IME, when people make a big show of being too busy for vacations, it's often sour grapes. My dear yuppie brother who used to sneer at "lazy" Europeans for not working sixty hour weeks has suddenly become the biggest convert to the European Way after moving there and taking advantage of the five weeks' paid vacation to travel absolutely bloody everywhere.

Dear e,

Knowing Europeans who work both in the gov't and private sector I can't remember anyone who couldn't take their vacation during the year.

Obviously, depending on the job, there are periods when nobody gets to take a vacation, and some businesses and institutions even have set time periods when their employees HAVE to take their vacations (the most famous ones are the big car manufacturers, and of course teachers).

Being so swamped with work that can't be postponed that one cannot take a day off or even has to work during the weekend is no reason for boasting but more for complaining.

It is quite normal that (this time definitely only outside the gov't sector) employees regularly work overtime but weekends tend to be spared and the contractually agreed-upon vacation time is sacrosanct.

60-hour weeks are not seen in terms of "look how much I produce" but more in terms of "our company is so stingy that it doesn't hire more people" and outsiders tend to see it as a sign that someone isn't efficient & smart enough to get his/her workload done in the regular 40 hours.

--MSK

on the west coast of north america people in the hi-tech sector certainly work 60-80 hrs/week and often take vacation only to stay at home to catch up on work. in reality, though, many do it because "everyone else is doing it" and because a fair portion of bosses believe that the more a person works, the more productive he or she is, and the more money he or she should make. however, my research on the subject all indicates that most people who put in extraordinary hours, in fact, don't really do all that much work. someone who works 60 hours a week at intel, for instance, actually only might do 20 hours of real work and 40 hours of socializing with his or her coworkers, playing computer games, or in general screwing off rather than doing any substantive work.

additionally, from direct observation and several old business textbooks, as a person increases the number of hours worked in a week, productivity on the extra hours decreases substantially.

another issue, at least in the hitech sector, with taking vacation is layoffs. many people feel that if they're not around when layoffs happen, they will almost surely get laid off. then again, if they were to just think for a moment and realize all of their vacation (in general) gets vaporized when they get laid off, maybe they'd take more vacation.

but such is life in the west coast hi-tech sector.

(i won't even go into heavy industry)

all of their vacation (in general) gets vaporized when they get laid off,

Huh? I've never heard of a state in which accrued vacation time isn't paid out on termination, and California is probably the most pro-worker state in the U.S. I can check with a labor law friend if you are seriously disputing this.

Eva: i'm not in california. you could be right though. i've never personally been dragged through the mud during a layoff. i am interested to see if that is, in fact, the case that people loose their accrued vacation time. either way, i think we both can agree that, unless the person is highly sought after at other companies, accrued vacation won't actually be used to take a vacation but, rather, will support a very depressed person searching for a job.

Depends here on where you work. Private sector jobs can be very very long hours. And then a lot of people have second jobs on top of that.

But there's a lot of random slacking off at work as well, big surprise there.

Face-time is big in the US, as is the idea that you have to stay late (even if you come in late...or take long lunch breaks, or use work time to pay your bills). I read a book years ago that suggested this had to do with the baby-boomer work ethic ("Generations at Work" I think it was called), but it could also just be due to the lower job security in the US, which forces people into competitive "I work so hard" posturing.

Where I am, Denmark, people whine about their long hours. Those in the private sector work a lot, generally. Unpaid overtime too. Come home dead tired. Nothing to brag about, rather evidence they are being fucked over by their employers, and they know it.

amongst white collar workers in london, long hours are fairly normal, partic. if you're anywhere near finance. whether you complain about it or not depends on how much you're paid, really. the bankers i know tend to be quite happy with the compromise they've made; the people who have to keep up with their schedules on less than half the pay are less so. lawyers, narcissists as they so often are, feel eternally undervalued even as they approach 6 figures.

interestingly, people over 50 seem to look at the working hours of those under 50 with some incredulity. post mid-life crisis, the idea of chaining oneself to the desk in the pursuit of paper and trinkets seems somewhat silly. those under 50 are too busy staring at their computers to realise.

I don't have time to comment I'm too busy.

personally i prefer to brag about getting by on a 25 hour work week.

We get up at twelve and we get to work by one
Take an hour for lunch and then by two we're done...

That's my ideal, anyway. Reality varies from that, unfortunately.

Well, first, open comments like this are almost useless as you have to make sure you're comparing at least oranges to mandarines, and not shriveled peaches.

In my experience in the "Anglo Saxon" world, putting in hours is heavily expected in finance and law, but after that, varies heavily. North America seems more hours conscious than say the Old Continent, but variation in efficacity ... well, hard to say.

Waterboy has it right for London, the generational issue of course is probably universal.

The hours mongering seems to be largely, I would say, an Anglo Saxon professional services thing.

As for Eva Luna's note supra, I believe in NY - at least as I understood my last contract - vac time is a matter of contract if it is paid on termination/exit or not.

As for Eva Luna's note supra, I believe in NY - at least as I understood my last contract - vac time is a matter of contract if it is paid on termination/exit or not.

Handily enough, my stepmom is a labor attorney in NY - I need to call her anyway, so it's simple enough to ask.

Actually, it looks like it's half-and-half:

"Q: When an employee resigns -- or is discharged -- from a job, is the employer required to pay the employee for any accrued, unused vacation time?

A: Whether an employer is obligated to pay for unused time depends upon the terms of the vacation and/or resignation policy. New York courts have held [in Glenville Gage Company, Inc. v. Industrial Board of Appeals of the State of New York, Department of Labor, 70 AD2d 283 (3d Dept 1979) affd, 52 NY2d 777 (1980)] that an agreement to furnish benefits or wage supplements, such as vacation, can specify that employees forfeit accrued benefits under certain conditions. To be valid, the employer must have notified employees, in writing, of the conditions that nullify the benefit.

If an employee has earned vacation time -- and there is no written forfeit policy, the employer must pay the employee for the accrued vacation."

IME in the legal field, the expectation of “face time” varies somewhat depending on how billing is done. My old firm normally billed on a per-matter basis for routine matters, so management couldn’t care less how many hours you put in, as long as you were billing enough. I liked that, as that meant it paid off to work efficiently – I could kick butt and still go home at a reasonable hour. I did do some unpaid overtime, but it wasn’t terribly onerous for the most part. The only times it irked me was when the overtime had been necessitated by my boss’ lack of planning appropriately to assign work to me in time for me to finish it (I hate it when something sat on her desk for 2 days until 4:30 on a Friday, and she would then decide it HAD to go out that day, when I could easily have finished it if I’d had it in hand earlier), or to leave herself enough time to review my work before it went out to clients or to the Feds (I was expected to stick around until anything time-sensitive had been OK’d.)

But in 2004, the Dept. of Labor clarified the definitions of which employees were subject to the overtime pay requirement, with the result that after consulting with employment counsel, my firm decided that any non-lawyer, non-managerial staff were required to be paid overtime…and all of the sudden, management was kicking people’s butts out the door at 5:00 unless it was truly an emergency. And then trying to tell us that they were sorry that the DOL had decided we were “non-professional” staff because, of course, they considered us professionals… did they really think we were stupid enough not to see that they were too cheap to pay us for overtime?