Can you take more than 2 consecutive weeks of vacation?

There's a lot of "it depends" here. As both a former founder and early startup employee these are the things that come to mind—

How far out did you discuss this with your employer? Were they aware of it when you joined? There's a pretty big difference if this is 6 months or two weeks away. Setting expectations go a long way here on both sides.

What is the size of the business? People are more critical the smaller the business is. The stakes are very different for a business with 10 vs 100 vs 1,000 employees.

Is the business cashflow positive—or near it? You said startup, so that makes me think they aren't cash flow positive. Three consecutive weeks is a lot to ask for a small business that isn't making money.

Essentially, the more stable the business is the less of an issue I'd expect it to be—given expectations were set in advance.

The only "rule" around vacation is the longer the vacation the more notice you _should_ give. I've had colleagues take 5-6 weeks off, but they let the team know 4-5 months in advance so it wasn't a big deal and we could work around it.

I have 30 days of vacation in my contract and I am free to use them whenever I want. It is also backed with the legal right to 4 weeks of consecutive vacation during Jun-Aug, a right that the employer cannot deny. Of course I live in Scandinavia. Sweden to be precise.

Most places I've worked, there has been a written or unwritten (and, depending on jurisdiction, maybe statutory) assumption that you can take a week or two off without discussion (other than which weeks, naturally) but anything above that may need some discussion about project impact and timing.

It typically hasn't been a problem if there is lots of notice, but "I'd like to take 3 weeks off next month" is likely to end up with a bunch of back and forth at best.

My current place has a number of international hires, and has been pretty flexible about allowing large blocks of time to go "home" and visit, some mix of vacation time, unpaid leave, and remote work for 4+ weeks. But these have typically been planned many months in advance.

This is why unlimited PTO is stupid. You have to get permission for ANY time off. Lame.

I have to take at least 2 consecutive weeks once every year. Switzerland.

I can, but I don't abuse it. I only took it once as I was truly exhausted and really needed to decompress. My advice is make sure your performance is stellar and also make sure to leave your team in a good position to perform without you. Having a good manager to run interference for you while away is also important. Gladly I checked all those boxes. YMMV.

If you are asking if there’s a general unspoken rule in US that everyone knows but you are not aware of - no, there isn’t one that I personally ever heard of.

But it’s not exactly unexpected that you may need to negotiate something with your specific employer. It sucks tho.

At my previous company they created a policy where if it was more than a week or two you had to get permission from the CEO (company was a few hundred people in size). This was after one month where like 5 people all took 3 week vacations after direct manager approvals and it created some operational issues... This all struck me as a bit unreasonable though because it was not an unlimited PTO place at the time so the time had been banked.

I can and I do (software engineer, not on call). But in the Netherlands this isn't too rare. Three weeks is fairly common during the summer holidays actually. As long as everyone is a bit flexible with planning to avoid certain key-employees from being absent at the same time, this is just possible.

Earlier this year I took five weeks of unpaid leave to redress the work/life balance. Not a problem either.

The alternative is that either I get burned out or I leave for an employer who is willing to let me take holidays if applied for in a timely manner. I can assure you that option one is one that costs employers a lot more than just accepting that employees are not always available.

In Germany you're required to take at least two consecutive weeks off once per year, and at least 20 days off in total. Most tech workers have 30 days off. People leaving for 3-5 weeks is pretty standard. I'm talking about a real vacation where employees are unreachable.

Sick days don't count as holidays. If you get sick on holiday you get those vacation days back.

https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/vacation-days

When I worked in academia, yes absolutely if the weeks aligned with breaks in instruction. So winter holidays, or pretty much any time in June, July, or August were fine for long stretches of PTO.

In the private sector, I think I took one two-week vacation. It was not a problem, but it had to be approved.

One company I worked with had a mandatory 8 week sabbatical after 10 years, and every 5 years thereafter. It had to be taken as a single block of time off.

As a German, I find your question is strange. And a Bit pittyful. I hope you can stand the Peer pressure and care for your wellbeing! Greetings fromm Bavaria

I'm not based in the US, but US companies outsourcing to my location that I worked for did find the concept foreign.

I make a point out of taking the last two weeks of the year off, but I could stretch it to three, because my manager takes this much, so it's not like he would be waiting for me with something anyway.

I'm also planning on taking a whole month off should I become a father of a second child. I took two weeks for the first one and in hindsight it was not enough. A (male) friend of mine took six and the only thing holding me back from doing the same are finances, since as a contractor I have a daily rate.

American PTO in my experience is nuts. It's full of unwritten rules and conventions.

Give me a fixed amount of leave, which everyone is forced to take, so I know where we're at and don't have to play your guessing games.

In the US, I would hardly be surprised. Working in France, I have 7 weeks of vacation every year (with 5 weeks being the minimum required by labor law for all full-time employees). In my company we're also required to take a "congé principal" once a year of at least 10 consecutive working days. As in most French companies, it's also pretty much the norm for people to take off 3 or even 4 weeks in July/August, I prefer to use mine over the course of the year though, unless I make big travel plans.

In many countries of the world, employees get up to about 5 weeks of consecutive paid vacation. Some countries also have a 'holiday loading' of some 15% on top of their normal pay level. https://www.australianunions.org.au/factsheet/leave-loading/

The US is an outlier with very little paid vacation. It seems that some people get no paid vacation weeks at all.

Depends:

How much banked vacation do you have?

How many weeks do you get per year?

How much notice are you giving?

Are there any major resourcing demands in the target time?

Are there serious conflicts with other co-workers?

How does your TC compare to the rest of your team and the industry at large?

Assuming favorable answers to the above, I've never been at a company which would reject PTO. Admittedly, I work at companies that actually understand that work-life balance is in everyone's best long-term interest, but Id say 75% of requests get approved without need for modifications. Probably depends a lot on industry.

> Is there an unspoken rule/etiquette to take no more than 2 consecutive weeks of vacation?

No, as long as you give your manager the heads up with enough notice, so they can find someone to cover for you, you can use all your vacation in one shot.

Note, at least with me, this means no more vacation bridge days, and more consideration needing to head out early, etc.

Also, if we are at an unlimited vacation org, this means you only have 1-2 weeks of vacation left over.

Another complicating factor is "unlimited vacation". I have it at my new gig and I think I probably have _less_ recourse than a person with an explicit "4 weeks of PTO" in their employment contract.

That being said, the company is really chill and every seems to be taking a good amount of vacation (and I told my manager I am targeting 5 weeks off per year and he said that is reasonable).

Well yes I can but it is a moot point because my spouse cannot so the situation as a whole isn't any better than if I was limited as well

In Europe it’s common to take an entire month off.

In Sweden it’s customary to get 25-40 days of vacation per year based on seniority, public vs private employers and other benefits.

Not exactly, but there's no guaranteed time off in the US at all (FMLA aside) and even mid-career office workers often only have three weeks per year (early-career workers often have two weeks, sometimes less) with the result that taking three weeks all at once is pretty unusual across most of the economy.

Yes 3, 4 you need some approval. I do take a total of 5 weeks of pto every year though (2 weeks winter, 2 weeks summer, 5 days spread through the year).

I can't take more than 2 weeks consecutive myself, it makes it incredibly hard to go back to work in general.

Recommendation: If they're asking you to work remote, take even more time. IOW, rather than working 1 of 3 weeks remote, work 3 of 5. That's what I did this summer as part of a 3 person startup. It gave both my family and my company a good amount of time.

My experience in the USA - yes, this unwritten rule exists. Or maybe I've only worked in places that are too small (or too disorganized) to provide coverage for longer intervals?

I've only taken greater-than-two-week intervals off /between/ jobs.

I think there is an understanding that more than two consecutive weeks has a bigger impact on peers than less. As much as I dislike it, I have to say “yes” that the bar is higher at two weeks. It’s not a prohibition, but a checkpoint perhaps?

every job I've had it was a process to get more than 2wks at a time; it was fraught with peril. I only got it through once or twice and my manager was not happy with it. That said, I usually get ~2wks per quarter.

I was "forced" to take 5 consecutive weeks of paid vacation this summer, because I had too many unused days from previous years.

The HR lady practically begged me to take the vacation.

This is in Eastern Europe.

Managers will try anything they can to prevent you exercising your rights. While there can be scenarios that make it impractical to take n weeks off, convention isn't a valid one.

Yes. I think I’m in a rarely lucky situation where my employer lets me save my holiday and sandwich it around the Xmas shutdown so I end up with a month off at the end of every year

Not in USA, but here I can by law take 4 weeks, not necessarily in one go, but it is more rare to split it up. And my bosses would not have any issues with that.

depends on the manager and company. before working in software Yeah i thought taking a lot of time in US like that was unheard of. That's also how i watched my parents manage their time. Working in software though, I feel like even up to 4 weeks has been normalized because so many people from foreign countries like India go home to visit family and the trip is a big one to take.

Yes, I can but I'm supposed to give two weeks notice if I'm doing so. (And no, I don't mean I'd need to quit).

I can do that without manager approval. I'm an SRE in Canada and accrue quite a bit of time off in lieu on my oncall shifts.

How big is the startup? This conversation is going to be quite different at a company with 3 employees vs a company with 3000.

I've not heard it forbidden but mainly speak to your manager to ensure that things are scheduled well enough.

What convention?

Your manager is a bad manager.

Sincerely, A Former Manager

I needed it once some years ago. I took a full month. No questions asked.

EDIT for context: Spanish consulting company

Is your company an “unlimited PTO” organization or do you have contractually guaranteed days off?

In France this is rather typical. 2 weeks are compulsory by law, some take 3, some 4.

I'm required to take 3 every July living in Norway.

it's an employee/employer relationship

what does your contract say?

it's that simple

(and if they don't respect the terms of their own contract then get out now)

resign or take unpaid leave and double the weeks. return to a higher salary there or elsewhere. creative policy compliance.

Your employer has the right to tell you how long you can take vacation for.

But she is lying when she says that it's convention to not take longer than 2 weeks off consecutively.

Yes. I do most years.

Yes. Why?

Yes.

In Stalinist Communist Europe no biggie. I can take 4 weeks off if you want. No questions asked no eye brows raised.