Michael

That's about the same as California law except on the 6th day (usually Saturday) is time and a half. Often companies also pay shift differential (extra pay when not working the day shift) but there is no law requiring shift differential pay.

Pulaski

That's the same in the UK, all time on Saturday was 1½time (I referred above to 6hrs on Saturday at 1½time), and the shift payment, was was 1⅓time for nights. My net pay for working nights was almost identical to my gross pay for 9-5 (no shift allowance), and I used to joke that I worked for (money for) myself, but worked nights for the taxman!

Hotscot

How long's a piece of string...?

Alternatively...you could get lucky depending on many variables...the demand for your skills, the employer that takes an interest, HR policies etc

4 weeks would be considered unusual.

Even if someone else has done this it doesn't really apply to whatever your situation will be.

Michael

Normally there isn't any negotiation on vacation time and I wouldn't try to negotiate it but many companies in the IT industry allow for unpaid vacation with the manager's approval.

Michael

I wouldn't say that 4 weeks is unusual in IT since many companies have converted to PTO. At one time, about 2 weeks vacation was standard for new employees plus 5 days of sick time. Now they are often combined under PTO and can be taken for any reason. Now often in the Silicon Valley (can't say what it is at other places) PTO is 4 weeks or greater for new employees.

Hotscot

I was just saying generally speaking...of course there are exceptions.

Maybe it's changed since this.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm

Michael

Average paid holidays and days of vacation and sick leave for full-time employees in small private establishments, 1996

Even in 1996, professional/technical personal averaged 10 days vacation and 8.5 days sick leave to start which is 18.5 days of PTO if the company converted to PTO and that is only for small companies. Large companies generally have better benefits.

All the companies that I worked for since 1980 had converted to PTO. Just like Bob's wife gets 5 weeks PTO as a bank executive although she can't seem to find time to take the time off.

Hotscot

Of which there are more of, than large corporations.

Generally, nationwide, 4 weeks vacation time for a new start would be unusual.
(However maybe he's not just speaking of vacation time...)

There are always exceptions.

Michael

We can debate this all day long but are talking about IT. Most IT workers don't work for small private enterprises but instead work for Russell 2000 or larger companies or are with Silicon Valley start ups. Personally I wouldn't classify an average market cap of $500 million as a small private enterprise.

Hotscot

Ok.

But there's no guarantee he would end up working for a large corporation, or where, geographically.

scrubbedexpat091

When at the airline our night premium which didn't start until 10pm, so only had 1 hour per shift since I was off at 11p, we got a whole 10 cents more per hour....

Hotels have been slightly more generous, I usually get 50 cents to 1.00 more per hour over the day shifts (7a to 3p and 3p to 11p) and if there is a restaurant free breakfast, but the breakfast is a taxable benefit, so I never used it as it increased my taxed paid and wasn't worth it in the long run.

Michael

I admit that although one of my sons gets reasonable vacation (about 4 weeks), he's so busy at his job that he is lucky if he has time to take off two weeks a year. He attended college but dropped out and worked at low paying menial jobs while involved with a very attractive girl that had a MBA with a very good paying job. I suspect after a while she was tired of carrying the financial load and my son moved back to the bay area to go back to college staying with me while he also learned web programing on his own. Now that he was being pushed by her from afar, he was a straight A student but after a year, she broke it off with him and he found another g/f on the internet and was off to Colorado. They eventually moved to LA and he got himself a decent paying job as a web developer since this was the tech boom of the 1990s.

After a couple years, he decided to start up a company with his g/f and another guy. The company would develop web sites for companies with him doing the programming, his g/f doing the administrative, and the other guy doing the marketing. Although the company was barely able to stay alive doing small jobs for companies, their big goal was to get a major music company where they would develop a portal for free and sell advertising for that web site and split the revenues with the music company (they were into music oriented web sites). They came to the bay area a couple of times on business and I talked to the marketing guy and asked him how he would sell the advertising if they got their big break and I didn't feel confident that he knew what he was doing. After two years they got their big break and signed a contract with a very large music company (one of the biggest in the world) and my son developed the portal which looked very good but the marketing guy couldn't figure out how to sell the advertising and the tech boom was crashing. Since my son spent all his time developing that web site, no money was coming in to pay the bills and they closed down the company with my son getting stuck with the credit cards and computer leasing bills since those required a personal guarantee and he signed for them.

Luckily even though the tech industry was crashing, he got himself another web development job and I bailed him out of the bills from his insolvent company. After a couple of years, the founder of that company decided to form a new "graphics design studio" company and my son transferred to the new company initially as a developer but eventually as a producer. As a producer he deals with advertising agencies to get the customer's requirements for ads so he is the liaison between the advertising agency and the development group. The graphics design studio only has about 20 full time employees but can have over 100 freelance developers working when they have a large project and a lot of projects going on at the same time.

They do a pretty decent business with projects ranging from about $200K to about $2 million and he is handling as many as the founder can assign to him. He makes a decent 6 figure salary but he works long hours and weekends constantly on the phone with the advertising agencies negotiating prices for desired changes and documenting those changes for the developers. He gets calls from the advertising agencies in the evening and on weekends and believe that may be because some advertising agencies may be in Europe or Asia (I've seen the ads that they produced and some are from around the world). Although if he works weekends he gets comp days but normally he doesn't have time to take those off so he sells those as well as some vacation back to the company at the end of the year.

Apparently the whole "graphics design studio" business is a madhouse with most of the studios in LA, NYC, and London so we've been discussing about how he can get out of the business. Personally I feel his skills are transferable to some high tech companies such as Google where they have built a big YouTube facility in LA but he wants to start up his own company and probably doesn't think that his skills are transferable.

Google invests in YouTube studio in LA - FT.com

hungryhorace

This is just a myth. Both British and German (and probably France, though I haven't checked on that for a while) workers are very well paid in skilled manufacturing jobs. You are aware are you not that Germany has some of the best manufacturers in the world? BMW, Miele, Siemens, Mercedes, Volkswagen to name just a few. All their plants are in Germany backed by highly skilled and well paid workers. Here in the US, the stupid workers don't even have the brains to join a union - a union which the parent company fully supported: http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100...82541226307368 Bunch of idiots.

I'm still struggling to see how this is different to the US? The only difference I can think of is that US prices for low and medium level goods costs less, though quality items (the variety of which Europeans prefer) cost FAR more.

My Miele vacuum cost me $700 here, yet costs around $350 in the UK. Another example, my Miele washing machine cost $2000 here. It would cost just over a grand in the UK. If you want low cost, crap quality items, the US has tonnes of low priced options available. If you want quality, well built items, you need to a) buy German and b) pay through the nose for it here.

hungryhorace

Amazon doesn't offer anywhere near what you are talking of. Two weeks PTO (plus some personal days) was what was on offer.

Pulaski

Er, no, they're not. Many "German" cars are now built in Eastern Europe, notably in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and also, in the case of VW, in Spain, to take advantage of much lower wages in those countries. "German" cars are also made in the UK, and France.