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66% of Americans say they want extended European-style vacation policies at work

(www.cnbc.com)
137 points pg_1234 | 2 comments | 26 Aug 23 08:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.488s | source
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cynicalsecurity ◴[26 Aug 23 09:33 UTC] No.37271086[source]▶
As much as I like my vacations, I would rather prefer US salary over it.
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lionkor ◴[26 Aug 23 09:36 UTC] No.37271102[source]▶
Does the US salary hold up against the benefits you get in a well-off EU country? Namely free healthcare, automatic payments into pension fund, strong social system if you're ever in trouble, etc.?

It seems to me that, as high as US salaries are, they arent that much higher compared to European salaries when you factor all this in, plus the face that a month of that work youre paid for youre OOO

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jakewins ◴[26 Aug 23 09:56 UTC] No.37271220[source]▶
I think you can do this math yourself pretty fast: US median software eng salary is about $170k/yr, German one is $80.

Both will include full health benefits etc.

With 5 weeks paid vacation in DE and 2 weeks in US, that would be $170k for 50 weeks if work vs $80k for 47 weeks.

Not counting US taxes being lower and looking only at gross pay, that’s about $1.7K/week in DE vs $3.4K/week in the US.

So after correcting for vacation, US engineers make about twice German counterparts

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ChatGTP ◴[26 Aug 23 11:04 UTC] No.37271671[source]▶
You do know that the majority of Americans aren't software engineers on ridiculous packages right?

Real actual engineers who build roads and power grids make way less money and have way less benefits while IMO doing much more important work than 90% of software engineers even understand.

Please take into account the real world before commenting on how good things are for everyone?

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1. jakewins ◴[26 Aug 23 12:37 UTC] No.37272300[source]▶
Before you write these holier-than-though, I-know-the-plight-of-the-common-man comments: check your intuition, are the things they told us in school growing up in Northern Europe still true?

I used SE salaries because this is HN. What does a ”real world” worker actually make?

If you look up the national median salaries you will find the median US worker makes more than the median German household, or more than twice the individual German worker for the same job.

So the exact same math I just did applies on the national statistics as well. Maybe it’s worth thinking about why it feels so important that this isn’t true, that northern EU workers surely must be much better off than their suffering US counterparts. The truth is much more complex than that.

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2. ChatGTP ◴[26 Aug 23 13:20 UTC] No.37272640[source]▶
I wasn't talking about Northern Europeans, I was talking about the fact software engineers in America have some of the most cushy, out of touch with reality packages in the world...I was responding too:

So after correcting for vacation, US engineers make about twice German counterparts

"Both will include full health benefits etc."

What I'm saying is that for a lot of people In America this isn't the case and it's those people who would benefit from more time off, especially because there job consists of more than sitting on HN for 50% of the day...