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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

The gap is even bigger if you consider that most EU countries also have ~2 weeks of fixed statutory holidays that aren't included in the 20 days, while most U.S. companies give only between 0 and 3 "free" fixed holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas are the most common; sometimes there's a 3rd floating one that can be used for a holiday of the employee's choice, such as Yom Kippur or Good Friday).

So more or less all Europeans get at least 6 weeks off per year. In the wealthier EU countries it's often 7 or 8, if you count both fixed and movable vacation (e.g. the legal minimum in Denmark is 5 weeks movable + 9 fixed days).

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Almost all the companies I've worked for gave Christmas Day, New years day, Thanksgiving, July 4th, Memorial, and Labor days. Many also through in Christmas Eve, and day after Thanksgiving, plus 2 floating holidays.

One thing I'm not sure how I feel about, is the combined sick/vacation PTO -- you end up with a larger number of days that you can use as vacation, but usually a smaller number of days overall (my current company is 18 days total PTO, previous company was 5 weeks). This works out great for people like me, who never need to take sick days (if I have a bad cold, I can work from home usually).

Now what would work really good (and what I think my current company had before I started), is one vacation pool, which us use when you are going to be off for 2 or more consecutive days, and a separate large pool of PTO days for either under-the-weather days, actual illnesses, or "fix the garage door / wait for Cable installer" days.

Another thing to look for, is how the vacation is rolled over. The best is where you earn X.something hours every paycheck, and can be sitting at any one time on what you would earn in 2 years. So a previous employer (Motorola) gave me 3 weeks a year, but I was always sitting on 6 weeks available until I had to take some time off to avoid losing new accumulation.

I remember reading the Dilbert http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-02-12/ as a teen and being really surprised learning later that the joke, Catbert eliminating sick days and making employees use vacation days for them, was not a ridiculous caricature but reality.

U.S. workers really need to revive the labor unions, it's unfortunate that the population has been so effectively persuaded into regarding them as a bad thing. Sure they can make a dent to the profitability, but the improved quality of living makes it worth it.

The biggest evil of labor unions is the fact that in many cases, they are a necessity. It's not that I'd rather not be part of a union, but I'd rather have the type of employment where unions aren't needed, or even beneficial. But this only happens when the work you do is both skilled, and in short supply, unfortunately.

Even in cases where there is some leverage (due to work being skilled/scarce), I'd often like someone to negotiate on my behalf collectively. I'm not an expert on employment law, on "gotchas" in employment contracts, or on what my rights are under local law, and I don't really want to become one. And I don't want to fight every individual battle over and over again when many of us have similar preferences. For example, why should I have to fight every company over noncompete clauses and "we own all your weekend IP" clauses? Even if I could win, this is a huge duplicated effort if every one of us has to argue this same point, and I'm not a contract lawyer or professional negotiator in any case. I'd rather delegate my negotiation authority to some association of technologists that negotiated at least baseline employment conditions.

I guess an alternative model is to take it really collective and just have the state pass laws mandating working conditions that all employers have to follow, that way nobody needs to negotiate those conditions. That's the approach California took with just banning noncompetes by statute, for example.

I like to treat Dilbert and Office Space as slightly-fictionalized-for-the-sake-of-humor documentaries.

I for one like a vacation only policy.

Why does it matter to you or the employer why you are taking a day off?

What if I don't get sick? I would have to lie to my employer or let paid time off go unused.

As long as the sick day count is rolled into the total vacation allowance, the only change is not having to lie when taking a day off.

If you don't get sick, you're not using the unlimited pool of sick days. After all, those are meant to get you healthy again (and protect your coworkers from you, in case it's contagious)

To make sick days more manageable for employers, in Germany the health care system takes over, paying wages after 6 weeks - down to 70% under the assumption that you don't have certain costs related to work (such as health care payments, commute) while sick.

I think some employers take extra (private) insurance for earlier coverage.

Of course, there is some abuse which is, of course, an immediate termination reason. As mitigation, sick days policies require (by law) to see a doctor if it's more than three days, and most employers require it for the first day.

Yes, all that is terribly unfair to those healthy employees that don't get to enjoy feeling miserable in bed...

I'm not aware of any US-based company with an unlimited pool of sick days. Maybe I'm wrong though, would love to know.

Autodesk is one for example.Again that is not substitute for STD and LTD it is for cases when lets say you get 2-3 day sickness (cold or something like that)

That's my impression, too.

And to be honest, it's one of the biggest reasons I don't dream of moving to the US anymore - even though nearly all of the interesting jobs in my niche are over there.

I find the US concept of sick days very strange... Either you're sick or you're not. In every other country I've worked in, sick days aren't counted: you get a note from the doctor, social security covers your wages and that's it. Sure, some people game the system a bit, and it costs a bit more in taxes, but at the end of the day, in 2014 should we really have to worry about being sick?

You can not have universally improved quality of living while lowering productivity, unless you getting money from outside of the system. Lowered productivity means the system has less resources, thus overall sum of the qualities of life is less. Which means to make your quality of life better, somebody's quality of life must suffer. In order to do it not only for yourself but on any kind of scale, somebody's quality of life has to suffer massively, or on equally large scale. Who would that be and why do you think they won't fight back and make your quality of life suffer instead?

I don't think "most" U.S. companies only give between 0 and 3 holidays. Every U.S. company I ever worked at at least had the following holidays: New Year , Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Day after Thanksgiving, Christmas. And then usually there are 2 or 3 other holidays depending on the company.

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