[bitL]

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.