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I guess 10 days = 2 weeks, which is 'standard' for a new employee at lovely traditional american companies. If you want more vacation, maybe you should have thought of that 10 years ago and gotten some tenure.
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May 18, 2017 14:49
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taqueso posted:I guess 10 days = 2 weeks, which is 'standard' for a new employee at lovely traditional american companies. If you want more vacation, maybe you should have thought of that 10 years ago and gotten some tenure. I have 22 days now, pto + sick + personal holiday. They also had a cool thing where a $100 charity donation bought me 2 vacation day and 4 "work a 6 hour day " coupons, hoping they do that again this year. I'm bored with the work, but I cant see myself leaving that for 10 days.
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May 18, 2017 14:58
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Doghouse posted:Bleh. Just got benefits info from a company I applied to and was very interested in. 10 days pto total, doesn't go up much. That's less than half of what I have now and it's just not enough for someone with a family. I would tell them to get bent if they won't bend on that (and make sure they know that's the reason I'm turning them down). Even for America, that's ridiculous.
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May 18, 2017 15:12
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feedmegin posted:I would tell them to get bent if they won't bend on that (and make sure they know that's the reason I'm turning them down). Even for America, that's ridiculous. The official policy of the place I just started at is one week of vacation after a year of employment and you can go negative by 20 whole hours during that first year. The manager who interviewed me bragged (truthfully!) about not giving a poo poo as long as we get our work done, so I don't care unless/until he goes away, but that's the worst policy I've ever heard of.
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May 18, 2017 15:27
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IIRC, I get 20 days, sick days don't count, and can go negative 10 days if I ask.
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May 18, 2017 16:15
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While it does sound like a big step down in terms of your PTO... if you don't like what you are doing, that's far worse. If this new place has something interesting to do, that's a big plus.
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May 18, 2017 17:37
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Skandranon posted:While it does sound like a big step down in terms of your PTO... if you don't like what you are doing, that's far worse. If this new place has something interesting to do, that's a big plus. New places are always a gamble. Work may sound interesting but not actually be interesting due to a bad culture/development process/manager/etc. And I'd personally consider that PTO policy to be a huge red flag culture-wise. Even if you can negotiate for better, the fact that they're trying to minimize the PTO their employees get is a problem; it means that your coworkers (who may not have been able to negotiate for better PTO) will be more stressed and tired.
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May 18, 2017 17:45
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All valid points. Probably should not take job at 10 day PTO place, but Doghouse should definitely keep looking if he is feeling trapped by benefits. Letting compensation trap you into doing work you hate is truly soul destroying.
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May 18, 2017 17:52
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:IIRC, I get 20 days, sick days don't count, and can go negative 10 days if I ask. I have 20 days vacation + 10 sick days. I use sick days as "mental health days" probably once a month. I would love at least 5 more vacation days a year and might negotiate for that depending what raise I get this year (last year we didn't get one due to a couple of bad quarters :/ )
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May 18, 2017 20:16
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Another EU data point: 25 days PTO plus sick leave standard. I asked for and received another 5 days in my "reassessment" last year so now I have six weeks.
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May 18, 2017 21:43
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Destroyenator posted:Another EU data point: 25 days PTO plus sick leave standard. I asked for and received another 5 days in my "reassessment" last year so now I have six weeks. I figure this is the kind of thing that happens when your citizens can just up and move to the next-door country if they don't like how things are going. I mean, every election year we get a ton of "I'm gonna move to Canada!" people but few actually want to live in the land of snow and moose.
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May 18, 2017 21:57
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Wait a minute we're more than snow and mooses. We also have Tim Hortons. And we're polite heh.
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May 18, 2017 23:06
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AskYourself posted:Wait a minute we're more than snow and mooses. We also have Tim Hortons. That's the other thing -- I don't think your average American could handle the peer pressure of being surrounded by genuinely nice people. Apologies for forgetting about the other third of your terrain though.
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May 18, 2017 23:11
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Pollyanna posted:Why are companies so reluctant to give out PTO?  is why, basically. If you're being paid for a day but not being at work you aren't making them any money. So you're costing them! That's the most grievous crime a person can make; costing the company money (exception: CEOs can do whatever the gently caress they want, they've earned it!).Same reason why there are companies that will fire you if you take a nap on break. It doesn't matter that it's literally been proven that a 15-20 minute nap does wonders for a person's productivity. You're sleeping at work and only lazy people do that. The American corporate view is that the way to get the maximum value out of people is to be stingy with PTO unless you have to give it out to attract good people (exception: the CEO only takes working vacations unlike you ungrateful scrubs so he gets to fly to Tokyo for 5 days a month if he feels like it), wring 50+ hours a week out of salaried employees, and fire/punish them for even the slightest productivity problem. It turns out however that that's a drat fine way to burn your employees out and make them hate their lives. Turns out that underpaid, overworked people who get too little time off and never see their families aren't happy and productive.
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May 19, 2017 00:13
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I figure this is the kind of thing that happens when your citizens can just up and move to the next-door country if they don't like how things are going. If it had to do with open borders then I would expect the US to be leading as mobility is far higher between states and there is a shared language. I'm pretty certain it's based on the culture and the US is hobbled by its puritanical view of work.
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May 19, 2017 00:28
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ToxicSlurpee posted:If you're being paid for a day but not being at work you aren't making them any money. So you're costing them! "useless eaters"
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May 19, 2017 00:44
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asur posted:If it had to do with open borders then I would expect the US to be leading as mobility is far higher between states and there is a shared language. I'm pretty certain it's based on the culture and the US is hobbled by its puritanical view of work. Oh sure, our culture is terrible. I was more trying to say that in Europe you can't get away with a terrible culture because there are non-terrible cultures adjacent to you. If all of Europe was as culturally homogeneous as the US is (not that we're completely homogeneous, but we're moreso than Europe is) then that argument wouldn't hold water.
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May 19, 2017 01:29
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I work in AMERICA and I have 25 days of PTO.
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May 19, 2017 03:45
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Steve French posted:I work in AMERICA and I have 25 days of PTO. Yep, a lot of people like to poo poo on 'American Companies' and their horrible culture when that's usually code for poo poo hole places in fly over country. 25 days PTO, 10 holidays, and week between Christmas and new years. I'll put that up against pretty much any EU work place.
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May 19, 2017 03:53
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Hughlander posted:Yep, a lot of people like to poo poo on 'American Companies' and their horrible culture when that's usually code for poo poo hole places in fly over country. 25 days PTO, 10 holidays, and week between Christmas and new years. I'll put that up against pretty much any EU work place. At times I don't mind working the week between Christmas and NYE. Hardly anyone else in the office and we usually stop at noon and drink the christmas ale in the keg.
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May 19, 2017 03:56
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geeves posted:At times I don't mind working the week between Christmas and NYE. Hardly anyone else in the office and we usually stop at noon and drink the christmas ale in the keg. From a selfish standpoint, it's a great opportunity for me to work on the poo poo I want to work on without interruption. Most normal weeks I spend so much of my time helping others, which is great and quite productive, but the change of pace is refreshing.
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May 19, 2017 04:10
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I'd prefer to work that week and take some other week but it generally doesn't work that way.
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May 19, 2017 04:13
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geeves posted:At times I don't mind working the week between Christmas and NYE. Hardly anyone else in the office and we usually stop at noon and drink the christmas ale in the keg. Reminds me of someone I used to work with who would schedule his christmas break to come in on the eves since no one would be there and he'd be told to go home early anyway.
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May 19, 2017 04:55
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Hughlander posted:Reminds me of someone I used to work with who would schedule his christmas break to come in on the eves since no one would be there and he'd be told to go home early anyway. It's a good trick for any office worker. Don't waste a vacation day on the day before a holiday, it's always a halfsie. (ymmv)
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May 19, 2017 06:09
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Having PTO is one thing, but actually being able to use that PTO is another. I currently get 15 days of PTO with something like another 11 days off here and there for holidays and stuff. The problem that I run into is that I'm often not allowed to take my PTO when I want because there always seems to be a customer/company meeting or some deadline. Time when I'd like to take PTO (like around Christmas and New Years) is off the table because that is "proposal season" where everyone is working long hours to get funding proposals out for the next calendar year. It's not unusual for my co-workers to send out a mail around right now (early summer) saying "I'm going back to China for three weeks, so I'll see you all next month." That's fine if you don't have kids, but if your kids are in school you can't always take a week of PTO when it is convenient for the company (around now, when the kids are still in school). Since I will be leaving for a new job, I hope that this is a moot point. I do have PTO scheduled during my notice period prior to my departure, but I also gave two months notice and am only taking 5 days of PTO during that time. Just yesterday, I was asked on a conference call to cancel my PTO to spend several full days during that time training a group of engineers to be my replacement. I just simply said "no" and reminded them that, despite my urging, four of my eight weeks of notice had already elapsed before anyone thought to get some replacement training scheduled. The reason for this delay is that (surprise, surprise) a director and a few engineers are off taking 3-4 weeks of PTO time and are out of the country in China.  They are clearly pretty upset with me over the pushback on not cancelling my PTO . Now, I have to spend the weekend putting together a training course for a two-day crunch on secure microkernel design, as they are now pushing the training up to next week. I doubt the engineers that I am training will retain much past the first hour or two of each day of training, since this is pretty heavy-duty stuff and they are a bit on the green side. When June 16th rolls around, it won't matter much anyway as I will be moving on to another, much better job. 
hendersa fucked around with this message at 13:55 on May 19, 2017 |
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May 19, 2017 13:25
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hendersa posted:Having PTO is one thing, but actually being able to use that PTO is another. I currently get 15 days of PTO with something like another 11 days off here and there for holidays and stuff. The problem that I run into is that I'm often not allowed to take my PTO when I want because there always seems to be a customer/company meeting or some deadline. This factor is probably more important than the raw number of days of PTO. The recent statistics have 'muricans taking 16 PTO days, leaving 5-6 on the table. I prefer companies that don't allow you to roll-over days, because then there's no excuse for everyone to not take all of them. It's like another badge of corporate serfdom: "I have 8 weeks of banked vacation"  (that I'll never use because I'm a huge pussy)
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May 19, 2017 14:25
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hendersa posted:They are clearly pretty upset with me over the pushback on not cancelling my PTO . Now, I have to spend the weekend putting together a training course for a two-day crunch on secure microkernel design, as they are now pushing the training up to next week Or else what? Why would you burn a weekend on a place you're quitting? I mean, if you love running training courses and making teaching materials is your idea of a day off then cool. Or if they're paying you some bonus to do extra work, that seems fair. I can't think of any other reason to work the weekend, though.
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May 19, 2017 14:27
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Vacations are typically planned months in advance. If your team can't adjust to you being gone for a week with months of lead time then there is something seriously wrong with your team. If I was forced to cancel a vacation that I had been planning for months I would send my resume to everyone on the planet the same day.
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May 19, 2017 14:32
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Mniot posted:Or else what? Two reasons: not burning bridges at the place I've worked at for the past five years and for the sake of the engineers being thrown to the wolves in my place. I have been documenting my engineering work for continuity purposes these past few weeks, so I'm turning my notebook scribbles and random notes into complete sentences and grouping them logically to hand them off. I'm not making a formal course with slides or anything like that. It's more like "here's everything I have, now lets walk through it and talk about what you don't understand" for two days. It's stuff I'd have to do anyway, but I'd rather get it done this weekend so that I can hand it off and never worry about it again with a guilt-free conscience. Then, I can concentrate on wrapping up project management loose ends during my last two weeks when I come back from PTO.
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May 19, 2017 14:43
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Hughlander posted:Yep, a lot of people like to poo poo on 'American Companies' and their horrible culture when that's usually code for poo poo hole places in fly over country. 25 days PTO, 10 holidays, and week between Christmas and new years. I'll put that up against pretty much any EU work place. Lol if you think lovely companies don't exist on the coast. Also, American corporate and work culture in general is pretty horrible for almost all non-professional employees and even a lot of professional ones.
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May 19, 2017 14:57
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mrmcd posted:Lol if you think lovely companies don't exist on the coast. Also, American corporate and work culture in general is pretty horrible for almost all non-professional employees and even a lot of professional ones. They may exist, it's just that no one with half a brain cell will work for one when literally every week 1-2 recruiters are knocking for companies that aren't lovely.
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May 19, 2017 15:35
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Hughlander posted:They may exist, it's just that no one with half a brain cell will work for one when literally every week 1-2 recruiters are knocking for companies that aren't lovely. The only reason any company is ever hiring is because it's growing steadily (rare) or because it's lovely and people are quitting (very common)
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May 19, 2017 15:49
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rt4 posted:The only reason any company is ever hiring is because it's growing steadily (rare) or because it's lovely and people are quitting (very common) This is total bullshit in several ways: - it is not actually rare for a company to be growing steadily; at least, not rare enough that it's hard to find one to work for. - even if it were, a company doesn't have to be growing steadily to be hiring, it can just be growing right now (literally by definition, if by "growing" we mean in number of employees) - people leave jobs for many reasons other than their employer is lovely, so even if a company isn't growing they might be making a backfill hire to replace someone that left for reasons not related to how lovely the employer is.
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May 19, 2017 17:35
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B-Nasty posted:This factor is probably more important than the raw number of days of PTO. The recent statistics have 'muricans taking 16 PTO days, leaving 5-6 on the table. The absolute worst are the companies that promise unlimited paid time off. Unlimited vacation! Unlimited sick days! Unlimited half days! I haven't seen that advertised much in a while as it turned out that companies that did that had a real tendency to heap so much work on you that you never, ever had the opportunity to actually use your supposedly unlimited PTO. Steve French posted:This is total bullshit in several ways: In programming land there's pretty much always a shortage of good developers and every company ever that hires more than four of them is probably constantly hiring. It seems like every company in existence ever is always trying to hire senior dev talent. Once you have a few years of experience and proven ability you can have a new job tomorrow if you need one. Meanwhile everybody is trying to poach everybody else's top dev talent.
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May 19, 2017 23:06
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The absolute worst are the companies that promise unlimited paid time off. Unlimited vacation! Unlimited sick days! Unlimited half days! I haven't seen that advertised much in a while as it turned out that companies that did that had a real tendency to heap so much work on you that you never, ever had the opportunity to actually use your supposedly unlimited PTO.
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May 19, 2017 23:34
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I've seen it done well and I've seen it done poorly but I think poorly tends to win out. In my recent job search I interviewed at a company where the HR representative told me "We have no PTO policy, which some people call 'unlimited PTO!' We do track to make sure people don't take too much." The same interview featured an engineer telling me about how he gets back on his work laptop at night and works in bed, and sometimes he even gets work done on the weekends!
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May 20, 2017 00:34
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The absolute worst are the companies that promise unlimited paid time off. Unlimited vacation! Unlimited sick days! Unlimited half days! I haven't seen that advertised much in a while as it turned out that companies that did that had a real tendency to heap so much work on you that you never, ever had the opportunity to actually use your supposedly unlimited PTO. I always feel the need to chime in when I see this because I guess I work for the exception that proves the rule. We have unlimited PTO here and they actually mean it. Every quarter you have to fill out an availability sheet and if you don't mark down PTO your manager asks you wtf is going on.
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May 20, 2017 00:38
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Rex-Goliath posted:I always feel the need to chime in when I see this because I guess I work for the exception that proves the rule. We have unlimited PTO here and they actually mean it. Every quarter you have to fill out an availability sheet and if you don't mark down PTO your manager asks you wtf is going on. It's certainly doable but from what I've gathered a company actually doing it is the exception rather than the rule. If you found a place that actually does it properly than good for you. Seriously.
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May 20, 2017 00:44
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I've seen at least one company with a minimum vacation policy, but that seems to be pretty rare.
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May 20, 2017 00:56
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csammis posted:I've seen it done well and I've seen it done poorly but I think poorly tends to win out. In my recent job search I interviewed at a company where the HR representative told me "We have no PTO policy, which some people call 'unlimited PTO!' We do track to make sure people don't take too much." The same interview featured an engineer telling me about how he gets back on his work laptop at night and works in bed, and sometimes he even gets work done on the weekends! It is ALWAYS best to ask a question or two about this at some point in the interview process. The last place I interviewed with an unlimited vacation policy basically divulged with nothing but a cursory question about the policy that most developers take "working vacations" and no one ever really took more than a long weekend. I think they ended up closing the listing despite being down two developers due to budgetary issues. Fun!
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