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Comment by dr_ | Hacker News Reader

Doctors don't have infinite sick days, many don't have 30 vacation days (I barely take a week off a year), and most don't have 40 hr work weeks.

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Yeah no-where on earth are there 30 holiday days per year and 40 hour maximum. No-one works that.

Except several EU countries which have that as the legal minimum…

(e.g. France: 35 hr legal working week, 25 days holidays and ~ 13 paid public holidays per year)

Most of western Europe, if not all, gets at least 4 weeks vacation. 40 hours is a bit more demanding but 42 is pretty common.

All of the EU gets 4 weeks. It's called the European Working Time Directive. That'd give you 20 days paid annual leave. Some member states have higher. (I think) all member states have paid public holidays aswell.

All of the EU gets 48 hours maximum working time per week, that's the European Working Time Directive again. The UK has a sort of an opt-out to it. Some member states have a lower maximum.

Fun Fact: I'm from Ireland (20 days holidays per year). Talked to some Germans, and they were shocked I could get by on 20 (they got 30).

I have 10 in the US. You lucky bastard.

Funny how people allready say EU countries instead of countries in Europe.

Why is it funny? Not all countries in Europe are in the EU.

(And slightly funny enough, not all of the EU is in Europe. French Guiana is in part of France and the EU and borders Brazil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Guiana)

I'm in The Netherlands, have a 40 hour work week, more than 30 days of paid leave, plus extra days when I move/marry/etc. It's pretty common in Western Europe.

And it's not as if we have less welfare, healthcare, worse education, low productivity, or an instable economy. In fact, in pretty much all rankings Western European countries are doing fine.

Unfortunately, government policies that make such thinks possible are called 'socialist' on the other side of the pond.

Unfortunately, government policies that make such thinks possible are called 'socialist' on the other side of the pond.

They are called 'Socialist' here (EU) aswell.

* The 2nd largest political party in the European Parliament is.... "Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats".

* The UK Labour Party (many times in government) has a footer to "Affiliated socialist societies" in it's homepage ( http://www.labour.org.uk/home ) (Though it's not really viewed as socialist party in UK as much now that it's "New Labour").

* The "Core Party Principles" of the Irish Labour Party (which is in government) starts with: "The four principles on which Socialism is based are …" ( http://www.labour.ie/principles/ )

The difference is that "socialist" isn't a dirty word in European countries.

Brazil: 44h, 30 days PTO, ~12 public holidays, 13th salary (yeah...). If you're not working as a contractor, that is, which is way too common in the IT field.

It's not really 30 days PTO, isn't it? It's "30 consecutive days", which might even include holidays/weekends. And you don't have much flexibility on taking them. Also, it's not uncommon to have 40h agreements.

In Brazil you get paid monthly, not weekly, so weekends are part of the math. 30 weekdays would make it 42 consecutive days vacation - now that would be awesome.

UK here: 35 hr week (which I generally stick to), 28 days holiday (rising to 30 in a couple of years, plus I usually buy 5 extra, plus public holidays).

What's interesting is I work for a large multi-national (listed on NYSE and TSX) - local expectations override the rest of their US-centric culture.

I didn't say treat me the way a hospital treats a doctor. I said you treat me as if I'm a doctor and you are a pharmaceutical sales rep.

Or, treat me like I'm an investor (which I am) and you're a startup (which you are).

However, median compensation for really good doctors is vastly higher than median compensation for really good developers (in the US, anyway).

And really good doctors have really high bills to pay, as well. Not many developers need 8 years of the best schooling (one could make the argument that really good developers don't need any schooling, although it helps).

Your point still stands, but student loans from med school are nothing to brush aside.

For really good specialists, student loans from med school are forgiven after 10 years of practice in academic medicine (which your residency counts towards), and often paid off for you if you go into private practice.

That's not a universal truth. Studying medicine in Europe is not significantly more expensive than studying history, CS or whatnot.

E.g., in Belgium, any year spent studying at college- or university-level costs €550 (±$720), plus the cost of the books. If your parents earn less than a middle class income, you pay significantly less.

The major difference that does hold true everywhere, is the fact that doctors start earning a salary much later.

Yeah, well, developers aren't given a giant book on solutions either.

Oh, I see, you're having an issue where you're executing 10,000 queries. Let me just open up this book and copy/paste the solution to you.

#1 Neither are doctors.

#2 Yes you are. It's called StackOverflow and a million other sites on the internet where you can google for an answer to your question.

I have a relative who is a doctor in an ER and they are essentially an independent contractor (not on a W2), they don't really get any sick days, per se, they are paid for what they work (at a very high rate, or I think a share of the income for that month for their department, something like that) but they have to manage it as a business, essentially (own health insurance, etc), I think its different for some as they may be an employee (like for Kaiser) but a lot are contractors.

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