PTO and the death of America's summer vacation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read the article quickly yesterday. From what I recall, I think the author missed the boat by not mentioning the reason many two-income families, including mine, don't take summer vacations - the number of school days off. People have no leave left between illnesses and the many school breaks and days off.

Bingo! Much easier to arrange for summer camps then the occasional professional devt days and weeklong breaks

+1 And there are more professional days/fake snow days now for local school systems then there were in the 1980s. Of course parents are going to burn their leave covering these days. And as someone pointed out, there is no longer a default SAHP to cover all the sick days. (Generalizing like the article did) In the 80s for many families, dad’s vacation time was just used for vacation. Mom took care of all days the kids were off.

I was the one who mentioned the school calendar, but I'll take this even further. The misalignment between the needs of working families and the school calendar (including the inclement weather days, which may or may not be a thing of the past), not only make summer vacations impossible for many families but also contribute to the high level and stress parents feel about schools which trickles down to their kids.

[Anonymous]

I end up using paid vacation as sick days most of the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

What part of Deloitte officially closes between Christmas and New Years - without making you use PTO?

[Anonymous]

I hate combined PTO but that’s what we end up with when employees treat sick like extra vacation days to take whenever they feel burned out—companies just combine them, and you get less because the old sick leave systems has more “cushion” because they were intended as an insurance (there if you need it only).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/10/disappearing-vacation-days/

This article amuses me. It states that Americans earn more vacation time now than they did in the past, then points at the rise of PTO vs vacation/sick days as to why there is a reluctance to take longer vacations.

But I'm pretty sure for most employers when they switched to PTO, the sum of your vacation and sick days did not equaly your new PTO total. They combined them, but shrunk the total! So technically we don't have less "vacation" but we certainly have seen leave balances degrease over the last 30 years.

Of course, then you have unlimited, or zero balance vacation policies as I like to call them....

Unlimited vacation is just a pay cut for employees under the guise of more generosity. It’s a giant scam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

What part of Deloitte officially closes between Christmas and New Years - without making you use PTO?

EY does this too. We are also closed the week of Fourth of July. We get four-day weekends for Labor Day and Memorial Day and Thanksgiving too.

We have unlimited vacation now, though, which is wildly unpopular since it was effectively a salary reduction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

But does t Deloitte work you for much unpaid overtime and lots of travel?

[Anonymous]

Personally, our lack of vacation is a combination of school schedule creep, especially as we get to the teen and HS years.

When I was growing up, school used to run Labor Day to Memorial Day. Now it runs from 2 weeks before Labor Day to 2 weeks after Memorial Day.

Add to that sports (fully admitting that this a choice we make): Fall sports start Aug 1. Add in basketball practices over Christmas and crew practices over Spring Break and you are down to essentially a 6 week summer vacation, which also coincides with summer swim.

Again, I'm not whining, this is a choice we have made, but a lot of families are making the same choice and it is a contributor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

What part of Deloitte officially closes between Christmas and New Years - without making you use PTO?

EY does this too. We are also closed the week of Fourth of July. We get four-day weekends for Labor Day and Memorial Day and Thanksgiving too.

We have unlimited vacation now, though, which is wildly unpopular since it was effectively a salary reduction.

I have friends working on the Federal consulting side at Deloitte and they are not off during Christmas to New Years. Is it just the tax and audit side that is off?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

But does t Deloitte work you for much unpaid overtime and lots of travel?

The consulting side does. The billable requirements are brutal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

What part of Deloitte officially closes between Christmas and New Years - without making you use PTO?

He’s in federal consulting.

[Anonymous]

When my employer switched to PTO they squeezed a week out of the equation. I've been there a decade and have four weeks of PTO per year plus eight holidays. I'm one of those folks with a working spouse and kids who almost never takes a full week off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

But does t Deloitte work you for much unpaid overtime and lots of travel?

He travels maybe one week/year and rarely works over 50 hours. During crunch time a few weeks of the year he will work weekends but he’s the default parent who does all the kid stuff during the week since I have zero flexibility so it evens out.

The company is disliked on this board but it has honestly been the most family friendly of anywhere either of us has ever worked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a 49 yo professional in DC proper and I get 30 days of PTO per year. That's sick and vacation all together. I use every single minute of it. We are closed December 25- January 2 as well

Two weeks are spent at the beach each summer, than a week in the Fall and a week in the Spring

Where do you work and are you hiring!

My spouse is at Deloitte and has this exact set up. It’s fabulous.

But does t Deloitte work you for much unpaid overtime and lots of travel?

He travels maybe one week/year and rarely works over 50 hours. During crunch time a few weeks of the year he will work weekends but he’s the default parent who does all the kid stuff during the week since I have zero flexibility so it evens out.

The company is disliked on this board but it has honestly been the most family friendly of anywhere either of us has ever worked.

That's a nice gig, how well does it pay?