Job Candidate: So how much vacation time do you offer?
Interviewer: We offer one-month paid vacation with your co-workers at an exotic location of our choosing. Oh, and we decide when you take those vacations
Interviewer: We offer one-month paid vacation with your co-workers at an exotic location of our choosing. Oh, and we decide when you take those vacations
This is sort-of normal elsewhere, actually. Even in Europe, employer has sway over vacations. Not a dictatorial power, but No will often be No for a certain period. It makes sense in many industries; you can't have a power plant running with too few qualified people present.
Edit: downvoted for a perfectly neutral response. Yes, looking at my own country's labor code, vacations are determined by the employer. They will likely meet you halfway and approve vacations for July and August (slow season) without too much hassle, but they do not have to. As said above, it makes sense; certain skeleton crews must be maintained at all times in many industries.
Another example of the situation above are factory workers, ie in Germany there are millions of cars moving south every summer during specific weeks valid for their part of the country, when +-whole factory goes out.
You need a more diverse workforce. Where I am, the Persian guy will work every Jan 1 as long as we guarantee him the first day of spring off. The Muslim lady will do Dec 24/25 as long as she gets some other specific day off.
The hard days to schedule are “family day” and other non-cultural holidays.
This is only a solution some of the time. I worked through Christmas / New Year's at eBay the year I joined, because I hadn't accrued enough vacation for it to make sense to take vacation.
But there was no work to do, because... everyone else was on vacation. Having me in the office benefited no one.
Though I’ve often try to work the non-holiday days around Christmas because it lets me clean everything up without anyone asking for much. But we always keep a skeleton team around in case (critical operation).
That solves the problem considered from my perspective, but it's less good from eBay's perspective. What the company really wants is to make the vacation at that time compulsory. If I have nothing better to do, under the system I experienced, I can still come into the office and eBay has to pay me despite the fact that they have nothing for me to do.
The other tactic I saw was block out vacation, but don’t actually take it so you actually have time to catch up on work. Every leaves you alone (because they think you’re off).
In general management prefers team members sort things out among themselves. E.g. one goes on leave during the first week of the school holiday the other on the second week.
I'm actually a bit surprised that you haven't come across it before because I've always been under the impression that these winter and summer shutdowns are pretty common.
I left a company due to that! Being forced to take holiday during the peak super-expensive period :/
But a society of my clones would probably fall apart.
The government also cut back on their professional development days (probably because it created a problem for parents to arrange childcare), but I heard these days became useless anyway as the budget for them got eliminated.
Working during the peak holiday seasons usually isn't too bad because vacations are more expensive, so going outside of season is better. (but not possible if you have school aged kids).
Also, tons of downtime to get errands fixed that have been left all year.
CEO to shareholders: It's a tax deductible 3-day meeting and team building exercise!
CEO to spouse: Hey, jet skiing in Thailand was on your bucket list, right?