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Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

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Re: Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

#21

Post by rapht »

From France :

We get 25 days by law, that's for employees who do the 35-hour workweek. Then people who do more than 35 hours (that is, people who don't follow the fixed 35-hour model) get more days depending on the sector / company.

I get a total of 38 days per year, so that's about 7 and a half weeks. (Yes that's a lot but has to be compared to my average 55-hour workweek.) I work at a large retail corporation.

I take 2 long breaks every year, 2 to 3 weeks each : - one in March/April where I like to travel far from the French winter, preferably in a sunny and warm tropical country - one in August/September, the destination depending on opportunities and remaining budget after the March break ;)

During these breaks, I do a lot of sightseeing (both scenic and cultural spots), days are generally busy but relaxed at the same time - what you don't see this time, you'll see next time. And I sleep a lot, too.

Other than these long breaks, I take a few days off around Christmas/New Year, and I use the remainder for some Mondays/Fridays off. That's when I visit family or just do the things I don't have time to do on regular week-ends.

(Edited for spelling)

Re: Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

#22

Post by tiquorsj »

ollysb wrote: post #6
pmcpinto wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 4 week of uninterrupted vacation is mandatory or a person can take that days in different periods?

In the UK the legal minimum is 28 days. In theory you can take the days however you want. In practice though you usually have to negotiate when to take them with your boss. They have to allow you to take them all off at some point in the year though so they're usually pretty accommodating. I've always been surprised at how little people get in the US. Given that it's a wealthy nation it seems to lag considerably behi…

People working hourly jobs don't get much guatanteed vacation and we have lots of them. Just about any full-time professional setting will have much more. Somewhere around 20 days when you factor in vacation and holidays and most give more days after a few years of service. The end result is that the older working population has many more days it just isn't mandated by the government. In regards to wealthy nation vacation times: It is possible that prosperity is not derived from vacation.

Re: Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

#23

Post by aragot »

French here. When employee in France, the law says 25 days/yr and you can add 11 RTT (please don't look that up in wikipedia). People don't tend to use them all. I would generally take 1-2 weeks for Christmas, and 2-weeks trips along the year to Europe or to the mountains/sea sports.

In Australia, it's only 4 weeks off, plus you kind of have to take 2 weeks to visit your family back in Europe for Christmas, so in the end I couldn't visit Australia while I was working there (reason #6 why I left). Fortunately I had taken a gap year to go farming around the continent, and i'll probably keep the idea of a 6-month break every 3 years.

I find that short holidays = unhappy employees, pressure to prevent them from taking unpaid leave, and that ends up in the sick leave being high. It's unfortunate.

Re: Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

#24

Post by arethuza »

As a family we seem to be follow the predictable UK middle class pattern of a week skiing in February and a couple of weeks in the sun in Greece/Turkey at beach club where I enjoy capsizing high performance dinghies.

Used to go in for rather more varied adventures before we had a kid. However, he is mid teens so we are starting to look at getting back to more varied stuff rather than focusing on holidays with great child care/entertainment.

I work for a UK based multinational - 33 days paid leave.

Re: Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

#26

Post by Riyadh »

Germany, Freelance Java/JEE Developer

Here for permanent positions you get 24+ days off but as a freelancer I obviously don't get any vacation unless I take a few days off myself.

- Usually every 1.5 years ~10-14 days: traveling in Europe - Every 3-4 years ~20 days: traveling outside of Europe - In addition to that I take a Friday off every ~2 months for a long weekend with the family, visiting places in Germany

I do my side projects at night and on the weekends, if the family allows me to. I outsource A LOT, so I think I actually get a decent amount of work done.

In Germany we have lots of official holidays so we get an extra day off here and there. The official "calculation" is ~220 working days per year (for permanent positions).

Re: Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

#27

Post by rapht »

pathy wrote: post #2

A Swedish perspective: By law you are granted 25 days vacation per year, assuming you have worked enough to "earn them", generally you get 12.5-13.x% extra salary per day worked that goes towards your vacation. The law also says that you have a right to 4 weeks uninterrupted vacation during the June, July and August. At least two months before the (requested) vacation you must get a definitive decision. The employers…

> "I believe I saw a study that recommended shorter, more frequent, vacations as the best way to recover from mental fatigue but I assume that there is a lot of opposing opinions on that matter."

As for myself, I find that I don't manage to totally disconnect from all things work until nearly a week of vacation, so even 9 full days (which is what you get when you take an entire week off) is kind of "not enough" because you only really enjoy that for 2 or 3 days.

Re: Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

#28

Post by jxf »

US here. I prefer to take frequent, short breaks (3-day, 4-day weekends) for occasional battery-recharging, with periodic longer vacations (9-day excursions somewhere), especially to go somewhere I've never been.

I try not to work on side projects during vacations. It's mostly about travel or doing something I haven't done before.

Vacations are a strict "no Internet" policy for me, to the extent that I can manage that. I usually cave and will leave notifications on my phone on, so I'm not as pure about it as I'd like to be.

Re: Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

#30

Post by michalstanko »

I'm from Slovakia, a little country in the Central Europe.

Regular employees here are entitled to 20 days of vacation, or 25 for those who are 33 or older. In addition to that, there are 15 days of public holidays (that includes New Year's Day, 2 days Easter, 3 days of Christmas, plus other holidays such as Constitution Day, and so on). You have to negotiate with the employer when do you take your holidays, and employer has the right to specifically tell you when to take half of those days.

As for me, I am a freelancer, and I like to travel a lot around Europe. Usually for 1 - 2 weeks, with first week off and the second week I work at the location and let my wife and little boy enjoy the warm weather for a bit longer. In the recent years we never took holidays during July/August, because we like to travel a bit more off-season, when the sun is still (or already) warm enough to still have a great time.

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