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Comment by ArteEtMarte | Hacker News Reader

That survey makes a lot of sense to me, as a Brit. If I don't take my PTO my boss's boss gets nagged by HR, so they nag my boss, who nags me.

Our PTO year runs from 1 April, so the only (unwritten) rule about vacation is that we should try to spread it over the year. This is because we're only allowed to carry over 5 days to the next year, not taking PTO is frowned upon, and HR don't want everybody to be using up their PTO at the same time at the end of the year.

A few days ago we had a Zoom town-hall meeting where our CEO thanked everybody for taking time off.

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I moved from the UK to Finland, and while the overall process is similar there are some niggles.

Generally you'd have a similar amount of time off here, 4-5 weeks, and it would run April-April as you said for your own.

The biggest difference is that you must take two consecutive weeks at least once a year.

That said there are pluses I think I'm allowed to stay home to care for a sick child 11 days a year, paid. That's a nice bonus, and it has been useful as a parent. When our child was a baby, or toddler, sickness mostly meant that he stayed asleep all day and was lethargic and quiet. Now he's older there's no chance that I'd be able to work from home and take care of him, so those days come in useful. (Helps that I get my 11 days, and my wife gets a similar amount too.)

Otherwise it feels like most Finnish people take a month off in the summer, to the extent that a lot of shops/places in the city close down due to no staff, so there's often a bit of negotiation within teams about who can be away, to make sure there is cover. But it feels pretty relaxed and friendly.

> The biggest difference is that you must take two consecutive weeks at least once a year.

I had this in the UK when I worked in finance. As I recall the two-week rule was commonly written into employment contracts in banking. There was some FCA guidance around this, possibly in the wake of the Jérôme Kerviel scandal (I am not sure, it's been a while).

The idea was to make it a harder for a single rogue trader to perpetrate fraud as they would have to collude with someone to look after their books while they were out for two weeks.

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