Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
sourcegraph.com
Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#2I would love to hear if any other companies are doing the same thing or considering it, and from anyone who works in banking and has to take mandatory time off.
Reddit comments here: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1zglqs/mandator....
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#3I agree, the motto of 'we don't have a vacation policy, just take time off if you need it' creates usually the wrong sort of culture and dynamics, leading to guilt, etc. Lack of clarity around expectations is commonly a source of anxiety and stress. Whenever possible I encourage that people take 1 week off per quarter.
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#4We have 25 days holiday per year for everyone. You are expected to take them and I will be following up on that too.
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#5From my brazilian perspective it's very strange to read this. In Brazil, vacation is mandatory by law. Any employee has 30 days of vacation by year. But the moment the employee goes on vacation and how he does it (30 days straight, 15-15 days, 20-10...) is still discussed previously with the employer.
I'm not judging which one is better, just acknowledging the culture difference.
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#6At my current salt rationer, sorry salary slavemonger, sorry, employer of choice, they do give each employee a set number of days each year. The employee can request to use some/all of those days throughout the year, but, the manager has to approve, and can veto requests. Last year our team lost most of their holiday due to management ineptitude and gross fuckwittery in terms of project management and death-marched delivery plans.
This year, the team, collectively have told the dates and taken it, and basically told management to go swing. If they take action against us taking some holiday, we all resign. Has worked so far.
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#7I would love to hear if any other companies are doing the same thing or considering it, and from anyone who works in banking and has to take mandatory time off. Reddit comments here: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1zglqs/mandator... .
Most companies in Europe will do this (although with 5+ weeks). They tend to be mostly competitive. It is a bit hard to understand why US tech workers put up with not having this.
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#8I'm very curious how you'd enforce "no work email except customer facing stuff", is that just going to be self-enforced?
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#9"If I had seven hours to cut down a tree, I would spend the first five sharpening my axe." - Abraham Lincoln
Many tech jobs are brain work. This is not like an assembly line. If you're not sharp, you're not very effective. Worse, you're making more mistakes, which are going to take time to find and fix. A tired engineer can be literally worse than useless.
So take vacation without feeling guilty. Encourage (force?) your employees to do so, too. But don't stop there. Go home at night when you're tired. Don't come in for the weekend. Come back with a brain that's ready to go.
Re: Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory
#10The companies are doing it to decrease liability on some accounting spreadsheets.
If you really care about staff you improve work life balance, pay competitive rates, spot and remove dumb managers and assholes.
Sorry but 2 weekss mandatory vacation is not going to help much, on the contrary it might make someone angry when forced to take time off when the company is slow, not when a poor dev wants to actually go somewhere for holidays.