Persistence

[blue_condition]

As many of you know I'm a bit stir-crazy at work and really want a new job... so I get a lot of calls from agents.

Comments

[kixie]

Ah yes, Americans are notoriously stingy on the holiday allowance. Depressing, no?

[blue_condition]

The American long-hours-"presenteeism" culture is unsustainable, I think. But trying to make it work in the UK will be a bit of a challenge!

If I was a young man, susceptible to the dubious lure of cocaine, sports cars, and expensive mistresses, I'd probably give it a go for a year or two - at least until the inevitable burnout (happened to a mate of mine who worked at Nomura in the early 90s - he had the whole bit, coke, BMW M3 Evo, vigorous sex life... and then went pop and spent the next 18 months in bed!)

As it is, I'm in my late 30s, I'm more excited by real ale, diesel locos and sprawling on the sofa with my beloved!

[missfairchild]

But trying to make it work in the UK will be a bit of a challenge!

Yes - it's something I will resist with every ounce of strength I have. It's a horribly superficial and self-serving attitude. Who wants to waste their life pushing paper around and looking busy instead of actually doing the job and going home? Gah.

[blue_condition]

I also don't like the US "company as extended family" thing. Work is something I do for 8 hours or so a day, and even those 8 hours reluctantly. I don't like work, there are other, more creative things I'd rather be doing with my time. It helps that the people I work with are intelligent, mostly amusing, and fairly low-key.

US companies seem to want to be all-inclusive. Live the company social life, wear the company polo shirt. I've seen the presenteeism and the creeping overflow into "real life" destroy several people and several relationships - Oracle used to be about the best place in the world for early coronaries and messy divorces.

[makyo]

company as extended family
This would be a family where a couple of uncles in smart suits shred every bit of paperwork they can find before absconding to somewhere hot with the contents of everyone's savings accounts, where everyone has to change their surname every couple of years, where incompetent cousins are promoted to being grandparents and then do something gormless with the family fortune before being paid a large amount of money to go away (and be appointed somebody else's grandparents), and where otherwise respectable members (or even entire branches) of the family are arbitrarily divorced from time to time.

[blue_condition]

Yep, that sort of thing, except you'd be expected to go to all the company parties (cash bar, and woe betide anyone who has more than one alcoholic drink!). ;)

Oy! There were reasons I wanted to move to the UK...

[bibliofile]

Actually, it's more like doing the job, which takes that long because production is up because of periodic layoffs/stupid deadlines/overambitious managers.

My first freelance tech-writing client gave me lots of war-story fodder. When I took a couple of weeks to go get married, the guys in the next room were astounded that I got any time off at all--I'd only been there for six months. (There are times when working freelance has its advantages: vacations on my schedule, period.)

This obviously forward-thinking organization offered a whole five days' sick time a year (minimum is ten--technically discretionary, though) in addition to the usual ten days' vacation (plus the minimal round of public holidays).

This is also the only prospective writing/editing client that had the gall to ask how fast I typed. I was able to reply honestly that I had no idea.

Re: Oy! There were reasons I wanted to move to the UK...

[blue_condition]

I'm frankly amazed at the US giving you an "allocation" of sick/personal days.

I have 28 days holiday, plus an allowance to cover all public holidays (with no expectation that I should take them on those actual days), and in most UK companies, if you're sick, you're sick.

I assume that most US workers throw sickies up to the maximum number of allocated sick days? (and therefore that the country as a whole grinds to a halt between Thanksgiving and Christmas as everyone burns up days? ;))

Re: Oy! There were reasons I wanted to move to the UK...

[angharad]

Problem being that you often have to have a doctor's note, to prove it, or else it counts as an "unexcused absence" (which have a maximum, past which you would be sacked), not as a "sick day". Very grammar school.

At the US company I used to work at, we had a "bank" of "personal time", which could be used for either sick days or vacation, thus effectively giving neither to parents (who used all their PT up with children's sicknesses and other appointments).

Re: Oy! There were reasons I wanted to move to the UK...

[blue_condition]

There is something terribly wrong with your society's working practices. ;)

Some days I go down on bended knee and pray to the EU and to the people who built the Welfare State in Britain - I'm only a bit capitalist ;P

Re: Oy! There were reasons I wanted to move to the UK...

[angharad]

your society's
Oy! I realise that Canada is barely a Commonwealth nation, culturally, but at least it's a start. I'll be waving a flag tomorrow. Mentally, at least. (And if they pass that stupid constitutional amendment down south, I'll be burning that'n, don't you worry.)

pray to the EU
*snicker*

Re: Oy! There were reasons I wanted to move to the UK...

[bibliofile]

The one-big-bank of time off is a newer practice here, and I like its intended flexibility but recognize those darn shortcomings