Live data from Hacker News

Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

bbc.co.uk

101–110 of 305 posts

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very subjective statement. The pandemic has been bar none the best period of my life. Increased physical and social distance from other people, no need to emote in public thanks to masks, no need to commute, greater accommodation for non-social options like self-checkouts. My physical and mental health have skyrocketed, and as a result I feel like I've been on vacation for a year and half, despite only taki…

I've never been so envious of happily married people in my life. Being single throughout this ordeal has broken me mentally, particularly at an age (31) where I'm staring down the last couple years of being able to meet someone my age. And the prospects coming out of it are grim. For people with a happy home life, this may have been a good time. But for the isolated, work from home, single people with no long term so…

Hey man, if you ever need someone to shoot the shit with or whatever, shoot me a DM via keybase (https://keybase.io/ojensen) or any of the networks linked there. I'm also pretty okay at several online multiplayer games if that kind of thing floats your boat.

Being alone sucks and an internet friend won't fix that, but maybe it can help :)

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very subjective statement. The pandemic has been bar none the best period of my life. Increased physical and social distance from other people, no need to emote in public thanks to masks, no need to commute, greater accommodation for non-social options like self-checkouts. My physical and mental health have skyrocketed, and as a result I feel like I've been on vacation for a year and half, despite only taki…

I've never been so envious of happily married people in my life. Being single throughout this ordeal has broken me mentally, particularly at an age (31) where I'm staring down the last couple years of being able to meet someone my age. And the prospects coming out of it are grim. For people with a happy home life, this may have been a good time. But for the isolated, work from home, single people with no long term so…

> particularly at an age (31) where I'm staring down the last couple years of being able to meet someone

You still have plenty of time - even to meet someone and have kids. Just focus on getting yourself into a good state - gym, hygiene, activities/hobbies where you can meet people. The rest will come.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#103
post #2

Good. We're taking all of July off at my company. Why? Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break. Somehow we all just seem to expect things to keep going like nothing changed. We all just seem to be expected to gloss over the pains of isolation, potential death and stress of work and life with no separation or boundaries. We made a conscious decision at my place of work t…

> Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us

Not really. Most of my family and friends did fine. Whole bunch of them changed to better jobs due to tech job boom, worked from home, started gardening projects, learnt tennis ect. It was more than awesome for whole bunch of ppl.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because you don't use the app and have no interest in the app or company does not mean you need to have a reductionist outlook on other people's work. Please don’t assume this. Parent comment’s question seems genuine.

> Parent comment’s question seems genuine. Why are you assuming genuineness when the parent mentioned this: 'an app with some basic functionality ' 'I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers' 'Is software dev in such a sad state that you can't deliver ' 'what the heck are they overworking on?' This is enough to know that the parent is dismissing the effort and work of others to the point…

> Why are you assuming genuineness

I’m just assuming the question was asked in good faith :) I’ve seen this topic discussed on HN about many companies and sometimes there are interesting and unexpected reasons for the high headcount.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#105

I would love to know how they are measuring the success of this measure -- and I'm not being cynical. How would one even begin to weigh the tradeoffs of closing business for everyone for an entire week against the increased productivity upon return and something woolly like "improved morale." What if giving everyone a week of twice a year was actually beneficial to the company? Or even quarterly? Many companies alrea…

> Also, this is incredible Marketing for Bumble, as many people are going to share this in Slack channels in an effort to get their companies to do the same.

Agreed and ppl sharing stuff of slack channels are their target customers too.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#106
post #2

Good. We're taking all of July off at my company. Why? Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break. Somehow we all just seem to expect things to keep going like nothing changed. We all just seem to be expected to gloss over the pains of isolation, potential death and stress of work and life with no separation or boundaries. We made a conscious decision at my place of work t…

This is a very subjective statement. The pandemic has been bar none the best period of my life. Increased physical and social distance from other people, no need to emote in public thanks to masks, no need to commute, greater accommodation for non-social options like self-checkouts. My physical and mental health have skyrocketed, and as a result I feel like I've been on vacation for a year and half, despite only taki…

I agree. 2020 was one of the best years of my life.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> particularly at an age (31) where I'm staring down the last couple years of being able to meet someone What? I'm 33, only a few months into my current relationship, and I have to say that dating is so much better at this age than it ever was.

>I'm 33, only a few months into my current relationship, and I have to say that dating is so much better at this age than it ever was. You can get lucky. There are certainly unicorns out there. Or you can date younger, if you're ok with that. But by and large, women and men work on different timelines. And you don't realize this as a man until it hits. The vast majority of women are out of the dating pool by 30. And…

I’m afraid that’s quite a bit of self referential bias. So let me raise your hopes with some of mine: I met my wife when she was 30 and already had 2 kids. We’ve been together for 16 years now, got 2 daughters (so 4 children in total), and are nothing like the individuals we were 16 years ago. We’ve grown together, we’ve grown separately - we’ve changed yearly. Since you’re aware of it now: don’t become an individual with rigid expectations and assumptions. Life is constantly evolving.

Aim to hit 80 and still shake your head at the person you were when you was 70 ;-)

Here’s one of my favorite quotes that feels relevant:

“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played”

You can find love at any age.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal minimum is 20 days for the London office, 22 in Spain, at least that in Moscow. (This is in addition to public holidays.) Bumble probably offer a bit more. In the UK and Spain, that's also the number you must use, I don't know about Russia. (In other words, if you've not used any days by December, you'll be taking all of December off. Or whenever your year wraps round.)

I don't think it is a requirement to take all holiday in the UK? I've definitely not used all of mine in the past.

The Northern Ireland link was easier to find:

> You must take at least four weeks’ holiday a year, so only holiday on top of this can be carried over and then only if your employer gives you permission or if this is permitted by your contract of employment.

I once had a colleague who was given a letter along the lines of "you still haven't used enough holiday; unless you advise us of your preferred days, you will be on holiday from date X to Y".

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/taking-your-holidays

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#109

I never found vacations to be useful for burnout. What does work for me is having a 40 hour work week. If I'm doing the same job for 50+ hrs/week, I start to dread the work. That said, this is drastic, seems like something other than burnout is going on.

whenever i go on vacation the first day or two are fun and relaxing but eventually i spend the rest of the week wishing i was back at work

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#110
post #2

Good. We're taking all of July off at my company. Why? Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break. Somehow we all just seem to expect things to keep going like nothing changed. We all just seem to be expected to gloss over the pains of isolation, potential death and stress of work and life with no separation or boundaries. We made a conscious decision at my place of work t…

Company-wide month off sounds amazing. Would you be willing to name it (would be great PR for them). If not, would you give a sense of geography, industry and size?

Took a look at their bio, then website, they appear to be "The Founder CEO of Micro Services, Inc."
Post reply on HN