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Comment by looperhacks | Hacker News Reader

Is this a common number of vacation days in the US? In Germany the minimum _by law_ is 20 days on a 5 day week and I wouldn't even consider a position offering only that.

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From a legal perspective I'm not sure, but I'd say 10 days is the minimum you'd see for a full time salaried position. But it's considered low for skilled professionals and would be a dealbreaker for many people. For skilled professionals (lawyers, engineers, etc.), 20 days is a more common number to see. This doesn't include sick days, which are usually counted separately.

It varies. Some companies have 'unlimited' paid time off, others just federal holidays. I don't think there is a federal law governing paid time off. There is a law (Family and Medical Leave Act) guaranteeing up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off though.

As someone else pointed out, some companies still offer vacation time and sick leave separately. None of the companies I've worked for still do, all have combined those into a single Paid Time Off pool.

Assuming sick time is a separate pool (which is less common than it used to be and isn't mentioned), then yes in the US 15 days would be pretty standard for someone with experience but might be as low as 10 for someone without. It's almost certainly on the low side if that's a common vacation/sick time pool.

In Germany when you are sick you are sick, there is no limit. You will be paid and you can not be fired for it.

An allotted amount of "sick days" doesn't really make sense anyway, not like you can choose to be sick next year.

(Only exception is for long term sicknesses, if you are sick for more than 6 consecutive weeks, then the next week your health insurance will pay you 60% of your normal wage instead. Or if there is no hope of you ever being able to work, again insurance.)

Oh and if you are sick on vacation you get your vacation days back as you were not really able to take advantage of them.

Typically, in the US there's a progression from sick days (or just a shared pool of days) to short-term disability to long-term disability at companies that have those things.

6 weeks per diagnosis. If say you had six weeks of Covid and break your leg on the way out of the hospital and need another six weeks, your salary will be paid. And you keep your vacation days.

This seems like an insane law. I'm shocked it works at all. If a country wants to provide people insurance against sickness, totally fine. But to push it off on employers seems crazy. Let's say you are a small business, you have 1 employee. If they get sick you are now stuck paying them for 6 weeks and you can't replace them? So your small business can basically go under if someone gets sick.

I really disagree strongly with trying to push things onto companies.

The government want to pay basic income? Great! The government want to provide health care? Great!

This to me is the main advantage I like about basic income, is it really seems like we can get rid of all these suboptimal laws with horrible abuses and bad tradeoffs, including: - min wage - overtime - vacation requirements - healthcare requirements

So businesses can just focus on what they do best and the government provides a safety net.

Like another sibling said, it's not really that different in the US, since in the US you also use sick days for a while (not six weeks though) and progress to disability.

In Germany it's just more structured. There's multiple special rules, like the employee must be working at the company for a while, it has different rules for companies with fewer employees, companies can't be in an emergency situation, there might be the possibility tax rebates.

This is mostly handled by careful accounting. You need to provision future money for it rather than living in a reverse "paycheck to paycheck" situation. I never had a German company but I had a company in a country with similar arrangements and my accountant made me learn it all.

It also has the side effect of having businesses to care about employee quality of life. Someone working 12 hours a day will probably burn out quickly.

Isn't the legal minimum in Germany 24 days, two days per month?

24 days for 6 day week, 20 days for 5 day week

More or less everyone has a 5-day week. Most jobs offer 25-30 days/year + unlimited sick days

Yep. My job offers 35 days: 30 flexible days/year plus 5 days where they close shop.

That's nice! Our mandatory closure over christmas goes out of the 30 day balance. Still good enough!

I have friends with just 10 days in the USA.

It's common, but you can be assured that any company offering 10 days vacation is being run by shitty or criminally inexperienced people.

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