Live data from Hacker News

Capacity Plan

fev.al

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Capacity Plan

#11
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true for the entire EU too. The minimum is 20, or slightly above that.

Pretty common in Germany are 30 days.

Yep. The minimum is 20 days (for a five day work week) but most people get 25 to 30 days. That's on top of 10-13 public holidays, and sick days.

Moreover, taking sick days is normalised and you will not be punished for it unless you abuse it. If you take below 30 sick days a year, you're likely safe.

My job is to help people settle in Germany. I struggle to communicate how chill German work culture is.

Re: Capacity Plan

#15
post #10

I agree that capacity planning is essential in almost all cases, but you don't want a macro-enabled document for this. You want a database that is connected to approval processes, auditing, pay stubs, people's calendars, etc.

> You want a database that is connected to approval processes, auditing, pay stubs, people's calendars, etc.

Does anything like that exist as a service?

Re: Capacity Plan

#16
post #10

I agree that capacity planning is essential in almost all cases, but you don't want a macro-enabled document for this. You want a database that is connected to approval processes, auditing, pay stubs, people's calendars, etc.

I would argue that making it too detailed will cause more problems than it solves. It encourages you to focus and trust the estimates more however the model is still far from reality. People may quit, people may get tired of working on something, they may realize they don't like working on something, some employees might be experts informally supporting other projects, some projects may not be as good for resumes or promotions, onboarding time is different for different people, some people really don't work well split across projects, etc.

Re: Capacity Plan

#17
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glanced at the model and didn't see holidays broken out separately. Most tech companies give most Federal holidays off, maybe 10 paid Federal holidays which means that 4.5 weeks of "vacation" is actually 2.5 weeks of PTO. 2-3 weeks of PTO is common in tech and across most professional roles after a few years with a company.

I assume from 10d changing 2.5->4.5 that whenever you say 'weeks' you mean 5-day working weeks? So 2-3 weeks = 10-15 days and that's 'after a few years with a company' ?!

A “week of PTO” generally means “however much time you’d usually work in a week”. If you typically work 40 hours per week, 40 hours of PTO is a week of PTO.

I think that around 10 company-selected holidays plus 15 employee-selected days is a fairly typical starting point for tech in the US, with some having more and some having less.

We start at 9 company plus 18 employee chosen days and you get 1 additional employee chosen day per year per year of service up to 5. (So, I’m at 9+23 or 32 days or 6.4 weeks per year now.) We also have half-day Fridays in the summer, so if you take 12 half-days of PTO, you can have 12 summer Fridays off plus 26 other days for 38 or almost 8 weeks off.

Re: Capacity Plan

#18

How realistic is 4.5 weeks of vacation/year (in US)?

I would say it's fairly common at tech companies. Right now I've got 22 days + 11 holidays + ~6 additional company wide days off. So almost 8 weeks off not counting sick days. One startup had unlimited PTO and I was taking around 6 weeks off a year not counting holidays.

Re: Capacity Plan

#19
post #15
post #10

I agree that capacity planning is essential in almost all cases, but you don't want a macro-enabled document for this. You want a database that is connected to approval processes, auditing, pay stubs, people's calendars, etc.

> You want a database that is connected to approval processes, auditing, pay stubs, people's calendars, etc. Does anything like that exist as a service?

I haven't looked. I do all those things internally. I would be terrified of abuse if someone else got ahold of internal planning documents.

Re: Capacity Plan

#20
post #15
post #10

I agree that capacity planning is essential in almost all cases, but you don't want a macro-enabled document for this. You want a database that is connected to approval processes, auditing, pay stubs, people's calendars, etc.

> You want a database that is connected to approval processes, auditing, pay stubs, people's calendars, etc. Does anything like that exist as a service?

I've seen resource-management[1] (formerly 10000ft) used in the past and it seems to do the job, but I wasn't an active user so I don't know all the ins and outs.

[1]https://www.smartsheet.com/platform/resource-management

Post reply on HN