211–220 of 336 posts
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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.
Yes, it is. And, just, seriously, what sort of a society doesn't mandate holidays?
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You are conflating hours with productivity. Let's assume that no engineer is getting less than 2 weeks of vacation off a year on paper. Most of these articles are written by people giving 4 weeks of vacation. So we're talking about the difference between a 'stingy' vacation policy and a generous vacation policy being 2/52 weeks in the year. If people gain more than 4% productivity by avoiding burnout, you net win by…
Agree 100%. I am talking about giving people 1 month off per year. In those cases, how do you maintain efficiency without bloat?
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…
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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…
It's true because I wanted it to be. I look around at my artistic friends, and I see that they live what they do, and I wanted that. It only works because I (mostly) love what I do (and the stock); so now, "work-life balance" means finding things I want to do that don't have anything to do with work, rather than making sure I have the time to do them.
To reiterate: Working more generally makes me happier because I'm doing something that I love, and that I can take (some) ownership of.
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Yeah I don't understand this one. If you're going to give someone 4 weeks off (which is extremely generous in the US) just give it to them at the beginning of the year. Some places let you take the vacation before you accrue it but if you were to quit before earning enough to cover the days you've taken you owe the company money.
This doesn't detract from your main point, but... 4 weeks off is not necessarily "extremely generous." It depends on whether that includes holidays. You might say that of course vacation days don't include holidays, but I know of several small tech/biotech companies that just give X total days of paid time off, usually 25-30. You can choose to take those PTO hours on holidays or not, which is more flexible I suppose.…
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> but you can find incentives/realign people so they are more productive. By giving them more vacation maybe?
I was thinking more along the lines of having them do work they are interested in/care about.
If someone is only putting in 2 hours of efficient work a day, then maybe you should start thinking about shuffling them within or out of the organization depending on the position and level they're filling, but asking about 10% inefficiency due to "missing bodies" is equivalent to complaining about getting shorted a penny from the barista. It's literally pocket change, get over it.
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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.
Professional,
All technical, Clerical Blue-collar
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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.