Capacity Plan
fev.al
fev.al
Most tech companies give most Federal holidays off, maybe 10 paid Federal holidays which means that 4.5 weeks of "vacation" is actually 2.5 weeks of PTO. 2-3 weeks of PTO is common in tech and across most professional roles after a few years with a company.
I think that around 10 company-selected holidays plus 15 employee-selected days is a fairly typical starting point for tech in the US, with some having more and some having less.
We start at 9 company plus 18 employee chosen days and you get 1 additional employee chosen day per year per year of service up to 5. (So, I’m at 9+23 or 32 days or 6.4 weeks per year now.) We also have half-day Fridays in the summer, so if you take 12 half-days of PTO, you can have 12 summer Fridays off plus 26 other days for 38 or almost 8 weeks off.
I'm surprised this doesn't come up in US/Europe salary discussions more (at least, I haven't seen it that I recall) - I've known and see it be a benefit (that people do use) to purchase extra holiday from their already higher than typical US starting point. Wouldn't make that much difference to the comparison if it was offered of course, but perhaps indicates Europeans would be choosier (or unhappier) with their hypothetical US job than they realise.
When we contemplate opening a new location (now, enabling remote work from a new jurisdiction), we have a standard way to capture the legal requirements and common practices in tech with regards to PTO, hours, on-call, market pay, etc.
It should be standard.
I figure that every one of my reports is going to be out for five weeks over the year and and plan accordingly.
Moreover, taking sick days is normalised and you will not be punished for it unless you abuse it. If you take below 30 sick days a year, you're likely safe.
My job is to help people settle in Germany. I struggle to communicate how chill German work culture is.
Standard in professional jobs in the UK would be about 7 weeks including public holidays (25 days plus 9 public holidays), maybe 8 or 9 weeks, especially after a few years tenure.
You want a database that is connected to approval processes, auditing, pay stubs, people's calendars, etc.
Does anything like that exist as a service?
The interesting thing is that for the internal capacity planning of her team, she uses my spreadsheet.