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I think this backlash is a microcosm for why our welfare programs are always under attack and identity politics plays so well in our society. The Balkanization

I think this backlash is a microcosm for why our welfare programs are always under attack and identity politics plays so well in our society. The Balkanization of benefits is _always_ a way to drive a stake through a cohort of people. Any type of increased leave benefit should be available to all. If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. We’re in an unprecedented time where anxiety and uncertainty is reining. The notion that we have to produce the same amount as before the pandemic is ludicrous and callous. No one should be taking pay cuts, whether they take more vacation or not, if the underlying health of the business remains strong (in Facebook’s case, for example, it is). Arguably, no one’s marginal value of labor should be changing either, it’s just that their working hours may change, and that should be okay. We’re just approaching distributed work, right now, all wrong. Commons hours matters less than good, written communication. If folks need to adjust their schedules significantly (more than two hours, here and there), then so be it. It won’t matter in the long run. Especially if leveraging that flexibility means that they don’t have to take PTO days for other reasons.

dvtrn 6y ago
If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. This right here is what stops most companies from doing most things that benefit the employee more than it does the almighty “revenue”.
- Spartan-S63 6y ago
  But most software companies, nowadays, are supported by subscription revenue, so this should be less of a concern than ever before.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Absolutely agree. Should be. In your experience is it the case?
  - vnorilo 6y ago
    What portion of those "subscriptions" are just first payments of a trial users forgot to cancel, and what percentage of employee time is devoted to tweaking the funnel to get more of the same (conversion rate)? This may be cynical, but both are significant for many mobile app businesses.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  That “almighty revenue” isn’t just a variable in a spreadsheet. That’s the source of your paychecks. It’s the money in the bank that keeps the company afloat during down quarters. It’s the number that needs to go up by a sufficient margin before your team can hire another person to help out. It would be an interesting experiment to offer half-time positions with half-pay (ignoring fixed costs that make the half-pay/half-time job more expensive). I doubt many people would take that deal.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    I’m absolutely aware that’s where my paycheck comes from. I’m simultaneously and acutely aware that the exact rationalization above is also used to excuse poor decision making In some companies that has real human consequences that happen to exist parallel with ‘getting a paycheck’ and those consequences and the behavior behind them are no less worthy of critique just because ‘paycheck’. These are my ethics. You don’t have to share them, I’m not here demanding that you do. I’d just rather dispense with the obviousness of “but that’s how you get paid”. Of course it is.
  - bsg75 6y ago
    Recurring revenue should be the source of compensation. Obsession with revenue growth is what drives poor staffing decisions: "We can't hire because net new revenue is down", but doing more requires more people.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> Any type of increased leave benefit should be available to all. If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. I’ve worked at two companies that tried genuinely unlimited vacation policies. The theory was that happy and well-rested employees who lived very fulfilling lives outside of the office would be naturally more motivated to do work for the company that granted them this benefit. For the people who needed flexible schedules (young children at home, caring for aging parents, personal health issues, irregular sleep patterns) this was a success. People who fit this description were overjoyed to find a company willing to accommodate them, and they returned the favor with great, efficient work. On the other hand, there was a subset of people who approached the system like a game: Just how little work could they do without getting fired? How could they claim the easiest tasks for themselves? This becomes a major problem when the workload is shared across a team, where one person’s reduced output becomes an increased burden on someone else. The people gaming the system weren’t doing so at the company’s expense. They were doing so at their team member’s expense. In theory we’d all get the same allowances regardless of the reason. In practice, people are infinitely happier to cover for a hard working coworker who needs an unplanned day off to tend to a sick child than they are to cover for an otherwise unencumbered coworker who simply decided they didn’t feel like working today. You could argue that the business should be allowed to slow down, but when your competitors are not slowing down and your profit margins aren’t infinite, that’s not a sustainable option. Eventually you need to start cutting headcount to compensate for the reduced productivity, which begins to defeat the purpose of catering to the employees. There is no free lunch.
- balfirevic 6y ago
  > I’ve worked at two companies that tried genuinely unlimited vacation policies. I wish companies would stop using the word "unlimited" for this. It's unspecified vacation policy, not unlimited.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    I debated calling it something else to avoid getting pulled into debates about semantics. I’ll put it this way: The company tried the “As long as you get work done, it doesn’t matter how many hours you work” approach. The problematic part of this equation is that “your work” isn’t a fixed quantity. When we allocate tasks and set weekly goals according to how much people can reasonably accomplish in a week, the “your work” variable becomes a proxy for how much that person is willing to work that week. The loophole is to minimize the number of tasks assigned to yourself while maximizing the perception of how long it took. The honest team members didn’t play this game and naturally ended up around 40 hours, mostly 9-5ish. It was the people gaming the system who played this game the most, obviously, and they tended to claim off hours and weekends as extra time spent working alone, assuming we couldn’t disprove it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dvtrn 6y ago

If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. This right here is what stops most companies from doing most things that benefit the employee more than it does the almighty “revenue”.

Spartan-S63 6y ago
But most software companies, nowadays, are supported by subscription revenue, so this should be less of a concern than ever before.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Absolutely agree. Should be. In your experience is it the case?
- vnorilo 6y ago
  What portion of those "subscriptions" are just first payments of a trial users forgot to cancel, and what percentage of employee time is devoted to tweaking the funnel to get more of the same (conversion rate)? This may be cynical, but both are significant for many mobile app businesses.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
That “almighty revenue” isn’t just a variable in a spreadsheet. That’s the source of your paychecks. It’s the money in the bank that keeps the company afloat during down quarters. It’s the number that needs to go up by a sufficient margin before your team can hire another person to help out. It would be an interesting experiment to offer half-time positions with half-pay (ignoring fixed costs that make the half-pay/half-time job more expensive). I doubt many people would take that deal.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  I’m absolutely aware that’s where my paycheck comes from. I’m simultaneously and acutely aware that the exact rationalization above is also used to excuse poor decision making In some companies that has real human consequences that happen to exist parallel with ‘getting a paycheck’ and those consequences and the behavior behind them are no less worthy of critique just because ‘paycheck’. These are my ethics. You don’t have to share them, I’m not here demanding that you do. I’d just rather dispense with the obviousness of “but that’s how you get paid”. Of course it is.
- bsg75 6y ago
  Recurring revenue should be the source of compensation. Obsession with revenue growth is what drives poor staffing decisions: "We can't hire because net new revenue is down", but doing more requires more people.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> Any type of increased leave benefit should be available to all. If that means the pace of developing new things for the business slows down, that’s what that means. I’ve worked at two companies that tried genuinely unlimited vacation policies. The theory was that happy and well-rested employees who lived very fulfilling lives outside of the office would be naturally more motivated to do work for the company that granted them this benefit. For the people who needed flexible schedules (young children at home, caring for aging parents, personal health issues, irregular sleep patterns) this was a success. People who fit this description were overjoyed to find a company willing to accommodate them, and they returned the favor with great, efficient work. On the other hand, there was a subset of people who approached the system like a game: Just how little work could they do without getting fired? How could they claim the easiest tasks for themselves? This becomes a major problem when the workload is shared across a team, where one person’s reduced output becomes an increased burden on someone else. The people gaming the system weren’t doing so at the company’s expense. They were doing so at their team member’s expense. In theory we’d all get the same allowances regardless of the reason. In practice, people are infinitely happier to cover for a hard working coworker who needs an unplanned day off to tend to a sick child than they are to cover for an otherwise unencumbered coworker who simply decided they didn’t feel like working today. You could argue that the business should be allowed to slow down, but when your competitors are not slowing down and your profit margins aren’t infinite, that’s not a sustainable option. Eventually you need to start cutting headcount to compensate for the reduced productivity, which begins to defeat the purpose of catering to the employees. There is no free lunch.

balfirevic 6y ago
> I’ve worked at two companies that tried genuinely unlimited vacation policies. I wish companies would stop using the word "unlimited" for this. It's unspecified vacation policy, not unlimited.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  I debated calling it something else to avoid getting pulled into debates about semantics. I’ll put it this way: The company tried the “As long as you get work done, it doesn’t matter how many hours you work” approach. The problematic part of this equation is that “your work” isn’t a fixed quantity. When we allocate tasks and set weekly goals according to how much people can reasonably accomplish in a week, the “your work” variable becomes a proxy for how much that person is willing to work that week. The loophole is to minimize the number of tasks assigned to yourself while maximizing the perception of how long it took. The honest team members didn’t play this game and naturally ended up around 40 hours, mostly 9-5ish. It was the people gaming the system who played this game the most, obviously, and they tended to claim off hours and weekends as extra time spent working alone, assuming we couldn’t disprove it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]