Ask HN: How many vacations do you take a year?

[pmcpinto]

Also do you take extended periods of time like 15-20 days, or small periods like 5-days? And also what kind of things do you usually do? Travel, visit family, work in side projects, etc

I'm curious to see if there are great differences between people located in different parts of the world, who work in startups vs in more established companies, etc

[pathy]

A Swedish perspective:

By law you are granted 25 days vacation per year, assuming you have worked enough to "earn them", generally you get 12.5-13.x% extra salary per day worked that goes towards your vacation.

The law also says that you have a right to 4 weeks uninterrupted vacation during the June, July and August. At least two months before the (requested) vacation you must get a definitive decision. The employers are not allowed, by law, to change their mind about granted vacation time.

I believe I saw a study that recommended shorter, more frequent, vacations as the best way to recover from mental fatigue but I assume that there is a lot of opposing opinions on that matter.

[pmcpinto]

That 4 week of uninterrupted vacation is mandatory or a person can take that days in different periods?

[rapht]

> "I believe I saw a study that recommended shorter, more frequent, vacations as the best way to recover from mental fatigue but I assume that there is a lot of opposing opinions on that matter."

As for myself, I find that I don't manage to totally disconnect from all things work until nearly a week of vacation, so even 9 full days (which is what you get when you take an entire week off) is kind of "not enough" because you only really enjoy that for 2 or 3 days.

[jasonkester]

I used to take one long trip every year or so, with 6-9 months on the road, climbing, surfing, and otherwise just wandering about until it started to get old or I missed using my brain and needed to run home and land another contract.

That lasted for about 10 years, but I've slowed down a bit now.

These days I seldom take more than six weeks truly "off", with all tools down and no hours billed. Instead I tend to move around to places that have the things I want to do, set up shop, and do my "vacationing" on nights, weekends, and the odd afternoon off. There are cheap-ish rental houses/apartments with good wifi pretty much everywhere in the world now. If you can work remote, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be working remote. Like, all the time.

It actually works out pretty well this way. I get way more climbing/surfing in than I used to when I was contracting in LA to save for the next trip, and I get to have a house with an office, comfy couch, etc.

Thank you, software industry, for making us pretty much the only class of individual on the planet who can pull this off!

[WA]

Do you carry your climbing gear or do you buy/sell at every location? I just started climbing a year ago, but all the stuff weighs a lot.

Topic: I have something like a lifestyle SaaS business, but I'm mainly at home and take a week or two off whenever I want (and other people have time). For example, last week, I went snowboarding in France for a week.

In 2013, I spent about 8 weeks in total in other places (US, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey).

In 2012, I traveled for 6 months around the world with my girlfriend.

[mcdowall]

I've been doing the same for the last 3 years, albeit not on the same scale. I contract every 6 months and then take a month or so off until like you I find my brain starting to feel neglected. I try to fit in a few weekend trips to cities during those 6 months.

I'm a technical PM so I tend to have to be on site for contracts and yet to find a remote PM role. That aside though I'm getting back to more coding these days so hope to be able to work remotely in the future.

[pmcpinto]

That's really great, so in the past you only work during 3-6 months?

[arethuza]

As a family we seem to be follow the predictable UK middle class pattern of a week skiing in February and a couple of weeks in the sun in Greece/Turkey at beach club where I enjoy capsizing high performance dinghies.

Used to go in for rather more varied adventures before we had a kid. However, he is mid teens so we are starting to look at getting back to more varied stuff rather than focusing on holidays with great child care/entertainment.

I work for a UK based multinational - 33 days paid leave.

[rapht]

From France :

We get 25 days by law, that's for employees who do the 35-hour workweek. Then people who do more than 35 hours (that is, people who don't follow the fixed 35-hour model) get more days depending on the sector / company.

I get a total of 38 days per year, so that's about 7 and a half weeks. (Yes that's a lot but has to be compared to my average 55-hour workweek.) I work at a large retail corporation.

I take 2 long breaks every year, 2 to 3 weeks each : - one in March/April where I like to travel far from the French winter, preferably in a sunny and warm tropical country - one in August/September, the destination depending on opportunities and remaining budget after the March break ;)

During these breaks, I do a lot of sightseeing (both scenic and cultural spots), days are generally busy but relaxed at the same time - what you don't see this time, you'll see next time. And I sleep a lot, too.

Other than these long breaks, I take a few days off around Christmas/New Year, and I use the remainder for some Mondays/Fridays off. That's when I visit family or just do the things I don't have time to do on regular week-ends.

(Edited for spelling)

[re1ser]

Serbian freelancer here

Last year I was to USA (10 days), Mallorca/Ibiza (14 days), Greece (4 days), a bit around the country for a few days, and during winter I tend to take every 3rd weekend or so to go to skiing. That sums up to around 30+ days/year.

This year, my plan is to mainly have active vacations, travelling & working, Thailand for a few months, and some mountain during winter for a few months.

[michalstanko]

I'm from Slovakia, a little country in the Central Europe.

Regular employees here are entitled to 20 days of vacation, or 25 for those who are 33 or older. In addition to that, there are 15 days of public holidays (that includes New Year's Day, 2 days Easter, 3 days of Christmas, plus other holidays such as Constitution Day, and so on). You have to negotiate with the employer when do you take your holidays, and employer has the right to specifically tell you when to take half of those days.

As for me, I am a freelancer, and I like to travel a lot around Europe. Usually for 1 - 2 weeks, with first week off and the second week I work at the location and let my wife and little boy enjoy the warm weather for a bit longer. In the recent years we never took holidays during July/August, because we like to travel a bit more off-season, when the sun is still (or already) warm enough to still have a great time.

[aragot]

French here. When employee in France, the law says 25 days/yr and you can add 11 RTT (please don't look that up in wikipedia). People don't tend to use them all. I would generally take 1-2 weeks for Christmas, and 2-weeks trips along the year to Europe or to the mountains/sea sports.

In Australia, it's only 4 weeks off, plus you kind of have to take 2 weeks to visit your family back in Europe for Christmas, so in the end I couldn't visit Australia while I was working there (reason #6 why I left). Fortunately I had taken a gap year to go farming around the continent, and i'll probably keep the idea of a 6-month break every 3 years.

I find that short holidays = unhappy employees, pressure to prevent them from taking unpaid leave, and that ends up in the sick leave being high. It's unfortunate.

[adaml_623]

Can you quickly enumerate the other 5+ reasons you left Australia? I'm very curious about different perspectives on these things.

[cjwebb]

Last year, I had about 7-8 long weekends, or short breaks (maybe 3 days max). I felt a bit depressed when I realised that I never had a whole week off though (apart from over xmas). That was in a London, UK startup.

This year, I'm going to make sure I have at least a couple of full weeks off.

[malvim]

Brazilian here. We get, by law, 30 days every year. We get 1+1/3 normal pay on those days.

You can choose to "sell" 10 of those 30 days and work (getting paid your normal wage plus the vacation money), but you HAVE to take the other 20 days off.

If you choose to take the 30 days, you can split them in two periods. If you split them in 12 and 18 days, you can put your vacation days between weekends and effectively get 5 weeks off.

Of course, that's for regularly employed (meaning "working for someone else") people. If you have your own business or work as a freelancer, there's no regulation.

[EdgarVerona]

I'm a 32 year old software engineer living in the U.S. Last year my company (in the most amazing extension of generosity I'd ever seen at any employer) gave everyone the last two weeks of the year off. Prior to that, I'd never had a vacation longer than a week in my professional career.

It's a funny thing - no one's twisting my arm to not take vacations, but I've always felt something akin to "I don't deserve a vacation" (for lack of a better description). I have known many co-workers in my career who have had similar anxiety about taking days off, as if we'll be perceived as not adding value if we're taking vacation.

My current employer's giving of a mandatory 2 week vacation is only now starting to make me realize that employers (at least good ones, like my current employer) don't feel that way at all, and that feeling of inadequacy is in my head.

This year? Well, perhaps I'll take a real vacation. I get 10 days allotted for vacation per year (so 2 weeks), and perhaps if I can find a good time to do so I'll take them consecutively and get a really good vacation - or at least, I won't feel guilty if I take two one-week vacations.

[saltcod]

In Canada, depending on the province you're in, everyone gets about 9-13 days of stat holidays. On top of that, the typical amount of actual vacation time in private industry is 2 weeks, in government about 3 weeks. That amount of time off goes up slowly over time of course.

I work at a university and get 12 stat days + 15 holidays = 27 days per year. That sounds like a lot more on paper than it is in real life =)

[typicalrunt]

In BC, Canada, an employer is mandated to give at least 2 weeks vacation [1] according to the Employment Standards Act. That vacation is expected to rise to 3 weeks after 5 years of employment.

[1] http://www.bclaws.ca/Recon/document/ID/freeside/00_96113_01#...

[benzesandbetter]

My answer is either zero, or one that is 365 days long... I travel and work continuously. In 2012, I was in 20 countries. In 2011, I was in 12. I enjoy my work, and don't really wish for time apart from it. My Brazilian girlfriend is trying to convince me to take longer (off-grid) vacations. We'll see how that goes.

[mcdowall]

UK, Contractor.

A 4 week long trip every 6months or so, though the last trip was 10 weeks.

3 to 4 weekend city breaks per year, most usually geared around a sporting event, festival or a friends Stag/Bachelor party.

Next big trip is a month in Brazil for the World Cup in June. Aside from that Roland Garros in May and Oktoberfest in September.

[pmcpinto]

Going to Brazil during the World Cup is really a great trip :). But be careful a lot of Brazilians want to boycott the World Cup

[Riyadh]

Germany, Freelance Java/JEE Developer

Here for permanent positions you get 24+ days off but as a freelancer I obviously don't get any vacation unless I take a few days off myself.

- Usually every 1.5 years ~10-14 days: traveling in Europe - Every 3-4 years ~20 days: traveling outside of Europe - In addition to that I take a Friday off every ~2 months for a long weekend with the family, visiting places in Germany

I do my side projects at night and on the weekends, if the family allows me to. I outsource A LOT, so I think I actually get a decent amount of work done.

In Germany we have lots of official holidays so we get an extra day off here and there. The official "calculation" is ~220 working days per year (for permanent positions).

[wellboy]

No holidays for the last 2 years. 3 months ago, I started needing the weekends heavily to recover. Now that my startup is up and running, with a couple of thousand users and some trial customers, I will probably take a skiing holiday soon.

[pathy]

Sounds like a holiday would do you good. No use becoming burnt out from not taking holidays.

Luckily IT companies can often manage a few days without you.

Best of luck with the startup and do enjoy vacations, or at least long weekends, from time to time.

[VLM]

I wonder if you'd see more variation between countries or more variation between singles/married-with-children.

I found my vacation pattern dramatically changed when over half my days became onesie-twosie "school play" "choir concert" "awards ceremony" "school conferences" "sports event" "scouts camping" kid-type stuff.

In the BC "before children" era I used to take entire weeks and go to overseas or far away rural type stuff. Once the kids are old enough to avoid getting lost and/or eaten by a bear I have plans for a couple national parks I haven't seen yet.

[bmj]

US here as well. My family takes a 4-6 week road trip each year (we go to points west to rock climb). I will typically work 5-8 day remotely during those trips (usually in a block at some point mid-trip), and unless I know something is brewing, I won't check my work email outside of those blocks (typically, this isn't hard, as we tend to camp in areas without great cellular coverage).

We will typically squeeze in a few four day weekend as well at other points in the year. If I've burned all my vacation time on our road trip, I'll just condense my work weeks.

[jxf]

US here. I prefer to take frequent, short breaks (3-day, 4-day weekends) for occasional battery-recharging, with periodic longer vacations (9-day excursions somewhere), especially to go somewhere I've never been.

I try not to work on side projects during vacations. It's mostly about travel or doing something I haven't done before.

Vacations are a strict "no Internet" policy for me, to the extent that I can manage that. I usually cave and will leave notifications on my phone on, so I'm not as pure about it as I'd like to be.

[furyg3]

I get 25 days in NL. I'm an expat, and have no kids.

I always take at least one 3+ week vacation, either to visit my home country (US) or to backpack. For me it's very important to completely disconnect from work for a while, it puts things in perspective, gives me more motivation, and brings me back ready to disrupt my previous work routine for the better.

The rest of the days I use 1-2 at a time to make a long weekend here and there (Nature or city trips).

[Kurtz79]

Based in Spain, medium-sized local company (few hundreds), I have about 30 days vacation every year. Usually the company locks some of these for the days close to Easter and Christmas. I usually use these to visit my family abroad.

I have left about 20, which I like to take in August (like most of the other employees) for a long vacation abroad, having one month a year when I can completely disconnect and still getting paid it's a real luxury.