I actually think the higher ups tend to take more vacation, but their vacation is a working vacation. Example, boss goes to San Francisco with family, takes family to Tahoe for a few days, takes investors to a Giants game or something. Still enjoyable, but still work.
yea there is probably a break point where it changes for the top BSDs. Probably more accurate to say that the road to BSD-ness is paved with carry-over days. But once you get there it changes.
The test is: does the organization operate around your vacation schedule or is it the other way around? BSDs take their vacation and everyone works around that shedule. That’s a long way off for me.
Most people think they are way more important to an organization that they truly are. Really, in most cases, regardless of how indispensable you imagine your skill set is, the firm will do just fine when you take your two weeks of vacation. It’s depressing to see how many people volunarily refuse to take vacation for one reason or another
Not me, haha. I work for a big 4 accounting firm, so as far as they’re concerned (and I completely accept this), I’m interchangable with most people of my level. When I take vacation, they’ll either assign somebody else to do it or my team will just deal with it themselves.
I think forcing people to cross-train is part of the purpose of the Fed directive I spoke of. The other part relates to uncovering fraud as it specifically references allowing time for any transactions the employee might have entered to clear. The thought is that if someone is involved in anything nefarious they need to constantly monitor their positions in order to circumvent controls, e.g. adjusting fictitious hedges, posting offsetting entries, or falsifying reconciliations.
It’s still really easy to fake certain things, even with all these controls. In your case, for instance, you are required to take 10 days (2 weeks) off. If you were like those Credit Suisse guys who colluded to mismark their positions, 2 weeks is not enough time to uncover this. Or if you were Kweku, you could falsify trades which settle say, 3 months from now. So while all these controls are better than nothing, if someone really wanted to lie, they can still do it. In fact, I’m sure many people still do…
I didn’t use up all my vacation days last 2 years at my firm… they “said” they’d compensate me with a bonus equal to a day’s worth of pay for any unused vacation day but when I tried to redeem them, they claim they never offered such a deal.
Not a big deal anyways but this year, I’m gonna use all of my 10 vacation days guiltlessly…
When I last worked for a big corporatey firm, they would compensate you for unused vacation days at your daily rate, so your last paycheck had an extra bundle in it, which was nice.
However, accumulated sick time was not compensated. So if I were trying to squeeze the last drop of juice out of them, I should have called in sick a lot before I left.
I get 25 days a year to use at my disposal. Last year I used 2 weeks before the CFA exam, so I have a lot of days subject to write off at the moment. My manager even encouraged me to use more days.
25 days haha…that is crazy…
I get 30 days a year, then next year I’ll get 35, then it caps at 40 days the next year.
I take a lot of long weekends, taking Friday an Monday off.
I also wouldn’t want to take any holiday over 2 weeks out of fear of being replaced.
I haven’t had a proper holiday since my son was born, just a lot of little mini-breaks.
Yeah I get 20 days and take every single one, also never answer the blackberry on vacation thank you very much, everyone knows my rules.
However to think of people living in an advanced civilization only getting one week off every three months is just nuts. What’s the point of it being so advanced if everyone works all the time. Places in Europe where they get 8-12 weeks sounds about right. Come in, get the work done, leave. Common sense.
The US culture is a bunch of posturing and nonsense, “no pain no gain” is the theory there. In my years working there people would take a 1 day job and turn it into a 6 month group exercise so they could make a big deal of things, schedule pointless meetings, stay till midnight, act important, intentionally suffer thus deserving of some gain. I’m like, “uhh why don’t I just go back to my desk and DO IT NOW, will be done by 4pm and go play some tennis”.
If you only take one week off per year, you are definately doing something wrong.
taking too many days off is the reason (one of them) why europe is in the predicament it is in today…that’s what I think…too many people are lazy…
I’m not sure if absolute amount of work is the main issue. If GDP increased, people will just demand more entitlements. It’s probably more important to look at the ratio of spending to GDP.
Yeah but what about the predicament the US is in…
23 days… use or loose