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Then you might miss out on a lot of talented people, because being away for a month at a time is a strange requirement for a programmer. Most people have famil
by omgsean 16y ago
Then you might miss out on a lot of talented people, because being away for a month at a time is a strange requirement for a programmer. Most people have families, friends, significant others, pets, or WoW guilds they simply don't want to be away from for a month at a time. The emotional toll of homesickness could very easily end up costing you.
Not to mention, if your employees are in committed relationships you're also subjecting them to a month without sex. I don't know if it's worth $2800/month to have two months a year where your employees are homesick and sexually frustrated.
- btilly 16y agoAbsolutely true. However it also frees them to hire people who live anywhere in the world, which gives them access to a lot of cheap talent that they otherwise would find hard to access. Given that they have 5 employees in 4 countries scattered across 2 continents, this is a pretty big benefit.
- patio11 16y agoThere are a lot of talented people in the world and Max needs to hire, hmm, five or ten of them? Being a Japanese salaryman probably wouldn't sound that attractive to the average American but there are a few of us defective types who do/did it anyway. (Speaking of quirky individual preferences: I'm a strict Catholic. Two months, huh. <dry>How ever would I cope.</dry> You can probably find five or ten other people with similar preferences -- it is a big Internet.)
- omgsean 16y agoOh definitely, I'm not saying he won't be able to find people. All I'm really saying is I wouldn't accept a job that required that of me, and I wouldn't be happy if my work implemented this policy. Different strokes for different strokes I suppose. <Insert celibacy joke here.>
- Kadin 16y agoImagining an existing company implementing a policy like this and forcing it on its employees is pretty different from a small startup deciding on it (with the enthusiastic buy-in of the principals) and then going off and hiring people who are excited about it. I've worked as a consultant for years. It's a job that requires a lot of travel. We don't hide this from prospective hires, and despite having a schedule that's a lot more rigorous than 1 month in 6, and going to places that are a lot less swank than a five-star in Bangkok, we've never had trouble recruiting. Actually I think there are a lot of people for whom the possibility of traveling twice a year to some semi-exotic locale and having their food/drinks/entertainment comped would be a big draw. As long as you're okay with the demographics that tends to lean towards -- young people, probably fresh college grads -- you might end up finding people willing to work for less, because they'd see the travel as a benefit, than if you were hiring for a cube job. A lot depends on how you spin it, and what kind of people you try to recruit. It's going to affect the character of the company a lot though.
- blackguardx 16y agoHow would being religious affect anything? Aren't there Catholic churches in pretty much every major city?
- omgsean 16y agoHe's referring to the lack of sex issue.
- blackguardx 16y agoI'm an atheist ex-catholic and I don't get the joke. Why would you downvote me for a legitimate question?
- jemfinch 16y agoI think he's an unmarried Catholic, so he's not having sex already; two months of not having sex amidst a lifetime of not having sex isn't really an issue for him. He'll change his tune pretty quickly, I'm sure, after getting married (from one "strict" Catholic to another).
- nandemo 16y ago>Not to mention, if your employees are in committed relationships you're also subjecting them to a month without sex. Dude, they went to Bangkok.