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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

#131

Post by vosper »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #114
vosper wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the most important points in the article is that forcing people to take vacation, and encouraging them to be completely unavailable, means that the company must learn how to survive the absence of a team member. It forces you to reduce the bus-factor, and this is critical. I ask my team members to take at least 20 days off per year (we also have an unlimited vacation policy) and I'll be using this argu…

How do you do this without creating a bloated organization? For example if you have 20 team members and expect for 2 to be gone for some kind of vacation at any point. When all are at work you have a 10% inefficiency. I wonder if it would be more effective to have have stretches of intense work (4-6 months) with long rest periods (1-3 months) between. This would minimize the operational switching frequency, though it…

I manage a software engineering team, and there's always more work to do - we have a big icebox full of things we wish we could get done. I imagine this is pretty normal in my field, and I can't imagine that we'll reach a point where we're overstaffed when people aren't on vacation. For other teams it may be the case that you end up overstaffed; I don't have much experience outside of my field.

I, personally, like your suggestion of stretches of intense work followed by long breaks, but I think that the reality of family life, hobbies, interests, and other commitments make that pretty unrealistic to impose on a team. You'd also have to be very committed to making sure that the work periods are strictly bounded, and it could be very tempting to slip and say "just another few days" / "just another week" and end up working to breaking point.

Edit: Grammar

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#132

Post by zeidrich »

Arjuna wrote: post #73
Someone1234 wrote: post #30

I've said it before and I'll say it again, unlimited days off (or "open") and zero days off are identical. If you have unlimited vacation people are inclined to take less and people respect the vacation you take less ("as you can always take more!"). Here's a study[0] (PDF) called "Overwhelmed America: Why Don’t We Use Our Earned Leave?" It is biased (travel association) but interesting nonetheless. According to this…

Thanks for the link to that study. In "europe" a two week vacation (10 work days) is common/standard. As opposed to American's "long weekends." To that point, if you've ever wondered (as I have) about the differences in philosophy on the topic of vacation between America and Europe, you may enjoy this paper [1]. It attempts to examine those differences. It's entitled "Europeans Work To Live and Americans Live To Work…

I think for many Americans, work is life. You get up, you spend an hour in the commute to work, you spend your 9 hours at work, you spend some more because overtime is expected, you commute home, you watch some reality television and go to bed.

At work you have made friends, you spend time browsing the internet, following up on your hobbies, etc. This is where life ends up happening. 8 hours consumed by sleep, or the avoidance of sleep, 3 hours in the process of getting ready and getting to and from work, 10 hours of work. When you're at home you're too tired to do much in the way of hobbies, so instead you do the few things that you're not going to get away with doing at work, maybe you have a drink, play video games, watch TV. But hey, maybe your work has a facility to let you play video games and watch TV anyways when you're working overtime. So instead of getting home and doing things for 3-4 hours, you stay at work with your coworker "friends" and spend your time knowing that if you want to take a break, there is a break room right there. You don't use it for those 4 hours, but you know you can, you know, if you weren't so busy, or if you really need it.

Contrast that to somewhere like Germany, which is where this article was written. Work days end early. The culture in Germany is not to live at work. Work is for working. You come to do a job, not to have interpersonal relationships with co-workers. The average work week in Germany is the lowest of all OECD countries at 25.6 hours per week according to a 2011 study.

I think the reason that Americans live to work is not because of something specific to Americans, but rather that workplace culture demands that Americans spend so much time at work that their work BECOMES their life. I mean, if you are working 80 hour weeks and commuting, and actually sleeping, it's impossible to have a life outside of work, but we need to have a life, so that life takes place at work.

So when Americans work more, they see their associates more, they are in the environment that they're most familiar with, they are basically at their home. On the other hand, when Germans work more, they are away from home.

I guess the question is which is better for people, and which is better for industry. Germany's industry is doing well, and I think that with shrinking demand for human resources, a more efficient, but shorter individual work week is a better long term scenario. It would be a big cultural shift for something like that to happen in the US though.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#133

Post by smackfu »

liveoneggs wrote: post #19
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 am on vacation next week but am still the primary on-call. I will take pages if I'm available or pass/escalate to the next guy if I'm not. Since I'm on vacation it's understood to be a best effort. Normally I would switch with someone but it's a busy vacation week so we just figure it out. I took a two hour call the morning of thanksgiving, for reference.

Do you at least get compensated for on-call?

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#134

Post by johnward »

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?

Someone needs to be available to cover issues but they should also get paid some type of bonus for working on a holiday in my opinion.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#135

Post by whatthemick »

sportanova wrote: post #86
GFischer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Uruguay, if you don't take your leave, the company has to compensate you (pay it as an extra worked day). Same if they fire you.

Time to move to Australia or Uruguay!

Or Denmark

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#136

Post by smackfu »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #114
vosper wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the most important points in the article is that forcing people to take vacation, and encouraging them to be completely unavailable, means that the company must learn how to survive the absence of a team member. It forces you to reduce the bus-factor, and this is critical. I ask my team members to take at least 20 days off per year (we also have an unlimited vacation policy) and I'll be using this argu…

How do you do this without creating a bloated organization? For example if you have 20 team members and expect for 2 to be gone for some kind of vacation at any point. When all are at work you have a 10% inefficiency. I wonder if it would be more effective to have have stretches of intense work (4-6 months) with long rest periods (1-3 months) between. This would minimize the operational switching frequency, though it…

If a company only has 10% inefficiencies, they are doing a fabulous job.

Most companies probably have 50% of their workforce surfing the web at any one time.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#137

Post by walshemj »

jcadam wrote: post #34

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 com…

Hmm is that not a breach of contract could in a tech company lead to an exodus of staff.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#138

Post by johnward »

smackfu wrote: post #122
CalRobert wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside tech (which is dripping with privilege) it's common to have 0-2 weeks of vacation in the US. There is no legal minimum, and I've had jobs offering 0, 1, and 2 weeks of vacation. In some cases you can take time off and simply not be paid for it.

>Outside tech (which is dripping with privilege) it's common to have 0-2 weeks of vacation in the US. I have to disagree. Maybe outside of white-collar work. But "tech" is not all of white-collar. Most people who work in offices for big companies get good vacation time.

Yes but there are still a lot of people who receive no vacation time and there is no law saying that employees have to get a minimum amount of time off.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#140

Post by walshemj »

butwhy wrote: post #12

Why do companies even try out these weird policies? They've gone from having unlimited days (then admitted it was a mistake for 2 whole years) and are now blindly trying out another unusual strategy. I don't see why they don't just offer a standard solution which seems to work for most companies, instead of trying to be extremely controlling of people.

given is a .de maybe authorities got wind of what was happening and thy had to change to avoid "legal entanglements"
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