Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

blogs.balsamiq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 120 posts

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#91

Post by mixmastamyk »

dkokelley wrote: post #68
Domenic_S wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not true in California, it may stop accruing, but can never expire. http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_vacation.htm (See #4).

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#92

Post by akg_67 »

bugsy wrote: post #83
akg_67 wrote: post #14

15 years ago, the company I worked for, piloted no limit on sick leave policy. The average number of sick leave taken fell from 12 days to 9 days. Company publised the statistics to employees and Only people whose sick leave exceeded 2 standard deviation were notified. We also piloted alternate Friday off, the absenteeism due to doctor, dentist, car service appointments fell off to negligible.

"Only people whose sick leave exceeded 2 standard deviation were notified" I don't understand what notified means? Notified of termination? So each year the company measured which people had the most sick days, which would of course be those dealing with cancer treatments as such, and fired them? IF so, it is reminiscent of Jack Welch's notorious dictat to fire the 10% "at the bottom" each year. No doubt I am misunde…

Notified means they and their manager were told that the sick leave taken exceeded the norm, there was no retaliation, just as a check of reasonableness of leave. I am not sure how longer duration illness were treated, may be put on short-term disability benefit.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#93

Post by reduxredacted »

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 think the outcome of this type of policy, as mentioned by others, is largely a product of the culture of the place that you work.

Where I work, we're given pretty generous paid time off, with very precise definitions of how said paid time off is to be taken, accrued and if not taken in its entirety by the end of the year, how one can "roll over" some of those days into the next year. Every 5 years or so, we get an additional 5 business days.

I get 30 days of paid time off. I used 15 last year. And I've never even come close to the 30 allotted.

I'm salary, and I have really real deadlines. But I've been at my company and in my sector for a long enough time that I know when I can take time and when I cannot. I can get in 15 days by taking the first week that most public schools start off. It's usually a lull time, and being a homeschool family, vacation packages around that time are usually great deals. We have a lull time around Christmas and August due to being a B2B business, and outside of that, I know my deadlines, manage my workload and have a boss that doesn't care if I give a day or two notice when I want time off (primarily because of the former ... I self-manage my time to ensure the least impact for that time off).

All of that said, we have a PTO policy, and I know of very few people who get anywhere close to it. Nor do I know of anyone I work with that actually takes advantage of the "rollover into next year" policy because there's no point. We simply won't use them because there's too much to be done and too few people to do it and in our corporate culture it's "get it done" or enjoy unemployment. Frankly, I'd find other employment if my employer decided to do the whole "we don't track vacation" policy because in my field at my company that'd basically mean "no vacation".

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#94

Post by nfriedly »

stel wrote: post #34

I worked at a small company where I was paid hourly and didn't even have paid vacation. The upside was you could take as much time off as you could afford. The downside was I couldn't afford much, though I did come into a little money from an outside project and managed to take a nice 4 week vacation. :-) I think a hybrid of that approach could work, where you get X weeks of paid vacation and can take more as unpaid…

Yea, I did something similar a while back and really enjoyed it.

> But I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would rather have more time off than money.

I suspect you're right, I think debt holds back a lot of people.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#95

Post by reduxredacted »

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.…

Peldi-- I believe you to be correct in your fear. It doesn't scale unless you ensure the managers layers below you encourage their employees to take time off and are as flexible as you.

I'd also strongly recommend looking over that shared vacation calendar and identify anyone who may not be taking a reasonable amount of time off. Some people are just love their jobs ... I'm one of them, and it's not as big a deal (though, I believe nearly everyone benefits from some time off, even when forced). But make a point to ensure they don't think the "we don't track vacation time" equates to "we don't take vacation time".

I'd also steer clear of the "laptops to the beach" comments. I don't take frequent vacations, but when I do, I need to go places where I can barely get a phone call and have no internet (I fight with myself on this topic every time, but when I go on a cruise or camp in a remote part of the state that I live in, I always return more refreshed than when I go somewhere that I can keep up with e-mail). I don't know the culture of your company, but at my company "laptops on the beach" would be code for "obligation to carry your laptop with you at all times".

Just my 2p, you sound like a decent leader and I appreciate the transparency.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#97

Post by scarmig »

bostonpete wrote: post #86
gmac wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe. But a happy and adequately-vacationed workforce is surely going to be more productive, so the loss might be less than it seems (citation needed here, admittedly). And I guess it might mean a few extra jobs, which surely can't be a bad thing.

By all measures I've seen, the U.S. workforce is dramatically more productive than the European workforce. I suspect the amount of time spent working is a significant factor in that.

Per worker, not by hour worked, where I believe I've seen [citation needed] at least the French and likely others have us beat.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#98

Post by cHalgan »

adaml_623 wrote: post #89
cHalgan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you please elaborate on why?

Reasoning goes like this:

- If a company is really about "we don't care about how much vacation you take", then why not to give me minimum vacations? It seems intellectually dishonest.

- How I do know how much of vacation I can take and whether that amount is preventing me of getting raise/bonus/promotion?

- This policy means that my vacation will vary depending on manager and current project. I cannot commit to travel with my kids, I cannot commit to visit my parents... because who knows: I might have a different manager next month.

- If I take two weeks vacation and none of my teammates are taking vacations, am I going to be fired? Are they going to consider me that I'm not a team player?

- I can lose a job after working for year or so without taking any vacation, but if I did accure vacation I will get some money (kinda reward for working hard for a year and not taking vacation), while in case of "flexible vacation" I get nothing.

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#99

Post by CamperBob »

bugsy wrote: post #77
teach wrote: post #24

Healthy quantities of vacation time is one of the reasons I'm still in public education after 15 years. Teaching in a public school isn't the easiest job in the world (nor the hardest, probably), and not everyone has the personality for it, but I really believe that having a lot of time off contributes to my mental / emotional / physical health and helps me to be an excellent teacher when I am working. In my district…

I am a designer, engineer and entrepreneur, but I have also taught high school in the past. As an engineer, I would not consider working for a place that had a problem with less than 4 weeks vacation. It is absolutely necessary to have that as a minimum to recharge and do a great job. If I'm not allowed to do what I need to to do a great job, I don't want the job, I tell people to give it to some lackey instead and j…

When I was a teacher, if I did not have the entire summer off, I would have gotten a gun and come in and shot the entire administration. Not because I am crazy, I've had a psych eval for security clearance

Um. About that clearance...

Re: Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

#100

Post by CamperBob »

cHalgan wrote: post #98
adaml_623 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please elaborate on why?

Reasoning goes like this: - If a company is really about "we don't care about how much vacation you take", then why not to give me minimum vacations? It seems intellectually dishonest. - How I do know how much of vacation I can take and whether that amount is preventing me of getting raise/bonus/promotion? - This policy means that my vacation will vary depending on manager and current project. I cannot commit to trav…

It seems like the one correct answer to the vacation policy question is, "Do what you want, as long as you don't hose the company."

If you want to work remotely for the next month and nothing depends on your physical presence at the office, fine.

If you want to fuck off for the next month and you're not on anyone's critical path, that's fine, too.

Restricting things a bit, "not hosing the company" could be interpreted to mean that you can take off when you want, but for absences longer than x days you need to let your supervisor know y days in advance so s/he can take it into account when necessary. It doesn't sound like this would be an unreasonable thing to ask, as long as x and y are clearly stated by the company and respected by employees.

This whole thread reminds me of why I don't work for other people. The idea of someone demanding my physical presence for a portion of each day, for no reason other than the fact that they can, makes me frown and cock my head to the side like a puzzled beagle.

Post reply on HN