I need a vacation. More importantly, I need money to take said vacation.

Side note, how the fuck do Europeans afford to take super long vacations.

vacations are paid ! \ (•◡•) /

What's the treshold for super long vacation? How many days exactly?

@Pyjong where i live (switzerland) there is a law that from the yearly required 4 weeks of vacation, 2 weeks can be consecutive.
So it's not unsual if you accumulated and didn't take vacation days from last year, that you take a 4 weeks long vacation.
And vacation is part of the wage negotiation at the job interview. And the more senior you get the more vacation days extra you get.

Yeah, vacations are both paid and mandatory here as well. And I'm soon taking mines :)

@heyheni that's pretty neat

Four weeks of vacation is legal minimum in Germany, too. However, that is seen as crap job and basis for applying elsewhere. Good standard is 30 days. With 5 working days per week, that's six weeks. On top of that, a few public holidays. All of that paid of course, just like sick leave.

@heyheni I get paid vacation time as well but dont have the extra money for the actual "vacation" part. I can get the time off from work, it's the part of paying to stay somewhere for an extended period of time.

@Pyjong I'd say anything over 7 days is long. Most of mine have been 4 or 5 days if I'm lucky.

@BobbyTables Does your boss just not allow you to take longer?

@BobbyTables the money for the vacation comes from the salary that goes with a dev job.

@Nanos
EU debt: 85% gdp (12 trillion)
US debt: 76% gdp (16 trillion)

Well, according to you, ours is from our vacations, and US's???

Blaming eu's debt in such things is at the very least misleading, and I would even dare to say: untruthful.

@Nanos
1) There is a plethora of studies out there supporting paid vacations benefits for productivity. It boosts eployee moral, improves talent retention and has significant health benefits. It's just common sense

2) Employees who go to work sick are less productive and risk spreading contagious diseases to other employees and customers, costing more to the company in the long run. Again, common sense.

3) When employees are paid well, they enjoy better mental and physical health. When employees are healthy, their performance improves. Bussiness owners unarguably benefit from having a happy, motivated workforce.

3) Pensions are deducted from the workers paycheck

4) We dont have student loans here, but a better education for everyone means a wider array of qualified workers to choose from for the companies.

5) ALL governments borrow. And I mean ALL. And not just govs, even companies!

@Nanos That's not what national debt is.. (wtf?) National debt is made by the _government_ of the country. You pelican!

@Nanos Of course one can make a shithole where everyone is miserable except a few company owners. The thing is just that a society where the majority loses isn't stable in the long run, and then even the company owners will lose out.

The social systems in Europe were not installed because the governments had good hearts. They wanted to take the wind out of the commies' sails, that's why.

Remember that a horse without rider is still a horse, but a rider without horse isn't a rider anymore.

Those who profit most from an order, i.e. the rich, should have most interest in social peace to maintain that order. Otherwise, people might start asking for how long they can still afford the rich.

@Nanos nope, I'm not even using my memory now. Google it..

michael moore - where to invade next (italian vacation)

https://youtu.be/DnqNjf5UM6Y

@Nanos If half of the workforce is on sick leave for a sports event, that should tell management something about employee engagement. And no, that's not going to get better with a crack-down, quite the opposite.

Also, it's quite common here if overtime spins out of control, then people go to the doctor and get a sick leave before they die of a heart attack, which such an asshole management wouldn't care about.

The result is that companies who try to succeed via asshole management have high turnover and high sick leave. Means, they are not competetive and go bankrupt. Which is healthy for all because that leaves economic room for better companies.

@Nanos

1) A burnt out workforce will undeniably produce less, not only that, but any worthwhile worker will leave.
https://upcounsel.com/paid-vacation...

https://forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/...

2) You realize you need a doctor's note to get a sick day of, do you? otherwise you could get fired.

3) Paying a decent wage is not asking too much

4) You do not even understand how our system works, do you? We pay a high % of taxes so that all those services are maintained

5) Ok. which ones are? Andorra? South Sudan? Tuvalu? Brunei? Liechenstein? Macau? Niue? Great economic powerhouses all of them. Whilst on the top of the list you would find countries like the us, uk, france, germany, netherlands.... What a coincidence, those ARE economic powerhouses....

@dozingncoding Usually, you only need a doctor's sick leave for more than three days in a row. Main reason is that for shit that goes away by itself, people are too lazy to visit the doctor - but if they did, they'd get the full week off.

If employees go overboard with that, employers can order sick leaves from day one individually. Or even hire detectives to find out whether the employee is really sick.

@Fast-Nop in my country they can ask them from the first day. Otherwide it could be considered to be an unjustified leave. I forgot once to bring it though, and since my employer trusts me they didn't even ask for the note. Were you to leave for more than three days in a row, you would need to be declared on sick leave by your doctor. And then depending on your contract, you could be up to 3 days without pay. If you are more than 3 days sick you would earn an income which is calculated differently frol your normal one

@dozingncoding Mh here you have to tell you're sick, but unless the company specifically requires so, no sick leave from the doctor if it's not more than three days.

Pay is normal for up to six weeks - the company has to factor that into their business calculation. After that, it's no longer the company who pays, but the health insurance. Then you get 70% of your former pre-tax income, but not exceeding 90% of the previous after tax income.

For usual dev salaries, the latter is relevant because tax and insurances subtract about 45% of the gross income. That's the price here of course.

@Nanos Sometimes, I do wake up in the morning and figure I'm totally not in the mood for working. Rare but happens. In that case, I just call in and tell HR that I need an unplanned holiday because something is with the house. Heating system, water pipes, plumbing, window access or whatever.

Since that's a day of my regular 30 days, nobody will give a fuss. I prefer that to feigning illness.

If you are not even able to pay minimum wage to yout workers. Maybe it's no longer profitable to run that particular business, trying to compete there with low paying countries by paying shitty wages is a zero sum game, either find a technology to make production cheaper, develop another innovative business or go somewhere else. Is it pretty? No, but that's the world we live in.

I repeat, we do not have student loan in our country, you could hardly call that a social service...

For other services we have, ofc they run at a loss, they are SERVICES, not businesses. They get payed with the taxes we all pay.

Uk has fucked itself with brexit, they still are an undeniable economic powerhouse, future looks dark tough. But that has nothing to do with paid vacations

@Nanos Well, you found wages even below minimum still reasonable. Fine, then don't complain and live with that. It's what you wanted, after all.

@Nanos God Damn, that's some good bait. Nice trolling ;D

@Nanos
Minimum wage guarantees that any worker working 8 hours a day can afford to live in our country. And it's still a shitty wage. I make way more than that amount here and it's still not that much.

Anyone earning less than that would not be able to feed themselves or be able to own a car, let alone having a home (which is extremely expensive btw)

We would never be able to compete with low wage countries like china or India, workers wouldn't even be able to feed themselves. Let alone have the prospect of improving their lives.
I don't even want my country to try to compete with those countries by lowering wages.

Want a wage lower than the minimum? All yours.

I don't know what do you understand by "minimum wage", but it is the bare minimum to be able to survive.

@Nanos
A most basic flat's rent here costs more or less the same as the minimun wage, and no 1M city flat, I'm talking about a basic home (still not counting other taxes and expenses).

What about the people without a job? Thats what social benefits are for. Here you can ask for state help (its like 80% of the minimun wage, and there can only be 1 per family), provided you can demonstrate that you are actively looking for work, they will give it to you.

You realize that even if they were to lower wages all other expenses would remain the same. Do you? Anyone with such a wage would not be able to live here.

Let the countries who lower their wages do so. Instead of doing that, I prefer my country to keep investing in new technologies to create new jobs.

I have a job with a reasonably good salary, and so does my wife. That's how we can afford to use our vacation days to travel somewhere.

Of course the downside is we don't own a house/apartment, and we'll be piss poor come retirement because we spent all the money on travel.

@Nanos Of course you don't have a system with "milk and honey" because you have too many people like yourself there who think the more miserable people are, the better it is for everyone.

In that regard, I find it funny that you get exactly what you think is best and then still complain that it sucks.

In the West, we had such shit in the 19th century. It was called "Manchester capitalism". We don't have that anymore because it sucked for most people. Capitalists faced the risk of getting hung on lamp posts if they had let the misery drive people towards the commies for much longer.

@Nanos That there's no investment in tech and stuff - of course not! The people who would be qualified to do that are exactly the ones who will leave such a miserable place as soon as they see an opportunity. That's called "brain drain".

@Nanos Also, the problem with market forces is market collapse. If you get into a spiral where companies underbid each other, and wages fall throughout the country, you'll end up with a failed state.

1) The workers are also the customers, and if their wages drop over the whole country, this will cause deflation. This means that goods demand stops, hoping for lower prices next month. This means fewer production, fewer jobs, smaller wages. Until there is no economy anymore.

2) When people don't earn enough to live on, they don't just die. They can and will go criminal if the alternative is starving.

Consequence: a failed state with no economy, no taxes, no state force and high criminality. Warlords take over the vacuum, and that's what a failed state is.

The market doesn't care whether that will happen five years down the road if it means more profit in this quarter. Mainly because those making the profits will use that to jump the ship before the shit hits the fan.

this rant feed 😆

@Nanos the problem with deflation is a deadlock where companies can't sell because nobody buys, so they fire their staff, and people don't buy because they don't have jobs. Deflation is a much more serious problem than inflation.

And yeah brain drain is exactly that. Then they are not anymore in their native country to do high tech stuff. And don't think even for a moment that illegal ghetto huts will attract talent from abroad to make up for the loss.

So why do you complain? You have what you wanted, a job with shitty pay and no holidays. The reason others have it better is that they were not content. You know - unions, strikes and stuff.

@heyheni I take it that your usual conversations are 140 characters in one direction, 140 in the other, then finished? ^^