December 19, 2013 at 10:53 am
In my 20 plus years of consulting I have budgeted 1,800 hours per work year. The typical work year is considered to be 2080 but for consultants you have to consider vacation - 120 hours, sick time - 40 hours, training - 40 hours, holidays - 80. Regardless of my rate, This is how I compute my expected income for the year. I frequently work more hours due to overtime but I always take vacation as "She who must be obeyed" requires it.
December 19, 2013 at 1:19 pm
As a workaholic, I find it difficult to unplug on the weekends but am trying my best. I got a reminder from my boss to take my personal days (we get 8 a year) by the end of the year or I will lose them. Same with vacation. So I had 3 left and was thinking, can I afford to see them go? No! So today, on the eve of a personal day, I was exhausted after reviewing several hundred reports, batch jobs and creating a visio diagram of the results that, hopefully someone will now understand when I say "a database does not live in the void without data." I looked at my calendar and boy, the personal day never looked so good.
It is important to "leave", if only for a little while. Stuff will go on with or without you and if they fail, you will be even more valued when you get back and fix it. Plus your family and pets will thank you for it too.
December 19, 2013 at 2:13 pm
The other day, I went to the office, and after checking email and task list saw there was nothing requiring my immediate attention, so I took the day off and watched "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" in a 3D IMAX theatre, which was a very delicious three hour escape. Afterward, I drove to a local mountain park for a six mile hike and returned home late in the evening. I actually prefer occasionally losing myself for a day or two when I really feel like it more than I do blocking off a couple of weeks at some fixed date.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 19, 2013 at 4:59 pm
I have generally always lax about taking all my vacation days. At the same time my prior position and employer was a bank that had a requirement to take five consecutive days off every year. Most of those vacations were at home. And you had five sick days.
My current position has been under two different companies. The prior company started you off with 17 days PTO for both vacation and "sick" days. You were responsible to reserve enough to handle the sick days; but you could carry over 40 hours.
The new owners start around ten days of use it or lose it vacation days and it goes up with time. (Three years + is fifteen days.) But they view sick time as sick time with a reasonable limit. And they expect you to try and telecommute on your sick days.
But at the same time I don't really stress about being off because when I'm at home I'm in a nice relatively stress-free environment. I have no spouse or kids. I live on six acres in a very rural area. A few years ago my ex-GF wanted to go on a weekend cabin retreat. About the only difference from my place was more trees, a little less traffic, and a jacuzzi compared to my garden tub.
So to me that makes a world of difference. I was doing a 110 mile round trip commute until recently. Now I'm telecommuting. Even though I now can be at "work" 24/7 I know how to turn it off and relax at home.
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Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
December 20, 2013 at 6:52 am
I'm in the UK and have 31.5 days leave (1.5 added in place of compulsory shutdowns) which was 26.5 until 5 years service complete. Plus Bank Holidays. Then we work flexitime and can take up to two flexi days off per month as long as the worked hours per month are correct and we always have to liaise with other team members to ensure cover. There's no working before 07:30 or after 18:00 without prior authorisation and no callouts when on leave so overall the work-life balance is good. Cr*p pay though.
December 20, 2013 at 7:33 am
P Jones (12/20/2013)
I'm in the UK and have 31.5 days leave (1.5 added in place of compulsory shutdowns) which was 26.5 until 5 years service complete. Plus Bank Holidays. Then we work flexitime and can take up to two flexi days off per month as long as the worked hours per month are correct and we always have to liaise with other team members to ensure cover. There's no working before 07:30 or after 18:00 without prior authorisation and no callouts when on leave so overall the work-life balance is good. Cr*p pay though.
What's a "compulsory shutdown" ?
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 23, 2013 at 1:54 am
Compulsory shutdown is when you are forced to take some annual leave at a particular time. This often occurs in the manufacturing industry when they have a furnace that they turn off, wait days for it to cool down, perform maintenance then it takes a couple more days to heat up again. During this time no-one in a chain of work involving the furnace can do anything. As this often was the majority of staff this has carried through to the office staff of the 20th and 21st centuries.
On another note, I tend to find that working freelance on a daily rate has meant that clients now rather time wasn't taken when deadlines are tight. Before, on an hourly rate, I could check that they were happy for me to work a little longer each day to ensure that the necessary tasks were achieved on time then take a day off. To be honest, I am not prepared to do work extra unpaid hours to fit deadlines that ignore room for absences (i.e. holiday/vacation). I am prepared to put in extra hours when required but not to take a days leave unpaid. PLEASE NOTE: that it is not all companies that are so inflexible.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
January 13, 2014 at 4:23 am
below86 (12/19/2013)
majorbloodnock (12/19/2013)
Jim Youmans-439383 (12/19/2013)
At my last job, we had a use it or lose it policy. If you did not use your two weeks, then you lost it. The bad part was that if you tried to take more than a 4 day weekend (Friday - Monday) your manager would make a big deal out of it and try to guilt you into not doing it. The one time I did take a week off, I got called every day and had to log in twice to fix something. It was a horrid place and I am very glad I do not work there anymore.My new position is much better and I am looking forward to my vacation this summer!
It's posts like that which remind me of my good fortune.
In the UK, four weeks is the norm, and the flexible benefits package in the company where I work allows us to buy extra to take it up to a maximum of six weeks per year. That aside, holiday is not a privilege; it's a contractual right. Once again, in the UK, the scenario Jim's post outlines would very likely have constituted harrassment and landed the company in court.
From my point of view, if a company cannot do without someone long enough for them to take a holiday, they have a critical single point of failure and that person's manager isn't doing their job properly.
"Four weeks is the norm"? No matter if you've been there a year or 20 years?
They seem to have the right idea about this in the UK. I'm going to have to check out the job market over there.:-)
I'm not completely sure about this but I think the minimum statutory holiday leave here in the UK is 15 days. Bank Holidays (first Monday in May, last Monday in May, last Monday in August in England, differences in Scotland, Northern Ireland and possibly Wales) can be included in those 15 days, although that's not usual. Typically leave increases with service. When I was an employee at the place I know freelance, I had 30 days plus Bank Holidays plus Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, Good Friday and Easter Monday, so 38 days in total, with reasonable sick leave on top of that (it's normal to have to provide a doctor's certificate if one is off for more than two days or more than one day either side of a weekend).
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