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by low_tech_love5 hours ago |
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upvoteby robin_reala5 hours ago|
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For people who aren’t familiar, Sweden takes summer holidays seriously. 25-30 days + public holidays is a normal amount of annual vacation time, and if an employee requests it and has the time available, it’s basically legally required to allow them to take a four-week contiguous summer break.

(See https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...)

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upvoteby low_tech_love5 hours ago|
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Not only that but the vacation is real. If someone is off then you should not expect them to answer at all (because if you do you’ll get very disappointed).
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upvoteby defrost4 hours ago|
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Ditto Australia: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/leave/annual-leave

  Full-time and part-time employees get 4 weeks of annual leave, based on their ordinary hours of work.
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upvoteby RustyRussell4 hours ago|
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Yeah, but there's little culture of actually taking that time.
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upvoteby defrost3 hours ago|
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I guess our experiences vary - our family had month long adventure vacations most years since the 1970s, and growing up we did a half year tour about the whole country when dad got cumulative long service year.
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upvoteby gib4443 hours ago|
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Sweden is fairly unique in allowing the employee to take a 4 week break. Is Australia the same?

2 weeks is the acceptable limit in the UK for example (where also has 20-35 holiday is common) though if you can convince your boss otherwise, you can take longer, but most people can't

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upvoteby mcbridematt2 hours ago|
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Some employers "force" their employees to use a portion of their annual leave during the Christmas / New Year shutdown period (usually 24 December -> first full week after New Years Day, if not longer). So you might not be able to use the full 4 weeks continuously.

This can be an unwelcome feature for some people, for example, if you want to have a vacation in the northern hemisphere summer season instead and/or maybe you don't have substantial family in Australia (or at least, those you actually want to see).

The auscorp reddit has a yearly thread on this issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/auscorp/comments/1mw6pqt/end_of_yea...

Those with school aged children might also want to save some of their annual for the mid-term/mid-year breaks as well. (Our academic years are aligned to calendar years)

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upvoteby defrost2 hours ago|
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Likely varies by industry - a peer Australian (probably in private IT ?) stated it's uncommon to take a break, whereas I'd say in mining, oil, gas, civil service, police and a good number of structured contract employment its more common.

I've "retired" into agriculture and a lot of farmers take a month off after harvest time to go fishing or other wise relax (this generally means filling up a couple of deep chest freezers with fish for the rest of the year).

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upvoteby askonomm3 hours ago|
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I thought it's basically the same in all of EU?
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upvoteby stavros5 hours ago|
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I work for a UK company and most people take basically all of August off (I end up with two months of vacation days a year so I take August off and sprinkle some leave around the year) and I can confirm that taking a month off is great. You forget what it's like to work, really.
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upvoteby jdsnape5 hours ago|
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That’s great! It’s very much not the norm here in general tho, in my experience two weeks would be the max people would take off contiguously.
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upvoteby gib4443 hours ago|
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Wow literally never heard of people taking 4 weeks off in the UK. Is this a new thing to deal with child care in the summer holidays?

Is this at the executive level?

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upvoteby nsbk5 hours ago|
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Hahaha yeah same here! My $dayjob has offices in Sweden and their summer breaks are legendary. We also have offices in the US, and the culture shock with the Americans never gets old
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upvoteby pdnagilum4 hours ago|
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Yup, same thought in Norwegian. Norway basically shuts down during July.
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upvoteby on_the_train1 hours ago|
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I knew instantly that it's him. No one is even remotely as hungry for attention as him.
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