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

bbc.co.uk

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

#151

Post by tolbish »

dharmab wrote: post #146

Adobe does two of these every year, one in winter around the holidays and one in July. From my perspective as an individual contributor, there are a few advantages: - With no feature/project work that week, there is zero pressure to check email or slack. - Teams are forced to build systems that are automated, resilient and documented enough that most of the staff won't need to be contacted during the shutdown week. -…

I wonder if it would be substantially more effective to prevent burnout by having shorter work days or work weeks.

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

#152

Post by bern4444 »

allochthon wrote: post #138

I've been working remotely for about five years, now, and I love it. I've always been curious about working at Twitter and Google, and I was vaguely hoping that they'd start looking at full-time remote hires across their engineering orgs. I value remote work more than I do the possibility of working at Twitter or Google, so it is a little wistfully that I realize I might never follow up on that curiosity.

Twitter allows for full time remote. They were one of the first companies to announce it with COVID [0]

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/01/twitter...

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

#153

Post by hh3k0 »

bin_bash wrote: post #66
hh3k0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no need to emote in public thanks to masks I will miss that. I liked not being told that I look angry or that I should smile sometimes.

I’m curious, are you female? I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that unless I was unbelievably angry. Like maybe once or twice in my entire adult life.

I'm male but hear such remarks ~1--3 times any given workweek.

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

#154

Post by lotsofpulp »

crowbahr wrote: post #130
NationalPark wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but NYC was hit hard relatively early on, and at the time there was a great deal of fear and uncertainty, especially because of the perception that the administration at the time had indicated it’s general hostility toward people in “blue” cities. People didn’t have the time or perhaps the perspective to step back and read whatever pre prints may have been available.

I appreciate your empathy here. This advisory wasn't even available in March or April of 2020: there was nothing. The URL has only existed since April of 2021.

It says updated Apr 2021. I certainly recall reading that COVID transmission via surfaces was minimal sometime in 2020, earlier rather than later.

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

#155

Post by MattGaiser »

silicon2401 wrote: post #22
asim wrote: 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 wouldn’t go as far as you, but I agree. Life got stripped of its tedious socially required games.

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

#156

Post by theptip »

joegahona wrote: post #4

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…

Just to note, you can regularly ask your employees how they feel, and with enough employees get a significant measurement. So maybe they can measure the “woolly” morale impact of this. Tools like Lattice make it easy to do a “pulse” survey for this purpose.

Also the great thing about doing this twice a year is you get two experiments so you can start to be confident it’s not just “Christmas makes employees 10% happier” if you also measured a similar bump in the summer break. (Obviously numbers made up for the sake of example.)

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

#157

Post by aweiland »

DrBazza wrote: post #49
crowbahr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been WFH for 4 years now and thoroughly enjoy it. I enjoy isolation, I love the intensity of coding that I can get done. I'm generally more introverted. That doesn't make the pandemic fun and rainbows. It's still been psychologically the most difficult time for me because I live in NYC. Walking the dog twice a day on ghost streets empty of any pedestrians, devoid of the hum of traffic and hearing nothing but the…

> Rubbing down the door knob with bleach. This article [1] implies the chance of catching COVID-19 from contact surfaces is 1 in 10,000 *at best* under lab conditions, and negligible at best. You're more likely to be struck by lightning or hit by a car. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-r...

Early on in the pandemic not a lot was known, so many of us took every precaution we could.

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

#158

Post by volkk »

dragosmocrii wrote: post #133
ramesh31 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and aren't living in some rural area (or san francisco lol) That was a good laugh. I think in retrospect spending my 20s in San Francisco had a lot to do with now being single in my 30s.

Why is that? What's wrong with SF for dating? (just curious)

probably because its very heavily skewed towards tech dudes

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

#159

Post by dec0dedab0de »

tolbish wrote: post #151
dharmab wrote: post #146

Adobe does two of these every year, one in winter around the holidays and one in July. From my perspective as an individual contributor, there are a few advantages: - With no feature/project work that week, there is zero pressure to check email or slack. - Teams are forced to build systems that are automated, resilient and documented enough that most of the staff won't need to be contacted during the shutdown week. -…

I wonder if it would be substantially more effective to prevent burnout by having shorter work days or work weeks.

I think it would be but I also would like forced time off as well. As well as forced socializing with team mates. And a sabbatical every 5 years or so.

But if I can find a job with full health benefits that lets me work three days a week, I'm going for it. Heck, that is the best argument in favor of universal healthcare. It would help unemployment, because way more people would be working part time.

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

#160

Post by handmodel »

gpm wrote: post #15
joegahona wrote: post #4

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…

Some things can't really be measured numerically, I think this is one. I think you do things like talking to people afterwards and see if they think it was a good idea, looking at attrition rates and try and guess if it moved them, looking at whatever productivity metrics you have, and at the end you probably have a gut feeling on whether or not it was a good idea... That's probably the best that you get.

I think the argument would be that this actually could be measured short term (probably all the staff will say they feel better in two weeks) but if in Q3 the CEO realizes they need to roll out some features before a Q4 quarterly call then what could have been a 12 week project will turn into a cramped 10 week project.
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