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Basecamp Employee Handbook

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Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#181

Post by ezyjules »

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.

The difference in Europe is that the UK, Swedish or German government subsidies a great deal of that one year. In the US, the company pays for it all, and on top of it perhaps around $2,000 a month for a family health insurance policy for that employee so they can get the birth and emergency care paid for. Again, this is mostly free outside the US. You're hitting up on some societal grade rather than company policy issues. I feel you though, being from the UK and living in the US, it is just insanity. So little care for mothers and parents.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#182

Post by balls187 »

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.

Good luck with that...

Yesterday I was working the afternoon at home, my son barges into my office and takes over my laptop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Wkx4mMfFE

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#183

Post by mahyarm »

amyjess wrote: post #85
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…

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…

I don't work at basecamp, but in practice it's pressing the ack button on pager duty on my phone, looking at the alert metrics to see if it's something I should worry about immediately and if it is and I'm not available, I would go ask someone else to try to deal with it. Oncall is triage, you usually ping the person actually responsible for it.

And if I am surprisingly indisposed it would fall back to everyone else. If I need to go to the doctor, then I would swap times with someone else. No one has gotten fired for letting an alert through, just minorly teased the next day.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#184

Post by ezyjules »

tptacek wrote: post #172
jorvi wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that train of logic we should be fighting for at least equal paternity leave for the average dad before there can be any discussion about more maternity leave..

There is no logic to that whatsoever. But since Basecamp doesn't make that distinction --- it has "primary" and "secondary" "caregiver" --- I don't think we need to argue this point.

It is illegal (discriminatory) to have any policy based on gender. As such, you cannot have a maternity or paternity policy. Thus primary - the parent of the two who will leave their role temporarily as the main caregiver whilst the other partner continues to work OR secondary - the other.

Note though that a health insurance policy in the US will cover maybe 60% of 8 weeks of salary for the birth mother under a disability benefit claim (no joke). If a father becomes the primary caregiver, then the company is paying 100% of that time off, without support. So offering equal carries a cost and guarantees that all your employees, male or female, if they are having a kid will take that time and incur that cost, rather than a % gender of your workforce. All things you need to factor in and cost into a business, especially a small one.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#185

Post by fastbeef »

tptacek wrote: post #138
fastbeef wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not paid for by businesses, it's paid by the government. It's pays out up to 80% of your income up to a limit and some companies chose to fill in the final gap as well.

It is paid for by businesses as well, in that every person who takes that leave potentially creates another headcount requirement to fill the gap. Something between the European standard expectation of a year's leave and the American top-end norm of 12/6 primary/secondary is probably the right answer here. But this is all a tangent. It is totally unreasonable to criticize Basecamp for policies that are on the high si…

Just to be clear, this isn't some experimental new thing that the Nordic countries are trying, this has been in place for well over 40 years - It. Works.

Does it create a suboptimal situation at the workplace. Sure, sometimes. However, since the management probably have taken long parental leaves themselves they are very understanding and willing to accommodate the next generation of parents.

In short - troublesome in the short run for certain companies, very beneficial for society as a whole in the long run.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#186

Post by cpach »

dejv wrote: post #158
tptacek wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'r…

I guess my wording was wrong, there was no worrying about fathers at all. I just can't wrap my head about how all the people are doing it. You can't just leave that small kid somewhere, is there some way of taking unpaid leave or are people just quit the job? I don't know.

I’m guessing that women quitting their job in order to take care of their kids is probably quite common in the US. I also think that nannies are more common there.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#187

Post by mahyarm »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #177
philip1209 wrote: post #2

Wow - they advise employees to remove all company data from devices, leave the company 1password account, disable touch ID, and put their attorney on speed dial every time they go through customs.

Yeah - https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/internation... - ouch. It feels like this has changed a lot in a very small number of years. Does anyone know how common it is to actually be put through this rigmorole?

I'm guessing very uncommon, but still a possibility.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#188

Post by rahoulb »

Everyone's going on about parental leave.

To me the big thing is 37 Signals spent years railing against companies with their handbooks and written down procedures. Calling them rituals doesn't change the fact that they have processes

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#189

Post by amyjess »

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…

> 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.

And this is what I can't stand about small businesses. Nothing makes me run from a company faster than a company saying they're committed to their ideals over what's best for everyone. Small businesses, for whatever reason, are the ones who are most likely to shout "Honor before reason!" and shoot themselves, their employees, and their customers in the foot. You don't see megacorps doing this.

What's best for everyone is to hire "tons of people immediately". If your ideals conflict with that, then you need to jettison your ideals.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#190

Post by mahyarm »

rdslw wrote: post #160

I find this discussion of "benefits" fascinating. In Europe, standard in IT companies (Central Europe, mind you), is: * 25 fullt paid days (or more) of vacation every year (no need to call it a sabatical and limit it to once a three years), not including national holidays etc. * one year of (or more) paid maternity leave (or more), while second parent gets few weeks (two at my country) * free gym membership (so I can…

Other than the vacation and parental leave time spans, which is mostly gov't law in many cases and not the company, that is pretty close to what it is in the USA.
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