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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

The expectation that everything should be "fair" in terms of salary and perks is nonsense, and how you end up with tiered salary and perks tied to job titles instead of being able to drive your own deal when you're accepting a job. Things probably should be in the same ballpark for two people doing the same job but if one person gets a bit more thats OK.

Paid time off for whatever reason is a benefit you and the company negotiate for. If the company decides to grant parents time off that non-parents don't get that's fine. That's just the company's opening position when they're negotiating with people who are parents, in much the same way that people who drive to the office might negotiate for a parking space or people who have a long commute might negotiate more hours working from home.

What you get in return for your hours is basically nothing to do with other people, and what they get is nothing to do with you.

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For most of us a job is not a hobby. Also we don’t get a wide gamut of job opportunities to make the selection based on the benefits. There is no negotiation, there are only one-two job opportunities (best case scenario) with the traditional take it as-is or leave option. This is why in the States fresh graduates end up with almost no Personal Time Off. With no legislation and no competition for talent (which is the case for most job roles), the business owners will ALWAYS F their employees.

It sounds great in theory until you realize it leads to paying women and minorities less for the same work. Meanwhile it means those in positions of power can arrange for myriad benefits (I’ll need a private helicopter between meetings and summers in the Hamptons) while Americans are guaranteed literally 0 days of vacation leave.

Here in Germany we have a minimum of 4 weeks (=20 days for full time workers) of paid time off, a livable minimum wage, 6 weeks paid paternity leave (well, paid by the government), up to 14 months (less well) paid paternal leave, etc.

Still, most of what GP said is still true. People negotiate for their salary and benefits, and paid or unpaid time off is a big part of that (6 weeks paid time off is common in IT).

That of course means better negotiators tend to get better deals. If you don't like that there are places with collective labor agreements, with wages set entirely though negotiations between company and union.

In the US there is no mandated time off, paid or otherwise, for any reason and employers can fire employees at any time without any reason or penalty.

There's also no minimum paid hours, only a minimum hourly wage; which is below the poverty line even for someone fortunate enough to work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks in a year without end.

If employers had more to lose from commiting to an offer of employment, like they do in Germany, then employees might have room to negotiate. The reality is that only a few very exceptional people have that luxury.

MacsHeadroom responded well so I don't have a lot to add but I will clarify that its not that I'm against any negotiation as obviously some people have special needs / desires and don't want things other people want. There are also people who are truly exceptional who likely could have many competing offers so naturally they are going to end up with a better deal.

The point is when you leave literally everything up to the market as the GP appears to be in favor of then you end up with a bunch of $5 wage slaves who've never heard of a vacation and a well financed class of financiers with boats who help arrange to finance the whole thing. Once you have social programs and policies that insulate from those kinds of things, then sure let people negotiate for additional perks they want.

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