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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

#311

Post by agilebyte »

innguest wrote: post #286
asgard1024 wrote: post #90

I would go even further and postulate that lack of rules about who is in power kills societies. Many equate "lack of rules" with "freedom", but it's a problem. People without conscience will freely abuse the lack of rules or start to fight with each other, while the good people will get screwed. Eventually, the good people, who usually just want to do the work, will get unhappy and leave. This applies not only to vac…

This is a bunch of leftist FUD to be honest. Read up on libertarianism. You've even managed to get the definition of "freedom" wrong. Lack of rules? Are we using arguments from decades ago? It's lack of rulers. There's never a lack of rules because we all understand natural law.

Natural law, like the survival of the fittest?

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#312

Post by svankmajer »

mhurron wrote: post #151
zeidrich wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Apparently I need to move to Germany because this is exactly how I work and like to work.

I came to say exactly this.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#313

Post by alecthomas »

Twitter also had this policy when I worked there (two years ago) and I thought it was really poorly thought out. Apart from all of the (relatively obvious) issues mentioned in the post, any vacation at Twitter was at the discretion of your immediate manager. So if you happened to have a hard-arse manager, or one who hated you, tough luck. Really a bad idea.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#315

Post by baddox »

DanBC wrote: post #239
spydum wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

problem with minimums is people like myself and certainly countless others will forget about it till end of year, then take off the entire month of december because they "must".

That's a problem with management, not with minimums.

Only in the sense that literally any problem at a company is a problem with management.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#316

Post by polskibus »

Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd wrote: post #281
polskibus wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you could go self-employed with contract in the same company. This way you can follow your own path while everybody else can use what os provided by the law. You would also earn more per hour to compensate for holidays you would normally be entitled to.

You can't self-employ in Germany without actually working for more than one company. (It was abused too much to get around employee protections.)

It is still abused in many ways (for example Rossmann chain), not only in tech sector - you can always work through an agency).

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#317

Post by peteretep »

ernestipark wrote: post #121
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…

The biggest part of unlimited vacation is really the culture of your company. If your company is filled w/ workaholics who look down on taking time off, it won't work. I'm an engineer at HubSpot and we have an unlimited vacation policy and for my team, it works great. Everyone is great about taking time off, we are happy for people when they do, and everyone gets their work done and is responsible. Everyone trusts ea…

     > Everyone is great about taking time off, we are happy
     > for people when they do, and everyone gets their work
     > done and is responsible
Can you put that in to numbers? Is the average amount of holiday people take really ~ 25 days a year, with some people taking more?

If not ... how can it be a better system than everyone just getting 25 days off?

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#318

Post by GFischer »

geofft wrote: post #236
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree 100%. I am talking about giving people 1 month off per year. In those cases, how do you maintain efficiency without bloat?

What's wrong with bloat? Isn't profitability the goal, not efficiency? If it's best achieved by having more resources so you continue to be profitable when one resource is unavailable, then have more resources. This is as true of hard drives and fire exits as it is of employees. Expanding on a point by brational, see Tom Demarco's book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency . It makes…

I've also learned to appreciate slack when learning about Kanban:

http://www.everydaykanban.com/2012/07/27/slack-is-not-a-dirt...

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#319

Post by alkonaut »

kpmah wrote: post #314

"unlimited" days off are nonsense. Can I take off 365 days a year? If the answer is no it's not unlimited. There's a limit, you're just not specifying it.

I have a feeling this only works in places where you can be fired for performance reasons.

Re: Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy

#320

Post by arjie »

javery wrote: post #59
microtonal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two or even three weeks seems very unhealthy to me: - You need a longer break to seriously disconnect: at least two weeks. - Around Christmas/New Year you probably want to be around family and friends: one week. - At least a week distributed over the year to do something fun with your kid, visit that distant friend, etc. Maybe it's because I come from Western Europe, where getting 5 weeks (25-30 days) off in total is…

I phrased it poorly - we get off the week around the holidays as the company closes down. I also take probably another week off for random days here or there.

You serve ads. That's necessarily high-availability, especially around Christmas, when people are trying to grab eyeballs. If the company closes down, who's making sure everything is all right? Or maybe your stuff is that reliable? That's pretty impressive.
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