I get five sick days a year. Toward the end of last winter I got sick several times and used four of them.<p>So for the rest of the year, say my insomnia shows up and I've been awake since 8 AM the previous day, I go to work anyway. I get maybe two hours of work done all day, but I sit at my desk and that's apparently what's important. That's only happened once this year, but it was Monday this week so it's fresh in my mind.<p>It's stupid. But I've got one sick day left and I might need it worse come flu season.<p>There are plenty of things I like about my job, but our time off policy is not among them... In the tech industry I'm guessing this is less common because it's not easy to hire good programmers. In other industries, I doubt it's an unusual experience.
Pretty easy to sum this up: people don't take sick days because:<p>- They aren't given that many<p>- Medical expenses are HUGE<p>- There's societal pressure to not take them<p>- It's easier to fall behind in work (and get fired if you do)<p>I really should count my blessings - I rarely feel sick enough to take a sick day - maybe at most once a year. I understand that other people aren't like that, and I'm fine with that. As long as everyone is doing their part, and we're all pulling together, it's all good.
My company has unlimited sick days. I've used none in my 2.5 years here. It's not that I don't get sick, but somehow I get sick while on vacation. Yep that's fun.<p>I see the doctor for checkups, I had many appointments to accompany my wife to the OBGYN, and appointments for my new baby...I don't take time off for those.<p>If I'm feeling under the weather I stay home and do a bit of work. If I had actual sick days I would be more inclined to take an entire day off, especially if towards the end of the year.<p>When I worked for the govt I took mental days...day where it would be pointless to come to the office because I'm not motivated
and would be unproductive. After a day off I'm good to go. Counted that as sick.
Please stay home if you're sick. The productivity loss due to you not coming in < the productivity loss due to you coming in and infecting your coworkers.
Is it common for programmers to have a fixed number of "sick days?"<p>The only time I ever had to keep track of sick days and vacation days is when I worked for the government and it was awful. There is no reason to do that to white collar workers.
I find the concept of limited sick days very odd. How can you possibly plan your sickness? When you're sick, you're sick, and shouldn't be going to work. Especially not when you've got something infectious that might make your co-workers sick too.<p>I had no idea that my country (Netherland) had the most generous law in this regard. The Dutch system sounds fairly obvious to me, and it works very well. Healthy, happy workers don't stay at home sick. Of course there are people who do abuse the system, but when people call in sick unusually often, it's generally a sign of a deeper problem, like hating their job or not being motivated to do it. And those are problems that need to be solved, not ignored.
Sick days are a terrible concept.<p>If I have a mild headache, can I take a sick day? What if it's November and I haven't used any sick days? What if I'm nauseous when I wake up, but I'm fine by lunch? Can I use sick days for psychological reasons? What if someone sees me in public and thinks I don't look sick? Should I follow these rules, or can I fake a phone cough as well as my co-workers?<p>Just give me an allotment for paid time off (and maybe unpaid time off), and let me run my life/work balance.
In my case, the employer had a great "take what you need" policy when it came to sick leave. Vacation hours were earned, up to 6 weeks worth of hours a year, but you could bank up to 8 weeks of hours. The only catch was "be responsible".<p>As a father with two little kids who are always getting sick, this was great. It was useable for their visits for shots and times when my wife could not change her schedule easily (she does by appointment, in-home yoga/physical therapy, can be tricky to bail on a person that needs your help on short notice). I still had the ability to stay home if I got sick at some point (which happens way more with kids).<p>This was the way for years. Until this year. Now it's a hard 5 weeks of combined sick and vacation time.<p>With plans already set up for the year, plane tickets booked, for weddings, vacation, etc. I'd burned it all up by June. So here I am with 3 days of vacation/sick leave left. If I get sick now I'm going to work.<p>That, coupled with losing a non-trivial amount of vacation hours has caused people to leave here in droves (with other mgmt issues coming in after the sick/vacay policy change and doubling the insurance premium). I don't really know what they were thinking as every other high tech company around us has a much better sick/vacation policy, better insurance. They can afford it, according to HR/accounting folks I talked to at happy hours. They're just making the numbers look better for their own benefit.<p>So TL;DR (and having read this article, far too frequently) the real answer management screws us out of it.
I don't have sick days, they just come out of our vacation days. Management thinks if you give people "sick days" they will say they are sick when they aren't just to get a day off.<p>I take sick days when I hurt my back and can't get out of bed but end up with my phone and iPad in bed taking emails and attending meetings/calls
I get ~40 days of vacation and unlimited sick leave (France). I use all of the vacation because of children but otherwise I would probably take half of them. The fact that I have unlimited sick leave helps to never be sick, actually. I guess that this is some kind of positive psychological feedback.
This is one of the reasons I'm at my job despite the 15-20% salary penalty. 40 vacation days, 25 sick, 5 personal.<p>This year we did a week in June and nearly 3 weeks in October for vacation. :)