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Do Companies Punish Workers Who Take Vacations?
Hugh Pickens writes "Chad Brooks reports that a steady stream of research over the past year reveals that Americans aren't taking vacations and it's because they are afraid to take time off from work for fear of appearing less than dedicated to their employer with one survey showing that 70 percent of employees said they weren't using all their earned vacation days in 2011. 'You have this kind of fear of not wanting to be seen as a slacker,' says John de Graaf, executive director of Take Back Your Time, an organization focused on challenging the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine facing society. De Graaf adds that while some companies are good about encouraging employees to use earned time off, there also are some that aren't worried about the potential repercussions that may come from that nose-to-the-grindstone approach. 'They think, "If I burn someone out, I can always find someone else,"' says de Graaf. 'They think [employees] are expendable.' Even when they do take vacation, research shows many employees aren't leaving their work behind. In one study, 66 percent of surveyed employees said they would check and respond to email during their time off, and 29 percent expect to attend meetings virtually while on vacation. De Graaf is not optimistic anything will ever get done to free employees of their fear of taking time off. 'This is the only wealthy country in the world that does not guarantee any paid vacation time,' says de Graaf. 'Every other country understands that this makes people healthier and creates a better workforce.'"
It's very important to me to be able to fuck off from my job. I skip out early, I take days off, I ignore phone calls after hours. As long as I get the job done during the day, I don't care what people think. I am a slacker, and I enjoy it. Life's too short to fret over the grindstone. Don't take life too seriously!
companies barely need excuses to punish employees anymore, they can just do it to keep the others in line.
but it gets better, though. if ron paul had his way, companies would effectively own their employees (to an even greater extent than they already do) and punish them more severely with no chance of the employees being able to do anything reactionary to it.
three comments and I am forever at terrible karma
Just another facet of the fascism that is the corporatised USA.
We love the 1%.
having worked for a company that did punish employees who took vacations I can say the answer to this is yes..
Everyone was excited about how the economy is screaming and moving forward with 3x more postings than last year! ... the jobs were all insurance selling door to door, hotel maids, cocktail waitressing, etc. This was a professional job fair too and only one of the 40 employers had anything over 30k a year!
In that environment would you want to risk your job? Hell no! If I were making 50k a year I would feel fucking rich and be greatful to work 12 hours a day. In that environment where these poor saps would do anything to take your job to feed your kids you have to suck it up. This isn't 1999 anymore.
I remember 12 years ago when I was young, that many people called in sick once a month or took a vacation Friday etc. These folks got laid off in 2001 as soon as the shit hit hte fan. Until the economy improves and there are more jobs than applicants this will continue. In addition with Europe at risk of going into a full great depression if the banking system collapses I would say there is considerable risk right now. Even if the US economy is adding more low wage jobs now than before this will sharply reverse if citigroup, chase, and BOA all go out of business once every bank in Europe also collapses too. It is very serious until governments learn to live within their means.
http://saveie6.com/
Oh FFS - can we please stop diluting the important words in our language? It kind of skews people's perspective of actual famine. #getoffmylawn
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
If it ever gets this bad, please shoot me! :0)
'Every other country understands that this makes people healthier and creates a better workforce.'"
No, every other country isn't ruled by supersized multinational corporations who can co-opt every government process, override any legal review, and sidestep any political controversy, if they pay enough. America's government can be properly classified now as "Dollar." That, right there, is what is causing the problem -- it's not that the government doesn't understand, it's that the government doesn't care.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
While my job is largely production based, the unemployment rate is currently 8.5%
I think most people would rather not be seen as being in the bottom 50% of workers where they are for fear of layoffs or any sort of cutback.
I think most people would rather take a small increase in work-stress to forgo a lot of financial related stress down the road.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
If you are capable and organized then your vacation time will be taken and your area of ownership will not suffer.
Understanding, capable, and organized bosses are also a huge help.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
USA USA USA!
Seriously though, what the hell is wrong with you guys? I live in Canada right beside you, and I'd get outright hostile at an interview if I was told there wasn't guaranteed vacation. I've never worked at a place that hasn't outright forced you to take vacation days. Literally, if you don't book them, they will book off arbitrary days towards the end of the year if they haven't been booked.
Those guys have mandatory vacation periods several weeks long. I envied that guy getting to take his vacation in the middle of crunch time.
The summary provides a lot of info on how employees view the situation, but it completely lacks any type of proof on whether or not companies are actually punishing workers for using vacation time. The part at the end about the U.S. being the only nation that doesn't guarantee vacation time is a red herring because if an employee has an employment contract that provides a certain amount of vacation time per year, then I would hazard to guess that being punished for actually using that vacation time would be a breech of contract.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Different cultures have different attitudes about work/life balance. I get the shakes if I'm away from work for more than a couple days.
Where I live we have 25 days of paid leave every year by law, i.e. five full weeks. People in white collar jobs typically have 6-7 weeks (employers use this to attract employees). Where I work I think the lowest number of days is 28 and then you get more with age up to about seven weeks worth of time of per year. Oh, and we only work 40 hours per week and we certainly don't take work home or with us when we go on vacation.
Oh FFS - can we please stop diluting the important words in our language? It kind of skews people's perspective of actual famine. #getoffmylawn
But, because of pirates dealing in so much stolen wares, they are handing out time famine by the bucket. If this goes on, we'll have a tsunami of time famine, whose earthquake will wreck the homes we have built.
Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?
It's not that I feel like I can't take vacation, but with only 2 weeks/year, I feel like I need to save it for something special. If I had 4 weeks (or more), I'd be more likely to take more little trips here and there or even use vacation as a personal day to stay home, but as it is, I try to save up my vacation for a big trip.
I'd rather that my company moved to a paid time off pool for both sick and vacation days since I so rarely use sick days.
Remember the office sitcom '9 to 5' ? yes, 9.00 in the morning to 05.00 in the evening. it depicted an office and the funny situations that happened in between the workers in the office. a privately owned office. it was a popular sitcom, due to depicting a lot of people's daily lives.
the catch here, is in the name of the sitcom - '9 to 5'. you see, back 20-25 years ago, the situation in america was so that you worked in private corporations in between those hours in general. actually not only in america - it was so in many other parts of the world (maybe except japan).
but look at it now - 7 in the evening is the normal time when work stops in almost entire private sector. in the last 25 years, somewhere in between, the hour we got out of work has gone from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and this did not happen only in america - almost any part of the world. wages ? they did not increase in proportion to inflation.
so we are working more, (25% more on average at least), but getting paid less. and everything is ship shape, as far as the current economic system and corporations are concerned.
would you expect paid vacations to be something that corporations would smile at, in such an environment ?
Read radical news here
I was always told that it looked bad if you didn't use all of your vacation. People that never go on vacation usually have something to hide (a mistake they don't want others finding out about). The only reason I don't use all of my vacation is that I'd rather cash in as much of it as possible to pay off those pesky student loans.
I take all my days every year, and I've got 28 PTO days per year on top of the usual holidays. Yes, I work in the US for a major corporation, but not to take your vacation days is ripping yourself off.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Tell me about it.
The harddrive holocaust last year threw us into a great data-storage depression; Can't even get a 1TB drive for under $100.
My company forces its employees to take vacations, because "banked" vacation time must be paid in full when employee leaves the company, and it can get very expensive to pay out a few month's worth of paychecks on top of losing a valuable resource. Now, having your work pile up while you're on vacation because there is no headcounts to replace you while you're away, is a while other issue.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Mandatory vacations are supposed to be one of the first lines of fraud prevention at all companies. People who commit frauds at companies by doctoring the books are unable to do so while they are on vacation, and so the discrepencies in the accounts show up when they are not at their desk for a couple of weeks. US corporations are, once again, opening themselves wide open to fraud by not requiring mandatory vacations of their employees.
In a country with laws giving everyone 4 weeks paid leave and 10 public holidays a year employees get pressured to take their leave, as leave balances are liabilities on their books. If employees work on a public holiday they are usually given a day in leiu and paid time and a half or double time. I feel a bit short changed being a contractor and getting absolutely nothing but the much bigger pay cheque more than makes up for it.
It's unhealthy to work non-stop and it can't be good for your work. I always come back feeling recharged. Occasionally a colleague has had significant holiday remaining at the year-end and our bosses certainly weren't applauding, they told them to take it ASAP.
Employees not taking holidays is also a known fraud risk. Employees committing fraud commonly do not take holidays because they need to keep covering their tracks. The story can be similar for incompetent employees. If they're not at work for a week complaints are more likely to make it to someone who might start asking questions.
In high-risk jobs it's not unusual for week-long holiday breaks to be absolutely mandatory (one of the findings from the Bearings Bank collapse).
People do not take vacations because they don't have money to do so. Or they simply refuse to fly because of this whole security theater we got going on here...
If you don't enjoy your job, then that sucks.
I worked for the Australian branch of a multinational, when we got put under the management of the US branches.
Now this was done because we were putting our releases on time, on budget, while the US branches were constantly missing deadlines and getting hit by penalty payments. So we were basically moved to make their departments figures look better.
The US managers kept coming out, looking at what we were doing and how hard we were working, and immediately deciding that if they could take our 4 weeks annual leave off us, we'd be even more productive! They could not get their heads around the idea that we were able to put in that much effort because we knew that when crunch finished we'd be able to take a couple of weeks to rest and recover before the next sprint. If you don't get time off, then you've got to pace yourself.
We never got it through their heads, and eventually we were written off as culturally lazy, and sold off. Even though we were the ones hitting deadlines, and they were always running late.
Are people who work long hours and check in to keep things moving even while on vacation, rewarded more than those who go off the grid when not on the clock?
Imagine two people:
1) has family and makes a point to not work on vacation, lest they suffer the wrath of their spouse
2) is single, and tends to take stay-cations, gets bored and checks in to work to break up monotony
I don't understand the logic that would drive a manager to give the same reward to both individuals, when person 2 clearly works more. Sure, person 1 has more getting in the way of work, but that doesn't justify an inflated sense of worth on the job.
"If I burn someone out, I can always find someone else(.)"
In this economy, that's perfectly true.
You are free to not take any vacations days if you choose to do so. The rules are only so that you can take some vacations days. So I am happy about the freedom to chose (I took 11 out of my 20 days of vacation last year), than being without any protection if I want to take the full 20 days this year.
Please enlighten me why this in any way a negative thing compared to the US?
Every other country understands that this makes people healthier and creates a better workforce.
Perhaps other countries' businesses are more about making money for the stockholders and less about reminding the management that they have power over the working stiffs.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Worker abuse is common and this leads to burnout, poor work do to long hours and higher trun over.
I openly tell companies while interviewing that I will take all my available PTO every single year. I also tell them that I do not expect to work more than 40 hours in a week (and never more than 50) unless it's a 1 or 2x a year event.
If a company isn't up to these expectations during the interview they get visibly uncomfortable or tell you the interview is done right then and there. This is fine for me, no one should work for a company which demands you work more than 40 hours or won't let you take the time off you've earned.
However, I do my work and never miss deadlines (due to my own failure). I feel as long as I keep up my end of the bargain so should the company. Any that don't aren't worth my time.
---
I took a three week long summer vacation last year. I am taking 5 weeks this summer. I also take many long weekends and sometimes a random week off here and there. If you're not then you need to find a new job and fast.
Oh and no, I don't care how much you love your job there's no way you can love it more than vacation.
At my company, we did away with vacations. You get no vacation time. At. All.
But that was just for starters, we also did away with sick time. None.
Personal days? Don't make me laugh.
I am proud to say that was my initiative.
One might think this could have some impact on moral. But when asked during on camera interviews, how much would people have to pay you to leave? Some said at least double, and most said they couldn't even think of a number.
If you want to know how that's possible, then Google ROWE. Results Only Work Environment. And you'll understand why.
I give talks about our transition to ROWE, and it's been nothing but phenomenal.
David
David Whatley
I used my vacation time this year. First time in 13 years I've actually taken a full vacation. Two weeks later I was let go. Luckily I have a new job already but this is a very real problem.
As for the reason I was let go? It was trumped up BS. I was a model employee, multiple promotions, commendations etc. Never had I been under any disciplinary action.
I've been with the company and (its successors in interest -- yes it's been bought three times) long enough that I supposedly get 5 weeks of vacation per year. However, there is a clear expectation that I will check email while on vacation (or holiday). I also have been called in for insignificant issues while I was on vacation -- told I had to come back in. If I go out of town, I'm expected to take a laptop with me so I can remote in to handle issues that come up. Vacation... I wish.
This is what capitalism does. Profits become more important than people.
In the U.S. you are also punished for taking time off for being sick. I actually had a co-worker told that she had to keep her accrued vacation time above 20 hours (vacation time and sick time are the same pool) because the company felt that she was taking too much time off even though she was only taking what she had accrued. So if she was hovering around 20 hours accrued and got the Flu, tough...better come to work and infect your co-workers. It's stupid. Corporate policy is based around what makes for the best quarterly report. Never mind that those decisions will cost the company in the long run as long as the numbers have been maximized for the quarterly report. The hubris of the corporate overlords is bolstered by the support of the state which says that we are "at will" employees that can be let go at any time without prior notice or reason. This is the result of runaway capitalism. We are returning to the robber barons of the turn of the last century.
There are those who are afraid, and there are those who think their job is just short term. I've found that by giving a 90 day notice of an upcoming vacation tends to make the more nervous bosses less so. I follow up every 30 days stating in my email, that on such and such a date I'll be taking some time off.
I even reminded the Management that they'd need to assign someone to cover for me early enough for me to bring my stand-in up to speed. No action.
As we got down to the last few weeks before I was scheduled to leave, my immediate manager started dropping hints that this wasn't a good time to be out of the office. I replied that that was why it was important to have someone cover for me.
About a week before I'm scheduled for time off, I get called into a meeting with every suit above me right up to the senior VP. They go on at great length about how important the work I'm doing is, how critical etc. to the Company, and what a poor time it will be for me to be gone. I make understanding noises. Finally they ask me if I'm going to reschedule my time off. I tell them that we have travel booked, hotels, all that.
They then dial up the "we really, really, really need you here" stuff. So I fold: "Well, if that's how it is we'll just have to tell the wedding guests they're on their own and call off the wedding." Silence.
I'm reliably informed that the partying at the reception went on nearly till dawn. We weren't there.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I certainly agree that employees that use their vacation days are at a disadvantage. Who are you more likely to promote? Joe Schmoe who 'abandons his post' for two weeks a year, or John Doe who hasn't taken so much as a sick day in ages and never takes vacation? You don't have to cross-train someone to hold down John's side of the fort for a week or two at a time, so promoting him will save you a few man-hours of time in the future. In the mean time, you'll keep telling Joe he can't take vacation because someone else on the far other end of the vacation always has the two weeks he wants reserved off....
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
And are your staff currently standing on the office roof theatening to jump off?
They exchanged it for a program where you "ask your manager for time off". Fine if you are a confident employee with a good manager and a good relationship with them. Not fine if you are timid or have a bad manager and bad relationship with them. Fine for the company because they win either way.
*returns from Googling*
You say you have no vacation time, I say you have unlimited vacation time. Normal companies will bitch out employees for not hitting milestones as well; the difference is that in yours, that's all they care about.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Oh no, this work environment is not open to abuse or doesn't foster abuse, no, not at all.
I'll be sure to ask a prospective employer if they employ ROWE.
And avoid them.
--
BMO
The OP mentioned that the US is the only rich country in the world where the government doesn't guarantee paid time off from one's job. Who cares? Whether it's a legal right or a company policy, if you're afraid to take it off for fear of being viewed as a slacker, then you won't take time off. My company gives me paid time off, and I take it. I have no idea whether I'm seen as a slacker or not, and I don't care. If I take too much time off, I have to take it unpaid, and they let me do that, too.
Nobody likes to work. We do it to get a paycheck. It's the United States of America - one of the last places on earth that you can make as much money as you want if you work hard enough. We seem to have adopted the stance that making money is a bad thing. That "the man" is crushing us. You all sound like a bunchy of whiny babies. Move to France or Canada if you are so sick of the US. I'm proud to have started with nothing and worked myself in something. It was tough, but it was my choice. Now my tax dollars pay for people to be unemployed for years and, if they are employed, for them to whine about how hard it is to have a job where you have to call in on your vacation. Boo freaking hoo.
So I, as an employer, can pile on results I expect to take eighty hours a week of work and my employees will be grateful for having the flexibility in their time where they can sleep and, maybe, take a weekend? Sounds great! Where do i sign up?
That is all.
Ours has 160 hours of vacation time for new hires, up to 240 hours per year after a few years. PTO is separate from vacation time. Sabbatical (twenty business days) every four years. And we're still productive.
Every other "wealthy" country in the world is going broke even faster than the United States. Why not hobble our economy even more with silly work rules?
The fact of the matter is at a big company (usually) there's no evil overlord saying "fuck these people out of their PTO". For one that guy is personally liable and it gets quite expensive if the employees sue. What instead usually happens is that this type of policy is local to a specific department of pointed haired evil troll boss. This guy "gets results" and gets ahead on the backs of his employees. If you've worked long enough you've probably had both types of bosses. Of course, this type of boss is actually _bad_ for the company as it creates a short term gain by exchanging it for morale and eventual turnover. If the manager gets a promotion, he doesn't care, the dept. health is someone elses issue. (And perversely it looks better for him "hey, that dept. ran great when _I_ was there!").
So how does an institution fight this? By punishing the managers. We have a rule where if the employee hits X hours of vacation they are then just paid out instead of getting more. X is a large #, like it would take more than a year of no vacation to get there. If you get close to X, the first thing that happens is your boss's boss sees this and says "how come Bob is maxing hours?". Its his fault. So managers are trained to make sure they track employee vacation and ensure they're taking it in reasonable chunks.
There's always exceptions, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons IMO for denying vacation. For instance, 2 guys are already out of a 4 man team. Probably not a good time for the other two to leave. Or your big product launch is next month and you need everyone around. These are generally not an issue with proper scheduling. Another good thing good companies will do is just close down certain weeks of the year, like Xmas to New years, or 4th of july weekend, etc. Most people are gone, so the ones who didn't take PTO will just goof off anyways. Give less PTO, but more standard holidays.
Anyways, doesn't have to be all doom and gloom if the managers have their shit together.
It wasn't the only cause but it was a combination of lack of training, not working over 60 hours a week, and then taking 7 days of vacation in a row.
I'm saving very hard. I'm looking forward to the day I am safe and don't care. I won't quit. I'll just stop putting out the effort while remaining positive and pleasant.
Looks to be about three years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
and every time I tried to take a day off I got the hairy eye-ball from the boss.
Every year they raised my pay a few % and in the last maybe 6-8 years of work, when things were booming and companies couldn't hire engineers fast enough, and were paying ridiculous "signing bonuses", I suggested to HR that they offer a little more time off instead of jacking up pay every year. I always got a blank stare as if I was speaking some sort of alien language.
While working for HP they used to march all of us into big presentations every year at annual raise time. They would proceed to tell us with pride how their HR people sat down with the HR people from every other large engineering employer in the bay area and came up with standardized job descriptions and salary/benefits. They never said it directly, but to anyone with a brain they were saying "don't bother to look for work somewhere else because you won't get a better deal".
Of course you can't take your lousy week or two of vacation time. Start doing that and you mark yourself as ready to be kicked to the curb when the stock price drops $2/share and the $20M/year CEO's brilliant answer is to lay off a bunch of engineers. No wonder the economy sucks. Between the fuckwit politicians and the fuckwit CEOs it's a wonder we are ALL living in cardboard boxes under an overpass somewhere.
I'm definitely NOT steering my son toward a career in engineering and would never recommend anyone else living in the US to do so.
(I've long suspected that many workers overestimate the amount of time they spend at the office . . . or at least engaged in productive work.)
For one, it doesn't matter. Being in the office at 7pm and seen is what matters.
Two, you're in the Midwest? Interesting. Location matters too - cultural norms. To put it bluntly, hay seed - you're a lazy slacker. I thought you farm boys got up at 3am, milked the chickens, fed the cows, had breakfast and then went to work.
And then worked until 11 PM, came home, had dinner, got 3.5 hours of sleep and then went right back to milking your chickens.
And then went and voted Republican.
There have been countless stories on the subject and they all point to the same thing -- insane work hours primarily to present an image of someone who works hard. The cost to their health and their humanity all be damned. The government officially encourages a return to sane work habits and schedules, but the government workers aren't setting a great example. An ex-girlfriend I know works for the Japanese government, works insane hours despite her current bad health and says her boss works until 3am and comes in to work at 10am.
Why is there a decline in birth rates? Why are there more old people than young people? What is the long term cost and prognosis of this? Yeah... just look to the Japanese to see what we're in for if this keeps going on.
This deluge of dilution is utterly intolerable!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
California law treats vacation as accrued wages. If you don't take your vacation days, the employer must pay you for them at the end of employment.
Still, many employers prefer to pay than let their employees take time off.
of very common behavior in humans:
- lack of empathy
- control others by fear
on one end, on the other
- fear, dependency and paranoia
So, co-dependent.
Has been present for ages, will it ever change even now, with resources getting limited?
Take more vacations to remote places where there is no connectivity. I take at least 2 weeks every year out in the woods where I cannot be contacted.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
At my company, vacation days, sick days, holidays are rolled up into PTO -- paid time off. The company tends to view PTO as theirs, not the employees. We have to take PTO on holidays (and usually the day after) and if we don't have time in the bank, too bad, it's now unPTO. We can no longer sell back PTO (there went the nice Christmas money). Give your two weeks notice and they buy back any unused PTO at 80%. There's a limit to how much PTO we can carry over from one year to the next (and it's not much). Managers are required to spend 4 of 8 PTO hours on-site, working, until they're down to the new limit. They're also required to spend at least 8 PTO hours per week, but it can't be the same day each week, nor are they allowed to bookend their weekends (Friday one week, Monday the next).
But if I do up and decide to take PTO on short notice (as in, that day), no one says a damn thing.
Is this just a US thing?
Here in the UK I can't imagine this ever occurring, any company doing such a thing would quite rapidly lose staff. In fact all of my employers have generally actively encouraged holiday taking (on the basis that accrued holiday in one year often doesn't get carried over to the next year).
How much holiday do you guys get over the pond anyway? I think the average for office workers here (not counting contractors of course) has gotta be about 25 days + public holidays.
. . IF I could get it! I have 15 days a year off, but trying to take any of them is like pulling teeth. My boss has an excuse for every season.
Winter - We're not getting much done because of the weather, so we need to work every chance we get.
Spring - We need to work more to make up for a bad Winter.
Summer - This is our best time of year to get a lot done. Let's work over if possible.
Fall - We're behind. Nobody can take off from now until the end of the year.
I have to put my foot down every time and demand to be off.
Last I heard, South Korea was the worst in this regard. Well there's another fine thing where the US isn't no. 1...
I'd be way too busy traveling, chasing women
You are doing it wrong. If you win the powerball, you don't have to chase women, they chase you.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Most comments seem to origin in the US. Some contributors may be interested in the situation in Europe. Here the data for the three biggest European economies.
-------------------
Paid Leave
European Union requires all its member states to guarantee by law minimally four weeks of paid leave for all employees.
Average paid holiday days per year for full-time employees in 2008:
- Germany 30 days, plus 10.5 days public holidays
- France 25 days, plus 11 days public holidays
- United Kingdom 24.7 days, plus 8 days public holidays
-------
Working hours
Actual average weekly work hours for full-time employees in Europe
- United Kingdom 40,9 hours (2008)
- Germany 38.8 hours (2010)
- France 38,4 hours (2008)
-------------------
And no, my experience in four European countries (UK, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic) suggests that workers are not punished in any way if they take their vacations.
Technology should make us more productive, e.g. able to respond to situations from a distance. (Consider how much easier it has become to discuss things with a colleagues, since the invention of the cellphone.)
Increased productivity should mean that people get time off and are able to do the things important to them. But it now also means that they're able to work very long hours. This correlates with a high unemployment rate, which suggests that the fear of being fired translates into working another person's job, for little or no pay.
The evidence is that the USA's relatively free market approach to employment practices is failing the workers. Is there a simple solution? Of course not. But some guaranteed conditions would be nice, like four weeks' annual leave.
It must be possible to make it uneconomical to penalise people for taking leave: if anyone loses or leaves their job when they are owed guaranteed leave (e.g. more than a few weeks' leave), or accumulates more than a certain amount of leave (e.g. two years'), then they receive a proportional payment e.g. triple time. You'd have to find a way to make sure this didn't just push people to become casuals and contractors. Not too hard: e.g. if you work more than 160 hours in a month for a given employer, you start accruing leave benefits. Yes, increased regulation would make it more expensive to hire people --- but only for employers who were expecting to exploit their employees.
My scheme is simplistic, but it aims to push a failing system in the right direction. There needs to be some momentum to help employees obtain a payoff from increased productivity, because at the moment they aren't getting it.
Nobody likes to work. We do it to get a paycheck. It's the United States of America - one of the last places on earth that you can make as much money as you want if you work hard enough. We seem to have adopted the stance that making money is a bad thing. That "the man" is crushing us. You all sound like a bunchy of whiny babies. Move to France or Canada if you are so sick of the US. I'm proud to have started with nothing and worked myself in something. It was tough, but it was my choice. Now my tax dollars pay for people to be unemployed for years and, if they are employed, for them to whine about how hard it is to have a job where you have to call in on your vacation. Boo freaking hoo.
Spoken like a true American Republican, with no sense of empathy for other people at all.
Yes sir, we are all just a bunch of whiny babies who deserve nothing better than to be the 21st century equivalent of slaves for you and your ilk.
If people like this sort of thinking, then vote GOP. If not, then vote anyone but them.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Do Companies Punish Workers Who Take Vacations?
In my experience the answer to that question is "no". Every place I've ever worked has strongly encouraged employees to take all available vacation time. And if you really feel the need to have more time off just ask for unpaid time.
It isn't really "the company" that punishes those who work shorter hours and take lots of time off. Some employees are very ambitious and work their butts off for every promotion, you can compete with them or decide not to, your choice.
How do you handle the issue where almost no company really knows how to rate performance of software or office work.
Why you think that can't be abused by slightly and constant increasing performance demand until some has to work 12 hours a day, every day is beyond me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Years ago when I worked at IBM (actually IGS, IBM Global Services) the "utilization rate" target of 103% of 2100 hours per year meant that ALL time off-- sick time, holidays, vacation, education & training-- had to be covered by "billable" time (even if only for blue-dollar projects)... so any time off had to be covered by O/T... but, unlike Comp Time, there's a cap of 3 to 5 weeks.
Mind you, if you fell short of the utilization rate target, your PBC rating would seldom-- if ever-- get above a "3"... which impacted variable pay.
Let's not get into how the company made business decisions on garbage data (CLAIMS) on green-dollar contracts where the consultants (in GBS) cannot claim more than, say, forty hours out of a 60-80 hour week.
IBM obviously isn't alone in this crap. After getting caught in a RIFtide I ended up as a contractor at Verizon... and, in early 2009, Verizon decided, unilaterally, to cut billing rates by 10%.
Being a contractor... well, there's no paid vacation. Or holidays. So you really want to work holidays.
Also, these days, being a contractor emulates inter-galactic vacuum since the pay rates tend to be crappy despite the history, some decades back, of contractors being paid significantly higher than FTEs because they were temporary (though there's no such thing as a "permanent" job any longer).
I guess we're supposed to feel threatened in order to get the most out of us.
Employees should PUNISH EMPLOYERS who don't let them take vacations.
"Wealthy. You keep using that word."
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
I remember more problem for not taking vacation than anything else. (Job was cool, no family... so work was family).
At the end of the year usual convocation on the staff manager office... With obligation to take the whole 5 weeks at once (usually end november/ december to hybernate)... Sometimes could negociate to be paid a 13th month instead but it was a grey area...
When the law oblige you to give your employee the vacations... there is nothing companies can do against it... (without triggering a legal shitstorm at every inspection of the books)
Yeah, while you technically have "unlimited" vacation time, your setup is widely open to abuse, and in the wrong hands, could be quite indistinguishable from slavery.
I don't want to imply that you, yourself, are doing bad here, I just wanted to point out the dangers if this thing gets into the wrong hands.
Remind me, which is the more developed country again?
Wow, in 12 years in the workforce it has never once occurred to me not to use all my vacation time, and I've also always insisted on comp time for traveling on weekends. I understand the reasoning (and as a work at home type I probably do too much work at odd hours) but most people need time off to recharge. As long as you prove your worth during your days on this shouldn't be an issue.
Maybe you can shove your post's title up your ass. This "Be happy you have a job" bullshit is nothing short of pure evil. It's like saying, "Be happy you can be fucked up the ass!"
We seem to have adopted the stance that making money is a bad thing.
No, we didn't. We adopted the CORRECT stance that abusing others to make money is a bad thing.
Vacation time does not mean actually going somewhere for leisure. It means not going to work, and getting paid. Truthfully such should be called paid time off.
Especially IT workers because they're often in a horizontal department that touches every single other department, and furthermore IT folks tend to be expensive so there are usually some functions you will perform that have no human redundancies. Smaller companies may only have one programmer or one admin. If there is a problem that crops up during your vacation, even a small one, they will expect you to answer your phone and talk them through fixing it. Usually it's not the company itself that is discouraging you from taking vacation time and actually using it as intended, it's more likely a manager that wants to meet deadlines and doesn't feel bad about making you lose some vacation time to do it.
But it drives me up the fucking wall when I go on vacation and get calls about stupid shit that I would normally handle, but that anybody with a brain could figure out pretty easily. That just means you're lazy and value the 30 minutes it would take you to figure it out on your own more than you value not interrupting my vacation. If I'm the network guy and a core switch catches on fire, then I definitely want you to call me before you start fucking with it, but otherwise just tell people they'll have to wait til next week, it won't be the end of the world.
Yes, I was being hyperbolic to make a point and get attention.... :D
We did away with formal vacation time, sick time, etc.
You have unlimited amounts of it.
ROWE is a system where an employeer treats their employees like competent adults who know how to manage their time.
Does everyone know how to do that? No. And those people fail to get good results under ROWE and get fired.
Is measuring results hard? It's as easy or as hard as you want to make it. You can do 360 Reviews and all that BS if you want. Or you can keep it more informal, like we do.
ROWE increases productivity and employee's become amazingly loyal.
The biggest difficulty with it is for the boss(es) who feel like they are somehow losing control. Who fear that the day after they start ROWE no one will come into the office anymore. Know what really happens? People come into the office, they get work done, and they feel far, far less stress.
It is amazing. Its simple. It works. And of all the BS systems that have come and gone, this is the one that just flat out does what it says.
We'd never consider going back. Ever.
David Whatley
Apparently Best Buy is a ROWE company. The ROWE website gorowe.com features them as a shining example of ROWE.
And that's all anyone really needs to know.
--
BMO
when you follow the two hour rule.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/business/two-hour-rule.htm
Years ago when I worked at IBM (actually IGS, IBM Global Services) the "utilization rate" target of 103% of 2100 hours per year meant that ALL time off-- sick time, holidays, vacation, education & training-- had to be covered by "billable" time (even if only for blue-dollar projects)... so any time off had to be covered by O/T... but, unlike Comp Time, there's a cap of 3 to 5 weeks.
You must have been there years ago - now you're required to work 10% overtime. IBM seriously sucks as an employer these days.
ROWE was initiated at Best Buy internally and has grown way past that. It may be the one great thing Best Buy ever came up with.
You can be snarky about it. Or... educate yourself.
Actually, I don't care either way. For those of us who live it, there is absolutely no going back. Ever.
David Whatley
My manager's always on my back for having too much leave up my sleeve. They want us to keep our accrued leave to a minimum.
Americans are simply stupid.... Or is that stupidly simple ?
No culture.
Apart from Bootsy Collins that is !
Wage slave educations.
of a post in the subject line, and the other part in the main body.
It's not very bright, but everybody is doing it so it must be fashionable.
I was recently laid-off from a job less than a month after taking a 2 week vacation. This was a once-in-a-lifetime, on-my-bucket-list trip that I had told my boss about before I was even hired. I'm sure the layoff was planned before I went on vacation, and I'm sure it's not the only reason I got the ax - but I also know it was a factor.
Best Buy has a long standing reputation of being abusive towards its employees including firing their most knowledgeable people, because they cost too much.
I am not being merely snarky. I am saying that if Best Buy is a shining example of ROWE, you'd have to be nuts to like ROWE as an employee. Obviously since you are an employer, you love ROWE if it means you get to squeeze that last drop of blood out of your employees.
--
BMO
"But that was just for starters, we also did away with sick time. None."
Comcast tried that. I made sure I came in sick as hell. Pleauge sick. and held back the puke as long as possible.
I then ran to the executives office to ask him a question and puked all over his desk, papers, laptop.
Spread the love, puke on the bastards.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Americans bitch about their jobs not being satisfying, and then bitch about how all those jobs get outsourced.
Based solely on the published income tax brackets, Americans have the mistaken impression that their overall tax system is progressive. This isn't true. An example of this thinking is illustrated by the parent comment:
Point 1: "the top N% pay FAR more in absolute tax dollars...", this is generally true.
Point 2: "...as well as more in percentage of their income, than the bottom 100-N%, for pretty much any value of N", this is baloney.
In fact, there are a number of flat and regressive taxes in the US, such that each quintile of tax payers pays taxes roughly in proportion to their income, as noted by the Citizens For Tax Justice report: America's Tax System Is Not As Progressive As You Think .
Bracket----avg-$ %$---%tax 1st--20---12500 3.5---2.0 2nd--20---25300 7.1---5.2 3rd--20---40700 11.6--10.3 4th--20---66300 19.0--19.0 Next-10--100000 14.3--15.1 Next--5--140000 10.2--11.2 Next--4--241000 14.2--15.6 Top---1-1254000 20.3--21.5Luke, help me take this mask off
I'd love to just work 10% overtime... an extra 4 hours a week? Definitely beat the extra 10+ I am expected to work.
>Yes, I was being hyperbolic to make a point and get attention.... :D
And furthermore, if you like ROWE so much, why don't you go fill in the ROWE article on Wikipedia with some actual facts or state some actual facts here instead of shouting complete utter nonsense?
1. How does it keep managers from being abusive?
2. How does "no paid time off" not translate into no time off?
3. How is management expected to come up with metrics to measure productivity when every way of measuring productivity I've seen come down the pike consist of 1 part actual measurement and 99 parts BS?
4. If informal metrics (like you say you use) are used, how are YOY comparisons made? How does that combat favoritism and backstabbing?
5. Like other people have asked, how does this not mean unrealistic expectations over time? You can only pile on geometric rates of improvement for so long.
But I suspect that you will answer none of these.
--
BMO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opk4x7jzRS4
Have gnu, will travel.
One advantage of saving up leave is if you leave your job, you get it all paid out. I believe a lot of people save up leave because if they get fired, made redundant or decide to move to another employer, they get a lump sum payout. This can be seen as a "bonus" if you move to another job, or a bit of extra money to help in the period between jobs.
Serfs Up !
Sparticus
They reduced the number of hours we could bank. It used to be 220. Now it's down to 160. I have worked there 17 years so I earn a whole PTO day every 2 weeks.
So I take my fucking time to keep it down under 160. Fortunately, I don't get a lot of flak for that.
However, I did have to come in to work on my vacation in December. That sucked ass . . . we are so understaffed that basically only one of us can be an expert on any given area. We don't have time to properly cross-train, and every time someone leaves, they eliminate the position instead of replacing the worker.
I'm hoping that as the job market recovers I can get the fuck out of here. I've reached the point where I think the company is starting to peak and is now going downhill. Management is starting to make stupid, panicky decisions. And the company has started repeatedly walking back promised comp time and raises. After promising them.
If we can ever get employment back up (meaning if we can ever get the stupid Tea Party fucks out of the way and get the economy to actually grow) I think a lot of American employers will be in a very strange position that they haven't had to deal with for a couple of decades -- the employer's market.
But first, we've got to stop practicing supply-side economics. It's cancer for the workers (and frankly for the customers as well).
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
I did this for years, and now I'm a contractor. I'm a W2 for a contracting company which is very, very good to its staff.
They encourage us to take our vacations.
And if we wind up working for a company which wants access to us while we're on vacation, they've got a policy that every call while on vacation is paid by the hour on top of vacation pay, at a slight premium rate, plus the vacation hours back. So if I wind up working on vacation, I get:
- vacation hours paid for worked hours
- premium paid time for those hours
- a refund on vacation time (e.g., 4 hours worked = refund of 4 hours of vacation).
Because tech staff are at a premium, this works - and the consultancy is very much able to say, with a straight face, that they work on behalf of their staff. No one likes getting called on vacation, but if it's going to happen, make it a costly choice for the caller.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
If I interviewed with you and you explained your company's ROWE doctrine to me, I'd drop you like a hot potato and move on to the next opportunity.
You might conjecture that's because I fear I'm not productive enough for you, or simply couldn't measure up. On the other hand, consider for a moment that maybe I'm more than qualified, productive and motivated -- but that I think your ROWE doctrine is a kind of employer's mind-game. It's an invisible goal-post that you've planted, an ambiguous promise. I have no interest in that kind of bullshit. No contract means no breach, right?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
I use all my vacation time every year. I get 3 weeks off and I take two in summer for vacation in a place I love where I can spend all day doing what I love. I also pursue this passion at home on summer weekends but it's not the same. I'll take a few days here and there over the year to use for that. While away for two weeks, hundreds of miles from the office, I have my laptop and work phone with me. I check my email every morning and evening and respond to the important things. I'll call in for conference calls and such if I'm not in the middle of some awesome activity. I like to stay in the loop and keep things on track as there's really nobody at work who can completely fill my shoes, so I'll get calls or emails for information or various things.
One year I offered to drive over 500 miles overnight to fix a crisis in the office but my boss insisted we never spoke and if I showed up he'd tell me to leave. The crisis was resolved, though it took a couple days to completely recover from what should have been at most a one day problem until back to 100%.
Now I'm been punished as well. Health benefits have been cut. Costs a lot more if you use it and the fine print basically reads "don't get sick or hurt". 401k was cut way back as well. These applied to everyone though as blanket cost savings and essentially a pay cut for all of us. Overall though I don't believe my employer punishes those who use vacation time. I actually have a flexible schedule. I often work longer hours but it's because things need to be done and I choose to put in the extra time to keep things moving smoothly, my choice and not because my boss demands it. If I need to take some time off I can always take it, I've never been turned down. Even if I had no vacation time I have never been turned down for taking unpaid time off. They know if I request it it's important to me and I'd never take time off when the company was in a bad position for me to be gone. Overall I can't complain too much about that. I don't feel there's any prejudice, but that may be different at other places.
Most employers want you to take your vacation because unused vacation accrues as a liability on their books. I think the real problem is that employees don't want to take the time off. I work for a very large software company, which now requires that we take the last week or so of the year off. It is a problem for the company that SW engineers tend not to take the vacation that they are entitled to, and it is not good either for the employee or the employer's balance sheet. While it feels paternalistic for them to tell me I must take vacation then, I have to admit they were right (at least in my case).
I am in India and have a few friends and relatives working in USA. My observation is that in US employees consider taking long vacations to be equivalent to proving to their employer that they are not critical to the business and work can go on without them. There have been cases where when the time for layoff's came the priority list consisted of all the employees on long vacations or scheduled to take long vacations.
With employees Not taking vacations and leaves accumulating HR policies have changes in the last decade to have a fixed upper bound on the number of leaves ( I know of a few cases where people nearing retirement took year long paid vacations due to the number of accumulated leaves).
To Share Is To care
I get punished when I take vacation, but not directly by my company. I get punished because I know that when I leave the office, nothing will get done. If I take two weeks off, I have to come back and take care of my own responsibilities, plus all of the problems that built up for two weeks while I was gone. It makes me not want to come back to work after vacations. It's not that I work with a bunch of idiots, per se. The problem is that my company has way more work than we can handle. We're trying to hire like crazy, but the new people aren't up to speed and the experience people are depended on way too much while the new people are spooled up.
I agree with this to a point. I mean, that's how I'd describe my current job. I don't DISLIKE it that much. By contrast, there are SO many other career options out there I have no interest in, to the point where I'd probably rather be on govt. assistance and living out of a cardboard box on the street corner than doing some of them every day. It's not a place I usually look forward to going, but often, it's really not bad at all once I'm there and get involved with whatever's needed that day. Specific PROJECTS I have to tackle there are often actually fun, but interacting with some of the other employees or doing dull but necessary work like coding bills or scanning in paper documents? Not so much.
On the other hand? All the people who swear they'd "never work another day in their life" if they were financially able, I don't quite relate to either. It would be great for a while, but like a lot of retirees say after they retire, life just gets kind of boring. You start losing track of basics like what day of the week it is, and you start feeling a little bit guilty that all around you, everyone else seems to be working while you just walk past, or make use of their services. You have a need to feel like you're "useful" in some way ... like you're accomplishing tasks that other people need accomplished.
Also, I've spent enough time around some of the "independently wealthy" people who spend all their time playing with toys and having fun to know they come across pretty shallow. They tend to rub me the wrong way, and not out of jealousy. It's more a sense that they really have no ambitions or goals. Thanks to the life they've voluntarily placed themselves in, they start assigning an artificially high level of importance to things that simply aren't that important.
so quick recap; most americans, hate their jobs, never take holidays, have no healthcare, live in a fascist police state ruled by megabuck corporations, surrounded by mobs of nutters with tons of guns..
and think the whole world's jealous of them,
cool, I'm in!
If what you're saying is true (and if it is, I'm not even quite sure how you found time to read this article on Slashdot and post a reply?) ... you *really* need to sit back, think about what you just wrote, and ask yourself if that's REALLY how you want your life to be from here forward!
First of all, I would assume and hope you're getting paid pretty well for working all those 18 hour days and having so much responsibility. That means, you're simply not doing something right if you haven't been able to put aside some of that money in savings, in case you DO need to switch jobs and don't have a check for a while. (So that situation you're so afraid of, of being out of work for 3 years and not knowing how you were going to sleep or eat shouldn't have to happen again.)
Second, yep, fewer and fewer businesses have any loyalty to employees, but that should be a 2-way street! If they view you as that "expendable", then why work so hard for them?! Do the basics outlined in your job description, and not anything more unless you actually WANT to do it. If, like you say, they "throw you to the curb" thinking they can get someone a lot cheaper to do the same or better, LET THEM. Either they're right and you were simply getting paid too much for the value you actually brought to their table, or (much more likely) they'll fail a few times in a row and start adjusting their expectations and/or pay scale as they learn how wrong they were.
And third? Maybe you need to spend less time worrying about customers running into these mistakes you're concerned about, and more time documenting procedures so OTHERS can do some of these tasks properly? It sounds like right now, a lot of people are getting paid to screw things up that you're putting in all these insane hours correcting. You've got to break that cycle, even IF it means a temporary drop in customer satisfaction ....
I can't imagine ever working in a "workplace" environment or for someone as an employee ever again. Trying to please a boss or not taking vacation to "appear" one way or another is fuckng baffling to me. I'll respect you for it, but my life is about; family, outdoors and well, life. "Work" (I own a small business and bust my ass at it) is a distant second priority with clearly defined boundrys.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
...anytime I want. No I won't reschedule my vacation either. No I won't answer the fuckin' email or cell phone. Don't like it, fuck off. I will bust my ass working every day, I'll work overtime nights & weekends if required, but my vacation is my vacation. If any employer disagrees with that, then fuck them, I'll find a new job.
I may not have worded a post as you did, but I agree in concept. I'm near retirement in the workforce and I can tell you that things have actually gotten better. I have to listen to everyone around me complain ("whine") about their long hours and their lack of appreciation, etc. The one common thing between them: they are young and have nothing to compare the current environment to. Why "when I was their age" I had to sit next to a chain smoker, work 60+ hours per week, and got no appreciation. But you know what? It was just normal. I worked hard and supported my family. The sense of entitlement I am surrounded by these days makes me sad and worry about our country's future as a super power. The pendulum always swings, though, and I envision that our current cushy working conditions are short lived. I wish I were going to be working long enough to see some of the young ones around have to truly put an effort into a career. I've a feeling that most would simply quit and move back in with their parents.
American has solved this with the trend to make everyone a TEMP WORKER. Vacation? nope. But we'll let you go in three months, enjoy your Vacation then...
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/12/news/companies/home_depot_hiring/index.htm?iid=HP_Highlight&hpt=hp_t1
My wife got punished for taking maternity leave.
Yes, that's illegal. And yes, it happened. And yes, her boss was smart enough to move my wife into a new job that was just good enough on paper to be considered a horizontal move (and thus meeting the letter of the law), but in actuality a really shitty job (violating the spirit). The only good part, for my wife, is that she's got a much better boss now, and has the possibility of advancement. When you've got a small infant at home, you're happy to have a job at all, but trying to make your mark in a new position while learning the new ropes is in reality impossible. My wife got the short end of the stick by a real jerk of a former boss.
.
I was once told by my manager that I could take vacation when, and only when, the project I was working on was finished. It was a two-year project that was dreamed up by my non-technical manager (the CIO, believe it or not) without my input (or the technical input from any other technology people in the company) and was doomed to failure because it would never work. My manager was looking for a scapegoat to assign blame to, as he finally realized his pet project was the fiasco I told him it would be.
Meanwhile, I am getting emails from Human Resources telling me that I have to take my vacation time or lose it.
It is a no win situation for technical people.
Netflix has the right solution on this topic......
I usually get deathly ill about once a year... so have to save my 10 vacation-sick days for illness. F'ing hate this country. At least in China we had golden weeks 3 times per year (though I don't think they are even doing that anymore)
Also takes 1 whole year to accumulate the 10 sick-vacation days... so if my deathly illness happens toward the beginning of the year this time, I'm shit out of luck.
Historically (and notable when compared to some other countries), Americans have an attitude that hard work cleanses the spirit and invigorates the mind and body--which is why if you give an American time off then often they will spend it "working on the house, gardening, studying" or some other productive task. Other cultures derisively refer to this as Americans "living to work, rather than working to live". Though it isn't strictly a work thing, you see it also in the way that Americans handle their play time, as well--they feel guilty if that time isn't "well spent" with some intense play, or intense relaxation--if that makes sense--, or intense shopping, etc. The sense of time-managament figures prominently into how sociologists measure cultures against one another (there are cultures where time is something decidedly finite, not to be "wasted", and other cultures where "wasting time" is a foreign concept).
Americans are hardly unique in how they manage their work/life balance; some Asians cultures have similar attitudes, parts of Northern Europe, Canada, and so on. Americans are probably disproportionately derided because the American culture has higher visibility through media/internet.
If my employer punished people for taking vacations, I'd find another job. That's what it means to be a professional - your protection as an employee is the threat you'll take your skills somewhere else. If you can't make that threat credibly it means your employer isn't getting his money's worth, and you need to do something about that.
The people who don't take holidays are yes-men or little bitches, who are worried that their incompetence will be brought up in a public arena (the water cooler) in their absence.
My company makes it clear they don't like granting vacation. New hires get a few days off, if they survive the probation period -and the company is fast to fire and drag in fresh meat.
A fair number of us, however, were employees acquired through the purchase of another company. Even though we are grandfathered in, we lose because we've been with the acquisition for a decade or more in many cases, and the company maxes out vacations for people at this level.
We get a max of about 28 days. If you take it, you are liable to find they've hired somebody to replace you while you were gone, or that the position was eliminated. Or find that projects got assigned while you are away and deliberately set to violate the due date before you got back. It is very common for other teams to find out someone is out and dump projects on them hours or minutes before the SLA timer runs out, so the SLA failure violation goes to the unaware recipient and not the person who actually dragged feet. They come in later and pull the projects back but the "failure" stays with the person who had the project at the time it went past due. This is a shitty system and is sanctioned by management. Survival of the fittest is how it was described to me. They have 3000 resumes on file. If somebody gets fired, they can hire several immigrant workers (they only hire such) to replace that person and even if two thirds of the new hires flop, they still get out ahead and probably for less money.
In light of these games, few dare take the time off. On the other hand, if you don't take it, the days to not rollover to the following year so you lose them. This is because you cannot have more than the 28 base days in a year and extras would be more than that, so you lose them automatically.
There is no option to bank vacation days, sell them to other employees, cash them out, or anything. You just lose them.
In the old days, before we were bought out, the relationship between management and workers was completely different. The company urged everyone to take time, pestered them to do so, protected their backs while they were out, and if something went wrong and you had to come in or work on a holiday, you'd get paid double time for the day and granted a flex day to use later. I miss that, but heck I would settle for an employer who just didn't begrudge the hell out of the workers and what they promise to give to the workers.
And every day I pass a bridge with dozens of homeless sleeping underneath and am reminded how lucky I am to just have a job at all. Shrug.
Sig for hire.
I once reported to an asshole that wanted to call me in the hospital the day I was undergoing an emergency angioplasty. Some of my co-workers put him in his place. He would call in from his vacation across the country to join in a group discussion...but then he could be heard snoring over the speaker-phone. What a phony POS. Yes, I got riffed later on...wasn't a team player (I consider that a compliment...I actually got stuff done)...but I'm better off for it and after taking an early retirement (and other recommended life-style changes), my heart disease is virtually cured (but that employer wound up paying for 3 PTCAs before I got smart). Eff'm!
My second job was writing the overnight rollover system for AVCO Financial Services in London Ontario (summer 1988.) I spent six months at 40 hours a week writing it.
That was pretty much the last time in my career I only worked 40 hours a week until around 2001-2002 when I was often too sick with migraines to put in the long hours any more.
I can only think of two times I didn't have a manager try to demand I reschedule my long-booked vacation because of some "emergency."
So yes, managers don't forget when you won't sacrifice your ENTIRE life for "the good of the company."
Fuck the company. All it ever did for me is sign a paycheque. After nearly 30 years of contracting, I have no delusions that any company of substantial size has ANY respect for the IT team, or that even a so-called "permanent" job will last longer than the project that you are hired to work on.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
When I started programming I needed to learn, so, without networking available, I used to go in for a 1/2 day on Saturday to code and explore. A co-worker came to me one day and said I was making him look bad because I came in on Saturdays. I invited him to join me and he said he didn't want too. I said, no problem and continued to go in on Saturdays. I didn't care how he looked and I wasn't going to slow down because of how someone else felt about my effort.
The issue is that many who want to get ahead and those who love what they do will work harder than others and, I would argue, everything else being equal, deserve more - this is what the market is about.
Twenty years after starting I ran organizations of 200 or so people. I never held anything against anyone who took their vacation. I didn't reward anyone who worked more hours than others simply because they worked more hours. I rewarded those who contributed the most to the mission. Often, those were the people who worked more hours but this wasn't always the case. Some of the people who took the most time off were top contributors to the mission. I never had the time to pay attention to who was working what hours because I was too busy paying attention to our deliverables. If I managed my organizations based on how many hours people worked I would not have lasted in my position.
The only time I worried about hours worked was for non-exempt people who were racking up overtime without any increased output - but out of 200 people I only had two or three who were paid by the hour.
Take your vacation days a day or two at a time. Don't take two or three weeks off all at once! That's a silly thing to do anyway, and I'd bet money you're doing that so that you can accommodate _other people_. Don't take two weeks off. Wait until you can take off a Quarter or even a Year, and use it to do something real. Until you get there, just take micro-vacations spaced out as often as the time accrues, so that you don't get to December, and --oops-- you *have to* take two weeks off or more at the same time *everybody else* "has to" do it.
Another thing I always strive to negotiate for is 9/80. Basically we know going in that we don't work 8 hour days. But we're still supposed to be doing 40 hour weeks as a baseline. So here's a compromise that works really well: Work nine hour days, planned. But, every second week, you take a Friday or a Monday off. Three day weekend every two weeks is better for me than one big vacation (which you also still get.)
People are spineless weak cowards. Take your fucking vacation time! You've earned it, it's yours, it's healthy, and it's fun! If your company is hinting even in the slightest that taking your vacation days will make you seem less like a team player, you need to drop that company like a bad habit. Alternatively, or perhaps as well, call your union to let them know that this shit is not acceptable.
Move sig!
As a Brit worker, I get generous holidays (US: 'vacations') and am forced to take them. But the company policy is 'One Life' - treat your co-workers as kindly as family, take your work enthusiasms home to your own family: there shouldn't be a strain. The training doesn't suit me (prefer Jekyll/Hyde personas), but it's a good point - maybe USians do this naturally, so need less time off?
I am, unfortunately, stuck in a bottom rung job. I get paid minimum wage. I don't get any paid time off. Or sick days. We are expected not to get sick. If we are sick one day, we have to call six hours prior to our shift and find a replacement. If we can't, then we are "encouraged" to come in. The hours are absolutely terrible, and you never know what your next week will be like, whether you'll be on first or second shift. I get one thirty minute break per day. I am not permitted any more time. I am "encouraged" not to take breaks. I've been called the past three of my last six days off to see if I could come in and work.
My employer expects maximum effort. They claim I should put 120% into my job, "like I'm being paid".
Needless to say, this is what, I think, represents the attitude of most employers. They think people are machines to be abused for their purpose. It's not long before I leave my current employment. I hope their business fails. They deserve it.
And it works, if you have good management. I have merely acceptable management, and they tend to assume that if we are getting everything done then we are capable of doing more. Under your system, they would just increase expectations until people were unable to take vacation, but not so much that anyone who worked every day could not meet them, and simply replace the ones who weren't able to deal with that. Not every worker is, or can be, irreplaceable.
Typical US attitude: Live to work
Typical EU attitude: Work to live
That, my friends, is the key!
It would be a shame if your battery was flat... and your forgot the cord.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
If you're just a worker drone and clock puncher then I can see that. However if you're at the executive level and daily decisions have a large impact on hundreds or even thousands of people, that is a whole different level of responsibility.
Companies, in the US anyway, do not punish workers for taking vacation. They punish workers for under-performance, and rightfully so.
It just so happens that under-performers are more likely to take shorter and more frequent time off, which makes them appear to be less motivated. But, correlation is not causation.
But, it's okay. Every organization needs engineers at the lower end of the performance spectrum, just like every society needs people to pick cotton and flip hamburgers. There are shit jobs in every technical organization that need to get done. Sure, someone else could do them, but their time is better spent on flagship and mission-critical projects.
These low performers are easy to let go in a cash crunch.
I like my job because in a lot of ways my hobbies (computers) are my job. Of course I've been a contractor for the last 13 years and leave when I'm burned out or there is a re-org I don't like. My vacation is unpaid but I've always been in a position to make it up + working before or after the vacation. Taking a vacation between gigs seemed like a great idea until I realized I spent part of my vacation job hunting. That is one way to really destroy the vacation buzz.
My employers in the UK have had zero problems with me having time off even including nearly a month off in one go. Must suck living in a country where you're expected to be your employer's slave.
In the US, at least. Here in Europe you HAVE to take your days off. Period.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38588550
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38588550
Land of the free... To sack at will... To push to the edge... To ignore scientific research on workers...
I'm not a slacker. I actually tend towards being a workaholic. But I don't judge people solely on the effort they put into the job. When approached correctly, a slacker will improve. The best managers know how to inspire people with their infectious optimism and positive thinking. Doing extra work isn't that bad when/if you're appreciated for it.
In the country I live in there are laws against burnout. Companies burning out people pay dearly for damages they cause.
A healthy company is so much more that the good financial results.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
'This is the only wealthy country in the world that does not guarantee any paid vacation time,' says de Graaf. 'Every other country understands that this makes people healthier and creates a better workforce.'"
"The Now Habit" by Dr. Neil Fiore is a self help book for managing procrastination. One of the most interesting things I have read in it is that workaholics are NOT high achievers.
The big difference ( shown by research ) between high achievers and workaholics is that high achievers "play hard and work hard"......they take their leisure time seriously, they know its value in making them capable of working hard and they take more time off than other people with giving themselves their blessing to do so, without guilt.
I work to live, I don't live to work.
Everyone knows that Americans are lazy workers and that's why we need to outsource work to nations where people have the proper appreciation for a day's work and why we need to import foreign labor for doing everything from high tech jobs to picking tomatoes in a field.
Clearly, this is Communist propaganda.
It's a shame Slashdot is permitting its bandwidth to promote Marxism.
I was just getting ready to ask for another weeks vacation. I've been with the company for 10 years.
Yes they do and thats not all they punish for. They punish for being sick, being injured, being older, having too much vacation time. For getting slower but thats the same as getting older i guess.
Jack of all trades,master of none
My boss encourages me to make sure I use all my vacation time (31 days/year). In fact Human Resources will be giving him a stern talking-to if he doesn't do that.
Of course, he can veto our vacation requests if a high-profile project is planned and we can't find a suitable replacement or if our schedules clash. In those cases, we sit down and work everything out collectively.
I'll take my unionized 34.5 hour a week, decently-paid, double pay for overtime job right here in "socialist" Europe. You Americans can keep your soul-destroying workplaces to yourself.
Eat the rich.
..What you can expect to happen when you get back (or while you were gone).
As the sole IT person for a facility, and being on call 24/7, I worry any time I take time off. There are so many complicated, critical processes (well, complicated to the rest of the staff), that it is incredibly difficult to feel safe with the idea knowing that "everything is fine" - because, quite frankly, it usually isn't.
Case in point: Last year I decided to finally try to take a "vacation". I took a week off. I didn't GO anywhere, of course; I just didn't go to work.
Monday: innumerable calls, 2 office visits (one for more than an hour).
Tuesday: innumerable calls, 4 office visits.
Wednesday: innumerable calls, 3 office visits.
It was at that point that my boss "encouraged" the staff to try to solve problems on their own rather than relying on me as a crutch. I still got called, of course, but most of the problems went ignored or stop-gap solutions were put into place.
Nearly everything I was called in for was due to PEBKAC. The Monday call was due to work being done by a CONSULTANT causing problems.
Sick days follow similar descriptors.
I've been at this facility for over 5 years. I've never taken a "real" vacation. This year, I'm changing that. My health has been declining quite a bit as of late, so I'm going to finally use my vacation days for real vacations (I get 15 days vacation time now thanks to my length of employment). The question I'm asking myself right now, is this: Should I turn off my cell phone?
Completely agree and let me add that people who don't take off mess it up for everyone. Its a horrible cycle when ass holes work their way to the top, burn out early, and create a cycle of this competitive get ahead mentality. Don't work this hard for anyone other than yourself! Especially in IT! If you can smile and your technology skills are good then your are not expendable. I work at a great company but I see this and it pisses me off to the nth degree. It never ends even after work as they even try to get you to volunteer have office parties, happy hours, etc. Let the other guy get ahead and when you are on your own time figure out how to follow your dreams with the resources you have.
LOL...I'm not rich, nor anywhere NEAR retired, and honestly, I rarely know what day of the week it is...I really do lose track.
Except for Fridays....I usually get clear headed about that.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
elsewhere though:
> "Americans are hardly unique in how they manage their work/life balance"
A few years ago when I was on active duty in the Air Force, we were entitled to a seemingly generous 30 day per year annual leave policy. I suppose that is still so. Anyway, taking leave amounts to getting approval in advance, which like any other job, means your boss has to decide whether he/she can afford for you to be away. Apparently, the program I was on was important because we (I and the other hundred or people working on the program) were told that if we submitted a request for leave of more than one week, it had to be accompanied by a letter describing why our job was so unimportant that we could be away from it by more than that. A couple years later when I was due for a change of assignment, I was offered the opportunity to stay on this program. I declined. Somehow, it survived without me.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant
People who work every day they can and remote into the office on the others are sometimes the people who refuse to let other people see what they are working on. Google "John Rusnak" as an example. My brother works for an offshore subsidiary of a US bank and he and his colleagues often have to take mandatory time off so that other people can be familiar with their files.
If things are actually working as they are, it sounds pretty amazing.
I'd still have to have some open and candid discussions with lower level employees about how things end up working in reality before I'd accept an offer at one of those places. But managed in the right hands, it sounds pretty liberating.
Question though: What about the managers and stuff? Do they have the same freedom to come and go as the employees do, or are they kinda supposed to stay?
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the ROWE stuff doesn't extend to the salespeople.
My own company lumps all annual leave into a single pool per employee, suffers a high turnover rate and doesn't replace positions. I not only have to worry about taking off for vacation, I have to worry about taking leave for medical reasons despite worsening chronic issues.
Will they pay for an internet connection in the middle of the amazon?
Dudes, (and dudettes), anymore, your boss can (and will) fire you for taking bathroom breaks--when you're working from home in the evenings.
I had a boss that said anyone on salary who worked less than 12 hour days should be fired and hourly workers who only put in 40 hour weeks should be charged for a week of vacation. I typically put in 4 14 hour days, 10 hours on Fridays, and at LEAST 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday. This was IN THE OFFICE TIME. the rest was called "Modem-time" and was expected, if not 100% logged.
I swear those were 90+ hour weeks. And then we were all outsourced anyway.
Seriously, if the picture in the US is as bad as some of you are painting, move. Seriously. I mean to another country. The rest of the western world is just no where near as fucked up. At the very least, drop any delusions that this is something we are all suffering under. No, it's just you. We don't know why you put up with it, but you really don't have to.
I'm an Australian engineer. My boss is always kind and courteous to me (and would be in trouble if he wasn't). He isn't out to screw me, he is part of the team. We are encouraged to take the 4 weeks of leave we accrue annually (it rolls over if you don't take it and there are thresholds where they start whinging at you to take it). We get paid overtime, and any doctoring of timesheets to work past the overtime caps is strictly discouraged. Actually, in truth, getting overtime as an engineer is fairly rare, but there is usually a TOIL system or equivalent such that you are only working the hours you are paid for on average. There are constant campaigns reminding people about work-life balance. There is even one day of the week where overtime is basically not approved and you get in trouble if you stay back to work on a project (meant so that even in busy times, you see your family occasionally). Work on weekends, while not totally prohibited, is extremely rare (i've never done it in 3 years). It requires special approval and they have to pay 1.5x your hourly rate.
I'm not trying to boast here, just trying to counter the hopeless view some of you have that it is the same everywhere and you should just cop it.
5-50 years down the road you find out that you're way less productive than the European companies that give their employees a month of vacation a year, and you're wondering how they do it. It's simple. Stop thinking that everything in the world is (1) dependant on money, and (2) can be modelled as a linear function.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Regular people are lazy. As an engineer, I'm efficient.
Absolutely! They keep demanding that I come back! And believe me - that is terrible punishment!
how do you justify moderating the above comment as troll? just because you disagree with someone who calls out ron paul for his anti-worker platform doesn't mean that the commenter is trolling. if you are too much of a fuckwit coward to reply to it because you know you can't say anything meaningful in response, fine. but you are a terrible sack of shit posing as a "libertarian" when you instead retaliate to the comment by making it less visible on slashdot. you are, at best, as bad as the bury brigades that garnered so much negative attention on digg.com not too long ago.
FYI, I was promoted to director of engineering at Fujitsu Microelectronics during that 22+ year career as "a chair-warmer". I too received stock options (most of which are handed out in lieu of cash and ultimately not worth the paper they are printed on, which is why they are given to engineers).
The fact that you make so many assumptions about me reveals you to be like some of the managers that I worked under. Managers who think they know everything and who don't give a shit about the people under them are exactly the reason I left engineering and will not steer my son toward it.
Ask yourself this- would you give your little speech about chairwarmers to applicants for engineering positions? Do you tell them that they'll be kicked to the curb next year if sales/revenues/etc. drop off? If not, why not? It appears that you hire engineers based on specific work projections for the coming year. Do you tell the people you're hiring that they are being hired for a year or are they given the impression that they are getting into a career? Why aren't you hiring people on a contractual basis instead of as employees? Why is it that you end up hiring so many "chair-warmers"- is the problem with the engineer or with the manager?
I have nothing but sympathy for the people who work/suffer under you.
If I'd told them earlier it was our wedding, they might have rationalized themselves around to insisting that I come back to work, as it was they were thinking about how they'd look if the word got out.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
ACtually it depends on the employee.
If they seem to be taking vacation when a projects is hot and all people are needed then they should definitely be punished.
We had one guy whose project was sort of key to the overall success of the bigger project. He decided to take off on vacation essentially unannounced.
What I did was to do his work and when he came back he no longer had the project and he just goofed off until we got a firing boss to notice and he was gone.
Everyone on the team got the bonus except for him. Good riddance.