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Comment by aspensmonster | Hacker News Reader

Why bother splitting? Just give a full month off. Use it as you see fit. Spent all of it and now you're sick? Tough luck.

I'm sure there's labour laws that mandate the split. I just can't help but feel that nearly everyone would rather take a guaranteed month of time for "whatever comes up" than "two weeks vacation" and "better make sure you (and your family) aren't sick for more than two weeks annually." Just as I can't help but feel that employers actually prefer the split because dealing with the "'work the system'" ones is cheaper than just treating every employee like an adult by giving them more than a pittance of time away from the office.

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The point is 'tough luck' gets the entire office sick by making sick employees come in to work. You almost never want this. It has a tremendous negative effect on productivity.

You also can't ignore the psychological effect of having to 'give up' time off (for a vacation with your kids, or a visit to your parents on their deathbed) in order to avoid going to work sick. It causes people to go to work sick a lot more often, because they can't anticipate when they will need time off. It also diminishes the rate at which they will use vacation time because they can't accurately estimate how often they'll get sick.

>It also diminishes the rate at which they will use vacation time because they can't accurately estimate how often they'll get sick.

Which leads to "use it or lose it" come December, when your entire company stops working because no one is in the office.

How exactly does 2 weeks paid vacation and 8 days paid sick leave change any of this? You're still out of luck if you end up bed-ridden for two weeks with the flu. My alternative of giving everyone a minimum chunk of four weeks --preferably six, but a minimum of four-- of paid time off for whatever reason gives people more breathing room, not less. They get more time off than they would have otherwise. This keeps more sick people out of the office, because they aren't having to worry about eating up precious PTO on what might get the office sick, or might just be a stomach bug.

Honestly, I sense people are latching on to my "tough luck" comment without bothering to think the rest of my comment through.

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