Our Vacation Policy: Take Some • Hacker News Board

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#71

Post by bugsy » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #66

dkokelley wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things. First, if the policy really does change from an entitlement to an unspoken privilege granted by your immediate superior, then I doubt the policy was implemented properly. I suppose it depends on the industry, but if corporate policy says your vacations are not tracked, it stands to reason that your time off can't be requested/approved/denied. If you get your work done, your company should by happy with…

> when you do leave a company, you don't always get the vacation days as a bonus in your paycheck. Depends on the state. In California, vacation time is earned as it is accrued and thus must be paid out on termination (voluntary or not).

This is the exact reason why these policies claim there is no specific time. No allocated days legally means zero days. Companies use this "flexible vacation" policy specifically so they don't have to comply with pay out in jurisdictions such as California. It's a big scam, which is why the real question to ask and answer is how many days on average are taken, and if they include "half days" as "vacation time" in the response, they are being intentionally highly misleading. Working half days is NOT vacation. It's work.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#72

Post by lreeves » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:15 PM UTC

ben1040 wrote: post #37

DanielStraight wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Unless you literally mean take as much vacation as you feel is right and no matter how much you take (even 4 weeks straight), we won't ask questions, then I'd rather have a specific number. For sick time, I think this is a great idea. I have unlimited sick time where I work, so I only take it when I'm really sick. It's like the saying that what gets measured gets done. The measure of legitimate sick time is no…

If it was "do you have the time" then as long as they had the time, people would feel fine taking sick time, even if they weren't sick. Or even worse, the policy at my employer - within a given year you may take up to five of your accrued sick days no questions asked (assuming you have the sick days banked), but to use any other sick time you have, you must submit a doctors note as verification. As an incentive inten…

It seems to me that the reward for no sick days would create an incentive for people to come in with a cold/flu and spread it around.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#73

Post by bostonpete » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:25 PM UTC

gmac wrote: post #48

megamark16 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.5 weeks? Sheesh, I only get 2 weeks at my current job. One week gets used up throughout the year for random errands, kids school stuff, that sort of thing. That leaves one week to actually take a vacation, and this year we just skipped it all together because about the time the kids were out of school my work got really busy.

Yeah, that's something you in the US really need to fix. The EU Working Time Directive gives Europeans the right to 5+ weeks (and in professional jobs this has been standard practice anyway).

> Yeah, that's something you in the US really need to fix.

Perhaps. It'd be tough to swallow the hit in productivity though.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#74

Post by dkokelley » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:29 PM UTC

bugsy wrote: post #71

Domenic_S wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you do leave a company, you don't always get the vacation days as a bonus in your paycheck. Depends on the state. In California, vacation time is earned as it is accrued and thus must be paid out on termination (voluntary or not).

This is the exact reason why these policies claim there is no specific time. No allocated days legally means zero days. Companies use this "flexible vacation" policy specifically so they don't have to comply with pay out in jurisdictions such as California. It's a big scam, which is why the real question to ask and answer is how many days on average are taken, and if they include "half days" as "vacation time" in the…

As stated elsewhere, I doubt the payout liability is that large, considering that most employees only get to keep vacation days for a little over a year before they expire.

I disagree with your use of the word scam to describe an untracked vacation policy. An employee at any one point in time will probably have no more than 6 weeks of accrued, unexpired vacation time (assuming they get 3 weeks per year and haven't taken a vacation in 2 years and their vacation rolls over a little bit). This is only 3 pay periods, or just over 10% of their actual pay (6/52 weeks).

I would agree that in general vacation policies are a bit of a scam in that you are promised x days as part of your compensation package, but then are told when they can or can't be used, and resist if you try to use them all at once, and expire them if you hold on to them for too long... Come to think of it, defined vacation days are a bit like airline miles.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#75

Post by gmac » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:37 PM UTC

bostonpete wrote: post #73

gmac wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's something you in the US really need to fix. The EU Working Time Directive gives Europeans the right to 5+ weeks (and in professional jobs this has been standard practice anyway).

> Yeah, that's something you in the US really need to fix. Perhaps. It'd be tough to swallow the hit in productivity though.

Well, maybe. But a happy and adequately-vacationed workforce is surely going to be more productive, so the loss might be less than it seems (citation needed here, admittedly).

And I guess it might mean a few extra jobs, which surely can't be a bad thing.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#76

Post by ori_b » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:42 PM UTC

bostonpete wrote: post #73

gmac wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's something you in the US really need to fix. The EU Working Time Directive gives Europeans the right to 5+ weeks (and in professional jobs this has been standard practice anyway).

> Yeah, that's something you in the US really need to fix. Perhaps. It'd be tough to swallow the hit in productivity though.

Would it? With the current level of unemployment, having companies forced to hire more people might be a good thing.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#77

Post by bugsy » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:42 PM UTC

teach wrote: post #24

Healthy quantities of vacation time is one of the reasons I'm still in public education after 15 years. Teaching in a public school isn't the easiest job in the world (nor the hardest, probably), and not everyone has the personality for it, but I really believe that having a lot of time off contributes to my mental / emotional / physical health and helps me to be an excellent teacher when I am working. In my district…

I am a designer, engineer and entrepreneur, but I have also taught high school in the past.

As an engineer, I would not consider working for a place that had a problem with less than 4 weeks vacation. It is absolutely necessary to have that as a minimum to recharge and do a great job. If I'm not allowed to do what I need to to do a great job, I don't want the job, I tell people to give it to some lackey instead and just be comfortable with their full on corporate BS environment.

I think that the extremely lengthy vacations should be taken into consideration when discussing teacher pay issues. It's relevant since a lot of teachers take part time jobs in the summer, something 12 and 11 month workers can't do. Some even write books and generate additional income that way, and recognized copyright case law in the US has the cool exception that books written by full time academics are not work for hire by their bosses. That's not the case for those of us in engineering where companies try to grab all they can.

Teaching high school in the US is extremely emotionally exhausting. You're expected to be a social worker and you deal with people with problems, yet you have little training and no support or back up or authority for dealing with this. When I was a teacher, if I did not have the entire summer off, I would have gotten a gun and come in and shot the entire administration. Not because I am crazy, I've had a psych eval for security clearance and am completely stable. It's just how close to breaking being a teacher in the US will drive you. The system is incredibly dysfunctional. Work stress is comparable to being a soldier on the front line. Most teachers are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. I am not surprised when I hear of so many female teachers having sex with their students - that is not because they are pedos, it is a stress response from having a total emotional breakdown from working in a horrific system.

If the 3 months of vacation time was removed from US schools, we would see a wave of teacher led psychotic breakdowns, suicides and massacres that would be so legendary they would be spoken of 1000 years from now.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#78

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:55 PM UTC

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #28

qbleep wrote: post #16

I would much prefer a generous but explicit vacation allowance. I feel that with the "take some!" vacation policy social pressure would prevent some from taking as much as they really want to. It's going to boil down to everyone implicitly deciding what's a fair amount and that will become the unwritten rule. I'd rather everyone just decide what's a fair amount and write it down. That being said, a fair amount is def…

It's one of the things that's always stunned me about the US - the 10 days vacation a year being a relatively common thing. European law states a minimum of 20 days (which can include public holidays though often / usually won't). In the UK where I work 20 - 25 days plus 8 or 9 days public holiday is the norm, and 28 - 30 days plus public holidays not unheard of. I seriously don't understand how people don't just go…

[deleted]

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#79

Post by bugsy » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 6:59 PM UTC

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #28

qbleep wrote: post #16

I would much prefer a generous but explicit vacation allowance. I feel that with the "take some!" vacation policy social pressure would prevent some from taking as much as they really want to. It's going to boil down to everyone implicitly deciding what's a fair amount and that will become the unwritten rule. I'd rather everyone just decide what's a fair amount and write it down. That being said, a fair amount is def…

It's one of the things that's always stunned me about the US - the 10 days vacation a year being a relatively common thing. European law states a minimum of 20 days (which can include public holidays though often / usually won't). In the UK where I work 20 - 25 days plus 8 or 9 days public holiday is the norm, and 28 - 30 days plus public holidays not unheard of. I seriously don't understand how people don't just go…

For those that work, they do go mad. Haven't you noticed that Americans are obese drug addicts with little knowledge of world culture, don't speak any other languages at all, and love to declare war or otherwise bully anyone they can while shouting rah rah patriot freedom? That is part of what happens from never being able to take a month of vacation, which means no long trips to europe or south america or africa or anywhere really other than across the state line to the indian casino for a few days of gambling and buffet eats.

All right, perhaps not every one would go mad. There's quite a few jobs especially in bureaucracies like government and banks where work is a social club where they chat and drink coffee all day. These people probably don't need a vacation, but they are the ones where there is no problem for them to take it since they weren't contributing much in the first place.

It's the productive people that get backtalk from managements about vacation: "You can't go, we are in a crunch."; "This is a crisis, where is the team spirit."; "I can't believe you are considering taking 5 days off this year when things are the way they have been lately."

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#80

Post by rimantas » Fri, Sep 09, 2011, 7:02 PM UTC

PonyGumbo wrote: post #36

rimantas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country you normally get 28 days of vacations of which at least two weeks must be consecutive — that's by law.

Where are you? I want to go to there.

Go to Sweden instead ;). IIRC they get 5 weeks.