We work hard, they enjoy life | Hacker News Reader

We work hard, they enjoy life

theglobeandmail.com

17 pointshackly7 comments

I'm Lithuanian guy working for American company. There is one factual errors in that article about Lithuanians public holidays: while we might have 13 public holidays but if public holiday matches with Sunday (like Mother's day) we don't get extra free day on Monday. Therefore we have approximately one week extra to four weeks of holidays we can take per year. So we have 5 weeks in total. Let's say in USA people have 3 weeks (2 vacation weeks + 1 week of public holidays).

Here is why I completely disagree with author's conclusion. We have 52 weeks per year. 3 or 5 weeks from that perspective is minor amount of work done. US people just spend 4.4% more time in the office but that doesn't mean they work harder (it is different for blue collars, of course). I personally never felt working less than my US colleagues.

Now about enjoyment of life. While I agree that those 4 weeks of annual leave makes a big difference (e.g. you can disconnect from your work and refresh your head) it is only small part of enjoyment of life. I will just say that here in Lithuania we have biggest suicide rate in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...).

My employer recently changed to a take-what-you-want vacation policy. So far it seems to be working well, with my French co-workers leading the way in using upwards of four weeks off. The part I really like is that they're tracking our time off with the intent of making sure everyone takes enough rather than seeing who uses too much.

It's amazing how easy it is never to take time off in this industry. We move so fast and there's always another problem to solve, so you never think you have time to take a long vacation. I still have to force myself to pick a week to go on vacation.

I haven't heard of that before. The ex-business-manager part of me absolutely freaks out when considering the logistics of it. How do they manage deadlines and such?

Otherwise, that sounds pretty darn awesome.

It definitely doesn't mean employees get to unilaterally declare when they're taking time off, if that's what you're wondering. I still have to go through the discussion with my manager about "No huge milestones coming up then, right? Your team and customers are okay with this?", but it removes the friction of "Well, you haven't actually earned five full days of PTO, so you'll have to take one unpaid or we have to do the paperwork to treat this as an advance..." that can make arranging vacations awkward.

But in cases where you earn days of PTO, aren't you allowed to take them anytime you want, because you earned them?

In theory, yes. But can you name a place you've worked where this was actually the case?

If push came to shove I could probably take vacation even if my manager didn't think it was a good time, citing mental health/family issues/whatever. But that would involve spending the same amount of goodwill as declaring "I've already earned this PTO so I'm using it whether you want me to or not", and I would be hesitant to do either of those if I had even the slightest bit of respect for my company or co-workers. And if I didn't have that respect for the job, why would I be working there in the first place?

I enjoy my work. Problem solved.

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