This is a cool idea. A couple suggestions:
- A lot of companies shut down for the period between Christmas and New Years. That should be a check box.
- There should be user preference for vacation during warm or cold weather seasons.
Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
121–130 of 177 posts
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#122[deleted]
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parent (heh) means they have no choice but to plan their holidays during the days off in the school roster. Tools like these are pretty much pointless if you can take a day off from work, but your kid is required to show up in school.
When I had younger children, we would just pull them from school on occasion. This did require a bit coordinating with homework, teachers etc, but they don't have to be in school. On a more serious note, schools are there to serve you, be assertive about your children being yours, they do not belong to the state (at least in the USA).
Yeah, that doesn't work in a lot of countries. I can be assertive all I want, but if I pull my child out of school without permission, I risk getting a call from the local child protection services and/or getting fined.
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#124Nice idea, but I was a little surprised that now, in November, it would give me a default of 20 days for this year. Maybe a checkbox "starting today/tomorrow" would make it a lot more useful. Additional constraints, as I am a spoiled German. Some days are often half off for the whole company, typically December 24 and 31.
And then obviously it might make sense to "lock in" certain clusters, or ignore them, but in contrast what I wrote above, this would be eye candy.
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#125Fun experiment but in reality people take vacation in the summer due to the season and schools, not because there are more public holidays then. This tool just told me to take all of December off, great time to sit somewhere in the cold.
See, for me it prefers I take nearly the whole month of May off once I go over 15 days of vacation. I think it's very much going for local maxima.
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#126Fun tool! I'd love for the "Edit List" menu to allow me to add company holidays to factor those into the maximization
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#127Love the idea
UK is missing the August bank holiday btw. And for bank holidays the UK is split in two 3 lists: England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#128Ha, this reminds me of a very similar practice I used to engage in with a few buddies when we started work. It was always fun to try to figure out how to optimize the PTO to get the “most days per day”. Nowadays, I find that the best time to take PTO is when I feel like taking PTO. Taking a long weekend when I’m feeling burnt out or disengaged goes much further for me than grinding for the entire first half of th yea…
Depending on your role and environment, certain days are also have more value in my eyes than others. For example, people tend not to push heavy stressful and potentially disaster risk processes on Fridays. They either do these on weird off hours for their target user base at large scales or Mondays in general. Fridays where I’m at tend to be “easier” days people intentionally try to make so for a gentle transition i…
This is key - taking the week between Christmas and New Year's often maximizes PTO days, but everyone does that so that week is quiet, simple, and you can put your head down and get some real work done.
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I had younger children, we would just pull them from school on occasion. This did require a bit coordinating with homework, teachers etc, but they don't have to be in school. On a more serious note, schools are there to serve you, be assertive about your children being yours, they do not belong to the state (at least in the USA).
Yeah, that doesn't work in a lot of countries. I can be assertive all I want, but if I pull my child out of school without permission, I risk getting a call from the local child protection services and/or getting fined.
_Whose_ permission is needed? You're their parent , that's all the "permissions" needed.
Re: Show HN: Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days
#130Office netblocker flagged this as pornography. Of course.