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Basecamp Employee Handbook

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Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#141

Post by tptacek »

dejv wrote: post #80
tptacek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 paid weeks parental leave for secondary caregivers puts them in the top tier of "major" companies, as does 16 weeks paid for primary caregivers; that's more than Google offered a few years ago. It's a bit disingenuous to zero in on the unpaid leave policy; what they're saying is, if you need more than 6 weeks, they'll try to work something out with you, and it'll probably be fine. They're being explicit about somet…

As a father of 11 month old, I can't imagine how people can live with just 6 or even 16 weeks of maternity leave. Even after almost one year it feels like care is (at least) full time job, which would be quite hard to outsource. In my EU country you will get up to three years of paid maternity leave per child, so I guess I am just spoiled.

My sister is a public interest lawyer in Chicago who will get a few short weeks of leave --- not 6 --- and then be expected back in court advocating for her clients. It is really difficult for me to connect with fathers who claim that 6 weeks of paternal leave is too onerous.

As a parent to two teenagers, both of whom were born in the early years of startups, I feel your pain --- having children is hard. But if we're going to lose our collective shit about this, can we start by getting mothers in blue-collar jobs 6 weeks of paid leave before we start worrying about six-figure fathers needing more than 6 weeks off?

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#142

Post by yebyen »

madmax108 wrote: post #59
tptacek wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you rephrase the question? What are you wondering?

How useful is it to clean all my work data every time before crossing the border? And if I'm asked why there's no data on my system, should I say I wiped it clean? or that it's a new system? or that it's a personal system?

If you find yourself in the position of answering why there's no data on the system, I think you'd already know the answer.

It takes a pretty invasive search to come to that conclusion. (Unless your definition of wipe is like, cat /dev/zero >/dev/sda, in which case they'd probably ask why it doesn't work pretty shortly after asking you to turn it on, and then you'd get to the conclusion fairly quickly.)

I've never had to deal with an invasive search like this but I've also never gone through customs with a laptop, at all. I think this kind of policy instruction is more useful as a way of simplifying the kinds of questions that General Counsel has to answer, especially in a corporate environment where you have a lot of (nerds) extremely privacy-conscious developers.

That eliminates a whole class of questions. "What should I do if I am asked to unlock my computer by a customs agent?" Let them search anything they want to, if they have legal authority to do it. "What if I have sensitive company data on my work laptop and we've signed XYZ NDA with LMNO Company?" This question and a whole host of related questions will never come up at all if there is a policy against carrying any type of sensitive data through customs.

If you are an employee of such company and you have issues with this policy, there is a pretty good chance it's because you aren't in the habit of keeping great backups. So that's one more great reason for the company to have this policy, as that's information that you'll want to become known and have addressed some time well before it matters.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#143

Post by amyjess »

adamlett wrote: post #132
amyjess wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that sounds horribly oppressive. What that basically means is "For 1 week a month, you can forget about going to the movies, going out to eat, going shopping, or going anywhere where you're not within 5 minutes of a desktop computer. You can probably forget about cooking, too, unless you're willing to start a kitchen fire when you get an alert. Hope you like DoorDash!" I would literally rather work the counter a…

Do you think employees at Taco Bell are payed the same, though?

You literally couldn't pay me enough to work a job where I had to be on call an entire week every month. I mean it. You could offer me nine figures, and I'd still turn it down.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#144

Post by mtberatwork »

SwellJoe wrote: post #113
mtberatwork wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That kind of law would guarantee only quite large business can survive, which is counter-productive if one wants to empower individuals. As others have pointed out, maternity/paternity leave in other Western countries are heavily subsidized through government assistance programs. The costs are not completely shouldered by the business.

So, why are the same folks trash-talking Basecamp for not offering more paid leave, since the US has no such subsidies? Aren't they based in the US? I'm not opposed to such subsidies being implemented in the US.

You are right, the trash talk may be a bit misguided since social safety nets that exist in other countries do not really exist in the US. Family leave, universal health care, worker's rights, etc are huge political issues in the US. I'm not originally from the US but have lived here now for a good while and I still am shocked to this day that these kind of societal benefits are not commonplace as they are elsewhere.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#146

Post by jlark777 »

sotojuan wrote: post #102
dejv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father of 11 month old, I can't imagine how people can live with just 6 or even 16 weeks of maternity leave. Even after almost one year it feels like care is (at least) full time job, which would be quite hard to outsource. In my EU country you will get up to three years of paid maternity leave per child, so I guess I am just spoiled.

Whenever I am ready to have children, I'm going remote. It's far from a perfect solution, but at least I'm close to my children.

Long story short, I first worked flex part-time (handing off time with my then spouse) when my kid was very young, then switched to being in an office when my kid started school and I was a single parent.

I went remote when my kid was in middle/high school because my kid needed me and it was good for me to be around. You can tell a 14 year old to shut up if you're on a conference call...most of the time. Also, I could take a few minutes in morning to get the kid to school (we lived close by to the school) or take a late lunch so my kid could go to after-school practices, classes, etc.

When a kid is in elementary school, it's vastly easier to work in an office. Elementary school is when life will be the most predictable with a kid. When a kid is in middle/high school, that's when you need to be present. For all the reasons you're thinking of. Teenagers are jerks.

All in all, I did pretty well. Kid is at a highly selective college these days.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#147

Post by mediocrejoker »

themcgruff wrote: post #79
toomuchtodo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the job req, it mentions the expectation is for 5 minute response times when you're on call (from alert to being online) and that you're on call one week a month. Is the compensation provided in line with essentially working 24 hours a day for a week once per month? https://basecamp.workable.com/j/A5A189B311 "We have a shared on call responsibility which is about 1 week (5 week days, and 2 weekend days) a…

(I run our Ops team.) The time burden goes down with the more people we have. It's still a burden though -- and our compensation (in theory) reflects that. FWIW We're doing everything we can to make this "work hours only" M-F, which we could solve by hiring tons of people immediately, but we also have other ideals like keeping the company as small as possible that we want to realize too. There's an open and ongoing d…

I think 5 minutes is an ideal target, and not a hard and fast rule, right? Otherwise how could you even go to the bathroom?

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#148

Post by nfriedly »

sotojuan wrote: post #102
dejv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father of 11 month old, I can't imagine how people can live with just 6 or even 16 weeks of maternity leave. Even after almost one year it feels like care is (at least) full time job, which would be quite hard to outsource. In my EU country you will get up to three years of paid maternity leave per child, so I guess I am just spoiled.

Whenever I am ready to have children, I'm going remote. It's far from a perfect solution, but at least I'm close to my children.

As a remote-working father of a 2-year-old, I agree with you. It's not perfect, but it's definitely better than being gone for 8+ hours per day.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#149

Post by [deleted] »

themcgruff wrote: post #79
toomuchtodo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the job req, it mentions the expectation is for 5 minute response times when you're on call (from alert to being online) and that you're on call one week a month. Is the compensation provided in line with essentially working 24 hours a day for a week once per month? https://basecamp.workable.com/j/A5A189B311 "We have a shared on call responsibility which is about 1 week (5 week days, and 2 weekend days) a…

(I run our Ops team.) The time burden goes down with the more people we have. It's still a burden though -- and our compensation (in theory) reflects that. FWIW We're doing everything we can to make this "work hours only" M-F, which we could solve by hiring tons of people immediately, but we also have other ideals like keeping the company as small as possible that we want to realize too. There's an open and ongoing d…

[deleted]

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#150

Post by anigbrowl »

bluetidepro wrote: post #3

> Sabbatical - Every three years, employees are eligible to take a one-month-long sabbatical. Just give a heads-up preferably three months in advance, so we can coordinate the work-load accordingly. I wish this was more common in the tech industry. I know for other industries this is basically a standard thing, but it seems like many tech companies don't do this.

They won't until you start demanding it, and walk away if you don't get what you ask for.
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