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Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

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Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#31

Post by antr »

foolinaround wrote: post #7

What I found to be even more relaxing is if all the employees of a company are forced to take the same time off ( 2 days to a week) and other flexible time off where the employee can choose his own time. Then, there are no email or updates to come back to...

From my point of view, that's the way it should be. At my company we make you take vacations. If by the end of the year you have plenty of days left you tend to take a long christmas/new year's break... and in some exceptions move a couple of vacations days to the next calendar year.

The unlimited vacations days, in my eyes, creates considerable pressure/anxiety on workers. If you are in the US and want to treat employees, just go for a fair number of paid vacations days like in most European countries... Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Italy, etc, all have approx. 28 days...

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#32

Post by shawabawa3 »

turnip1979 wrote: post #11

Genuine question: how do companies/teams that run services deal with peak vacation periods? E.g. Christmas holidays. Even if everyone wants to take the last two weeks of the year off, you have to have someone keeping the lights on. Also, what happens if a high priority problem comes in? Are the team leads/managers careful not to schedule work around the holidays?

I imagine by offering more money

I would gladly work on christmas for 2x pay (especially if I had unlimited vacation I could take at other points)

and if something does go majorly wrong over christmas, your clients will probably understand

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#34

Post by jcadam »

I like this idea of minimum vacation. Most companies I've worked in use vacation days as some sort of reward for sticking with the company for X number of years (i.e., "When you hit your 5 year anniversary, you get an extra 1.5 days of paid vacation. Won't that be nice!"). And when I say paid vacation, I really mean PTO with no separate 'sick leave' days. Which means people show up to work sick.

Funny enough, the company I work for was recently bought, and in the interests of making things 'uniform', we were forced to adopt the purchasing company's vacation policy, which meant an across the board cut in everyone's PTO hours (to include folks that negotiated additional vacation days when they were hired -- those agreements were declared null and void). Apparently the execs thought the hit to morale/retention was worth the 'cost savings'.

On the other hand, I once interviewed at a company with an 'open' vacation policy and was immediately suspicious of it. My first thought was "I'm guessing people don't take much vacation?" That didn't go over so well with the interviewer.

It's nice to see an employer that treats vacation as a means to increase employee productivity and retention (burnout prevention, etc.), rather than as a pure cost to be minimized as much as possible.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#35

Post by dragonwriter »

tylermac1 wrote: post #4
sportanova wrote: post #2

Of course the other reason for 'unlimited vacation' is so when an employee leaves, the company doesn't have to pay them for unused vacation days. Huge red flag when a company has 'unlimited vacation'

With these kinds of policies being more common in young companies, I highly doubt that paying back unused vacation can have any significant effect on normal operations. In the other case there's also generally limits on how much vacation time you can build up, generally taking a couple years of not taking vacation to max out.

> With these kinds of policies being more common in young companies, I highly doubt that paying back unused vacation can have any significant effect on normal operations.

It has an effect on the balance sheet, since vacation time accrued but not used is a liability; in companies whose operations are labor-heavy, and that have high-pay workers, that's may be a concern, especially when seeking investors, since concrete current liabilities can weigh heavily against hoped-for future returns.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#36

Post by shawabawa3 »

oakesm9 wrote: post #23
javery wrote: post #5

We have an unlimited vacation policy at Adzerk and I try to lead by example by taking at least 2-3 weeks off a year (especially in the summer). We also try to encourage everyone to take at least one solid week off a year and it seems to work pretty well. I think that's the real issue with unlimited policy - if the leaders don't take vacation no one else thinks they can.

Is 2-3 weeks off a normal amount of time in the US? I get 28 days off per year in the UK, which is around the standard amount.

> I get 28 days off per year in the UK, which is around the standard amount.

28 is the legal minimum in the UK, however that includes bank holidays. You probably actually have 36 including bank holidays

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#37

Post by Ao7bei3s »

javery wrote: post #5

We have an unlimited vacation policy at Adzerk and I try to lead by example by taking at least 2-3 weeks off a year (especially in the summer). We also try to encourage everyone to take at least one solid week off a year and it seems to work pretty well. I think that's the real issue with unlimited policy - if the leaders don't take vacation no one else thinks they can.

Reality check: over here in Germany, the legal minimum is 24 days per year. As a developer, you wouldn't take a contract below 28 days (but you also won't be offered one). 29-30 are common. My previous company allowed an additional ~5 days of unpaid leave, which many took.

Sorry, but your 10-15 days are insane.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#38

Post by TillE »

jbb555 wrote: post #33

very good. Except "now has a required minimum of 25 (paid) vacation days per year, no matter what country they live in." Well no. If they live in the UK for example they have a mandatory limit of 28 days not 25 because it's the law.

But is that an enforced minimum? Is an employee required to take that many days off work? Because that's the distinction being drawn here.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#39

Post by dragonwriter »

josephschmoe wrote: post #18
jadc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think these are weird policies anymore. I work at a major software company and one year ago, we went from having a set of number of vacations days to an "unlimited vacation" policy. Many companies are already doing this or following suit. In California at least, I suspect this has something more to do with accounting than experimentation, i.e. the companies don't have to have on their books the money owed if…

While that liability is nice, I think the world is better off without it. If people know they can't take their vacation with them, they'll actually take it when it's appropriate. The liability situation is a lose-lose one. You take less vacation because you're comfortable you'll get it and the company gets a liability on the books because you work too hard. Without the liability, you'll see a lot of people take vacat…

> Without the liability, you'll see a lot of people take vacation during layoffs though.

Not necessarily -- quantitatively unlimited vacation doesn't mean that the vacation can be taken without management approval of the specific timing, it just means that its not held to a fixed limit.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#40

Post by debacle »

sportanova wrote: post #2

Of course the other reason for 'unlimited vacation' is so when an employee leaves, the company doesn't have to pay them for unused vacation days. Huge red flag when a company has 'unlimited vacation'

IIRC, the company doesn't have to pay you for unused vacation days even if you don't use them. It's pretty much at the discretion of the company.
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