dbd33

In pounds?

Cepheus

Both as it does not matter for me.

R I C H

My work-life balance here has been poor. First 4 years here I had no days off and worked 14+hr days. The 'benefit' of being self employed.

I quit my last job recently and got paid out for 5 weeks of untaken leave. Dbd's expressed it many times before - in some jobs here taking vacation is professional suicide.

Piff Poff

We work less, earn more money, well husband does so I don't have to work full time. We get to spend more time at home but our lives were 'fuller' in the UK.

Atlantic Xpat

To contribute to to the debate, not, that I think it will have any relevance to the OP, but anyway.....

I have less vacation time here than I did in the UK but am fortunate enough in position and employer to have a degree of flexibility that I never had in the UK. The 15 minute vs. 1hr commute also adds to that but my experience will be different to many others in that respect. (Think GTA commuting for example).

dbd33

We drive half an hour to work. This morning we didn't see another car for the first fifteen minutes and began to wonder if this was a holiday we didn't know about. That's quite different from my commute in Toronto, five miles, which took equally long whether I walked or drove.

Sometimes I work in America. Sometimes in the UK. This type of work, computing, provides the same work/life imbalance in each. Commuting differs depending on the exact location but, upon arrival in the office or connecting by VPN, it's exactly the same in each of them. The expectations for working hours and the ability to vary them with workload, are the same everywhere. The only other work I have a recent comparison for is nursing in a trauma unit (my daughter has a job in one in Toronto, one in London), that's reported to differ in important respects but in terms of hours and shifts it's similar. In both lines of work in both countries there's a constant risk of being replaced by cheap third world labour.

Maybe it's different for milkmen but in those two trades the specific job is more important in terms of work/life balance than the country it's in.

stuabroad

^what he said, multiplied by a few thousand. Even if it was the other way round, i'd dal with it: i'm still in shock about the amount of land i just got with my new house. Could never ever ever ever do that back home.

Those here who think they are high-powered, would mostly be eaten alive back home. The lack of the ability to get to the point in business discussions overwhelms the mind sometimes.

I personally put it down t the excessive coffee consumption and the consequence of having a drive-thru Starbucks/Timmys on every street corner. This makes you feel high-powered but it's all really a delusion.

CanadaJimmy

Really depends on the job. In my case it's a good balance, I have the option of working at home, I have a casual work environment, and it's also only a 20 minute drive to the office which is nice.

louisemc

Thank you all for your informative replies!

januarymix

Can you clarify this statement?

Signed,
The Doofus

Mikeypm

I think my sister would confirm on those benefits of being self employed, she is a fashion designer and yoga teacher and splits her time between teaching yoga freelance, running a yoga studio as a partner in the studio, making home made crafts and doing free lance clothing design and web design. She also has two kids so not sure what her average hours per day are ?. The general feeling I get is she still prefers these long hours and balancing act than being in the job and city she was in back in the UK.

MarylandNed

True except for the fact that vacation time frequently starts off at just 2-3 weeks for those working in Canada and the US. That was the biggest adjustment for me when I moved to Canada. I moved from a job in London where I had 5 (maybe 6) weeks vacation plus what appeared to be an unlimited number of sick days (nudge nudge wink wink - although most people made sure they stayed around the average of 11-12 sick days). To then arrive in Canada and get just 2 weeks vacation (which also included sick days) was a shock. My boss would sometimes ask me to work weekends (without any extra pay) which ate into my free time further - but when you're on a TWP and hoping for PR status, there's not much you can do about it. I now work in the US and get almost 6 weeks vacation again - that also includes sick days but it's definitely better than 2 weeks.

dbd33

I tried to make it plain that my comments applied to two specific trades. People in our business don't have paid vacation, nor paid sick time, in any of the jurisdictions mentioned. People working in trauma units have massive amounts of time off in both locations, that's achieved by shift juggling.

The one difference I will concede, in this context, is that I don't know of anyone being penalised for taking unpaid leave during slack work times in the UK. In Canada desk presence is important, not appearing for a whole week even when there's no actual work to be done can be a "career limiting" move.

Souvy

Opening your mouth here can also be professional suicide.

My stepson very recently started a new job in a new town (he's a machinist). The company got an order for a piece that they thought they could make but were not sure. They had to contact the manufacturer of the machine (in the US) to check. None of the established guys spoke much if any English, so the phonecall took a couple of hours. The Boy bit his tongue. He's completely bilingual and could have sorted the thing in ten minutes. He, probably rightly, concluded that, as a newbie, scoring points off his superiors would not possibly not be a great idea.

oopsbuddy

...until they find out later that he could have saved them a lot of trouble...! Only kidding, canny decision!