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Comment by bodas | Hacker News Reader

Even on a selfish level, the extra 2-3 weeks of PTO in UK is easily more important than the extra compensation in the US. What's the point of having more money if you are stuck in an office for more of the year and can only spend it on material goods? As you say, for women the difference in maternity leave is laughable.

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Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK.

> Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Ah but you're cherry picking an example from one company, I am also not sure how long or what role you'd need to accrue that much PTO. In Europe most (all?) countries have a legal minimum of 3-4 weeks PTO in addition to public holidays, regardless of your job or time working.

> Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK. I'm not sure what the definition of federal holidays is vs. public holidays in Europe, but a quick Google suggests US has 10 while the UK has 8 public holidays.

I'm specifically talking about what Google gives its employees for public holidays. And federal holidays are basically meaningless unless you, y'know, work for the feds.

"Eventually" but to get to that point you have to endure years of getting half the time off that a burger flipper gets in McDonalds UK. Honestly it's a bit humiliating.

The more limited time does suck, but on the other hand the huge amount of money makes it way easier to retire earlier, so you can have more time off in the long run if you want.

>Eventually at Google US you get 5 weeks PTO, which is the same as in Google London. Plus Google has four more holidays in the US than in the UK.

How many engineers do you know who made full use of their five weeks every year and were able to be promoted?

I don't keep track of people's vacation time that closely. When I transferred to Google Munich though I didn't notice a change in work life balance, other than having more vacation.

Were you transferring from the Mountain View office?

Yes.

At the big tech companies the parent references, the PTO and parental leave are pretty competitive.

I work for Twitter in the US and I took 7 or 8 weeks last year, including taking off all of November. We also get 20 weeks paid parental leave (either mother or father) and it includes adoptions and same-sex couples.

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