We can do it. We work remotely (but also travel for work and check in to offices on our schedules (not in the summer)) - we sometimes take our nanny and other times target places with great full day kids' camps.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Go to any swim meet, scout meeting, etc. All kids activities are run by moms with flexible jobs (me included). My supervisor cares that I meet my deliverables, not how, when, or where I do it. I have enough seniority that I can front load my meetings before camp pickup/swim meet/whatever, and work from the beach as needed. I was selective when I mommy tracked and while I may not be using my Ivy degree to it’s fullest, there’s only one of me at my office and I can set my terms and work pretty much completely independently without micromanaging.

That’s different than a month+ out of the country and you know it.

From the OP, we don't know whether OP's friend was working while abroad or taking a full month off. I'll be doing a combo of that this summer - out of town for a full month, but having some weeks completely off and working from wherever we'll be the other weeks. But I agree that it is outside the scope of standard US business practice to take a full month of leave without extenuating circumstances.

This. And it’s laughable for people to suggest anyone who wants to can just go out and find a job that allows 4 consecutive weeks off at one time.

Anonymous wrote:DH works for a Swedish company on the US side, but they have no problem with us being on European hours.

I work for an American company but my boss is Greek and he goes home to Greece for a month every year.

My best friends husband is high up at a major corp and he is originally from Prague and when he got the job offer, he negotiated that he could work abroad whenever. Wife works in a school so she has summers off. They are currently on an 8 week trip. Right now, they left the kids with the Prague grandparents and are in Switzerland just them to.

It works if people make it work!

I'm the PP who posted about my parents being abroad during the summer while in grad school. I'm thankful that my job allows me the flexibility to work from home a lot and also do things like volunteer at swim meets, but saying that "it works if you make it work" is pretty short-sighted. It obviously just works for certain types of jobs. I get 3.5 weeks of vacation I can take whenever and a bunch of other holidays (including 1 week between Xmas and NY), but there's no actual way for me to get another week of vacation for another few years. I tried to negotiate this and couldn't. I mean, yes, I could get another job, but it's not like there's someone just out there handing out jobs with extra vacation time. Jobs with "unlimited PTO" can also kinda be a trap, where people are actually expected to always be reachable. Sorry for the whining, my point is just to be kind to each other. This is something people have strong emotional responses to.

My company (and others that I know of) have a policy that allows employees to work from anywhere for up to four weeks a year.

Depends almost entirely on the job. Some people mentioned teaching. My parents and I spent almost the entire summer nearly every year in our home country when they were in grad school and they continued doing this while on academic/teaching jobs (theoretical field, so no need to run a lab during the summer and they could work remotely on research.) They were never "rich" though. If you don't know, don't judge or make assumptions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Go to any swim meet, scout meeting, etc. All kids activities are run by moms with flexible jobs (me included). My supervisor cares that I meet my deliverables, not how, when, or where I do it. I have enough seniority that I can front load my meetings before camp pickup/swim meet/whatever, and work from the beach as needed. I was selective when I mommy tracked and while I may not be using my Ivy degree to it’s fullest, there’s only one of me at my office and I can set my terms and work pretty much completely independently without micromanaging.

That’s different than a month+ out of the country and you know it.

From the OP, we don't know whether OP's friend was working while abroad or taking a full month off. I'll be doing a combo of that this summer - out of town for a full month, but having some weeks completely off and working from wherever we'll be the other weeks. But I agree that it is outside the scope of standard US business practice to take a full month of leave without extenuating circumstances.

DH works for a Swedish company on the US side, but they have no problem with us being on European hours.

I work for an American company but my boss is Greek and he goes home to Greece for a month every year.

My best friends husband is high up at a major corp and he is originally from Prague and when he got the job offer, he negotiated that he could work abroad whenever. Wife works in a school so she has summers off. They are currently on an 8 week trip. Right now, they left the kids with the Prague grandparents and are in Switzerland just them to.

It works if people make it work!

home exchanges which are free*

We do this at least once a year. DH and I both WFH. When we are on European hours, our core work hours are around 7pm-midnight. It works well for us. Kids sleep 7-7. We do fun things all day then have dinner put them to bed, and work the night and get 7 hours of sleep. We both have pretty flexibly jobs where we can largely schedule our calls ourselves. Sometimes we switch off like I'll take the kids out for the morning and DH will catch up on work. We often fly one of the grandmas out for a couple of weeks and they are both helpful and adore the quality time with the kids. We both travel for work sporadically so we rack up a good amount of miles which we use for vacation and then we do home exchanges which are fee so we basically travel for free. Sometimes we use local babysitters to sit at the house after the kids go to sleep and we can get a date night. Works well for us and our kids LOVE it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your company can manage a month+ without you, do they really need you at all? Neither DH nor I has ever had a kind of job where people can take a month or leave at once barring FMLA.

So you can’t imagine that someone would be valuable enough that their companies would keep them happy? You must be doing menial jobs.

Nope, client facing in a specialized field with a high billable rate. No one at my firm does the same type of work I do.

No one is irreplaceable.

And you chose to provide that much for your place of work. If you were that needed, you could negotiate taking several weeks off if you wanted to.

+1 the new flex isn't this "I'm irreplaceable" stuff from 20 yrs ago where acting like you were single handedly putting out fires left and right and no one else could do it.

Instead it's work on your own terms whether that's WFH, flexible schedule, long stretches off etc. But a good salary to match.

It's what people have said.

Some ppl have a lot of PTO.

Others are allowed to WFH anywhere including abroad. Some can say it's a "scam" or whatever, but I know ppl who do this where the parents switch off who's working vs on leave for a week each (so someone watches the kids), and then another week or two where both are on vacation. I also know ppl who have some kind of childcare on these long vacations (grandparent, nanny, local babysitter etc.)

It's amazing but it's not that surprising to me. I know ppl who make clear this is something important to them (this was specific to someone with family abroad) and raise it up front in accepting a new job.

Anonymous wrote:Go to any swim meet, scout meeting, etc. All kids activities are run by moms with flexible jobs (me included). My supervisor cares that I meet my deliverables, not how, when, or where I do it. I have enough seniority that I can front load my meetings before camp pickup/swim meet/whatever, and work from the beach as needed. I was selective when I mommy tracked and while I may not be using my Ivy degree to it’s fullest, there’s only one of me at my office and I can set my terms and work pretty much completely independently without micromanaging.

That’s different than a month+ out of the country and you know it.

Go to any swim meet, scout meeting, etc. All kids activities are run by moms with flexible jobs (me included). My supervisor cares that I meet my deliverables, not how, when, or where I do it. I have enough seniority that I can front load my meetings before camp pickup/swim meet/whatever, and work from the beach as needed. I was selective when I mommy tracked and while I may not be using my Ivy degree to it’s fullest, there’s only one of me at my office and I can set my terms and work pretty much completely independently without micromanaging.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your company can manage a month+ without you, do they really need you at all? Neither DH nor I has ever had a kind of job where people can take a month or leave at once barring FMLA.

So you can’t imagine that someone would be valuable enough that their companies would keep them happy? You must be doing menial jobs.

Nope, client facing in a specialized field with a high billable rate. No one at my firm does the same type of work I do.

No one is irreplaceable.

And you chose to provide that much for your place of work. If you were that needed, you could negotiate taking several weeks off if you wanted to.

Anonymous wrote:This is very common in tech. I have team members who are international with families in India or Turkey and they travel each year for about a month to visit family. We also all have unlimited PTO and we also all have jobs where work can temporarily be transitioned to other team members. most tech companies don’t rely on a single engineer so one person being gone for a few weeks doesn’t mean their work is not valuable. I’m wfh and unlimited PTO and could take off a month if I wanted but instead I do several week long vacations throughout the year and lots of long weekends in between. It’s awesome and I’m loyal to my employer , until things change.

+1. My DH is very high up at his tech company and has unlimited PTO. I am self employed. We take a month off every summer. We don’t really take any major time off otherwise, except for the week of Christmas and New Years when no one is working anyway.