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Comment by devdad | Hacker News Reader

Can someone living in the US care to expand on this?

"...which is also when many VCs get back from their August vacations (sad but true!)."

What is sad here? Being Swede,my initial reaction was "ok, late summer vacation".

The VC industry is somewhat unique in the US in that it takes a long, almost-industry-wide vacation at a time of year when other American professionals do not have a coordinated vacation. People who have to interface with the industry (like e.g. founders) are occasionally annoyed at what is, from their perspective, an unannounced total work stoppage.

It is useful background knowledge here that American professionals culturally expect less vacation total than European professionals do (the norm is ~2 weeks) and expect it to be largely non-contiguous with the exception of the end-of-the-year holiday season.

Is this because American people genuinely think that 2 weeks a year for vacation is good enough, because of a culture of ambition, or simply because of the grip of employers is too strong to take the risk of asking for longer vacations (i.e. very cheap to fire people compared to other countries)?

It's just a cultural norm. There are strong economic and political and historical reasons why the cultural norm exists, but the fish doesn't see the water. From the point of view of an American, it's just "normal".

I know in Seattle its even more culturally tolerated because we get so little sun year-round and you gotta binge in the peak summer month.

> It is useful background knowledge here that American professionals culturally expect less vacation total than European professionals do (the norm is ~2 weeks) and expect it to be largely non-contiguous with the exception of the end-of-the-year holiday season.

The exception would be big tech companies where it's not unusual to see employees at all levels take 3 to 4 weeks vacations in the summer* , especially foreigners since they want to spend time to visit their families, and depending on their country of origin, were used to 7-8 weeks.

(* not every summer)

Some are saying that the "sad but true" comment is a commentary on American/Silicon Valley culture.

I interpreted it as a comment on the fact that VCs will pass on funding if it doesn't fit into their schedule

A month long vacation is a luxury most don't have here.

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