Why is America the 'no-vacation nation'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/05/23/vacation.in.america/index.html <comment><USER3> There is a good article from another software developer around here who told his boss he was taking a 3 month vacation. He made the point the business needed him more than he needed it; he was a competent developer and could easily get work, didn't have any living/large financial dependencies. At first I thought it was absurd, but the more I thought about it, he was absolutely correct.

Take a long vacation some time. Even if you do have a family, save up enough money and go travel for a while. Take some decent time off work (4+ weeks). Let them fire you if they want. That's (one of my) my goal(s) over the next 2 years: take an extended vacation (I haven't taken more than a week off since I graduated college).

<comment><USER4> Here it is, and it's awesome:

[http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks- vaca...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks-vacation-is- only.html)

<comment><USER5> you can do that only if you are a senior dev.. what do junior devs, recent college grads do?

<comment><USER6> Live on less than half of your net(take-home) pay and save the rest. Now for every month that you work, you are also saving a month's worth of living expenses. After two years of this you have two years of fuck you money. Two years is enough time to learn python or something else significant.

Your savings can last even longer if you get a $10/hr job such as waiting tables part-time.

Work daily on developing marketable skills. Work daily on communicating how your work impacts the business you're in. Imagine your boss asks you tomorrow, "Why shouldn't I fire you right now?". What would you say?

Always have a resume prepared.

Once you have done this you can go up to your boss and tell her you are taking two months off and you won't care what she says in reply.

<comment><USER7> Recent grads are only making ~40k, some times less, some times considerably less (people have posted Ask HNs about this topic before). As someone who used to be in that camp, living off half your net at that salary range is not realistic; living on 75% is barely so, if you're eating bologna sandwiches every night.

Having a second job is a great idea, it's just too bad you can't get a good consulting job when you're a junior dev. Once you have a couple of years of experience you can start to get consulting work and from there you are pretty much set financially. The first couple of years are tough though. Vacations aren't realistic unless you have family that helps you out.

<comment><USER8> Most undergrads are only making ~$0/year, and seem to get by just fine. Adding an extra $40k into the mix would only seem to help.

I made $37k at my first job, and managed to put $10k of that into the market for the first four years. So yes, it's possible.

Everything the grandparent says is good advice (apart from the waiting tables thing. Freelancing pays 10-30x as much.) Live cheap when you're young, bank away as much as possible, spend your 30s living on a beach. It's very doable if that's what you want.

<comment><USER6> I just mentioned waiting tables because it was a job almost anyone could do and that pays decently. It's something you could find quickly to stretch savings between jobs. I don't have any experience with freelancing but that's probably a better idea.

<comment><USER9> The biggest advantage of waiting tables is that you can get a job, and eat _before_ you get your first paycheck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this old story is vey relevant here.

I have employees that take a lower salary than others, but have up to 7 weeks holiday a year. I'm happy with that. One employee that has 7 weeks holiday has only had 1 day sick in the 6 years I've employed him.

\-- Sharpen the Saw --

Once upon a time a very strong woodcutter ask for a job in a timber merchant, and he got it. The paid was really good and so were the work conditions. For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best. His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to work.

The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees "Congratulations," the boss said. "Go on that way!" Very motivated for the boss' words, the woodcutter try harder the next day, but he only could bring 15 trees. The third day he try even harder, but he only could bring 10 trees.

Day after day he was bringing less and less trees. "I must be losing my strength", the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on. "When was the last time you sharpened your axe?" the boss asked. "Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees..."

<comment><USER11> That kind of sounds like a metaphor for more training rather than vacation?

<comment><USER10> I understand it to mean you should take time out in order to improve the overall quality of your work.

Be that training, a vacation, or the literal "sharpening of the axe."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I complained to an employer that it was too hard to request my vacation time (it's in my contract, they made it very hard to pick dates by always having an emergency deadline, etc) they replied "It's like that everywhere", as if it was a legit answer.

Many employers also lump in sick time with vacation time, as if that's a replacement since you didn't come into work. That would probably be okay, if you had an option to take unpaid vacation time when the time comes. Instead, you're often forced to take a shorter vacation, which doesn't do the job.

And forcing you to work while on vacation is unforgiveable. It shows that the company doesn't understand why vacation time is necessary. (I haven't had anyone do this to me, thankfully. It wouldn't have gone well.)

If taking unpaid vacations was an option, I would probably end up taking about 4 weeks worth of vacations, instead of 2.

<comment><USER13> What really grinds my gears is when federal holidays count towards my "vacation time". Those alone eat up seven days!

I request four weeks of vacation in my contract, but am afraid to use them. That's America.

<comment><USER14> I started a new job last year with 10 days of vacation. It wasn't until December that I learned that five of those days were mandatory for the week between Christmas and New Year's. If you had no vacation days left, it was unpaid time off.

<comment><USER15> Since this is HN, there's a pretty good chance you're an Engineer of some kind. Where are you (or what do you do?) that companies can get away with this?

<comment><USER16> This is the norm in the UK, companies close over the holidays and there are mandatory holidays that go with that.

Being clear about this with new (and especially young) employees is a good idea as to people straight out of college, it's not obvious.

But there's certainly nothing dodgy about it.

<comment><USER17> Not at any UK company I've worked at (1 corporation, 1 retailer, 1 startup).

<comment><USER18> Every uk company I worked at was like this, from a major university, an us IT company, tons financial services company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This was one of the major draws for me for moving to Europe in my early 20s (from the US). After working one year in the US and having one week of vacation, it was bordering on surreal to have 6.

That said, most Americans wouldn't like the European pay scales. While a developer gets 3-6 times the vacation in Germany, they make half as much money.

For me it was a great trade; I still had a middle class income and spent my 20s bouncing around the world visiting more than 30 countries on 5 continents, with zero gaps in my employment.

Now that I'm an employer, I still see it as a great trade: employees are a lot cheaper here, and seem to be happier. But again, while most American software developers would love to have more vacation, I've heard them also repeat ludicrous things about how they can "barely survive on $60k/year".

<comment><USER20> Question to non-french here, does your advertised salary include the employer's tax ?

For exemple here in France, on the salary my employer pays, it's divided pretty much like this: 40% employer's taxes, 20% employee's taxes, 40% final amount of money you put in the bank when all is said and done.

BUT my negociated salary, the one I signed on, never included employer's taxes, so for a 100€ salary I never discussed 100€ or even thought of it at any point, my contract has always been about 60€ (and then I pay about 20€ in taxes).

For me what that really changes is that:

\- if employer's taxes increses, I have no idea about it, and my pay check doesn't change at all (neither if it decreases)

\- our perceived salary seems to be a lot lower than some other countries.

So what I'm asking is, when you guys speak about that kind of salary being way too low, is it a "complete" salary or is it after employer's taxes ? I live with less that those 60k$/42k€ and I can afford a nice middle class life in the middle of Paris plus vacations every year ...

PS: actually if you look at french job offers, you will see "brut" and/or "net" salaries, brut is pre employee's taxes, net is post.

<comment><USER21> In the US, yes. The various taxes that employers must pay are paid separately, not taken out of their salary. If someone is talking about $60k or whatever, their takehome is $60k-federal income tax - social security tax - medicare tax - state income tax (some states don't have this, but most do)- local income tax (rare). On top of that, you are also likely going to have deductions for health/dental/etc insurance, and then pre-tax payments to your retirement plan (401k).

Separately, the company must pay a few other taxes on that $60k (nowhere near 40%, though)

<comment><USER22> For FICA (SS/Medicare) the employer pays as much as the employee. The FICA rate is 15.3% of your base pay(there is an upper limit), you pay half and the employer pays half (except for 2011, stimulus package and all, the employee part of the SS part of FICA is reduced). Typically with most large employers the employer pays 70-80% of the medical insurance premiums, varies by company. Same for Dental, long term disability, etc. Typically the employers overall cost is 20-30% of your salary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> One result of this is that businesses chuck human redundancy out the window. Often there's only one person who can do a business critical task, and as they can't really be gone from work for that long, the business gets by.

From an business uptime perspective, forced "downtime" of employees through vacation is actually a good way to force the creation of backup systems for business process.

<comment><USER24> There are a lot of companies that do force people to take vacations for precisely this reason.

I also recall hearing at some point in time that a lot of financial institutions forced certain people to take time off,as a means to detect embezzling. I'm not sure if that's true or not.

<comment><USER25> Yes, that is true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It wasn't always like this in Europe. Extended vacation time was one of the many hard-fought rights won by the socialist/trade-unionist movements of the past century throughout the continent. Not even Thatcher dared attacking that right (she dropped a few national holidays here and there, instead).

Things didn't turn out quite the same on the other side of the pond, sadly, and this is the result.

<comment><USER27> That may be true but here, in Europe (esp. Eastern), many people go years without taking more than few days of vacation. One, you're discouraged to take time off -- you can lose your job if you're not "devoted". Two, you have to work over capacity to support yourself and your family.

<comment><USER28> Not strictly Eastern Europe (was never part of Warsaw pact, had hostile relations to Soviet Union) but the former Yugoslavian countries today are in this seat: Slovenia enjoys vacation time like during Yugoslavian times, which means 4-5 weeks at least plus holidays. Croatia took a more capitalist route and altough workers still enjoy socialist benefits such as 1 hour per day payed for their lunch, and holidays off, the vacation time has been decreased while working time increased (10-12 hours per day are common). Bosnia has large unemployment but the holidays+vacation are intact for the public offices, while for private employees get 1 or 2 weeks off per year. Serbia is in a similar position.

Yugoslavia Socialism -> 4-5 weeks at least, plus all religioous holidays and all communist free days. Capitalism -> 1-2 weeks maximum, religious on, communist off.

<comment><USER29> IIRC both Croatia and Slovenia provide 20 days minimum and the rest negotiated wuth employers. If in a union that mostly means 3 or 4 weeks.

In Croatia the country shuts down during the summer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Usually the only time Americans can take long vacations is between jobs. I wonder how many actually change jobs just for this reason.

I asked for 4 consecutive weeks off to travel Europe once at a previous employer (I had worked there 5 years with no more then a week and a half off) and they denied the request. So I found another job and made sure I had a 4 week break between the two.

<comment><USER31> I've done this, though I didn't realize what I was doing at the time.

I was working for Sun Microsystems, which gave me two weeks of vacation time. Sun was doing a forced shutdown over the week of the 4th of July, which burned 4 days, and then there was the inevitable "shutdown" over christmas break, which burned another three days. This left me with 3 days of "elective" vacation time. A wedding took care of those.

I quit Sun, and deliberately took off 4 weeks before my next job started. Funny, when the 4 weeks were over, I was ready to go back to Sun. The job I had left was better than the one I was taking. I realized that I had just been terminally burned out. Maybe I should have called Sun back, we were still on good terms, but at the time, I didn't really realize this was an option... and this was the deep tech recession of the early 2000s (which accounts for the forced shut down in the summer), so they were trying to shed employees.

I wasn't a rock star, but I'm pretty sure I was valuable to the company. I'd spent almost three years writing code, learning the structure of sun's data warehouse, getting to know supply analysts, people in sales, people in manufacturing, and understanding the issues in logistics and how to write analytical apps to support these functions. Even if my hard skills could be replaced (they certainly could, by any Industrial Engineering major with intermediate programming ability), the new person would still take years to acquire all that domain and institutional knowledge.

This is why I do agree that it's nuts for companies to be so stingy with vacation time. An extra week or two a year would probably have kept me at Sun. I think the reason this inefficiency persists is that employers just don't see the connection. I didn't even see the connection, and I was the one who quit my job.

It could be that I'm more prone to burnout than most. Maybe so, but I don't think I'm an extreme outlier on this. I suspect lots of job-hopping and burnout does result from such low vacation allotments.

<comment> brown9-2 Until today I have never heard of a US company forcing employee's to use "forced shutdown" days - which I'm interpreting to mean the company telling people they have off on a certain day - as vacation days, and this is the second time (at least) it's been mentioned in this thread.

How common is this exactly? Because this sounds like a company that is really, really screwing it's employees.

<comment><USER32> There are two types. The 'shutdown', or technically in my companies case the 'plant shutdown', and the 'furlough' day.

At my company, the factory has 7,000 employees in one location. So many people took vacation between Christmas and New Years that the factory simply can not operate. The solution was either to only give that time off for a select group of people (pissing off most of the factory guys), or to make everyone take that time off (pissing off the few that used to come in that week and goof off).

Unfortunately they extended it from the guys in the factory up to the engineers. Which really makes no sense. I'm working on a project that won't hit the factory floor for another year. Why can't I work between Christmas and New Years? I would be amazingly produtive without all the meetings and distractions. Not only do we have to take the time off and use vacation (or not get paid and don't come in), but we are not allowed to come in even if we wanted to. I assume this is all negotiated with the unions, they never want the salaried guys to have perks that they don't have. So for I end up burning 3-5 out of 10 vacation days a year on a week I absolutely do NOT want to take off. But I still get paid for those days at least. And there are ways to get around it (floating holidays, i.e. work 40 hours in 4 days in a week with a holiday gives you the holiday back) which in effect allow you to have your full 2 weeks. If that was not the case I think the salaried engineers would have fought back against the practice more. Although I guess most people with kids like that week off anyway, I just view it as a waste, I like taking my vacation during the times those with kids can't take vacation. Everything is cheaper and less crowded.

A 'furlow' is an unpaid day that the company forces you to take. A lot of government employees have these now, you must take 1-5 days off a year and not get paid for those days. In effect it is a pay cut but in exchance you get more vacation days. The most interesting thing about the furlough is that very often you see people given a choice between everyone taking a few days furlough or a bunch of people getting fired. More often than not, everyone votes to have a few people fired.

<comment><USER31> I was very bummed that Sun forced me to take off the week of 4th of july for the same reason. I wanted to take a week in San Diego at the beach. That's crowded any time in the summer, but after labor day, when school resumes, the weather is actually nicer in early fall (they call it "june gloom" in san diego, coastal fog is still common in early-mid summer), rentals are way easier to get, and hotel prices drop dramatically. Instead, Sun was forcing me to take my beach week at the most expensive and slightly less desirable time of year. And when you only get two weeks at all, that's pretty crappy.

<comment><USER32> The amazing thing to me is that that simple little policy - which probably makes a lot of sense to executives with kids at these large companies that take the week off anyway - is enough to drive me away to another company. It is definitely more cost effective to just give people more vacation than to be replacing an engineer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The thing I find most interesting about this discussion is that we have not yet seen anyone from the US proudly claiming that by working harder they are more productive than the rest of us. I have seen similar conversations several times on various on-line forums in the past, and there was always a defensive/proud mindset from a significant group, even as those of us outside the US wondered if they realised how much their employers were abusing them.

Since the financial mess of the past couple of years showed that US productivity figures that seemed too good to be true really were just an illusion, I'm hoping that the mindset of the average US worker has become a bit more realistic and a bit less willing to accept (by international standards) abusively long hours and short vacations. It will be good for the workers, and I expect for their employers as well in the long run, since working with better rested and happier employees is one of the surest ways to improve productivity known to man.

<comment><USER34> The United States has one of the very highest GDP (PPP) per hour worked in the world. Been that way for a long time. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_hour_worked) . It makes sense, given our massive capital stock. So working longer hours here would mean a lot more productivity.

I myself value leisure highly, though. I have a job as a software engineer at a large bank in New York. Right out of college, the bank allows me (and all other first-year developers) four weeks of vacation per year, and I'm taking full advantage of it. I like to travel.

Demand for software engineering talent is so strong right now in the United States that I'm surprised so many Americans on Hacker News feel they can't take a decent vacation. I'm sure if they spoke to their bosses they could work something out. You shouldn't be afraid to ask for a reasonable vacation.

<comment><USER35> I'm right there with you. I work for a small VoIP company as a support engineer and even we get decent vacation. Plus we work remotely 60% of the time. I've got it setup right now that ever 12 days of work I have 7 days off. Plus I have sick days and personal days. Which I don't need to use as I can just work from home (unless I'm so sick i can't work).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is crazy from our (Western European) perspective.

It was one of my reasons for not taking a job in the USA that was offered me a few years ago. Yes, it paid somewhat more than here in Europe but I'd rather have the benefits such as more free time and better health care than more income.

<comment><USER37> I can only agree.

I plan to move to SF in the following months, but this is one of the issues why I think that I won't stay there permanently, but will move back to Europe after a few years.

<comment><USER38> In my experience, big companies in the U.S. are often willing to negotiate on the number of vacation days issued. I negotiated 4 weeks of vacation/sick time + 6 holiday days at my last job. I took a a couple thousand dollars less than my target salary, but I was definitely happier.

Also, banks, educational institutions, and government offices are more generous when it comes to vacation days. Tech companies and ad agencies are generally the stingiest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> My employeer recently went unlimited vacation! Which in practice really means no vacation unless you bully your way into it which is very stressful.

<comment><USER40> That is definitely the perk that isn't. Imagine a startup offering employees unlimited pay -- "Whoa whoa whoa, you drew $3,000 this month? $3,000!? You're a single guy, what do you need $3,000 for? Don't we give you enough soda?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm a Swedish developer. This year I have 7 weeks of vacation, and I plan to use it all. I normally get the 5 weeks required by law. Last year, I only used 4 of those 5 weeks, so one spilled over to this year. I also got a bonus week of vacation for working a lot of overtime last summer. So that makes 7 weeks.

<comment><USER42> Hur kan man hitta ett jobb i Sverige? ;) Måste man talar svenska?

<comment><USER43> Most jobs are advertised at the government-run (but great) Platsbanken

google-translated: [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.arbetsformedlingen.se%2Fplatsbanken%3Furl%3D-123388378%252FStandard%252FSokViaYrke%252FSokresultatViaYrke.aspx%253Fq%253Ds\(ga\(ld\(199\)\)yo\(3\)yg\(2131\)\)c\(135591B3\)%26sv.url%3D12.237ec53d11d47b612d78000171)

I cant imagine Swedish would be much of an issue if you work with software development. Even outside technology, most swedes speak english well enough for basic communication.

Still, if you get a work permit (easy), you get to attend free Swedish lessons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've found this is something that really surprises Europeans. But, once, when I was comparing notes with some travelers in a hostel in New Zealand, we asked a South Korean among us for his perspective. He said that he and everyone he knows gets maybe _2_ days paid vacation a year. They work most weekends and get maybe 1 holiday. He said if you want to travel, you have to quit your job to do it, with no guarantee you will get another when you get back.

This changed my perspective. The difference between that and the States' 10ish days off is much greater than the difference between us and Europe. It is hard for me to imagine. Can anyone else with knowledge of East Asia chime in? Was this guy's experience representative? If so, it is a bit silly to call America the "no vacation nation." We do get vacation.

<comment><USER45> I'm not sure how common this is but "vacation" for the few Japanese and Chinese tourists I've met is usually done as a work retreat. For example, your division has met or exceeded its objectives for the year? Congratulations! you're all going to Hawaii for a week. I assume this is how compensation is done there.

While vacationing in Hawaii I read an article about the massive logistics it took to host about 10 million Amway sales reps from China. The visa and hotel backlog was insane so it took about 2 years from when they were promised to when they were actually delivered that company paid vacation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> America doesn't do vacation because of a mistaken understanding of the meaning of the word "productivity".

As long as you have management consultants who specialize in the single metric of productivity (i.e. number of dollars of profit vs. number of dollars spent on people making the profit), you will have miserable people.

<comment><USER47> American corporate culture seems to live by the motto "Don't think - measure!"

<comment><USER48> I've witnessed this. Counterintuitively, I think it's a side-effect of not understanding math.

To those without a good understanding of statistics, numbers and graphs are a mystical, magical way to easily improve just about anything.

<comment><USER49> It's also a way to avoid personal responsibility and human judgment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Relative to cost-of-living, are wages the same, lower, or higher in countries with mandatory paid vacations? One wonders whether there's a delusive "free lunch" notion underpinning Euro vacation policy, whether governments really can force companies to pay _everyone_ more for the same level of output, or whether Euro economies have discovered an effective way to engineer a more efficient labor force by attempting to outlaw burnout.

Because, at the end of the day, the company is buying completed-and-sold widgets for their salary dollar. All things being equal (including widget output), if the company pays you $50k a year and gives you 4 more "paid" vacation weeks, they gave you a raise. You can mandate 2, 4, or 8 weeks of vacation, but --- at least in middle class jobs --- you can't really mandate a salary floor.

</comment><comment><USER51> No vacation really sucks. I took 2 months between jobs once, but I've always been able to take a week or two weeks at a time. Now, we have the same policy as netflix. Basically you take time off when you want it, and you take as much as you want. It's all paid. Our only designer is gone for 3 weeks to get married. We'll struggle a little bit for those 3 weeks, but I'm grateful that when it's my time to take a week or two off, I don't feel guilty or have to beg for it.

<comment><USER52> The funny thing is, the Netflix policy is tied to a corporate culture that's reputed to be very high stress, performance-focused, and quick to terminate. In such an insecure environment, I would be very surprised if Netflix employees took more vacation than the average industry employee.

I would never want to work for a Netflix-model company. When I take vacation, I want to feel _entitled_ to it (because I am!), and when I forgo vacation, I want to be paid out for that sacrifice when I leave the company.

I think the Netflix model exists more to improve the company ledger by reducing liabilities than to help the employee or promote a healthy work environment. Maybe it's different where you work, but that's my perspective, from my comfortable 12 company holidays, 15 days PTO perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I find it hard to believe that the employer really gains much by offering less than 3 weeks. No one is fully productive 52 weeks a year (or even 50).

</comment><comment><USER54> Nobody has mentioned the obvious: weak unions.

<comment><USER55> I'm not sure how much that has to do with it.

I live in Chicago, no one around here would accuse the unions of being weak, but vacation time here is no different than in the south.

Unless you mean on a national level (unions pushing for federal reform and what-not) than yes the unions here are weaker, but the U.S. Also tends to be more opposed to national regulations than Europe as well.

<comment><USER56> Considering most vacation law is set at the national level, yes, weak union power at the national level results in the situation we have here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This topic is covered on a somewhat regular basis in The Economist - <USER2> different guises. One memorable comparison between Europe and the USA was that Americans work more so they can spend the occasional weekend on their expensive boat while Europeans are happier taking longer vacations on canoe trips.

</comment><comment><USER58> How many Americans can only afford health coverage via their workplace plan?

How many Americans live in right-to-work states and can be dismissed without a reason?

Add that together and you have a lot of fear.

<comment><USER59> Nitpick: you're referring to at-will employment, not right-to-work. Right-to- work laws mean that you can't be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment. At-will employment means that you can (theoretically) be fired or quit at any time for no reason.

<comment><USER60> Though the two are related in that almost all of the employees that cannot be terminated at the employer's will are unionized. Even in the right-to-work states, almost all of the employees of governments and universities cannot be fired at will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm wondering how much of it is because people neglect to negotiate their vacation time when changing jobs.

Most American workplaces start you out with 2 weeks and then usually add a week or so after so many years of seniority. When you change jobs, how many of you ask for that same amount of vacation time at the new company? Or do you just accept that you're new and don't want to push things by asking for more at the onset? Or is it just forgotten until it's too late to ask?

<comment><USER62> I've got a co-worker who negotiated extra time of when he started here (3 weeks instead of the normal 2). Normally, we get an extra week of vacation after 5 years of employment. Unfortunately, they screwed him out of it because he already _had_ 3 weeks, which is the normal amount for someone with 5 years of tenure. :-(

<comment><USER63> So if he worked there for 10 years he would have gotten 10 x 3 = 30 weeks holiday, however had he not negotiated he would have gotten 5 x 2 + 5 x 3 = 25 weeks.

I cannot see how you consider that he got a bad deal.

<comment><USER62> It's a bad deal because he negotiated less starting salary in return for more starting vacation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> How many of you treat conferences as mini-vacations? I find that in my field, going to a couple conferences throughout the year makes up for a couple days of vacation, as long as I don't have any work on my plate.

Also, I find that being single and having friends that (on the majority), make less than I do, makes it difficult to plan trips to places you'd have to fly/rent a hotel for. Trips consist of ten friends carpooling, getting a group rate at a ski resort, and renting out a condo for next to nothing for a weekend.

<comment><USER64> I definitely do that.

I have a lot of vacation days through work (6 weeks this year), but have pretty much no desire to go on vacations. I end up using my vacation days to go to Security conferences.

I've found, at least with my favorite conferences (CanSecWest, Shmoocon), that they refill my "info-sec excitement meter" for a good four months before I start considering quitting and going to work in a comic book store.

<comment><USER65> I think about quitting and working a lower paying job all the time. That just inspires me to sock away more of my excess income for that day when it eventually comes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> So, in the field of software engineering where competition for employees is tough, is it really still common to give only 2 or 3 weeks vacation? Would it be considered outrageous to ask for 5 or 6 weeks of vacation when interviewing for a position, in Silicon Valley?

<comment><USER49> I don't know about SV in particular, but I've worked a several tech companies over the years.

Yes, usually HR can make exceptions. But you need a good reason, like "at my current job I have 3 weeks of leave accrued, I want to not lose that if I come work for you".

But having an engineer who accrues vacation at a different rate than other employees hired under the same circumstances would be quite exceptional. It would stand out in their records and they might not have a good way to justify their decision if they were questioned about it "why is troles taking so many vacations?".

During the hiring process, it's probably not a good idea to act exceptional in the amount of vacation you plan on taking! It would be easier to negotiate on salary.

<comment><USER67> On the contrary, there is no better time to negotiate than post offer, pre acceptance.

<comment><USER49> I didn't mean to imply he shouldn't negotiate or that it wasn't a good time for it, only that some things are easier to negotiate than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> That's really crazy, but it gives employers the chance to hire and retain the best talents not only with salary wars.

I still think that the major problem is that the US is one of the three only nations in the world that does not have paid maternity leave. Absurd.

<comment><USER69> Actually there are numerous companies in the U.S. that do have maternity leave. I used to work for an agency in NY that generally had less pay but more benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> For software companies (and probably to all other industries which hire 'knowledge workers'), it should be very important to give enough of vacation time to their employees (developers).

For me that is no brainier, but unfortunately, very few hi-tech companies actually understand that. So you have high-rate of "burn outs" which cause all kind problems (bugs, bad design decisions, etc.). The management mantra is still: The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Also, I was surprised how it is very hard to find a hi-tech company offering something like unpaid sabbatical leave or fulltime sabbatical replacement position (i.e., programmer working in sales for one or two months). Some banks and hedge funds do that.

</comment><comment><USER71> Sad but true.

Years back when I was working for an American employer, filing a leave seemed like taboo. I didn't understand it back then but when my wife got hospitalized, I filed for an emergency leave of course, my boss sent flowers with a note that goes something like this: "Hope your wife gets better yada yada...can you work while you're at the hospital?"

<comment><USER65> I had a boss like that. He texted me Christmas Eve, asking about progress on my latest project.

I quit a month later and found another company that gave me 6 weeks vacation (starting). And much better pay to boot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> No heathcare, no vacation, can get fired with no notice, crap public transport, astronomical crime rate, dubious legal freedoms.

Why is it you guys pay your government again?

<comment><USER73> High salaries; cheap consumer goods; teenagers on the street are polite, and shop assistants can count and spell.

But that's all I can think of. And you missed "slow broadband".

<comment><USER72> Okay - 1 and 2 make sense; teenagers: are they really polite? my sarcasm detector is off - if comparing it to the scumbag quotient of the British Isles then I totally see where you are coming from; can shop assistants count and spell better?

<comment><USER73> I am indeed thinking of the British Isles (glad you spotted that: I suspected I needed to qualify that claim somehow). I'm convinced that Americans spell their own language better than the British (or the French), who can misspell any handmade sign however simple. I probably don't have enough anecdotal evidence to make the counting claim compelling, but I've never managed to confuse an American cashier by overpaying in some complicated way in order to get fewer coins in change.

<comment><USER72> Hmmm, yes, damn do we specialise in that untended-to social minority of scumbags.

I must try that next time I am over. Perhaps they are better at mental arithmetic because they are always adding the tax back on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Move to Norway - the best place to live according to the UN: <http://goo.gl/012ea>

Just be aware that while it might be a good place to live, Norwegians find lots to complain about anyway. Also, it's definitely not the most exciting place to live. You'll earn enough to buy a place to live, have kids and spend your five weeks of paid vacation somewhere warmer.

FWIW, I've met Americans who have moved here because of our socialist values (yes, socialist... it's not a curse word where I come from ;)), and are pretty happy about it.

</comment><comment><USER75> Very simply, this country was founded by people with the Protestant Work Ethic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic> and it has become a part of our national identity.

<comment><USER76> I live in the more protestant part of Germany, Hamburg. People here get the same vacation (the company I work for has 28 days paid vacation for its employees). The only difference is that we have a few days less public holidays than in the catholic regions.

<comment><USER75> It really isn't so much the religious aspect of Protestantism but the work ethic associated with early American settlers and the lack of fun they believed in. There is a really wonderful book by Harriet Beecher Stowe which outlines the lives of these people: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Folks>

<comment><USER76> The 'protestantischer Arbeitsethos' (protestant work ethic) is originally a concept developed in Germany (propagated to neighbor countries and then to the USA) and still very influential here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> "Century of the Self" is a great documentary on how the American population has been socially engineered by corporations.

<comment><USER78> You can (legitimately) download "Century of the Self" here:

Part 1: <http://www.archive.org/details/AdaCurtisCenturyoftheSelf_0> Part 2: [http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPar...](http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart2of4) Part 3: [http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPar...](http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart3of4) Part 4: [http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPar...](http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart4of4_0)

<comment><USER79> I can second this. It is one of those documentaries that you need to see at least once before you die. Very informative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> in Russia we have approx. 4 weeks of paid vacations which don't expire if you dont use them, people work from 9 to 6 with 45 mins for lunch, and from 9 to 4:45 on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (40 hrs work week). If national holidays fall onto workdays, there's an extra day off. Mostly this is observed now, administration tend to force people go on vacation to make accounting simpler. For several years we had Christmas vacations from 1 to 10th of January.

now a joke story as it is told in Russia.

at one company people worked their asses off very hard, came earlier, left later, sometimes worked until 9 or 10 to meet goals in the plan. and suddenly one man started to appear at 9, leave an 6 and didn't appear on Saturday and Sunday when the deadline was near. colleagues started to look at him with blame, and finally told him, who the fuck you think you are? why you so relaxed when we are tearing our asses? - oh, sorry guys, its a real shame, - he replied, - but i am on a vacation

</comment><comment><USER81> I know a fair few people who work one month on, one month off (pro rata, of course). Even in London or Hong Kong (not Tokyo) a competent developer can earn enough in 6 months to live on for 12.

</comment><comment><USER82> Allow me to air a dissenting opinion, since everyone here seems to make fun of those poor US workaholics.

I think the low number of vacation days is just a side effect of Americans not having such a strict compartmentalization between "work" and "life". I worked on both sides of the Atlantic and although I settled in Europe now I actually like the US work ethic, the low number of vacation days notwithstanding.

For many Europeans work is something they do to have bread on the table and the "real" life is that part you're not working. For many Americans their work is their life and the free time they have gets intermingled with work (they take the kids to the company barbecue! never heard of that happening in Europe).

But if most of your waking moments are spent doing something which is not your primary objective than you could say the Europeans are the sad ones.

(Side note: I am now in the happy position that I enjoy running my own company, I might feel different if I had a lousy job)

<comment><USER11> Thank you. I _am_ my work and I _live_ to work and I'm tired of people treating me like some sort of pariah, because of it. The only thing I will spend more time doing in my life besides working is sleeping and that thing I do and how well I do it greatly defines me. I am not just the man who exists between the few hours after work and before bed and if others are, then I'm sorry for them. (I understand that isn't everyone - many people do love what they do and care about the work they make with their lives, but still enjoy the lengthy break now and then).

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I get 23 days holiday entitlement plus UK bank holidays which this year thanks to Prince William adds on another 9 days.

Like some others however, I have dreamt about travelling long term so have handed my notice in, managed to secure some small freelance gigs and leave next wednesday for Bangkok, my holiday entitlement just wasn't enough ;)

</comment><comment><USER84> It's no better in Canada the usual vacation time is two weeks with that increasing to three after maybe five years then after ten years it may go to four weeks but that's it it's extremely rare to see more than five weeks.

The years of service are calculated for full-time positions so if you worked at a company part-time for five years and then became full-time only then does the clock start to tick towards more vacation time.

In my job the summer is a busy time and vacations are blacked out from July to August the best times to go in a snowy country. The rest of the year the quiet time is used for projects which also mean no vacation.

Over six years each year I managed to get a week or two in, barely, but I've got 210 hours of vacation and 200+ hours of sick time (maxed out) that I can't use because I can never get time off. And I'm not allowed to take two weeks in a row either. Time to move on!

<comment><USER85> Actually several sources show Canada is better than the US, although how much better depends on the source. This one below paints the rosiest picture I've seen for Canada, I've seen others show as few as 19 (for average) while show 14 for the US (same as below):

<http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922052.html>

<comment><USER84> That seems bizarre, any job I've ever had or anyone I know get two weeks vacation.

Anyone you ask wouldn't get any more than two weeks and self-employed seasonal workers such as farmers and fishermen may not get any vacation.

<comment><USER85> In my experience in the infrastructure/defense/aerospace fields, you get 2 weeks to start, but 3 weeks after 2 years, plus 1 week company shutdown in December. Plus stat holidays of course (about one week's worth).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> My employer gives the usual 2 weeks vacation for the first year of employment. Then, every year after that, you get an extra week up to 4 weeks paid vacation per year. Also, my employer is very vacation friendly in terms of requesting time off.

However, the biggest problem I have is actually taking the time off! I feel like I will miss too much work if I take a long vacation so I just take off a day or two here and there to "relax." And just like the article says I am always available via email on my cell phone and although I don't want to admit it, I am usually available on my computer as well.

<comment><USER87> What do you mean "miss too much work" ?

Seriously, what's the worst that could happen if you're not there for a week or two?

<comment><USER11> His comment seems fairly self explanatory, to me. If you have five things to do every day and you do five things every day, you keep up. If you have five things to do every day and you don't do them for ten days, you have 55 things to do on the eleventh day.

<comment><USER87> But most americans seem to have two weeks of vacation each year, if your reasoning is correct, then every american would get two weeks behind each year.

Except, it doesn't work like that, right? In our profession, you don't have a steady workload, sometime you need to do more, sometimes you need to do less. You have colleagues that can cover for you when you are not at work.

There's this weird-ass mentality in the US that you shouldn't be paid when you're not at work, but that's just the wrong way of thinking about it. If I have five weeks of paid vacation and a week of holidays, then the company pays me my yearly salary for 46 weeks of labour.

If the company expects me to do more than 46 weeks of labour in a year, it's doing something wrong. That is not the deal, and if there's more work that needs to be done, then they either have to convince me to work overtime, or hire more employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Taking control of my own schedule is in the top 5 list of reasons I quit being an employee 4 years ago (constant reorganization was number 1). Now I take all of August off, spend time volunteering in my daughters' classrooms during the day, get all of my errands done while the streets and shops are empty, and generally love life a lot more.

Anyone with dev skills can go independent or strike out with a group of like- minded souls to take control of their schedule. Sure there are downsides to working on your own, and it isn't all skittles and beer, but overall I find it well worth it.

</comment><comment><USER89> They might as well call this article Why is America the 'no-union nation'?

</comment><comment><USER90> Out of curiosity, anyone know if sabbaticals common in Europe?

A software developer I know worked tirelessly for 4 years at a large corporation before burning out. He may have taken a week off here & there, but was always answering his emails.

He finally requested a sabbatical. Those are rare and very tough to get, but his manager fought for him and off he went. He returned refreshed, though he left the job shortly thereafter (which is a major reason why that company made it tough to request a sabbatical).

I'm just curious if the same kind of phenomenon occurs in Europe.

<comment><USER91> AFAIK sabbatical are quasi exclusive to US and Canada. I never knew anyone in Europe going for a sabbatical.

<comment><USER92> In Finland we have a practice called vuorotteluvapaa (work sharing). It is commonplace for people nearing middle age. For example my mother used vuorotteluvapaa to do deaconess studies to complement her nursing degree. Work sharing requires that your employer hires someone who is registered as unemployed to fill in "your shoes".

To get work share you need to have worked at least 10 years of which at least 13 months to your current employer. You can work share for a minimum of 90 days and maximum of 359 days. Compensation is 70-80% of what your unemployment benefit (25.74€ base per day + 45% of your normal day's earnings) would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> I work at a (bootstrapped) European startup. In june, one of the founders takes a month of vacation. In july, the other does the same. As an employee, I'm entitled to 5 weeks off. Sick leave does not subtract from that. Every American reader probably thinks we will never make it. European readers would consider insane if we did without that time off. That's how ingrained this vacation business is. And if you ask me, we are happier and more productive than we would be without those vacations.

</comment><comment><USER94> I would not mind a split between paid and unpaid vacation. I see no reason (unless contractually specified) why a company should pay me for not working.

I don't live to work. I work to live.

<comment><USER60> >I see no reason (unless contractually specified) why a company should pay me for not working.

Because you probably do not get a charge out of getting something for nothing -- but many do.

<comment><USER94> Well, if someone _wants_ to give me something for nothing, I'll take it. :D Please don't get me wrong. Donations are definitely accepted!

But I want to create win-win situations with my business relationships. If I am working for a company, they are getting my product, I am getting money (possibly benefits). If I am not working, e.g., I am dorking around in Mexico for a month on vacation, the company is not netting value out of me, and if they are _paying_ me, that's a drain on their resources. I want my employer to be awesome, because as a member of that company, the awesomeness trickles down. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Wow, that really is incredible... I really can't imagine not being able to take a week of vacation for fear of losing my job...

Do you guys in the US get time in lieu? My job is 40 hours a week, and if you work longer than that, you can take the time off later. So working fifteen minutes longer every day lets you have another week off (paid) every year, in addition to the four weeks paid holiday you get.

And since holiday time accumulates, you are encouraged to take most of it every year.

<comment><USER96> Generally no. Most engineering jobs fall in the "salaried professional" category, which means that no over time is paid and that you're expected to work for 40 hours a week. I've seen a lot of nice managers allow employees to take some downtime after a stressful or overworked period, but there's not a standard policy at most jobs. Jobs where "punching the clock," usually hourly paid positions, can get a little closer to that, but usually only within a pay period. Example: if my friend puts in a little bit extra each day, he might leave early on Friday, but can't accrue that outside of the two week paycheck to paycheck period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> After seven years with my company, I was finally earning the highest amount of vacation hours per pay check, up to 15 days per year. In my fifteen year career, as an adult, I've never taken a vacation and I don't really have any interest in doing so. I currently have about 300 hours of vacation banked. I'm at the limit, so unless I use some of that time, I won't earn any more. That's okay, because . . . I don't have any use for a vacation. I don't use sick days, either (I know a lot of people use their three or five allotted sick days from their company as personal time).

I guess if I was digging ditches for a living, I'd want all the paid vacations I could possibly have. However, I work with computers and technology for a living and I love computers and technology. So . . you know . . . why would I want to take time off from doing something I enjoy?

Not to mention, after I die, nobody is going to remember me fondly for the vacations I took, so I could sit in the sun and cook my skin next to a chlorinated pool in another country. They're going to remember me for any work ethic, personality, and accomplishments I had.

<comment><USER97> _Not to mention, after I die, nobody is going to remember me fondly for the vacations I took, so I could sit in the sun and cook my skin next to a chlorinated pool in another country. They're going to remember me for any work ethic, personality, and accomplishments I had._

If that's all you think vacations are, no wonder you don't take them.

My housemate is in Africa for 10 days with her mother at the moment. Another friend is going to Vietnam for two weeks shortly. Both of these ventures open the travelers up to new experiences and broaden not only their horizons, but mine by proxy. I can guarantee you that I will remember their trips to foreign lands more than I remember them spending another week in their jobs.

I actually find it a little sad that you seem to think that broadening your perspective is worthless (ie: "here I am, why ever look elsewhere?")

<comment><USER11> I've actually traveled a great deal (in my youth, including two years in Zambia and Kenya) and while it's not something I enjoy overall (for all the usual travel hassles, plus I'd rather spend my time earning money rather than spending it), I understand that your friend does. I don't know that there is anything particularly "perspective broadening" about it in a world that has grown so close together through technology and communication, but I'm sure she'll have plenty of memories and experiences from it. Memories and experiences don't necessarily have inherent value. They have personal value.

I enjoy working. I enjoy that every week, I get to do technically creative and very detailed and complex things with people who are all over the planet. China, Japan, India, Australia, all over the UK, France, the Vatican, Israel, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Singapore and many others. Granted, taking time away from work makes you look bad, so not doing that is a point in my favor -- but I truly enjoy my work. I also enjoy that it allows me to own a home, have plans to buy my childhood home so it can stay in the family some day, put my siblings through college, help with financial support and technical guidance of my friends' businesses and projects, contribute to worthy causes, and someday potentially retire.

Then again, if I have to die "young", I want to be one of those Karōshi deaths where they go out slumped over a pile of spreadsheets and whitepapers on their desk. So . . . take my preferences with a grain of salt, if you like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> All you folks must seriously consider moving to India. Its a vibrant country with a lot of energy. Software Engineers get above than average market salaries. With a decent salary one can afford a great life style here. It also servers as an excellent laboratory where you can test/prototype and implement your ideas.

</comment><comment><USER99> We do not live to work, we work to live.

At least that is how I see it. I will work to keep me busy doing (hopefully) interesting things and to keep food on the table but in the end I work because I have to. We all do.

Wouldn't you rather work 6 months of the year and travel or do whatever you want the rest? I know I would.

</comment><comment><USER100> I work for a company that doesn't have expiring vacation days. They are payed out at 100% at your current salary the day you quit, get fired, or retire. We have a large amount of employees that use this as an additional retirement account. I can't imagine banking all my vacation time!

<comment><USER101> That's a dangerous strategy to rely on. The company may not ultimately be able to afford such payouts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> In many European countries if you don't take all your holidays, the company must pay you for them. So companies do not financially benefit if you work more, all they get are employees that are tired and overworked. This is why they would be keen for you to take all your holidays.

</comment><comment><USER102> The flip side of this is that we have Summer vacation for schools (unlike the rest of the world) and have institutionalized Spring Break for college students. Sadly we see the idea of vacation as being for the very young or the very old who retire.

<comment><USER103> That can't be true. Bavarian schools, for example, have a five-week summer vacation this year and additionally eight weeks of vacation spread over the whole year (one week in spring and autumn, two weeks for Easter, Pentecost and Christmas). There are also quite a few state and federal holidays but, as you can see, vacations are already clustered around those holidays. I think there are maybe two or three additional holidays outside of vacation times (May 1, German Unity Day, probably some weird religious holiday I'm forgetting).

That's a shorter (but still quite long) summer vacation. Overall, however, vacation times are similar.

As for spring break, here is the situation at my German university: classes end at July 15 this year, exams end at August 20, the next semester starts at October 1. That's one month and nearly two weeks when you can be absolutely sure that there is nothing to do for you (at least when you finish your papers in time and don't have a thesis to write) and probably more depending on when your exams are.

We also get two weeks off for Christmas and there is obviously also a shorter break (about one week and up to one month depending on when your exams are) between winter semester and summer semester (but no other vacations, only federal and state holidays).

I don't know much about US universities (Is there downtime for students between semesters?) but I do know that spring break certainly doesn't compare. (One or two weeks? Seriously?)

<comment> barry-cotter I'm pretty sure German universities suck in comparision to all Anglophone universities when it comes to free time, and I know it's true for Irish and British ones.

You get three months off for the summer (normally June, July and August), a month off over Christmas (though in some universities it may only be three weeks, and you may have to prepare for exams), and various other time off.

Also that summer time is _free_ , no papers to write. It is goddamned awesome. [http://www2.ul.ie/web/WWW/Services/Academic_Calendar/2012_-_...](http://www2.ul.ie/web/WWW/Services/Academic_Calendar/2012_-_13_Academic_Calendar)

<comment><USER103> Summer is free for me, too. No papers to write. It is, however, relatively easy to convince your Prof to extend the deadline into the summer break.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> I get 3 paid weeks of vacation per year. More would be nice, but unless I'm going to do something (spend a month in Europe for example) I get tired of being on vacation after a week or so. Also, when it comes to single days here and there my boss just tells me to take them. His way of hoping I pick up the phone on a Saturday when something breaks I guess :)

I recently travelled to to the UK and France for 16 days and was happy to return home. I had a great time on the trip, so maybe I'm weird for not wanting to be gone longer? If I actually lived in Europe more vacation might be nice because it's so easy/cheap to visit other countries.

<comment><USER105> Vacation in Sweden (I think it's like this in other European countries as well, but I don't know for sure) doesn't always mean that you go away somewhere, or at least not for the entire vacation. Say if you have four continuous weeks of vacation during the summer (June to August here in Sweden), which is very common, you might be gone for a week or two, but spend the rest of the time at home.

Since almost everyone have the large part of their vacation during the summer, there is a good chance that some of your friends and family will have vacation at the same time, so you just relax and enjoy life for the rest of the time.

(Or you can just spend the entire vacation repainting your house and be stressed about all the stuff you have to do now that you have the time...)

<comment><USER104> Like I said above, maybe I'm weird :)

I can only relax for a few days before I get stir crazy. I need problems to solve and things to think about. It probably helps that I don't hate my job and have a lot of free time already. A long time ago I realized that I didn't want to be that person who lives for the couple times a year they get a vacation (even if you have 4 weeks I don't want to hate the other 48). Instead try to live in places where I'm on vacation all the time. Right now I'm in the mountains and at the end of the summer I'm moving back to the beach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen I hear that people take substantially less vacation in East Asia.

</comment><comment><USER106> I guess I'm in the "lucky" category when it comes to paid time off. I work for a small company though, and I receive 5 holidays, 5 floating holidays, 5 sick days, and 5 weeks vacation. I could find a job that pays 10k more per year but offers not nearly as much vacation time - but I prefer the time off over the additional money.

</comment><comment><USER107> When I was working for an employer, all I wanted was more vacation time so I could travel. Now that I am self-employed, I just get antsy when I'm on vacation.

What I've found works better for me is to take extended vacations every couple of years (a year here, 3 months there). This recharges my batteries for years at a time.

</comment><comment><USER108> This is one of the reasons I love my technology work at a non-profit. Sure I make lots less, but they are extremely generous with paid time off. Our institutional culture encourages people taking vacations, and while we have serious tight deadlines, people still support a healthy life-work balance.

</comment><comment><USER109> If the US had the culture of taking off August, it would be far easier to take off 3 weeks since everyone in your company would be doing it. Logistically however I don't really understand how taking August off works in Europe. Where does everyone go? Doesn't it get super crowded?

<comment><USER45> Most of the French head south to the riviera, or north to brittany, basically any place with a beach nearby.

The roads are packed so you'll usually see a traffic report with them interviewing people taking a picnic on the side of the road, complete with wine and cheese of course. Also, its part of the draw. When there is a known crowd coming most of the hotels and restaurants pull out all the stops: foods, drinks, live entertainment. A lot of these seaside towns can be quite sleepy during the winter so its sort of a big deal.

And, quite a few of my colleagues have family that moved south for the warmer weather, some just head out to visit family.

<comment><USER110> That sounds like a large-scale version of what happens every summer weekend in New England as Boston and its suburbs head to the cape.

<comment><USER45> Yes, but instead of a summer weekend its the entire month of august and parts of July. From my experience, Paris gets completely evacuated except for the tourists and tourism related jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> My employer is hiring and offers 5 weeks of vacation after the first year. Must be a US citizen. No remote work. <http://woti.com/benefits.cfm> <http://woti.com/jobs.cfm>

</comment><comment><USER112> american - working for a company i love, but i find it hard to even write long articles on HN because of the fear of "slacking"..i would love to elaborate more and explain why im slowing starting my own web design co for my traveling laptop days i so dream about....

</comment><comment><USER113> The corporate overlords don't have time for us to enjoy ourselves. Is there any other explanation?

</comment><comment><USER114> This is very similar to an article that made it to the first page yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2573664>

Still, the more awareness that this topic gets, the better!

</comment><comment><USER115> Exactly. I'm bright and awesome, but this one thing puts me off moving to the USA.

</comment><comment><USER116> Does anyone else here prefer to have shorter vacations and higher pay? I've taken a few vacations in my life and they've tended to be less fun than working (at least after the first 3 days. Before that it's awesome).

<comment><USER22> well..... as long as we are being truthful, after 10 days vacation with a wife and two kids getting back to work is a relief. I'm often more stressed by vacation than work, but one of my children has "special needs" and despite the fact that I love him with all my heart, the constant monitoring what he eats, what he is doing, if he has craped himself, etc. takes a lot out of a vacation. That said, next year in February I'm taking a 2 week trip to South America with just my daughter and meeting up with some cousins and other extended family from both the states and Ecuador and Panama. My south American cousins I haven't seen in thirty years. I'm very much looking forward to it. ( and on that note, I think I'll have to post a "ask HN" on language learning options to brush up on my 25 years forgotten high school Spanish (if one doesn't exist already).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Do US employers (especially startups) typically agree to agree to offer unpaid vacations? Or are those 0 to 10 or 15 days really a hard limit?

</comment><comment><USER117> Why is this on HN? Please, bring back the no politics rule. If you want to talk politics on the internets, there are plenty of other sites out there.

</comment><comment><USER79> Who linked this piece of crap and why is at the top? Utter nonsense! Whoever shared this, please consider opra winfrey websites or others of those sort.

<comment><USER118> good to see the new users raising the level of discourse here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> Well, that's just sad. You do know that the rest of the world is having problems at finding a job at all, or at least getting paid on regular basis? Cry me a river.

<comment><USER120> That isn't a constructive comment at all, not to mention untrue: here in Uruguay we have a record low unemployment, for example (and zero unemployment in IT).

Whether you'd be willing to work for my wage is another problem, but I do have 20 days' worth of paid vacations.

<comment><USER119> You're right, I wasn't being constructive, but neither is this article if you consider that this isn't US-only. I'm also certain that millionaires also have a lot of personal problems, and yet also find little empathy from other people. I admit, I have not checked the current situation of Uruguay, or many other countries for that matter, yet I'm pretty certain that "I'm afraid to go on a vacation, my boss is treating me bad" is a personal and not a IT issue at all.

Want constructive comments - give constructive topics.</comment></comment></comment>


Can You Get Addicted to Pot? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/americas-invisible-pot-addicts?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I've been there myself wrt marijuana addictions as a response to stressors, but if it wasn't herb it was alcohol would likely be the next best thing in the cases in the article. Legalization and regulation is key regardless as Drug War legislation and it's effects are uniquely tied to legalization/regulation. The real problem for America unfortunately in the face of the addictions issues is that there's just too little mental health support for people publically and privately, and too many seemingly anonymous forces bearing on the stability of our lives. No amount of Munchausen-esque pulling oneself up by the hairs on one's head can respond to that kind of complexity. We simply aren't evolved for it at the present time.

</comment><comment><USER3> This link is dead, try [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/americas-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/americas- invisible-pot-addicts/567886/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sure you can.</comment>


Go support for Android - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N3XyVkAP8nmWjASz8L_OjjnjVKxgeVBjIsTr5qIUcA4/preview?sle=true <comment><USER2> So I've finally been learning to write Android Java... and honestly, as a C#/Python developer, I figured it would be easy to pick up. Holy crap, how do you people live like this?

Yeah, I'll be trying out Go for Android. Give me an excuse to learn Go. Still don't like the idea of going without generics and exceptions, but maybe it'll surprise me. I figure we're all just biding our time until Rust is ready.

<comment><USER3> Rust is almost/ready for Android and iOS, granted that the language itself is still in a state of flux:

[https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/wiki/Doc-building-for- andr...](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/wiki/Doc-building-for-android)

More recently:

[https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust- dev/2014-June/010323...](https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust- dev/2014-June/010323.html)

[https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/wiki/Doc-building-for- ios](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/wiki/Doc-building-for-ios)

<comment><USER4> You are still stuck using the GUI toolkits of the platforms in their native tongues. I think Qt and Mono (so C++ and C# respectively) are the only toolkits that support both of them with one code base.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps not so much a Serious UI Toolkit(TM), but anything that eventually compiles down to GL would work too. This is how play-clj does it: binding to libgdx, which eventually calls some OpenGL methods.

While I did jokingly say "Serious UI Toolkit", there's more than a few awesome applications on Android that have very, very simple UI widget requirements. Particularly games, which according to the article, they're focusing on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this an official project supported by either the Go or Android teams, or is it just an independent developer planning to take on this challenge? Who's David Crashaw?

<comment><USER7> I'm on the Go team. My work has been internal to Google up until now.

<comment><USER8> Nice to have you be less internal!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple releases a series of books with hundreds of pages and hours of video using Swift, and Google releases a one page Google Doc proposing to use Go. And then people wonder why Apple is able to attract so many developers to their platform...

<comment><USER10> Swift has been in development since 2010 in secret. This is the price you pay for open source, you get to see things in an immature state which evolve over time.

<comment><USER11> And Go was started in 2007! [http://golang.org/doc/faq#history](http://golang.org/doc/faq#history)

It's got nothing to do with open source. Instead it reflects the different approaches taken by Apple and Google.

Apple designs something new, tries hard to get it right the first time, and commits to it completely. Swift is the way to write for Apple's platforms, period. It's appropriate for a "social media application, all the way up to a high-performance 3D game." There's no doubt that Swift is meant to succeed Objective-C.

Google experiments more, sees what sticks. Go, Dart, Dalvik, v8, NaCl... You sure have lots of choices, but the relationships between these technologies is unclear, and has the character of uncoordinated teams working in isolation.

<comment><USER12> Go was also never made to be used in context of Android - even more it doesn't even have dynamic linking capability and was explicitly made to generate completely static binaries for server deployments. Which is not compatible (at least not without some serious hacking) with an OS which has full API written in Java an requires JNI interface and boxing of every interaction for every API call.

While Go is a feasible replacement for C/C++ for native parts of Android applications (which are just normal Linux .so libraries linked against bionic) it would be a terrible fit for main application language without a full rewrite of most of the operating system (note that ART is certainly NOT a magic bullet here!). Note here that native (NDK) code has practically NO access to Android OS APIs (only APIs available are bitmap manipulation, OpenGL, OpenAL and limited sensors access).

It's staggering just how many misconceptions and lack of understanding of Android structure is there in those "Go for Android" threads.

For us Android devs pretty much three points would improve the Android development experience:

1.) Add Java 8 language feature support to ART/Dalvik runtime. This would clean up code immensely, especially in so concurrency and callback heavy use- case as a mobile app is.

2.) Clean up Android APIs and fix broken implementations. Add modern block/callback based APIs to replace listener-heavy code. Perhaps look at RxJava design patterns for core Android APIs as well.

3.) Improve tooling. Not the code editors (IDEA/AS with Maven or Gradle are decent enough), but the profiling tools, hiearchy viewer, tracing tools and other tooling which wasn't touched in years and are SORELY needed for good app development. Figuring out why a certain animation stutters right now requires stitching together several partially working tools with poor documentation.

Note that NONE of those issues would be improved by adding Go as a language to interact with Android and would just cause additional issues on Go/Java boundaries.

<comment><USER13> Are you proposing that Java 8 closure syntax is the solution to deeply nested callback code? Hopefully not---because that doesn't really follow IMO. A proper solution for concurrency is to use the Actor model or something similar.

<comment><USER12> It's a solution for tons of boilerplate code which appears when trying to do patterns. Compare for example Reactive Extensions (which are pretty popular in Android community for management of concurrency) and just how much more verbose is Java 6 code with it's piles of anonymous classes vs. lambdas of Java 8 or Scala. Even though IntelliJ IDEA can hide that boilerplate pretty well, it's still tons of needles code you have to pollute your codebase when you're implementing those modern patterns.

In short, what I'm saying is, that at the current state of Android, implementing Java 8 features would bring simillar benefits than switching to a whole other language without having to rewrite whole runtime and most of the operating system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Providing a Go equivalent to the Android platform is intractable._

It may be several step beyond what a small team could do in a short time, but not intractable.

Shooting from the hip, the job looks like this:

1\. Add Go language and debugging support to the ART runtime environment

2\. Port the standard Go packages, using a single-architecture backend modified to produce ART compatible binaries to bootstrap

3\. Add equivalent support for RPCs (AIDL) and Renderscript

4\. Build equivalent APIs for those in the android.__.__ packages that make sense in Go, possibly taking this an an opportunity to redesign some APIs

5\. Create equivalents for the apache.__.__ and java.__.__ that don't have equivalents or alternatives in the Go packages

6\. Splice in an intermediate representation and refactor the Go compilers to be ART pre-compilers, or take the easy way out and compile go to a possibly enhanced Dalvik bytecode

It may seem daunting that Dalvik and ART embody Java runtime support, and that the current (near-future, really) toolchain goes Java -> Java bytecode (and acquires a lot of Java-oriented tooling this way) -> Dalvik bytecode -> native code precompiled for ART. But I do not think it would bloat an Android runtime too much to add Go as a first class citizen. The build chain has become a little awkward anyway with Dalvik bytecode as an intermediate step that making a Go back-end that compiles for an ART-specific intermediate language might be cleaner.

How do I put an asterisk in a comment here?

<comment><USER15> Android apps are meant to be platform independent. A pure Java Android app will run fine on both ARM (various flavours) and x86. I vaguely remember a MIPS implementation too.

Without the intermediate step (bytecode), you are pushing the awkwardness to every individual developer.

<comment> grey-area Platform independence isn't really a big deal. Apple managed this just fine with fat binaries, and you could have an analogous system on Android without problems and a build chain that automatically cross-compiled (easy in golang). Developers wouldn't even have to notice. The size of binaries is often a small part of the total size of the app - resources tend to take up much more room.

The real problem would be porting all the current APIs. If Google actually decided to do this though it would be a good opportunity to clean up the current APIs and provide a new version free from legacy cruft. So it is doable, but a fair amount of work to provide UI bindings etc.

The obstacles are more political and monetary than technical.

<comment><USER15> Apple controls and chooses the hardware targets by itself.

Android is open and the potential number of hardware targets is limitless. It's not just about the size of the binaries; the app and the programmer should ideally be agnostic of the hardware. On an open-platform with closed- source applications, the least awkward way to do this is to push the native translation to the run-time.

<comment> grey-area In practice, is the number of hardware targets larger than two or three? I doubt it would be a problem for google to certify hardware targets.

<comment><USER16> But here's the kicker: The number of targets is a variable. Google would have to force developers to recompile for each new ISA. New ISAs keep getting added, many of them ARM ISAs that are not mutually compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Intriguing. I'm not aware of much, if any, interest in Go in the games community, but there we are. C# seems to have finally taken off big time.

What would be cool/interesting is if you can write half decent audio processing code in Go for Android without the GC kicking in at the wrong moment.

They're 100% right about the broader API though.

<comment><USER18> I'm surprised C# is gaining this much traction in the games community despite the complete abandonment of both XNA and Managed DirectX by Microsoft.

<comment><USER19> I think this is 90% a result of Unity.

<comment><USER20> Let's hope Unity will support Rust, too, then...and I guess Go now as well, if Google says they want it for games.

<comment><USER21> Likely not - C# seems here to stay on Unity3D, but speeding up execution through tools like IL2CPP seem most likely.

[http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/20/the-future-of- scripting-...](http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/20/the-future-of-scripting-in- unity/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been following this and, for me, the real story here is .so support from go which they need to implement to allow this. Previously the go run time has expected to be the one running the main method. The changes to the runtime to support android will also hopefully allow go to be used for things like extending python or R.

<comment><USER13> > is .so support from go which they need to implement to allow this

.so support on Android is pretty broken even with C/C++ code. For example, do you know the Unix versioned .so convention? Compile to foo.so.1.142, then create a soft link called foo.so -> foo.so.1.142? Android doesn't support this in general, even with C/C++ code (see [1] for discussion; my recent experience with this issue is that it hasn't since been resolved).

[1]: [http://grokbase.com/t/gg/android-ndk/11ae9h0sm5/how-to- load-...](http://grokbase.com/t/gg/android-ndk/11ae9h0sm5/how-to-load-so-file- which-depends-on-other-so-file-with-versiob-no)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I haven't tried Go programming. I really like all these alternate programming languages/tools coming to all these platforms. Very cool. So many things to learn, so little time.

However, I like Ruby. In that department, RubyMotion the popular iOS/Mac alternate programming toolset is coming to Android. Seems the floodgates of "use your language of choice" are opening...

If you are interested in alternate languages and tool sets for your development I'd give this a look. [http://www.rubymotion.com](http://www.rubymotion.com)

</comment><comment><USER24> I am excited for this, if only because it might finally give me a random excuse to learn how to write code in Go. Does someone have more context on what the timeline for 'go 1.4' is?

<comment><USER25> In full disclosure, i'm a bit of a Go fanatic. But two things that led me to the language.

1 - The tour. Seriously, just go through tour.golang.org and...you know Go. From there it's just little tricks and best practices, many covered in 'effective go'

2 - It's a tiny language. That's a plus or minus depending on who you ask.

If you aren't new to programming in general, you can pick up the majority of Go in a day I think.

<comment><USER13> I agree with everything axaxs has said here! The Go Tour and also the Rob Pike / Sameer Ajmani talks ([Advanced] Concurrency Patterns in Go, Concurrency is not Parallelism) are all great resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It continues to amaze me that as people lay more and more interesting ways to interact with android using the ndk, even _from within google itself_ , the official word on the NDK remains; don't use this unless you really really have to.

<comment><USER12> If you know anything about Android then this is obvious - crossing from Dalvik to unmanaged code gives you huge performance penalties because you need to rebox and (in alot of cases) copy memory as arguments are passed. It also causes huge amounts of pain as you need to convert Java objects into something compatible with your language.

For most cases it's just not worth it.

<comment><USER26> There are some good reasons not to use the NDK (like the rich android UI, webview, etc); but performance isn't one of them.

The point I was making is that despite the downsides, even people from inside google are using it now. Makes the android teams 'pretend ndk does not exist' stance rather ironic.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't. Native code is by definition code compiled for a specific ISA, and Android is supposed to run on several ISAs, including ARMv7 and amd64. Native code is cancer on the ecosystem when you look at it from an ISA diversity perspective.

<comment><USER27> Native code runs on far more architectures than Dalvik, including (particularly) in the embedded world.

And the NDK is a rather neat solution to the compilation issue. Once you've set up the toolchain properly, different architectures are simply not an issue. There's no architecture that Android runs on that doesn't accommodate native code.

After all, don't forget that under a rather thin layer of Java, the native code "cancer" is what is driving Android.

<comment><USER28> Hogwash. If you are talking about _SOURCE_ portability, Java runs in just as many places as C code, including in the embedded world.

If you are talking about _BINARY_ portability (which is what everyone was actually talking about), then native code isn't portable for shit, whereas Dalvik code happily runs on multiple flavors of ARM, MIPS, and x86 with official or partially-official support.

Unless you are proposing that Android adopts a Goobuntu design of "compile everything from source", then the portability of native code source is utterly irrelevant. And if you are proposing that, you are hopelessly naive. Not to mention you must really, really hate having battery life if you want to spend over an hour compiling & installing, say, Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've recently written my first toy app for Android (first mobile app) and it was more challenging than I thought it would be. The API seems a little odd but like I said first app so I'll have to get used to it.

Go has been on my radar since forever but I haven't written anything in it. This sounds like a cool announcement. I think my next mobile experiment will involve Apache Cordova though but now I'm tempted to give Go a shot (game is fine with me)

<comment><USER13> In my experience with Android apps, I've almost never had to use the NDK. When I did have to use the NDK, it wasn't because I wanted to code in C/C++---it was because there were strong, open-source libraries written in C/C++ that I wanted to use in an app (Though, I have no experience making games on Android).

If you want to check out Go, then the Go Tour [1] and the various talks by Rob Pike [2] [3] / Sameer Ajmani [4] are great resources. The Go Tour stands on its own as an interest-building resource; the several programming exercises it has you do are fun and challenging.

[1]: [http://tour.golang.org/#1](http://tour.golang.org/#1) [2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6kdp27TYZs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6kdp27TYZs) [3]: [http://blog.golang.org/concurrency-is-not- parallelism](http://blog.golang.org/concurrency-is-not-parallelism) [4]: [http://blog.golang.org/advanced-go-concurrency- patterns](http://blog.golang.org/advanced-go-concurrency-patterns)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Okay, this could be interesting. I'm especially interested in how good the performance will be compared to Dalvik.

</comment><comment><USER31> So is this basically the NDK but using Go instead of C? I was hoping I could not use Java at all...

</comment><comment><USER32> This is great news, good to see Google building a mobile + desktop interface with Go. Just like Apple did with Objective-C.

And yet with Go there is more use of it for CLI apps and web apps. Adding mobile to that equation just makes it even more complete.

Good job Google.

</comment><comment><USER33> That's really good news. I have been waiting for it for do long! Maybe Go will prove not to be suitable for Android development but still the whole ecosystem around will only gain from such an opportunity regardless.

</comment><comment><USER34> I myself have been wondering why this is not their original plan with Go.

</comment><comment><USER35> On a side note, it's already possible to build Android binaries with CGO as long as you use the external linker. Just build for Linux + external linked from the NDK.

<comment><USER36> You don't even need the external linker. Just build a normal linux/arm binary with CGO_ENABLED=0.

What this proposal brings is access to the NDK APIs. You could run Go on Android since over 4 years now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think title should be "Better Go support for Android NDK" Now it seems like a linkbait. I clicked and felt so...

</comment><comment><USER38> "it also makes it possible to use the same code to bind to languages like Objective C" Yeah, go for it. :-/

</comment><comment><USER39> I expect Dart to make it to Android (officially) before Go.

</comment><comment><USER40> Just as I had thought they would go (pun intended) about it - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7845660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7845660)

</comment><comment><USER41> Interesting!</comment>


Steve Jobs testing Photo Booth in 2005 - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150344003354357.371772.500729356

<comment><USER2> In the coming weeks, more stuff like this will start to appear. I will be really upset of why this appears, with him going away. But his biggest legacy is a new generation of inspired people, going forward where he left us now.</comment>