Federal employees with less than three years of service start with 13 days of annual leave, not 20. Itâ(TM)s theoretically possible to negotiate some degree of matching of private sector leave to your leave category (13, 20, or 26 are the groupings for feds) if youâ(TM)ve never been a fed before, but many agencies simply refuse to negotiate on it. (Sick leave isnâ(TM)t lumped with annual leave and they arenâ(TM)t interchangeable)