9 ms·

Holidays are good for workers and companies alike

92 points by edward 7y ago

standardUser 7y ago
Thankfully, the trend seems to be towards a much greater tolerance of vacation time and an increased willingness to actually take vacation. I credit the millennials for this new attitude, as their clout in the workplace gradually supplants the tedious boomer philosophy that time off of any kind is something to be avoided at all costs. And the author makes a good point that giving workers time off can reveal things about your organization. They mention sussing out a morale-sinking middle-manager, but you could also view it is a general stress test for your team/company. It's good to know if one or two absences slow things to a halt, or if one individual is too indispensable to be gone for even a few days. After all, people get ill, injured or just quit from time to time. Better to have periodic absences be a natural part of your organization that you learn to handle, instead of crisis every time.
- glitchcrab 7y ago
  My company gives us unlimited time off - provided your team isn't going to be left with too few people then you just stick it in the calendar. It's incredibly liberating not having to plan your holidays to ensure you stay within X days, not having to request approval etc.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    Curious, how much vacation do your peers at the company take each year? Rough guess is fine. I ask because I've heard that "unlimited vacation" actually results in LESS vacation being taken because employees are afraid to be seen as the one abusing the system (even though taking 4+ week/year should be norm). Somewhat related, I loathe the trend of grouping sick and vacation time into a single bucket (for those in the EU, in the US, if you're sick you have to burn leave, the concept of "you're sick, stay home" doesn't really exist).
    - DanFeldman 7y ago
      It's easy to not take enough vacation at companies w/ unlimited vacation. Anecdotally, most of my peers at companies w/ unlimited vacation take less vacation than traditionally counted vacation days. I work at a place w/ unlimited vacation and take about 4-4.5 weeks per year. A big reason I actually get to take this much vacation is because our founders & senior leadership also take vacation. I could easily see a world where our sr leadership didn't take any time off and there was implicit pressure to not use vacation time.
      - gregspies 7y ago
        That 4-4.5 weeks is less than the minimum amount of time I'm allowed to take off (not sure if it's strictly required but HR would start chasing me). Assuming weekends are taken off by default, 4.5 weeks is about 23 days, which is quite far down this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...
        Ididntdothis 7y ago
        Looking at this table the best countries in terms of leave are muslim countries. Lots of public holidays.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        I get 4 weeks guaranteed and I make sure to take them. In Germany I had 6 weeks. If “unlimited” translates to 4 and you feel lucky that you actually get that much then “unlimited” feels like a scam to guilt trip people into less vacation and not having to pay out any when people leave. I guess you also don’t accrue any for a longer trip if you take off less one year.
      - Aaargh20318 7y ago
        4 weeks is the legal minimum where I live, so that doesn’t seem like a lot at all. Also, the problem with unlimited vacation days is that you don’t get paid for unused days when you quit your job.
  - CuriouslyC 7y ago
    I have this privilege also, but I find that it's kind of a double edged sword. I can take "vacations" whenever I want, but I can't completely escape work when I do. I've had teammates do things like request a push to prod over vacation, while not mentioning that the prod database had also undergone a pretty large schema change (with no documentation!), then basically beg me to fix it because performance reviews were coming up in a few days.
    - ferzul 7y ago
      How about if you're international? If there's a serious problem at work (and the bus number is one) I can't fix it because (a) it isn't legal to work while on leave (b) I'm overseas and it isn't legal to work on my visa. So if something goes won't, they're stuffed. at least that's they're fault.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        At least for Americans, (a) is presumably very uncommon and (b) is never really a problem in my experience. Even if you're on a tourist visa, answering a work email or phone call isn't an issue. (Attending a conference or setting up in a co-work space for a few days may be, depending on the country, of course.)
    - ghaff 7y ago
      It's admittedly less common than it used to be but sometimes you're vacationing somewhere that just doesn't have connectivity. Even leaving aside being off in the Himalayas or wherever, even a lot of areas in the western US like Death Valley have pretty limited coverage. And, if I'm backpacking, even if I have a cell signal there's not much I can do if it's not something I can fix with a few words based on what's in my brain. To the broader point though. I do find being mostly connected is largely a plus. It's easier to take time off when I know that I can do a bit of flexible work and can be reached when needed rather than being tethered to a network just in case. I have worked both ways over my career and I much prefer today.
    - glitchcrab 7y ago
      Then that is an issue with the company culture, processes and staffing. Holiday is holiday - I've never worked anywhere which would expect me to remain contactable whilst on holiday.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    But is there an enforced minimum? If not, UTO tends to NTO.
  - Vinnl 7y ago
    Is that paid time off?
- ghaff 7y ago
  My understanding is that, at least historically, in finance there was some mandated time off based on the idea that if an individual were doing something sketchy, forcing them out of the office and offline for a couple of weeks might flush it out.
  - dmurray 7y ago
    Still the case, or at least it's taught in compliance courses.
  - fancyfish 7y ago
    Yeah it still exists and is called "block leave." While on block leave, you also have to stay signed out of all email and computer systems or the leave becomes invalidated. There's also "garden leave" for several months after leaving a job, where you're paid but can't work for a competitor/new job. Somehow it's supposed to prevent you sharing IP but I'm not sure it's effective at all, outside of being a long paid vacation.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I'd be hesitant to draw broader trends from the experience of devs and other exempt employees at large tech firms. Anecdotally, I tend to agree. When I took multi-week vacations earlier in my career, that seemed to be something of an outlier. I'm not sure that's as true today. One factor may be that, for better or worse, people can stay at least somewhat connected while on vacation. It used to be that traveling meant that it took a real effort to reach you. And if you were on vacation, you were pretty much incommunicado for the period. On the other hand, I'd be very hesitant to draw broader conclusions about the adult working population.
- P_I_Staker 7y ago
  > the tedious boomer philosophy that time off of any kind is something to be avoided at all costs Not just that, you're stealing from the company. I've seriously met people with this mentality.
- jameshart 7y ago
  Interesting - similar ‘antifragility’ concept as chaos testing. Better to discover the weaknesses and dependencies of your system by inducing a failure yourself than to learn about it when it’s imposed on you by chance.
alkonaut 7y ago
Just shutting down for a month like many companies in parts of Europe is great. Means you don’t even have “time off work”, it means work doesn’t exist because no one else works either. You return after (at least) a month to an empty inbox.
- pfisch 7y ago
  Almost no tech company could operate like that. What would you do just shut down your services for a month? Offer no support?
  - philwelch 7y ago
    Makes me nostalgic for the days software actually shipped in a shrink wrap box.
  - slyall 7y ago
    Plenty of tech companies do. Complete change freeze so you only need a minimum number of developers and ops people around. Although it is sometimes a good time of do that big CICD pipeline rebuild. The lawyers, HR, finance and office support are down to minimal. Same with the cleaners (a good time to repaint the office though), internal IT, cafe and other support staff. Sales will be down to minimal since all the customers will be on holiday. Customer support might be at normal or reduced level depending on industry.
  - basementcat 7y ago
    Almost all tech companies operate like this; they have a significantly reduced staff level for 1 or 2 days of a 7 day period.
  - ulfw 7y ago
    Considering the small amount of "support" some tech companies provide... I don't see an issue.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      The net amount to the public may be small. The scale offered relative to the size of the companies, and within high-value niches (enterprise customers, business partners, vendors/suppliers) may be significant. Coordinated downtime can still be an advantage. It's actually a guiding principle in CPU scheduling systems as well -- so many cycles dedicated to processing vs. overhead.
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
Another thing that helps is that having a person out helps you find places where only one person can do something. There shouldn't be any processes that hinge on a single point of (human) failure, but it's easy for them to sneak in, so it's good to check every now and again: What would happen if this person were hit by a bus?
- shoo 7y ago
  Provided you're in an environment where information from failures can be rapidly fed into improvements, and failures are not terminal: fail early, fail often, fail small.
mmwelt 7y ago
For those who need it: http://archive.is/BAuxl http://archive.is/BAuxl
bambataa 7y ago
Something I’ve always wondered about corporate America: on Apple rumour sites and so on it’s often breathlessly reported that all staff leave has been cancelled for whatever dates. What happens if eg you’d promised to take your kids to Disneyland and had everything booked? Do you just have to lose the booking deposit and let down your kids? Why do people put up with that?
- ghaff 7y ago
  Personally I've never encountered such a thing though I'm sure it happens. Under most circumstances, I expect my reaction would be "Sorry but I booked a trip." I would be surprised to see a company reimburse significant personal expenses if that happened.
- SeeDave 7y ago
  It's a totally rational, bigger-picture thought process: 1. Employer will not tolerate "absenteeism" and will retaliate with consequences up to termination. 2. Spouse will not accept lower standard of life via reduced wages. Since earning power ("a good provider") is a major reason why many spouses chose to marry their geeky/techie partner... any threat to stable employment is a threat to the stability of my family. 3. Housing is almost entirely unaffordable in Bay Area. Miss three payments and car is reposessed. Miss one credit card payment and score drops 60 points, interest rate goes up to 29.99%. It becomes a simple expected value calculation after that. Would you prefer the 100% chance of losing Disneyland deposit/letting down your kids.... or the n% chance of becoming a homeless, carless, divorcee with a damaged credit score for the next 7 years? To be clear: I'm not pro-corporation/anti-child... but there are reasons why working parents make the decisions they make.
  - bonniemuffin 7y ago
    "Since earning power ("a good provider") is a major reason why many spouses chose to marry their geeky/techie partner" [citation needed] That seems like quite a bold statement. Is there any evidence that marriages involving a tech partner are more likely to be primarily based on earning power than other marriages? Overall, marriages involving higher-earning professions and higher education are much less likely to end in divorce compared to marriages between less-educated partners, suggesting that "lost my tech job and got divorced" is not a major contributor to divorce rates overall. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States#Rates_of_divorce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States#R...)

92 points by edward 7y ago

Thankfully, the trend seems to be towards a much greater tolerance of vacation time and an increased willingness to actually take vacation. I credit the millennials for this new attitude, as their clout in the workplace gradually supplants the tedious boomer philosophy that time off of any kind is something to be avoided at all costs. And the author makes a good point that giving workers time off can reveal things about your organization. They mention sussing out a morale-sinking middle-manager, but you could also view it is a general stress test for your team/company. It's good to know if one or two absences slow things to a halt, or if one individual is too indispensable to be gone for even a few days. After all, people get ill, injured or just quit from time to time. Better to have periodic absences be a natural part of your organization that you learn to handle, instead of crisis every time.

glitchcrab 7y ago
My company gives us unlimited time off - provided your team isn't going to be left with too few people then you just stick it in the calendar. It's incredibly liberating not having to plan your holidays to ensure you stay within X days, not having to request approval etc.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  Curious, how much vacation do your peers at the company take each year? Rough guess is fine. I ask because I've heard that "unlimited vacation" actually results in LESS vacation being taken because employees are afraid to be seen as the one abusing the system (even though taking 4+ week/year should be norm). Somewhat related, I loathe the trend of grouping sick and vacation time into a single bucket (for those in the EU, in the US, if you're sick you have to burn leave, the concept of "you're sick, stay home" doesn't really exist).
  - DanFeldman 7y ago
    It's easy to not take enough vacation at companies w/ unlimited vacation. Anecdotally, most of my peers at companies w/ unlimited vacation take less vacation than traditionally counted vacation days. I work at a place w/ unlimited vacation and take about 4-4.5 weeks per year. A big reason I actually get to take this much vacation is because our founders & senior leadership also take vacation. I could easily see a world where our sr leadership didn't take any time off and there was implicit pressure to not use vacation time.
    - gregspies 7y ago
      That 4-4.5 weeks is less than the minimum amount of time I'm allowed to take off (not sure if it's strictly required but HR would start chasing me). Assuming weekends are taken off by default, 4.5 weeks is about 23 days, which is quite far down this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        Looking at this table the best countries in terms of leave are muslim countries. Lots of public holidays.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      I get 4 weeks guaranteed and I make sure to take them. In Germany I had 6 weeks. If “unlimited” translates to 4 and you feel lucky that you actually get that much then “unlimited” feels like a scam to guilt trip people into less vacation and not having to pay out any when people leave. I guess you also don’t accrue any for a longer trip if you take off less one year.
    - Aaargh20318 7y ago
      4 weeks is the legal minimum where I live, so that doesn’t seem like a lot at all. Also, the problem with unlimited vacation days is that you don’t get paid for unused days when you quit your job.
- CuriouslyC 7y ago
  I have this privilege also, but I find that it's kind of a double edged sword. I can take "vacations" whenever I want, but I can't completely escape work when I do. I've had teammates do things like request a push to prod over vacation, while not mentioning that the prod database had also undergone a pretty large schema change (with no documentation!), then basically beg me to fix it because performance reviews were coming up in a few days.
  - ferzul 7y ago
    How about if you're international? If there's a serious problem at work (and the bus number is one) I can't fix it because (a) it isn't legal to work while on leave (b) I'm overseas and it isn't legal to work on my visa. So if something goes won't, they're stuffed. at least that's they're fault.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      At least for Americans, (a) is presumably very uncommon and (b) is never really a problem in my experience. Even if you're on a tourist visa, answering a work email or phone call isn't an issue. (Attending a conference or setting up in a co-work space for a few days may be, depending on the country, of course.)
  - ghaff 7y ago
    It's admittedly less common than it used to be but sometimes you're vacationing somewhere that just doesn't have connectivity. Even leaving aside being off in the Himalayas or wherever, even a lot of areas in the western US like Death Valley have pretty limited coverage. And, if I'm backpacking, even if I have a cell signal there's not much I can do if it's not something I can fix with a few words based on what's in my brain. To the broader point though. I do find being mostly connected is largely a plus. It's easier to take time off when I know that I can do a bit of flexible work and can be reached when needed rather than being tethered to a network just in case. I have worked both ways over my career and I much prefer today.
  - glitchcrab 7y ago
    Then that is an issue with the company culture, processes and staffing. Holiday is holiday - I've never worked anywhere which would expect me to remain contactable whilst on holiday.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  But is there an enforced minimum? If not, UTO tends to NTO.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  Is that paid time off?
ghaff 7y ago
My understanding is that, at least historically, in finance there was some mandated time off based on the idea that if an individual were doing something sketchy, forcing them out of the office and offline for a couple of weeks might flush it out.
- dmurray 7y ago
  Still the case, or at least it's taught in compliance courses.
- fancyfish 7y ago
  Yeah it still exists and is called "block leave." While on block leave, you also have to stay signed out of all email and computer systems or the leave becomes invalidated. There's also "garden leave" for several months after leaving a job, where you're paid but can't work for a competitor/new job. Somehow it's supposed to prevent you sharing IP but I'm not sure it's effective at all, outside of being a long paid vacation.
ghaff 7y ago
I'd be hesitant to draw broader trends from the experience of devs and other exempt employees at large tech firms. Anecdotally, I tend to agree. When I took multi-week vacations earlier in my career, that seemed to be something of an outlier. I'm not sure that's as true today. One factor may be that, for better or worse, people can stay at least somewhat connected while on vacation. It used to be that traveling meant that it took a real effort to reach you. And if you were on vacation, you were pretty much incommunicado for the period. On the other hand, I'd be very hesitant to draw broader conclusions about the adult working population.
P_I_Staker 7y ago
> the tedious boomer philosophy that time off of any kind is something to be avoided at all costs Not just that, you're stealing from the company. I've seriously met people with this mentality.
jameshart 7y ago
Interesting - similar ‘antifragility’ concept as chaos testing. Better to discover the weaknesses and dependencies of your system by inducing a failure yourself than to learn about it when it’s imposed on you by chance.

alkonaut 7y ago

Just shutting down for a month like many companies in parts of Europe is great. Means you don’t even have “time off work”, it means work doesn’t exist because no one else works either. You return after (at least) a month to an empty inbox.

pfisch 7y ago
Almost no tech company could operate like that. What would you do just shut down your services for a month? Offer no support?
- philwelch 7y ago
  Makes me nostalgic for the days software actually shipped in a shrink wrap box.
- slyall 7y ago
  Plenty of tech companies do. Complete change freeze so you only need a minimum number of developers and ops people around. Although it is sometimes a good time of do that big CICD pipeline rebuild. The lawyers, HR, finance and office support are down to minimal. Same with the cleaners (a good time to repaint the office though), internal IT, cafe and other support staff. Sales will be down to minimal since all the customers will be on holiday. Customer support might be at normal or reduced level depending on industry.
- basementcat 7y ago
  Almost all tech companies operate like this; they have a significantly reduced staff level for 1 or 2 days of a 7 day period.
- ulfw 7y ago
  Considering the small amount of "support" some tech companies provide... I don't see an issue.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    The net amount to the public may be small. The scale offered relative to the size of the companies, and within high-value niches (enterprise customers, business partners, vendors/suppliers) may be significant. Coordinated downtime can still be an advantage. It's actually a guiding principle in CPU scheduling systems as well -- so many cycles dedicated to processing vs. overhead.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago

Another thing that helps is that having a person out helps you find places where only one person can do something. There shouldn't be any processes that hinge on a single point of (human) failure, but it's easy for them to sneak in, so it's good to check every now and again: What would happen if this person were hit by a bus?

shoo 7y ago
Provided you're in an environment where information from failures can be rapidly fed into improvements, and failures are not terminal: fail early, fail often, fail small.

mmwelt 7y ago

For those who need it: http://archive.is/BAuxl http://archive.is/BAuxl

bambataa 7y ago

Something I’ve always wondered about corporate America: on Apple rumour sites and so on it’s often breathlessly reported that all staff leave has been cancelled for whatever dates. What happens if eg you’d promised to take your kids to Disneyland and had everything booked? Do you just have to lose the booking deposit and let down your kids? Why do people put up with that?

ghaff 7y ago
Personally I've never encountered such a thing though I'm sure it happens. Under most circumstances, I expect my reaction would be "Sorry but I booked a trip." I would be surprised to see a company reimburse significant personal expenses if that happened.
SeeDave 7y ago
It's a totally rational, bigger-picture thought process: 1. Employer will not tolerate "absenteeism" and will retaliate with consequences up to termination. 2. Spouse will not accept lower standard of life via reduced wages. Since earning power ("a good provider") is a major reason why many spouses chose to marry their geeky/techie partner... any threat to stable employment is a threat to the stability of my family. 3. Housing is almost entirely unaffordable in Bay Area. Miss three payments and car is reposessed. Miss one credit card payment and score drops 60 points, interest rate goes up to 29.99%. It becomes a simple expected value calculation after that. Would you prefer the 100% chance of losing Disneyland deposit/letting down your kids.... or the n% chance of becoming a homeless, carless, divorcee with a damaged credit score for the next 7 years? To be clear: I'm not pro-corporation/anti-child... but there are reasons why working parents make the decisions they make.
- bonniemuffin 7y ago
  "Since earning power ("a good provider") is a major reason why many spouses chose to marry their geeky/techie partner" [citation needed] That seems like quite a bold statement. Is there any evidence that marriages involving a tech partner are more likely to be primarily based on earning power than other marriages? Overall, marriages involving higher-earning professions and higher education are much less likely to end in divorce compared to marriages between less-educated partners, suggesting that "lost my tech job and got divorced" is not a major contributor to divorce rates overall. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States#Rates_of_divorce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States#R...)