4 ms·

I have a pretty awful view of this: In the less complex jobs, they struggle to get things like paternity leave and time off. We have those. We should be look

I have a pretty awful view of this: In the less complex jobs, they struggle to get things like paternity leave and time off. We have those. We should be looking at those ridiculous things we think we don't deserve and organizing to get them. We could be a leading example for the industries that come behind us. Paid time off is common in softwareland. Let's make it mandatory "you must take 4 weeks off minimum a year". We know "unlimited time off" is a guilt-tripping farce. If 1 software dev can add billions of dollars of value to a company, we should be getting these ridiculous things. These things that seem like coddling us. Maybe even a formula for "if i added x% profit, I deserve y% of that" I think hollywood is ahead of us on compensation formulas imo.

hakfoo 3y ago
We can't do Hollywood style compensation because we rely on actually functional computers which are obviously incapable of Hollywood math. More seriously, we need to make sure the entire team is getting the goodies. Even your fairy-tale 1000x developers depend on good ops/infrastructure, support and QA and clever management; if they can only hire on McStaff warm bodies, they're massively hobbling those "ridiculously compensated" devs.
xethos 3y ago
> We know "unlimited time off" is a guilt-tripping farce Alternately, treat minimum time off like accountants. One cannot cook the books alone indefinitely if there's a week you're not there and somebody else has to do your job. Similarly, only having one guy that can fix specific issues that nobody else can touch means your sprawling Fortune 500 has a bus factor of 1 - which even executives can see is not smart business.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >One cannot cook the books alone indefinitely if there's a week you're not there and somebody else has to do your job. Oh well, they deal with that when they layoff people to get 2% lower expenses for earning's call. Why should I care about a bus factor if the company doesn't?
pandaman 3y ago
You are not selling unions very well: why would I want mandatory time off? If I want time off I will take it, my coworkers taking or not taking it does not concern me a single bit. More so, being forced to take time off is not a benefit for me, at my current work there is no PTO accrual so I feel forced to take time off and it's not ideal, other benefits are good enough to outweigh this but with everything equal I'd choose some place where I could cash out time off over the one where I can accumulate multiple months of time off over the one where I have to use-it-or-lose-it. There are many such policies in a union, ask anybody who is a member of one and nobody is happy with all the policies of the union. Not to mention people who want to start a career and cannot even join the union (hello SAG) and cannot get a job because they are not in the union.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >why would I want mandatory time off? because even with "unlimited time off" it is a herculean task to get a long vacation approved. And without those plans, accrued time off is lucky to hit 2 weeks a year. So I have to not be sick or have emergencies for 2 years straight to get what is normal in the EU? It's easier to force mandatory vacation than go through all that. US as a whole has horrible days off policies and I'd happily take some mandatory vacation. You are even free to use it to research stuff if you really want to get ahead or whatever. > I'd choose some place where I could cash out time off over the one where I can accumulate multiple months of time off over the one where I have to use-it-or-lose-it. Where are you where you can accumulate "months of time off"? Every plan I've had had max accruals of anywhere from 14-28 days. You literally hit a point where you have to use it, and this is after multiple years of accrual, not a single year.
  - pandaman 3y ago
    There are alternatives I listed, the choice is not between "unlimited time off" and "mandatory". "Unlimited time off" would probably stand beneath "use-it-or-lose-it" in my evaluation because with the latter I'd be able to collect my PTO balance upon resignation. >And without those plans, accrued time off is lucky to hit 2 weeks a year. I never had less than 20 days (4 weeks) PTO, not counting holidays and Christmas lockdown and since I did not bother to negotiate any special PTO, I believe thousands upon thousands of my coworkers had the same luck. >So I have to not be sick or have emergencies for 2 years straight to get what is normal in the EU? I believe if you took a SWE job for what the normal in EU you could have also negotiated 10 weeks of PTO on top of that. >It's easier to force mandatory vacation than go through all that. It might be easier that that, whatever that is, but it's not desirable for me. >Where are you where you can accumulate "months of time off"? In the last TNC where I worked, I cashed out over two months of PTO (it capped over 40 days, 380 hours or some strange number like that) when I resigned. >Every plan I've had had max accruals of anywhere from 14-28 days So? If PTO is so important to you just make it a condition of your employment, it's just money for the employer, take more PTO, take less other comp. It's as same as if it had been made mandatory except people who are not interested in long vacations can have cash instead.

hakfoo 3y ago

We can't do Hollywood style compensation because we rely on actually functional computers which are obviously incapable of Hollywood math. More seriously, we need to make sure the entire team is getting the goodies. Even your fairy-tale 1000x developers depend on good ops/infrastructure, support and QA and clever management; if they can only hire on McStaff warm bodies, they're massively hobbling those "ridiculously compensated" devs.

xethos 3y ago

> We know "unlimited time off" is a guilt-tripping farce Alternately, treat minimum time off like accountants. One cannot cook the books alone indefinitely if there's a week you're not there and somebody else has to do your job. Similarly, only having one guy that can fix specific issues that nobody else can touch means your sprawling Fortune 500 has a bus factor of 1 - which even executives can see is not smart business.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
>One cannot cook the books alone indefinitely if there's a week you're not there and somebody else has to do your job. Oh well, they deal with that when they layoff people to get 2% lower expenses for earning's call. Why should I care about a bus factor if the company doesn't?

pandaman 3y ago

You are not selling unions very well: why would I want mandatory time off? If I want time off I will take it, my coworkers taking or not taking it does not concern me a single bit. More so, being forced to take time off is not a benefit for me, at my current work there is no PTO accrual so I feel forced to take time off and it's not ideal, other benefits are good enough to outweigh this but with everything equal I'd choose some place where I could cash out time off over the one where I can accumulate multiple months of time off over the one where I have to use-it-or-lose-it. There are many such policies in a union, ask anybody who is a member of one and nobody is happy with all the policies of the union. Not to mention people who want to start a career and cannot even join the union (hello SAG) and cannot get a job because they are not in the union.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
>why would I want mandatory time off? because even with "unlimited time off" it is a herculean task to get a long vacation approved. And without those plans, accrued time off is lucky to hit 2 weeks a year. So I have to not be sick or have emergencies for 2 years straight to get what is normal in the EU? It's easier to force mandatory vacation than go through all that. US as a whole has horrible days off policies and I'd happily take some mandatory vacation. You are even free to use it to research stuff if you really want to get ahead or whatever. > I'd choose some place where I could cash out time off over the one where I can accumulate multiple months of time off over the one where I have to use-it-or-lose-it. Where are you where you can accumulate "months of time off"? Every plan I've had had max accruals of anywhere from 14-28 days. You literally hit a point where you have to use it, and this is after multiple years of accrual, not a single year.
- pandaman 3y ago
  There are alternatives I listed, the choice is not between "unlimited time off" and "mandatory". "Unlimited time off" would probably stand beneath "use-it-or-lose-it" in my evaluation because with the latter I'd be able to collect my PTO balance upon resignation. >And without those plans, accrued time off is lucky to hit 2 weeks a year. I never had less than 20 days (4 weeks) PTO, not counting holidays and Christmas lockdown and since I did not bother to negotiate any special PTO, I believe thousands upon thousands of my coworkers had the same luck. >So I have to not be sick or have emergencies for 2 years straight to get what is normal in the EU? I believe if you took a SWE job for what the normal in EU you could have also negotiated 10 weeks of PTO on top of that. >It's easier to force mandatory vacation than go through all that. It might be easier that that, whatever that is, but it's not desirable for me. >Where are you where you can accumulate "months of time off"? In the last TNC where I worked, I cashed out over two months of PTO (it capped over 40 days, 380 hours or some strange number like that) when I resigned. >Every plan I've had had max accruals of anywhere from 14-28 days So? If PTO is so important to you just make it a condition of your employment, it's just money for the employer, take more PTO, take less other comp. It's as same as if it had been made mandatory except people who are not interested in long vacations can have cash instead.