 5 years, and could work your way up to 6 weeks at 30yrs. no lunch break, no pension, and some expensive health insurance that covers nothing. Now it used to be 21 starting 28 after 5 yrs, a pension and a lunch break, with some impressive healthcare. And they took away the upper limit of vacation you could get to be 4? IIRC After 30 years. (So 1 extra week after 5 years, then one more after another 25).
The pay is fine but no nearly what it used to be. It used to be $10+ over the competition, now it’s barely $1. They are hurting to hire because of it too
Unlimited ?
Pretty standard now days. The only limit is I have to get my work done and it can’t be more than 4 weeks at a time. Oddly it can’t be used if you’re sick. You have to use sick time for being sick. That’s only 12 weeks but that’s when disability would kick in.
Wait, so you get “unlimited” paid vacation days? That sounds like complete corporate bullshit to me… Who decideds when/if “work is done” or not? Even if your work isn’t done (there is always more to do), you still deserve vacation/days off.
How many paid vacation days do people take on average a year? How many did you take this year/last year? What happens if your company decides that you have taken too many vacation days this year, will they mention it you want to discuss wages? What happens if someone doesn’t take a minimum number of vacation days a year, will they be forced to take them or will they get praise for being a “hard worker”?
You’re right to be wary of unlimited. It’s primarily a way for employers to avoid having to pay out accrued vacation time when staff leave. And create the competitive environment you mentioned over taking few days vs a lot. It seems great at first glance but I’d prefer a set number of days, no ambiguity that way.
I decide.
On average? 4-8 weeks.
If you had read my comment, you’d see we are forced to take a eeek in July, two weeks for the end of the year and 20 holidays.
I take very little time off. I feel like I’m already off most the time.
I decide.
Oh please, then you could just “decide” to take every other month off and nobody would care, you would get paid the same,etc , you can’t tell me that’s the case…
If you had read my comment, you’d see we are forced to take a eeek in July, two weeks for the end of the year
Right, so 3 weeks vacation and you can’t even decide when to take them. Sounds like a pretty shitty deal to me…
I take very little time off.
It seems that way, yes, so what good does “unlimited vacation” do?
I feel like I’m already off most the time.
Are you a hiring agent or something? What’s next, are you going to tell me that your company is like “a family”?
Probably Turkey. Euro wannabes 😂
Netherlands. Fuck turkey lmao. The only thing turkeys are good for is being eaten during Thanksgiving.
I wouldn’t want to live in Turkey, but they do have good food.
Well either your employer was acting illegally or you were only working a few hours per week, which is it?
Minimum is 20 days in the Netherlands
I think or rather hope he confused vacation days with bank holidays.
I got 7 weeks per year atm
I think a lot of people thought you meant days.
It looks like the average is 11 PTO days a year according to Forbes, with nearly a third of employees getting zero. I myself get 24 days a year with it going up to 29 in about a year. That said I’m terrified of being effed over by layoffs so I’ve been hoarding them like a dragon for the payout, which is arguably way way worse than having a nice federal minimum of PTO days.
Just make sure you actually do get a payout, had a friend screwed over by that recently.
I don’t hate the Europeans for having fair working conditions. I hate the rich assholes that make my home country such a shitty place to live and work in.
It’s time to emulate the french and set the place on fire if they don’t start treating us fair.
T’inquiète* or Ne t’en fais pas* would have been a better translation for Don’t worry/No worries than “Pas grave”
Or you can start with unions…
Or fires…
The protests and strikes they keep quashing are the alternative to fires, destruction, and violence. It’s a social agreement the factory and warehouse owners want us to have forgotten.
That means not enough fires
Ding.
And how do you think unions come about? Historically it’s by setting things on fire.
By actually talking to your coworkers about unionization, which is scarier for many of us than fantasies of an anonymous crowd.
It mostly depends whether unions are successful or not under the current administration. Unionizing has gone bad before. You can’t always blame the workers for not believing it would help, theres a lot of pressure from the other side.
why not both?
We need Syndicates and Worker/Consumer cooperatives as an end goal. Unions aren’t the finish line and are only a bandaid over capital ownership.
Markets aren’t the finish line either, to be fair. Those retain the mechanisms that bring about inequality.
Only for them to be destroyed in another 20 years by the rich
Nah. Break out the guillotines, it worked well for the French.
I get 5 weeks.
In the US.
Thanks to a union.
And I get paid the hours on top of regular pay at the end of the year if I don’t use the vacation. Nobody gives you a second thought if you use your vacation. Zero pressure not to fuck off for a week or more.
Go Union.
The most heinous thing is lack of required sick time. And who is it that’s least likely to get paid sick time? Customer service, of course, the ones coughing and sneezing all over your clothes and food.
France is more than 7. Only things good here are benefits earned over the years by the workers struggle
Nope, France is 5 minimum, each company can add as much as they want but the law is 5 minimum.
I agree on all the good work of previous generations to earn us these though.
You have RTT as well (overtime transformed into paid leave)
I have:
14 fixed holidays.
31 vacation days.
35 hours workweek.
Summertime hours reduction (from 35 to 32 hours).
Fight for it, and force your countries and employers to apply those conditions, because I assure you, they are good.
Summertime hours reduction (from 35 to 32 hours).
lol these are my regular hours (webdev in Germany with a 4-day work week)
What’s the name of your employer again?
Seriously, those are really good conditions, I’m glad you are aware of that.
I cheated a little. As I’m employed by a public organization of the Spanish government. But it’s true that we achieved these conditions because we have massive Unions here in the public sector. We are currently threatening with a strike if the remove remote work (as they are threatening to remove it).
I’m in the USA and I get 3 weeks paid vacation, 10 paid holidays, and 2 “personal days” which are also PTO, and more sick time than I am ever able to use up. I think I have over 200 hours of sick leave PTO accrued.
This is not a basic entry-level job though, it’s after climbing the career ladder for years. It would be much nicer for our country’s folks if everyone was allowed as much PTO by all jobs.
I only just this month “unlocked” my final week PTO after 7 years… 15 days PTO is the limit at my job :/
Nice, good luck with your fight, remote work is the future
I hate working from home with a passion! I got really depressed during covid lockdowns. My productivity fell to near zero. I had to have a talk with my employer and got a permit to work from the office. I see that it is practical every now and then and suffer through it if I have an errant that has do be done during the day.
35 days hols per year, would be 27 or something but they give us the English bank holidays as part of our allocation (am Scottish but it’s UK company).
Australia is weirdly crap for this too. Only twenty days annual leave, though in theory you can bank it forever until you die at your desk.
20 workdays is 4 weeks non?
I had 26 before :( At least there are endless AFL themed public holidays.
28 days + 8 Bank Holidays. Easter is great, you can have 16 days not at work, and only use 8 days holiday. (Good Friday and Easter Monday are Bank holidays, and I don’t work weekends)
30 days paid vacation + bank holidays + regional holidays + 0.5 days of vacation each on Christmas and new years eve + generally not having to work on weekends + generally not having to work longer than 8 hours a day + public transport ticket paid by the company.
Cannot complain.
Cannot complain.
Spotted the German.
I’m going for UK, specifically Scotland.
I’m an American that had that, then we got bought by a German company that took it away. Shit’s fucked.
Wtf that goes against reason
No, why? That’s capitalism for you. It’s still a US company/subsidiary, just with a German owner.
