Do you actually think a CEO would take 30 days worth of vacation time even if they had the option to? She'll probably use five of those days at most. She's got her work cut out for her.

Something tells me that the vacation time isn't getting used.

She'll probably use it when she has her baby in October.

Maternity leave is typically separate from other accrued PTO.

Maternity leave is also not necessarily paid. In my experience with maternity leave, the only pay involved short- and long-term disability insurance. Of course, individual employers may offer paid leave, but that's not required.

True, but she'll probably use the PTO for doctor's visits and other pre/postpartum stuff.

That only counts paid time off, though. She gets paid enough to take a day off whenever she wants, though, so practically speaking, it's still the "you're the CEO—you call the shots" thing going on.

Heck, I only get 15. I would kill for 20.

Move to Europe. Most countries guarantee at least 25–30 days (the UK is actually one of the lowest.) In Finland you get 40.

Conversations like these make me realise how lucky us teachers are with our 13 weeks of paid vacation time.

That's why they always say there are two reasons to become a teacher: July and August.

The problem with teaching is that your holidays are the same time as all the families, so you're stuck with the most expensive and crowded periods.

Plus you have days off from school that aren't national federal holidays, Cesar Chavez Day if I remember was one.

Which days these are depends entirely on the state and school district, at least in the US. Districts with a low or no Jewish population aren't likely to take Rosh Hashanah off, etc.

Ha! Districts outside of New York and LA mostly don't grant Rosh ha'Shanah off even if they do have a substantial Jewish population. Employers do similar: Jewish holidays come out of your vacation time because they're not "company holidays" like Christmas.

Just noting, but Massachusetts never really stopped being Puritan. Oy gevalt.

Well I'm from Australia, so I think there are at least another 5-10 public holidays that i'm not counting.

In reality, the Finnish average is more like 27-32 days.

After your second year of work at a company, you get 5 weeks vacation per year. The official number for this is 30 days, but that's counting Saturdays. Nobody works 6 days per week, so in reality this is 25 days.

On top of those 25 days, there are public holidays. On average 7 of them fall on weekdays per year.

This gives us a grand total of 32 days per year on average.

Of course, everyone takes them during the same time, and goes to the same place.

Really? Australia has only 20 days per year (generally), but we do have 9 public holidays (10 this year in Queensland because they are moving one to the end of the year into the first, so they couldn't do that without having both on a cross-over year).

The 28 days referred to as 'standard' in the UK includes their public holidays.

I get 28 days + public holidays (I love my boss!)

This is true, but in reality the vast majority of employers do not count public holidays as part of the statutory minimum.

Are you sure about that? I've worked a lot of shitty jobs in my time, and every single job I've ever worked at has had the 28 days as the minimum.

28 days is the statutory minimum. Whether it includes bank holidays depends on the contract of employment. More info here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandh...

In australia the unions are so strong in certain areas (mainly skilled labour) that most of the tradies working at one place (where I did some tech consulting) had 40-60 days paid leave (including public holidays, normal paid holidays, R&R, random union days and 10day sick leave).