transatlantic_chap

One of the common reasons people give for not liking the idea of living/working in the US is the stinginess of employers when it comes to paid time off.

While there certainly are still places offering just two weeks off a year, I am beginning to notice job ads where the annual allocation looks a lot more reasonable (20 or even 25 days). Decent maternity leave is still a distant dream, but at least it appears that the paid time off situation could be changing.

What has your experience been with this?

dj6372

The starting PTO at my company is 5 days! Going up to 10 after 5 years service, I got 'lucky' I had previous service so they gave me 10 days, however as a salaried employee I get 5 'usable' sick days as PTO, so in effect 15 days. My wife also gets 10 days, she is a Regional Director, so is it improving?.................mmmmm not in my opinion.

Derrygal

I think that you really have to have a lot of tenure with an American company to get a decent vacation allowance. I have 4 weeks which isn't bad. However, that also includes sick time and I have been with this company 17 years. It took me 15 years to get this much time off work. I honestly can't remember what I started out with, but I know it wasn't much. I remember that I didn't take a trip back to the UK for 6 full years and part of the reason was the stingy vacation allowance (not the only reason but that was a big part of it). It's work work work here and things don't seem to be getting better. As for the maternity leave for new mothers - don't even get me started!! I realize that you didn't ask about that, but as I have two daughters and grandchildren it really bothers me!

Pulaski

I am not aware of any significant changes generally speaking. Vacation allowance seems to be heavily dependant on the industry you work in and your level in the company.

boltonreddave

I started a job in July with a medical services software company in Pittsburgh. I was pleasantly surprised with 15 vacation days, 4 personal days and 6 sick days.

robin1234

Always have to add the proviso in these discussions - we are only talking about commercial companies in relation to stingy vacation & having to work many years to get longer time off.

I say that not just because I worked for a university (25 days vacation, plus the entire Christmas/ New Year period, plus unlimited sick time. And this was from day one.) But also because I live and worked in a remote rural area - virtually no one around here works for a large commercial enterprise except perhaps Walmart or Lowes. Virtually all full time workers around here are school teachers, in higher education, cops, prison guards, or other government employment.

And vacation allowance is probably a meaningless concept if you work in Walmart etc., as you'll likely be part time only.

In America the concept of summer by the lake, at summer camp, at the "cottage" etc. is still a reality for many families. And that's the whole summer, Memorial Day till Labor Day. I think it's a bit of a holdover from the nineteenth century, when wealthy people left the city in the summer for their health. I believe it's still a factor in France.

transatlantic_chap

Yes, perhaps my view of things is skewed as I am mostly looking at jobs in universities.

robin1234

yeah universities you really need a cottage on the lake and a pile of books from the university library on indefinite loan

Owen778

I've never heard an American suggest taking the whole summer off. We took three vacations totalling almost four weeks this summer, and some of my colleagues had trouble getting their heads around it.

rpjs

In tech in hotspot areas like NYC "unlimited" PTO is becoming the norm. Usually that means in practice you can take around four weeks a year, plus occasional sick days. Also, my company is very flexible about working from home, so a lot of times folks will WFH when they're not feeling well enough to come into the office, but well enough to work. Basically so long as you're doing the job and don't take the piss, they're fine.

Sheepdip

My company has been trialing a 'take what you need' policy this year. Waiting to see if it will be repeated next year but from what I see, most people are nervous to use it (I'm not one of those)! We also do the WFH bit too as a number of employees are remote workers anyway.

Pulaski

One of my colleagues, a born and bred American with no connections to the UK or other countries, takes two and three week vacations every year. He gets 28 vacation days to take so do I ), and often books his vacations to include a public holiday, thereby stretching his vacation allowance further.

robin1234

These days, it would mostly be families where one or more parents are teachers.

The sense of summer as low season in the city is still current though. Traditionally, a lot of children are gone for eight whole weeks at sleepaway camp. It's low season at the opera, ballet, theatres etc. Weekly magazines (The Nation is just one example) often have less frequent issues in the summer. Monthly journals often take a hiatus in the summer.

dj6372

We tend to tack days around the public holidays to make a week vacation, I have Thanksgiving day and Friday off so will book the Monday to make it a longer break.
We try and be a little more imaginative with our vacation now.

Giantaxe

My situation is getting worse in that I'm now being forced to use 20% of my vacation allowance for the week between Christmas and New Year. Unsurprisingly, the US is the only country that this legally flies in; no international employee is affected. They did "recompense" us by adding two public holidays, but of course those are also days when people might not necessarily want to take vacation.