I am currently in Germany, 6 weeks is basically a standard excluding holidays (which is up to 13 extra days depending on the state and weekend overlay as there are no bank holidays). So in the end you can end up with ~8 weeks. Minimum vacation days as specified by the law is 4 weeks.

Most of my friends in the US start with 2 weeks, after a few years they get 3 weeks, then these are reset if they change the job, and if they take a vacation, they are either frowned upon or they have to be available to work on a moments notice. I find this utterly crazy.

I have not, nor have I ever met anyone who has, been expected to work or even be available on a vacation. I've also never taken or been offered a job with less than 3 weeks vacation to start. Current job (been here for 2 months) is 25 paid days off plus ten or so holidays. This seems to be a common criticism of the US but I've been in the professional workforce for just about a decade and have never come across this. I've worked remotely, for small companies with ten employees and Fortune 500 companies. I just don't believe there are people taking jobs where they get 10 days off a year and are expected to answer a phone call from their boss on vacation, unless they are 1) interns; 2) non-professional jobs, service industry, etc; 3) at the very beginning of their career (I could see this happening with more predatory employers with the huge number of unemployed recent grads looking for works).

I think it depends on different factors. My wife has the same experience as you - never had less than 3 weeks of vacation time. She's a policy analyst in the non-profit sector. I've been in IT as a software developer for 20+ years and have been with 8 different employers across different industrial sectors and ranging from startup to Fortune 500. Most employer changes set me back to 2 weeks.

I know people who feel pressure to work on vacation. The pressure is very real and isn't always related to ambition on the part of those people. Usually they're being exploited by an ambitious manager who has a "hold" of some kind, e.g. exploited person has a child with 2 years left of college and can't afford to lose his/her job.

Well, 2 weeks were a starting offer from once the most valuable company on the planet for a senior SW engineer position in California, with automatic extension by 1 week after the first year, and another week after a promotion to a staff engineer.

One Seattle-based eCommerce company forced you to keep pager with you all the times, even on a vacation, if you were an unlucky part of operations.

This can't happen in most European countries, unless the company desperately wants to lose plenty of court cases.

One member of my US family in the midwest worked in an unionized menial job with 1 week of paid vacation including sick days. The rest was unpaid.

I was expected to work or be available on vacation the entire time I worked at a startup. Once the company was bought by a larger company, I received 5 weeks of vacation, that I still was required to be available and work.

Only after I left the unit I was in, was it respected that I was not to be contacted.

Edit: I'd also add I had to work all day on Christmas one year, and I know others in very similar situations.

Friends with a security engineer at a company everyone would know. He can't even get a normal work day right now, or a single day off in a week.

It certainly happens.

That 5-6 weeks is well outside he norm in the US.

In my experience, to get that much leave, you have to work at the same company for 5+ years. And either be highly-paid white collar OR highly paid union.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/the-unite... http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm

None of those are mandatory holidays in the US.

Especially if you work in retail or the food/hospitality industries.

UK guy here; it's 5-6 weeks in addition to national holidays (which are normally 8 days/year).

Highschool I worked for Lufthansa here in North America, it was common to see Germans fly over their bikes to go on a 2 month road trip while on paid vacation.