when I quote him the price I'll ship it for

Ask for citizenship!

Greetings, Buffistae! I have been largely absent, but reading along when I can. A childhood friend got a cancer diagnosis a few weeks ago that doesn't come with a good prognosis (or an easy journey to the end) and I have been using much of my energy to type words to her.

As faculty, I don't report hours or days off to anyone although I do tell my dean when I'll be gone for more than a day or two. We'll be in CA for Spring Break, and I am looking forward to finally getting Miss K to Yosemite and hiking there with her.

Thanks to talk here, I just checked my PTO balance. I've been taking a bunch of time off lately, just a day here and there, but for me that is a bunch. I still have 286 hours in the bank. The concept of taking 7 consecutive weeks off - I can't imagine.

My angel and devil are acting up again. My angel is horrified at the prospect of a government shutdown. My devil is thrilled at the idea of the Republicans getting blamed for a government shutdown.

So long as the Rs really do get blamed. But it would suck for everyone who relies on the smooth functioning of the bureaucracy to get by, and for federal employees who live paycheck to paycheck...

Me, I'll be fine. But not everyone will.

But it would suck for everyone who relies on the smooth functioning of the bureaucracy to get by, and for federal employees who live paycheck to paycheck...

Yeah, that's what my angel says. And of course I'm not going to root for it.

Unlimited time off has gotten to be a pretty common perk in techlandia - the upside is not having to do the obsessive how many hours do I have left thing, and the companies that do it right really are more humane than most. The downside is that some companies abuse it - either by dangling it as a perk when workload is too high to ever take it, or using the fact that there isn't a fixed amount in the compensation package to avoid paying out accrued time when people leave.

We have unlimited at the officer level, basically VPs and above, below that it accrues based on seniority (18/24/30 days depending on years of service). But it doesn't roll over at all. If you don't take it during the calendar year it's gone. So for people below officer level who leave mid-year, there can be some small level of accrual but not the large number of banked hours you see at other places.

I will say, the non-rollover really bothered me at first, and I was definitely one of those who tended to struggle to take time at all and had a large amount banked. But really, use-or-lose forced me to change my perspective and get more serious about carving out time away, even if it was mostly long weekends or half-days here and there instead of true vacations. And it really does make a difference in terms of life balance/mental health.

Now that I'm unlimited I still sort of mentally peg it to the number of days just to make sure I'm taking enough/not too much time.

I get 2 weeks/year vacation + 2 float days and can acquire additional float days in various incentive plans and lotteries. I'll get an additional week next year or the year after, and a 4th week after 10 years, and a 5th week after 15 years which is just unimaginable to me. We can rollover unlimited float days and vacation time up to two years worth (so if I accrue over 4 weeks vacation time without using it I stop accruing, is how I think that's supposed to work), and we can cash out vacation and/or float days back to the company once a year. I know people who do that regularly, but I use up my time just about as quickly as it becomes available to me, really.

I don't know how I'd handle unlimited time off. I'd have to have a lot of discussions with my supervisor, I guess.

I've never been in a job where I've had any time off (on cruise ships, you only get time off if the ship's doctor decides that you are too sick to work), and I will have a "normal" office job soon (hopefully), and I don't know how I'll use vacation time. I can't imagine ever not using all the the time available to me, but I can't say for sure.

One of my brothers works for Twitter, and they offer unlimited vacation, and he really loves it.

I get 25 days per year. Next year I will go up to 27 days because I was hired here in 2000!!! Man I feel old.

I have no idea how I would use them if I didn't take time off for theatre every year. I am also still using up a 5 week glut from a bad boss in 2005! SO I take 3 - 4 weeks for theatre, a week in the summer, a week at Christmas, and other assorted days and I still have a huge balance.

I've got something like 30+ days a year by now (10 years+ here), but I can't use more than five days at a time. I think I could request more at once for a special occasion, but management is thrilled at the idea. Medical leave is separate. The last couple of years I've had unexpected medical things pop up that eat a week, but otherwise I take 3 week-long vacations a year and the occasional day for doctors and whatnot, like car repairs. Another reason to buy a new car.