Hacker News Reader

Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

As a European (for now, oho) this doesn't surprise me at all. American working patterns are bonkers.

You guys have this concept of 'vacation' which well, isn't.

15 days or whatever per year pretty much all just must either get banked for emergencies, admin, or maybe that one Mega Holiday where you fly across the world and spend a week or whatever trying to forget your life.

I don't get it at all. It might make sense if you're a founder or whatever and you love your job. Most people are working to live, but there is no "live", because there's no time that isn't work.

I'd rather be homeless. Can I choose to be homeless in Europe instead tho? ;)

View on HN

I'm genuinely curious; how many days do Europeans typically get?

20 days minimum by law in Italy (plus sick leave when needed), in practice though it's more like 28 days for most jobs. Excluding weekends and national holidays of course.

4-5 weeks?

The legal minimum in NL is (the equivalent of) four weeks per year (20 days on a 40 hours/week contract), so not that much more than US. Some fields (healthcare, construction, education) get more than that.

However, none of that can be usurped by your employer for other things than vacation. For example, your employer isn't allowed to deduct pay or withhold vacation hours for doctor's visits during work hours. Major life events, like funerals or child births are paid leave. And for most professions, there's no such things as unpaid overtime: you work more hours, you either get more pay or receive more vacation hours.

I think 20 is the minimum but from what I've seen 24-25 is the most common (at least in the IT field). I've got 28.

UK: https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

"Almost all workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday a year (known as statutory leave entitlement or annual leave)."

So 28 days.

Personally I've usually had about 25 days + bank holidays in contracts as standard (i.e. before negotiation), so 33 days in total.

The main distinction though is that because we don't have this 'health insurance tied to work' thing going on, it's at least theoretically possible for a median wage earner who hasn't loaded themselves up with debt to take a decent amount of time off by just leaving their job. Whether they actually do it doesn't matter - there's at least the mental release valve of knowing you can quit.

In the US it sounds like you could get away with that as a healthy 20 year old otherwise you'd be playing the lottery.

In Poland it's minimum 26 days and 13-15 days of holidays, but typically companies give you additional 5 days. So 45 days combined

Reply on news.ycombinator.com