Also, how long do you take a holiday/vacation for?
USA, tech start-up. “unlimited PTO” and probably about a month’s worth per year. Also full WFH but that’s because of a medical exemption.
While I’m at my desk, I work extremely hard but don’t usually work more than 35ish hours per week as I my brain can’t sustain much more.
No, I don’t have PTO. Guess.
Spain:
12 national holidays.
29 vacation days.
4 sick days without a doctor signed medical leave. As many as I need with a medical leave.
Switzerland, 35 days of vacation but that is just the company I work for, usually it is 20-25 days. Also an additional 7 days of national and communal holidays.
I usually go on short vacations, 3-7 days.
Also Switzerland here, adding some more info:
The minimum by law is 20 days in general, 25 days for people under 20 years of age. But getting 25 days independent of age is pretty standard at least for office jobs. At my workplace I get 25, people over 50 years of age get 5 days extra.
Also by law two weeks of vacation are to be taken en bloc., so technically that’s not allowed hubobes ;-) but I have not yet heard of any enforcement of this for smaller places. I have a friend who works for a bank, they are apparently very strict in forcing their employees to take two weeks en bloc each year.
Some collective employment agreements for industrial sectors mandate 25 days and mandate an increase for people over 50, but I don’t know for which sectors.
Ah and as for sick days, by law 3 weeks in your first year, and longer later. There are a few scales for the exact increase over time, but just as an example the one from Basel is 2 months starting in your second year, 3 months starting year 4, 4 months starting year 11.
Unless your contract has an insurance for sickness, which work a little differently, there it’s like 80% of your salary for 720 days within 900 days. With various little details, like nothing for the first 3 days, or burden of proof from day x, or sometimes 100% instead of 80%. Depends on the insurance, but it has to be good enough to be considered equal to the above mentioned minima by law.
U.S. (California)
- unlimited vacation time (my boss very much lets me use it too)
- 40 “sick” hours a year
- “ bereavement leave “ (death in family)
- 12 holidays
I will admit I am lucky for being in the US. It most likely helps that I work for one of those evil Silicon Valley tech companies.
Canada. 20 days PTO, 5 PEL, 11 holidays
UK, 25 days as standard (not including paid bank holidays) plus my employer has the option to buy/sell up to 5 days so I usually buy 5 extra. Also, if you have left over holiday days, you can carry over 5 to the next financial year.
Additionally, the standard legal of 9 months maternity leave.
Also, unlimited paid sick days providing you don’t take the piss; longer than 3 days you should ask for a note from the GP. Longer than 2 weeks you should arrange a meeting to discuss the situation and what (if any) adjustments can be made.
I will also point out that mental conditions must be treated the same as physical conditions so if you need to take a mental health day then you can.
Also my job is very flexible about working arrangements.
The standard is hybrid working, 2 out of 5 days in the office. But depending on what your job is you could be fully WFH or full-time in the office.
If you feel you can only work part-time and your manager agrees then you can.
And the contracted hours are 37.5 per week and flexible start so you must be available between the core hours of 10am to 12pm and from 2pm to 4pm, and as it’s the UK Fridays you can finish at 12. Providing you’ve logged enough hours for the week, if you want to finish early you can or take a longer lunch break to run an errand.
Oh and the cherry on top is the company tries to match annual pay rises with inflation and give a very good reason if they can’t fully match it. That’s not very common in the UK and one of the main reasons, aside from the fact that it’s a nice place to work, why I’ve stayed with them because I don’t feel pressured to move jobs to stop my pay getting eroded by inflation.
Sounds really good!
Midwest US at a large nonprofit with ~10% union workers, ~7 hours PTO accrued per 2 week pay period adds up to just over 184 hours or 23 days, and another 14 holidays. PTO accrued was tiny until 5 years seniority, currently at 13 years and I think it caps at 8@20.
I usually take off as much as I can, about a month per year spread out by 1-2 week stretches for a vacation or just to take care of personal work or projects, moves, family stuff, etc.
Germany 30 days
Plus basically unlimited sick days
Somewhat true. After six weeks you will get paid by the health insurance (around 70% of your paycheck).
US - unlimited
but is it really unlimited? At my last job, it was “unlimited with manager’s approval”, which basically means as long as the manager approves you’re good to go, no hard limits, but in practice managers wouldn’t approve more than 2-4 weeks (10-20 work days) a year, usually.
There are some things that influence the actual time off:
- I am bonused on my hours billed, so if I’m off more that 6 weeks in a 6 month period, I won’t get my bonus.
- I work from home, so I don’t take as many days off for being sick because I’m not worried about spreading germs.
- I don’t like to make out of office plans, so I take PTO between contracts. If I have a lot of work going on, I take less time off.
Unlimited paid time off? That means you are unemployed and rich?
No, my work just doesn’t like to track PTO.
That’s kind of mysterious, can you elaborate? Are you self-employed or a CEO or something like that?
I am an owner in the business and we have decided that we want to pay for outcomes instead of butts in chairs. I don’t care if everyone leaves at noon if the work is done. And I certainly don’t want to track it.
Interesting, thanks for your frankness!
USA, CA, civil service, IBEW. I’m between 5 and 15 years (different PTO for different service lengths).
15 days vacation, all federal plus 5 floating holidays, and 10 sick days.
It’s 10 days vacation between 1 and 5 years, and 20 after 15.
USA, WA, IBEW. Less than 5 years, but ours doesn’t change until 10 years(? I think I need to look this up).
20 days PTO accrual in a year, 2 personal holidays. No sick days.
I believe ours goes up to 28 days/year once at 20years with the company? It takes a lot for us
fuck man that is EMBARRASSING for a union of any sort.
It’s city work.
what does that mean?
literally this week I overheard 2 ladies talking on the bus about getting in with City of Toronto as cleaners, which would be an upgrade. They were both public school cleaners. Talking about how they spend their existing 6 weeks of vacation. One at a school hosting summer school and camps so the work never stops; the other at a school where they are made to take the whole summer off by default.
One mentioned being a 20+ year, the other was a fairly recent hire from the sounds of it. The lifer was committed to the school board, but the junior was obviously really interested in getting in with the City if she could swing it. Because you get MORE with the city. But their hiring process is insane.
CUPE local 79 FTW apparently kicking IBEW ass.
IBEW you gotta change your name. get with the times.
That means there are 20,000 workers from various crafts who all share the same vacation policy. It’s not the type of thing that comes up in department-level union negotiations.
IBEW bud from the other corner of the country! To be fair, I’m not at 5 years yet, but I get 4 float days, 10 vacation, 7 sick days, unsure what it’s like for normal hourly workers but as a shift worker I work any holidays on my schedule. It’s hilariously bad, I only semi-joke when I say I’d like to go on strike from my own union to make it actually work for me.
Oh, and despite working well over 400 hours of overtime, none of that translates into extra vacation time. Yet corporate is flabbergasted at poor retention rates.
US - 0
None at all, no sick, no holiday, no federal holiday, absolutely no PTO. If I don’t go in I simply don’t get paid.
Same and same.
Brazil.
30 days + a lot of holidays.
At least 2 years for sickness if I’m not mistaken.I might be wrong, you probably only get 20 in the way leave days are counted outside of Brazil. In most other countries days off don’t count weekends, so a month of holidays is 20 days off.
Every single company I worked in Brazil gave a one month holiday that you could split at most in two, i.e. the minimum holiday you could take was 2 weeks. Whereas here in Europe every company I worked for gave me some number of days that you can take like you want, e.g. there’s a public holiday on Friday? Take the next Monday for very an extended weekend, or use 4 days to have a 9 day holiday.
It’s 30 days, but weekends count. Recently the law was amended to disallow scheduling vacations to start on a Friday because of that. It can be taken in full, or 15+15, or 10+20, or 10+10+10.
You’re missing my point, when people in Europe say they get 30 days they mean 30 “actual days where they were supposed to be working” off, not counting weekends. So a month is only really 20 days. That was one thing that caught me by surprise when I moved here, and it makes a difference when comparing across different countries, because they can’t tell you how many days off using your numbering because it depends on when they take their days off, e.g. there’s a public holiday on Monday, so you take Tuesday -Friday off (which only uses 4 days) but you have 9 consecutive days off (from Saturday to the Sunday after the first one). But it’s easy to convert your 30 days into working days, you essentially divide by 7/5, and you get that you only have approximately 21 days (where you should be working) off a year.
UK, 25 days annual leave which is the standard minimum plus bank holidays
a few years ago, my friend got a remote IT job in the UK (from canada) and the VERY FIRST THING they started with upon hiring was planning the time off in relation to other people. it was so shocking to us, neither of us nor any of our friends had ever heard of this before. Here, people have so little time off that the employer can just coast on everyone working a little harder while their colleague is away a little bit here n there. But when you have people with 6-12 weeks off every year you do start to need to coordinate.
Standard question for any job I’ve had, it’s a position of strength for the new employee as they have to honour them as the dates were confirmed before they joined. If you wait till you are in the door you may not get them as others might already have them booked.
I work for a US company but my contract is governed by Canadian and Ontario labour laws. The company offers unlimited time off but that’s illegal in Canada so we have unlimited time off minimum four weeks. We take as much time off as we want as long as our job gets done.
