How much vacation do you get?

I recently retired, but when I worked it was 4 weeks paid vacation per year.
 
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puma1552 said:
I love my job, but I'm dying for a vacation. My job is very mentally taxing (engineer). We always have tons of work to do which is better than the alternative, but it can be pretty stressful.

That said we only get 10 days of vacation (which I suppose is standard) and 6 company holidays. No floating holidays or personal holidays. Just the 10 and the 6. We also don't get black Friday nor even Christmas Eve off.
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I'm also an Engineer and while I've not moved around much, I don't believe that 10 days is "Standard", unless they're simply referring to how much a starting employee gets...or you're working for a really small firm.

In my present job (been there 20+ years now), I started with 10 days off (2 weeks), plus the eleven (11) US Federal Holidays but now get 25 days off (5 weeks), plus the eleven (11) US Federal Holidays.

Can't roll any vacation either, use it or lose it, and lots of people have lost it thinking they'd be able to take it at the end of the year but having too many deadlines, so even that's a gamble.
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Employees losing earned vacation time is a Management/Leadership Failure. So too is to not have any 'rollover' banking provisions.

At my last job I had over four weeks of vacation in addition to about double the holidays. Seemed like I had a week off or a few days off every other month or so, which was great.
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Which means you already suspect that the "its standard" claim is probably BS. Ask around the older engineers there to find out if they're still just getting 10 days/year after X years on the job. In my case, there was a very defined policy which scheduled the vacation benefit bumps at 3 and 15 years.


I don't know what the point of this post is...

The easy answer would be to find another job with more time off, but there are a lot of other great things about the job, and I don't know that I'd get much more competitive a package elsewhere...
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I understand: you're collecting data and considering 'design alternatives' ;-)

Do the local research for how much your coworkers are getting (even if it is to just note who goes on vacations & for how long).

When you get to having a reasonably good relationship with your boss for pay/compensation discussions, what you really want to do is to discuss your concerns with him as it relates to your compensation. In your case, it sounds like the message that you want to send is that for your next raise, you want him to know that you want a different mix of pay-benefits, so the question is if they're open to "compensation in forms other than pay".



-hh
 
I know I get 10 days in my first year. I believe it's 15 in year two and 20 in year three.

We also get 3 "personal days" every year. Basically additional paid vacation or sick days to use however you want. This does not vary based on seniority.

For 2013 we get the following off:
  • New Years Day
  • MLK Jr Day
  • President's Day
  • Good Friday (1/2 day)
  • Memorial Day
  • 4th of July
  • Labor Day
  • Veteran's Day
  • Thanksgiving and day after
  • Christmas Eve to New Years day (week off)*

*My department and finance are the only two I'm aware of that have to work this week, sadly. So the days we have to work during this time we get as floating holidays to use. We still get Christmas and Christmas Eve off; New Years Eve it depends.

Vacation and personal days do not roll over. Sick days (15/year) do however.
 
I get 15 days off and we don't really count sick days, but I rarely take sick days. The office also closes during Christmas and new years week.
 
Wait a minute, do I understand correctly that in the US, every company chooses for itself if i.e. Memorial Day is off or not?

And 15 days a year, you must be kidding me..I couldn't survive in your country! :eek:
 
puma1552 said:
My job is very mentally taxing (engineer). We always have tons of work to do which is better than the alternative, but it can be pretty stressful.
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Peculiar. I'm an engineer, have been for nearly 20 years, but only one job have I had which I would have called "mentally taxing" - and I was only there about 8 months. I hated it. I stayed in the field because it's actually not stressful at all, as far as jobs go.

That said we only get 10 days of vacation (which I suppose is standard) and 6 company holidays.
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That's a bit lean in my experience. I get 15 days a year plus I think 8 1/2 holidays. In consulting, it's all about billable hours, so we don't get a lot of holidays, but 6 sounds pretty thin, I think.

Can't roll any vacation either, use it or lose it
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This part bothers me the most. I did have one employer that only allowed us to roll over no more than 40 hours, but otherwise I've never been told "use it or lose it."
 
Y'all lucky bast... I get ZERO vacation time and ZERO holidays.:(

On the plus side, I have very flexible hours (in when I'm good and ready, out when I've had it up to here;)). I just need to get all my work done. In the end, I guess it all balances out.

At my old job I had 2 weeks the first year, +1 week each additional year I was with the company up to 6 weeks. I had a lot of vacation time saved up and joked with my co-worker that I might take every Monday off for the next 6 months.:D The boss over heard and was not pleased. Meh... the guy was so uptight you couldn't push a greased BB up his (_!_).

My new boss is cool. She doesn't mind that I show up at 10-ish, give or take an hour, and leave at 4-ish, give or take an hour. For me, not being stuck in rush hour traffic is well worth the no vacation.
 
Zero paid personal days.

Zero paid holidays.

Zero paid sick days.

Zero paid vacation.

Any days I take off cost me the income I would have earned on those days.

Great deal...right!?:rolleyes:
 
I think it is 29 days. It was 38 until there were policy changes and I lost 9 days. I figure the longer I work there, the more vacation days they'll remove. :D
 
Shrink said:
Zero paid personal days.

Zero paid holidays.

Zero paid sick days.

Zero paid vacation.

Any days I take off cost me the income I would have earned on those days.

Great deal...right!?:rolleyes:
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This for me as well. I own my own business and am a contractor for a fortune 500 company. Neither of my "jobs" give me any vacation/personal/sick days. If I take time off, I don't get paid. It's amazing how much motivation that gives you for getting your butt out of bed and into the office!
 
I do L2 support at a large company, as a contractor. My company starts people at 3 weeks PTO, increasing to 4 and then topping out at 5. That's a combo of sick and vacation days. On top of that, we get all the Federal US holidays and 6 floating holidays so we can align our holiday schedule with that of the site we support/sit at.

I've been here long enough I get 5 weeks PTO now. We can roll a week over year to year, anything beyond 40 hours is lost as are any unused floating holidays.
 
I typically get 8 years per year, as well as 10 personal days, corporate days off and national holidays.

I typically work 4 days of 10 hour shifts, saves more time for long weekends weekly. Unless we have a REALLY big project on a deadline.
 
2 Weeks. The only holidays I get off are Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. Other holidays I can take off (Like Memorial Day, Labor Day, or the 4th of July), but typically you pick one. Maybe you'll get lucky and get 2 off. I don't mind working them, because typically I have overtime anyway which is 1.5, and holiday pay which is 2.5, so basically depending on what day the holiday falls on, I could be making 4x my regular rate.
 
We start with 3 weeks, plus all Canadian statutory holidays, and then some.

New Years Day
Family Day
Good Friday
Easter Monday
Victoria Day
Canada Day
BC Day
Labour Day
Thanksgiving Day
Remembrance Day
Christmas Day

+ Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, New Years Eve.

After 4 years of employment, vacation time goes to 4 weeks, and slowly builds from there up to 8 weeks paid I think, perhaps even more I need to check the collective agreement.

Also, we get as many sick days as needed, and we can bank OT for extra days. Life/work balance is pretty good, but I do wish we made some more $$$, but can't have it all I suppose.
 
firedept said:
I get 4 weeks a year. I rarely use them as I only work 3 days a week, but am on call 24/7. Company I work for will buy my holiday time out if I ask.
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See I would use all of it. You almost have to. The thing about vacation is they give you it and they call it "paid", but it's not actually paid. They could give you no vacation and pay you more, but they don't. They instead give you vacation and pay you less.

Moral of the story: There's no such thing as "paid vacation". Take all of your vacation.
 
well it's pretty clear things are much leaner at my place than most others.

I should also say you get 10 days for five years, then 3 weeks in your sixth year, and then from that point on you get an extra day per year until you hit four weeks, at which point that's the grand cap. so i guess you get four weeks in your 11th year.
 
5 weeks plus national holidays, 5 personal days, 5 sick days, if sick days not used get paid for them at end of year.
 
3 weeks vacation. 8 personal days (which are the same thing as vacation except they don't pay them out if I quit), 6 paid holidays and no set limit on sick days.

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twietee said:
Wait a minute, do I understand correctly that in the US, every company chooses for itself if i.e. Memorial Day is off or not?

And 15 days a year, you must be kidding me..I couldn't survive in your country! :eek:
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It's up to the employer, but most 9-5 M-F desk jobs will give Memorial Day and other federal holidays off. I'm in IT and I get Memorial Day off. The people who usually don't get it off are those who work in retail, because stores don't close for Memorial Day - it's now a big weekend for sales, because there's no better way to honor the troops than to purchase a new mattress or car :rolleyes:
 
26 days annual leave plus standard UK bank holidays plus I can accrue an additional 12 days of flexi days if I do the overtime (which isn't an issue)

Not too bad when reading some of the other posts
 
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