[Thibault]

[quote=flu]
Assuming you are a full time employee, you should have either accrued vacation or the new type of “vacation” policy….[/quote]

Yes I can accumulate paid time-off in my company. Right now I have 15 days of PTO but I don’t have sick days: if I am sick, my PTO goes down.

There are many instances during the year where I need to take a day off here and there. So I am often left with 2 weeks of vacation time per year. At this rate, I will need to wait 4 years to take a 2-month long vacation to France…

It’s hard for me to understand why Americans don’t have more paid time-off. Life shouldn’t be just about work.

But I agree that the French just don’t work enough (yet they are the most productive people in the world). Here is an opportunity for me to criticize and show the absurdity in my own country by providing a little comparison: the minimum length of paid time-off in France by law is 25 days or 5 weeks. But that’s just the beginning.

In 2000, the (socialist) government adopted the 35-hour week measure (versus 39 hours previously). Some companies (mostly government jobs) apply the 35-hour week by forcing their employees to take a day off every other week. But in companies where the 35-hour week is difficult to put into effect (and that’s most medium and large size public companies), employees get extra PTO days (called RTT) to compensate the fact that they still work 39 hours a week. The calculation of the amount of “RTT” days is fairly complex but it varies between 10 and 22 days per year.

But that’s not all. French have 11 paid holidays. When a holiday falls on a weekend, you still get an extra day off. And if the holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, almost all companies give an extra day off so that employees can take a 4-day weekend. That’s an additional 4 to 6 days per year.
As an example. May in France is a very slow month. This year, there are 3 holidays in May: May 1st (Labor Day), May 8th (end of WWII) and May 29th (a Christian holiday called Ascension Day). All fall on a Thursday so that’s 3 x 4-day weekends in just one month!

In total, French people easily accumulate 40 to 50 PTO days per year plus 11 paid holidays! “Et la cerise sur le gateau” (and the cherry on the top): sick days do not count towards these PTO days. I don’t think there is even a limit in how many days you can be sick, as long as you provide the employer with a doctor’s certificate. I recently read that, in 2013, the average French worker took 35 sick days in the year. Crazy!

Add maternity/paternity leaves, plus a few days where you can’t go to work because of strikes in the public transportation and you’ll quickly realize that on average the French don’t even work 1 day out of 2!

[Thibault]

Thanks for all the great feedback! I will try to reply to some of the questions a little later.
My desire was not to go back to France just for the sake of going to France. It is mostly to see my family and my friends on a more regular basis.
In the past 10 years or so, I have only been to France about every other year and usually for 10 to 12 days at most. It is not even what I would call a vacation. It’s essentially a quick tour to see as many as people as possible.
I guess going back to France with my daughter just once a year but 2 or 3 months at a time would be a great solution to my problems. But with the job I currently hold, that’s not feasible. My company would problably let me know do that once as unpaid time-off but I already know for sure they won’t let me do that every single year.
So I am basically to find a job that would accomodate that. And it’s not easy.
I will defnitely explore some of the options you guys suggested.

[Thibault]

[quote=flu] You probably don’t *have* to work long nights if you’re willing to cut down on your expenses somewhat…Don’t worry, when you get older like me, you begin to care less about working…sort of…[/quote]

I didn’t have a choice. Being in charge of software configuration, I have to be available during code deployment to production which usually occurs at night to minimize impact on customers.
And working extra hours in my job doesn’t make me more rich. I am not a hourly employee.
Sure I start to care less about working… but I still work as much as I use to when I just started!

[Thibault]

[quote=scaredyclassic]perhaps you will make some friends, get to the seaside , but all you’d talk about is how much you miss your petite gosse and weep into your admittedly good wine. perhaps it is true that you do not smoke now, but soon you will be so depressed you will berolling cigarettes upon awakening, missing your little girl. for now, it appears, home is in the united states. san diego may Gd have mercy our your soul. you may have dual citizenship, but we have you by the gosses. I WANT TO GO HOME!!!!![/quote]

Ah ah. Good point but as I said, I am not looking at leaving for good. I am just trying to find a way to go to France more often, and maybe work from there a few weeks per year.
Spending the entire summer with my daughter in France would be a huge improvement.

[Thibault]

[quote=spdrun] What area of town are you in? [/quote]

I live in Carmel Valley just off the 56 freeway.
It’s nice and clean but overall very sterile.

[Thibault]

Great post scaredy, even though I have never smoked and I despise Le Monde.

When I first came here, my plan was never to stay in the US forever. I just got stuck in a situation I couldn’t get out of.
The first few years in San Diego were exciting. It was a period of discovery and fun: the nice weather, the beaches, the desert… everything was new to me.
Now I look back and ask myself: what did I do in the past 10 years? All I can see work. Long days at work. Nights at work, too many weekends at work. When I don’t work on the weekends, I just try to recover from exhaustion.

To me France is a real place. It’s the place where my family lives. It’s the place where all by best friends live. In 15 years in San Diego, I have never been invited once by my neighbors. I don’t even know them to tell you the truth. I can count on my 2 hands the number of times I was invited for a dinner by some friends. I might be wrong or out of touch but it’s almost like what is really missing here (and I don’t know if it’s specific to Southern CA) is the fact that most people are not interested in strong and long-lasting relationships. I feel like people don’t need to have friends. They do just fine by themselves. Human relation don’t motivate them that much.
It’s what I miss about France. Being able to sit at a table with a good friend and a nice bottle of wine and talk all night about anything.

It will be hard to convince my ex-wife to move back to France. But I can give it a try.

[Thibault]

[quote=spdrun]What are customs duties and what would be infrastructural costs to distribute the pants?[/quote]

12% Duty rate plus 20.6% VAT.

[Thibault]

flu, I agree.

I am not saying that everything is better in France. France has so many social problems. It’s not by accident that French are the #1 consumers of anti-depressants in the world.

But there’s just something about living there that is really special. Most of the people in my country don’t realize it because that’s all they know. But if you travel and live oversea for a long period of time, that’s when you realize that France is not that bad after all… Great lifestyle, great food, a country with over 1,500 years of history, free education, free healthcare, a minimum of 5 weeks of paid-time off plus 35 hour work week or more time-off if you work extra hours… And Paris, I have yet to find a city that can compare to Paris…

A government job or a teaching job could work.
Being a teacher would give me a solid 2 months of time-off every summer.

[Thibault]

[quote=all]Can you freelance, as already mentioned? [/quote]
It would be hard to freelance in my field.
I am a software configuration manager / release engineer, not a developer.
Basically I am in charge of the code repository in a software organization. I take care of the builds, manage the releases to production etc. It is more of a support role.

[Thibault]

One solution would be to find a company that lets me telecommute and work in a different time zone.
Most software jobs just require that you have a laptop and an Internet connection. Still, I haven’t been able to find such a job.

Going to Europe frequently is expensive. 12 years ago I could fly from LA to Paris for under $500 R/T during the low season. Now airfares are $900 in low season and over $1,300 in high season. I need to take that in consideration.

I have a friend in France who has a very successful business in selling electronic parts for computers.
He suggested importing Levi’s jeans from US to France. Levi’s are 90 to 110 euros ($125-$150) in France, no kidding. They are $39 here at Macy’s…

[Thibault]

I have. In one of my previous jobs, the company – a start-up – offered “unlimited time-off”. I never took so little time off that when I worked there!
All my vacation requests would be denied by my manager because there was too much work in the pipeline.

[Author]

Posts