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I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. My experience has been that the constant "on" state wears you down. Th

by lumost 3y ago

I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. My experience has been that the constant "on" state wears you down. The only way to get to "off" is to be OOTO officially for a week+. Add in parental responsibilities and you really don't have any headspace for yourself. Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to recharge from the constant 24/7 rush.

ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
>Add in parental responsibilities Out of curiosity, how many of your coworkers have kids? I have 3, and I've always found it a bit ominous that even when I'm on large teams (8+) I'm typically still the only person with kids. So far: 1. job 1, team of 8, only 1 other IC had kids 2. job 2, team of 10, nobody else had kids 3. current job, team of 8, nobody else has kids. If you expand it to the suborganization we're in, you get ~16 people and only one other person has kids. And it's not like these teams are mostly college new grads or anything, it's usually people like me in their 30's. I always wonder how much of a disadvantage it is that other people get to clock out of work, enjoy an evening, sleep through the night, and then wake up and go to work. Whereas a parent is going to clock out of work and clock in to parenting, and then when it's kid bedtime, you finally get 2-3 hours to fit in personal time that's usually still not "you" time but is you spending time with your partner. I'd never trade my kids for my career, and I find the time I spend with them incredibly fulfilling, but it's definitely extra load. And I do depend on being good at my job to help feed them and stuff. And I did opt into this, so it's hard to say it's "unfair". But I feel like our society doesn't need more reasons not to have kids given fertility is already below replacement rate.
- bbbobbb 3y ago
  Fertility is definitely not below replacement rate. Maybe in western countries. You find it hard to say it's unfair but you seem to hint to it. I don't think it is in the slightest. Also you sound like a software developer from the US so you likely can afford to work say 80% and "recoup" some of that free time.
  - ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
    Yes, I meant in the West, where much of the high-tech work the article is about. Well of course I feel it's unfair at some level! That is indeed why I made the comment. Assuming we want society to continue, someone has to have kids. And while of course we don't want to force individual people to have kids, we should (again assuming we do want humanity to continue) probably try to achieve some kind of balance to where large swathes of people don't self-select out of having kids due to economic/career reasons. And if the working spouse tries to shed home responsibilities to help them focus on their career, this simply promotes inequity, both sex-wise (since more women are stay-at-home spouses than men) and class-wise (wealthier people will be able to hire additional help, while poorer people will not).
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Children seem like a liability in almost every aspect. I'm honestly a bit surprised when anyone mentions they have/want them, and I'm not even a type A/career climber, who I would think would see them as even more of a liability.
  - ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
    They're amazing. They're a lot of work, and a lot of that work is at odd hours ("3am: dad I'm scared of the wind also I accidentally peed on the floor") and/or highly frustrating ("me: son, please stop leaning out that window. son, balancing precariously halfway out his playhouse window: why. me: because if you fall out of it, it will hurt. 2 mins later: falls out of window and it hurts.") (also - feeding kids of any age). But it's so worth it. My oldest is old enough to be playing with legos, and teaching him how to follow the instructions, and then seeing him both follow the instructions and then also deviate from them sometimes with his own creativity without compromising the rest of the build (well, usually) is just amazing to see happen. And then take this sentiment ^ and apply it to practically every facet of life. Having kids is about finding magic and bonding in both everyday things, like watering the garden together, and in the once-in-a-lifetime things like going on a vacation to someplace. But of course it's not for everyone! It is really hard work and it takes a certain maturity and disposition for selflessness to be good at it. So I of course respect people who want to opt-out. But - setting magic aside - so much of our economy is literally predicated on populations either continuously growing or at the very least not shrinking that we need to be careful about fertility rates. I think we can look to Japan to see what happens when you make your society too much of an economic rat race: people either solely focus on it or drop out of it, and both will cause fertility rates to drop. A good step in the right direction here is that it's probably in the interest of us all that people who want to have kids are enabled to do so. (And indeed we have some policies like this already - public schools, child tax credits, etc). And note that my concern about none of my coworkers having kids is mostly in this vein ^: it seems to me like it's a bad sign if a bunch of people with ample means are all still deciding not to have kids despite nominally having the funding to bankroll it.
    - throwaway675309 3y ago
- madduci 3y ago
  Do you really have 2-3 hours after kid bedtime? By the time my kids are asleep, it's already late and have no left time to do anything more than going to sleep myself
  - ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
    It varies a lot - sometimes the kids are in bed by 8 and I stay up till 11. Sometimes they're not in bed till 9 and I stay up till 12 and regret it the next day. I suspect as my kids get older (they're 4.5, 2.9, and 0.8 years old atm) that will shift later and later as they converge towards more 8-9 hours of sleep per night. I'm already starting to see it with the 4.5-year-old who will often stay up until 10ish playing in his room. Probably going to need to start allowing him a later bedtime.
- lumost 3y ago
  I did find that it's important to work on teams where folks have kids. If you're politely vocal about the time blocks... it helps. But honestly I've had to use the 8PM-11PM slots for work with folks on the west coast. I treat is as a red flag if the management/other senior engineers don't have kids. It worked alright for about 1.5 years, but ... I need to get more PTO to sustain this type of work load.
pyrale 3y ago
> I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. As an EU person, the existence of places where people never stop working is mind boggling.
- icedchai 3y ago
  I suspect many of these comments are from people in the 20% that actually do most of the work. There are plenty of jobs where people almost never start working. I have friends who've worked corporate jobs doing little-to-nothing for years at a time, collecting 6 figure salaries until the move on to the next gig.
- n_ary 3y ago
  Unfortunately, I have yet to find a place as such in EU. In my 11 years of career, I have yet to see myself or my team ever stopping. While I hopped several jobs, everywhere is same, super ambitious people working non-stop and then get stern e-mail from HR that their previous year’s whole annual leave is due and must be taken before March 31. Fortunately, I’ve seen within same org, teams which are always on vacation or are collecting pay with 4h coffee breaks and 2h morning breakfast, but sadly I never managed to land into one of those teams. The “non-stop” kind is majority in EU, but somehow we like to tout the “wow must be US thing”. At this point, I believe these comments are coming from some minority group from a very specific country in EU.
Aurornis 3y ago
> Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to recharge from the constant 24/7 rush. At least 1 week of vacation per quarter (in addition to normal holiday time) has been fairly standard for every senior-level tech job I’ve had in a long time. I had one job with a generous vacation policy that resulted in some people taking 8-10 weeks of vacation or more per year, in addition to normal holidays. They had a great time, but honestly it started to become a burden for everyone else to work around them. Toward the end it was getting bad enough that some projects were basically stalled because you could never get everyone on the project to be available at the same time. We’d push the project forward as much as we could, then wait a week for another round of people to come back to work, then push it forward as much as we could while working around the rest of the people on vacation this week, then repeat. It would have been okay if it was a lifestyle business where delivering quickly didn’t really matter much, but it was a less established business where we were slowly running out money. They tried hiring more people but that only increased the burn rate. The end game was that they clamped down hard on vacation time. A lot of the people who were only there for the lax vacation schedules left. Ironically, it was more relaxed to actually do work there after it became more predictable and you could depend on people actually being available to work. There’s probably a good middle ground but it’s not as easy as just letting everyone take a lot of vacation all the time.
- lumost 3y ago
  I saw HubSpot (a former employer) started turning short weeks into a "week of rest". Seemed like a great idea, just synchronize everyone's vacations so that no one plans work for that week.
  - dshah 3y ago
    I'm from HubSpot (I'm one of the founders). This was our second year doing the "Week of Rest". It was an experiment we ran last year. It ended up being a good idea and works well.

by lumost 3y ago

ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago

>Add in parental responsibilities Out of curiosity, how many of your coworkers have kids? I have 3, and I've always found it a bit ominous that even when I'm on large teams (8+) I'm typically still the only person with kids. So far: 1. job 1, team of 8, only 1 other IC had kids 2. job 2, team of 10, nobody else had kids 3. current job, team of 8, nobody else has kids. If you expand it to the suborganization we're in, you get ~16 people and only one other person has kids. And it's not like these teams are mostly college new grads or anything, it's usually people like me in their 30's. I always wonder how much of a disadvantage it is that other people get to clock out of work, enjoy an evening, sleep through the night, and then wake up and go to work. Whereas a parent is going to clock out of work and clock in to parenting, and then when it's kid bedtime, you finally get 2-3 hours to fit in personal time that's usually still not "you" time but is you spending time with your partner. I'd never trade my kids for my career, and I find the time I spend with them incredibly fulfilling, but it's definitely extra load. And I do depend on being good at my job to help feed them and stuff. And I did opt into this, so it's hard to say it's "unfair". But I feel like our society doesn't need more reasons not to have kids given fertility is already below replacement rate.

bbbobbb 3y ago
Fertility is definitely not below replacement rate. Maybe in western countries. You find it hard to say it's unfair but you seem to hint to it. I don't think it is in the slightest. Also you sound like a software developer from the US so you likely can afford to work say 80% and "recoup" some of that free time.
- ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
  Yes, I meant in the West, where much of the high-tech work the article is about. Well of course I feel it's unfair at some level! That is indeed why I made the comment. Assuming we want society to continue, someone has to have kids. And while of course we don't want to force individual people to have kids, we should (again assuming we do want humanity to continue) probably try to achieve some kind of balance to where large swathes of people don't self-select out of having kids due to economic/career reasons. And if the working spouse tries to shed home responsibilities to help them focus on their career, this simply promotes inequity, both sex-wise (since more women are stay-at-home spouses than men) and class-wise (wealthier people will be able to hire additional help, while poorer people will not).
hotpotamus 3y ago
Children seem like a liability in almost every aspect. I'm honestly a bit surprised when anyone mentions they have/want them, and I'm not even a type A/career climber, who I would think would see them as even more of a liability.
- ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
  They're amazing. They're a lot of work, and a lot of that work is at odd hours ("3am: dad I'm scared of the wind also I accidentally peed on the floor") and/or highly frustrating ("me: son, please stop leaning out that window. son, balancing precariously halfway out his playhouse window: why. me: because if you fall out of it, it will hurt. 2 mins later: falls out of window and it hurts.") (also - feeding kids of any age). But it's so worth it. My oldest is old enough to be playing with legos, and teaching him how to follow the instructions, and then seeing him both follow the instructions and then also deviate from them sometimes with his own creativity without compromising the rest of the build (well, usually) is just amazing to see happen. And then take this sentiment ^ and apply it to practically every facet of life. Having kids is about finding magic and bonding in both everyday things, like watering the garden together, and in the once-in-a-lifetime things like going on a vacation to someplace. But of course it's not for everyone! It is really hard work and it takes a certain maturity and disposition for selflessness to be good at it. So I of course respect people who want to opt-out. But - setting magic aside - so much of our economy is literally predicated on populations either continuously growing or at the very least not shrinking that we need to be careful about fertility rates. I think we can look to Japan to see what happens when you make your society too much of an economic rat race: people either solely focus on it or drop out of it, and both will cause fertility rates to drop. A good step in the right direction here is that it's probably in the interest of us all that people who want to have kids are enabled to do so. (And indeed we have some policies like this already - public schools, child tax credits, etc). And note that my concern about none of my coworkers having kids is mostly in this vein ^: it seems to me like it's a bad sign if a bunch of people with ample means are all still deciding not to have kids despite nominally having the funding to bankroll it.
  - throwaway675309 3y ago
madduci 3y ago
Do you really have 2-3 hours after kid bedtime? By the time my kids are asleep, it's already late and have no left time to do anything more than going to sleep myself
- ye-olde-sysrq 3y ago
  It varies a lot - sometimes the kids are in bed by 8 and I stay up till 11. Sometimes they're not in bed till 9 and I stay up till 12 and regret it the next day. I suspect as my kids get older (they're 4.5, 2.9, and 0.8 years old atm) that will shift later and later as they converge towards more 8-9 hours of sleep per night. I'm already starting to see it with the 4.5-year-old who will often stay up until 10ish playing in his room. Probably going to need to start allowing him a later bedtime.
lumost 3y ago
I did find that it's important to work on teams where folks have kids. If you're politely vocal about the time blocks... it helps. But honestly I've had to use the 8PM-11PM slots for work with folks on the west coast. I treat is as a red flag if the management/other senior engineers don't have kids. It worked alright for about 1.5 years, but ... I need to get more PTO to sustain this type of work load.

pyrale 3y ago

> I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. As an EU person, the existence of places where people never stop working is mind boggling.

icedchai 3y ago
I suspect many of these comments are from people in the 20% that actually do most of the work. There are plenty of jobs where people almost never start working. I have friends who've worked corporate jobs doing little-to-nothing for years at a time, collecting 6 figure salaries until the move on to the next gig.
n_ary 3y ago
Unfortunately, I have yet to find a place as such in EU. In my 11 years of career, I have yet to see myself or my team ever stopping. While I hopped several jobs, everywhere is same, super ambitious people working non-stop and then get stern e-mail from HR that their previous year’s whole annual leave is due and must be taken before March 31. Fortunately, I’ve seen within same org, teams which are always on vacation or are collecting pay with 4h coffee breaks and 2h morning breakfast, but sadly I never managed to land into one of those teams. The “non-stop” kind is majority in EU, but somehow we like to tout the “wow must be US thing”. At this point, I believe these comments are coming from some minority group from a very specific country in EU.

Aurornis 3y ago

> Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to recharge from the constant 24/7 rush. At least 1 week of vacation per quarter (in addition to normal holiday time) has been fairly standard for every senior-level tech job I’ve had in a long time. I had one job with a generous vacation policy that resulted in some people taking 8-10 weeks of vacation or more per year, in addition to normal holidays. They had a great time, but honestly it started to become a burden for everyone else to work around them. Toward the end it was getting bad enough that some projects were basically stalled because you could never get everyone on the project to be available at the same time. We’d push the project forward as much as we could, then wait a week for another round of people to come back to work, then push it forward as much as we could while working around the rest of the people on vacation this week, then repeat. It would have been okay if it was a lifestyle business where delivering quickly didn’t really matter much, but it was a less established business where we were slowly running out money. They tried hiring more people but that only increased the burn rate. The end game was that they clamped down hard on vacation time. A lot of the people who were only there for the lax vacation schedules left. Ironically, it was more relaxed to actually do work there after it became more predictable and you could depend on people actually being available to work. There’s probably a good middle ground but it’s not as easy as just letting everyone take a lot of vacation all the time.

lumost 3y ago
I saw HubSpot (a former employer) started turning short weeks into a "week of rest". Seemed like a great idea, just synchronize everyone's vacations so that no one plans work for that week.
- dshah 3y ago
  I'm from HubSpot (I'm one of the founders). This was our second year doing the "Week of Rest". It was an experiment we ran last year. It ended up being a good idea and works well.