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Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

blogs.balsamiq.com

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Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#61

Post by eavc »

fmavituna wrote: post #45
nhashem wrote: post #23

For policies like this, your company culture and the examples leadership sets are going to dictate exactly how something like this, or anything else not explicit, is followed. If leadership often takes vacation and doesn't do more than basic email checking, if that, then employees will feel comfortable doing the same and enjoy this policy over your standard "you accumulate 5 hours of PTO per pay period." If leadershi…

It's about the size of the company and quality of the communication between the management and team. If your dialogue was better with the CEO then you wouldn't feel that way or just ask him/her easily.

If only people were rational enough in their behaviors and efficient enough in their communication for that to really be the silver bullet.

In a small company, there are rarely such neatly demarcated lines. Regardless of how well you communicate with your boss about arranging to be done earlier, you will feel the eyes of your coworkers when you head out the door.

edit: A notable exception being results-focused cultures that emphasize flexibility as a company value. If punching the clock is an expectation, it's hard to manage to be on a shifted schedule without there being at least a twinge of resentment when you head out earlier.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#62

Post by sdizdar »

I'm not sure, but there are a few horror stories here in Bay Area about policy like this (you go for a two week vacation (no email, no phone) and you got terminated when you come back).

The problem is that eventually the policy like this will create a backlash and burn out. However, it will be hard to find why ... As of now, this policy will work because balsamiq is cool and hot. But after your company is not a startup anymore ('running repeatable business mode') you need to find something which will be more predictable. If nothing you might want to recruit a more senior people which do have a family. And then you will get into this "it is hard to find talent" bs.

Also if this is really a policy, why not to accrue minimum vacations anyway?

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#64

Post by hotlikearobot »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #28
qbleep wrote: post #16

I would much prefer a generous but explicit vacation allowance. I feel that with the "take some!" vacation policy social pressure would prevent some from taking as much as they really want to. It's going to boil down to everyone implicitly deciding what's a fair amount and that will become the unwritten rule. I'd rather everyone just decide what's a fair amount and write it down. That being said, a fair amount is def…

It's one of the things that's always stunned me about the US - the 10 days vacation a year being a relatively common thing. European law states a minimum of 20 days (which can include public holidays though often / usually won't). In the UK where I work 20 - 25 days plus 8 or 9 days public holiday is the norm, and 28 - 30 days plus public holidays not unheard of. I seriously don't understand how people don't just go…

I think the answer is that most people do go a little mad.

I know I do.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#65

Post by dkokelley »

diolpah wrote: post #27

"We don't have deadlines" What? How is this even possible? Even if one doesn't set internal deadlines, I can't imagine avoiding integration commitments with any number of third parties, whether they be strategic partners, clients/customers, api/feed integrators, etc.

I wondered about that too, and then I thought that it could be a very smart idea in the right circumstances.

While working with external parties who expect things done by a certain date prevents the 'no deadlines' policy from working (by definition), we have observed that typically work expands to fill the time allotted for it. This means that from an internal product development point of view, telling your team that your product should be ready by Q3 of next year will almost guarantee that the product will be done by Q3 or later (with copious amounts of scrambling as Q3 approaches). When you eliminate the deadline, workers (I would argue) are more likely to complete the task in the actual time it SHOULD take, instead of letting the job expand to fill the deadline. (You could argue that instead workers will be lazy and take longer than it should take, thus demonstrating that deadlines are necessary.)

You have the actual development time, and you have the artificial deadline. If the actual development time is longer than the deadline, then trying to meet the deadline will be stressful and quality to be sacrificed for speed. Alternatively if the deadline is longer than the actual time, then work will expand and the team will be less efficient. In both cases, working without a deadline should prove the better outcome.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#66

Post by Domenic_S »

dkokelley wrote: post #57
supahfly_remix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company did the same. It must be a fad among CEOs. While on the face of it this policy looks like an improvement, it turned an entitlement into something that depends on the generosity of one's boss. Also, keep in mind that when quitting you don't get any accrued money. I highly dislike it.

A few things. First, if the policy really does change from an entitlement to an unspoken privilege granted by your immediate superior, then I doubt the policy was implemented properly. I suppose it depends on the industry, but if corporate policy says your vacations are not tracked, it stands to reason that your time off can't be requested/approved/denied. If you get your work done, your company should by happy with…

> when you do leave a company, you don't always get the vacation days as a bonus in your paycheck.

Depends on the state. In California, vacation time is earned as it is accrued and thus must be paid out on termination (voluntary or not).

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#67

Post by cHalgan »

Hmmm... I like the idea 'take some' but then why not accure vacations anyway and 'force' people to take vacations before accuras expires?

Actually, in one of big companies developing world class mission critical software, my manager would send me an email saying something like "please take vacations since we are making Mercedeses and not Pintos".

Yes, there were pople working really a lot and not taking vacations, but it ended up that their designs are not well thought and implementation sloppy (yea, it is done faster than planed but locking was just not performing on SMPs), so they were passed during promotion / bonus time.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#68

Post by dkokelley »

Domenic_S wrote: post #66
dkokelley wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things. First, if the policy really does change from an entitlement to an unspoken privilege granted by your immediate superior, then I doubt the policy was implemented properly. I suppose it depends on the industry, but if corporate policy says your vacations are not tracked, it stands to reason that your time off can't be requested/approved/denied. If you get your work done, your company should by happy with…

> when you do leave a company, you don't always get the vacation days as a bonus in your paycheck. Depends on the state. In California, vacation time is earned as it is accrued and thus must be paid out on termination (voluntary or not).

Yes the law does mandate vacation payout in some areas, but the actual vacation days also expire, meaning that your employer won't have to pay you for 20 years of accrued vacation. This is why I don't like vacation days as an accrued benefit.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#69

Post by bugsy »

damoncali wrote: post #9
rfrey wrote: post #2

The company I work for recently adopted a NetFlix style "we don't track vacation" policy. It's been about nine months, and anecdotes (no data available - we don't track!) suggest total vacation time taken is less than half of last year. I suppose that whether that's good or bad is pretty subjective.

I've seen similar situations. People wind up never knowing if it's really ok to take vacation, so they don't. If the folks in charge are the workaholic types, the answer is usually perceived to be "no", even if it's not.

Absolutely so. I've seen this policy many times and it always results in less vacation around. Not only that but in his very post linked to he makes clear that he considers a proper 6 week vacation (I take off August like most civilized people do, and I take off a bit more at other times) is unacceptable because they are tracking a metric called "pace" that proper vacations would interfere with. He then suggests that what they really prefer is that you work at least half time (possibly this is 8 hrs a day instead of 16?) remotely from wherever you are taking your "vacation". Um, that's not a vacation. Vacation is no contact whatsoever with work, otherwise you are not recharging at all. There is no such thing as vacationing half time. That is working half time, not vacationing.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#70

Post by cHalgan »

balsamiq wrote: post #19

Hi all, Peldi here. Thanks for the feedback. I don't know how much vacation everyone here is taking (I could look in the shared vacation calendar we have), but I'd say everyone is taking 3-4 weeks a year, plus some more time when they take their laptop to the beach and work half-days from there. This is one of the policies that I fear might not work if we ever reach a certain size, but so far we're all happy with it.…

I just want to comment that policy like this will cause you problems in recruiting a certain type of talent. Of course, that will be imposible to measure, but I can tell you none of my friends (we are little older but not so much) will not work for a company which has a policy like that. We just had a beer talk last Friday about that.
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