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Basecamp Employee Handbook

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Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#171

Post by tptacek »

dejv wrote: post #158
tptacek wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister is a public interest lawyer in Chicago who will get a few short weeks of leave --- not 6 --- and then be expected back in court advocating for her clients. It is really difficult for me to connect with fathers who claim that 6 weeks of paternal leave is too onerous. As a parent to two teenagers, both of whom were born in the early years of startups, I feel your pain --- having children is hard . But if we'r…

I guess my wording was wrong, there was no worrying about fathers at all. I just can't wrap my head about how all the people are doing it. You can't just leave that small kid somewhere, is there some way of taking unpaid leave or are people just quit the job? I don't know.

My experience of parenting has been that every aspect of it is like that. I was amazed the first night that we'd kept the boy alive at all. He's going to UIUC in a few months. I can't believe that happened either. Everything is crazy hard, and we're playing on SUPER EXTREME EASY MODE.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#172

Post by tptacek »

jorvi wrote: post #168
tptacek wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister is a public interest lawyer in Chicago who will get a few short weeks of leave --- not 6 --- and then be expected back in court advocating for her clients. It is really difficult for me to connect with fathers who claim that 6 weeks of paternal leave is too onerous. As a parent to two teenagers, both of whom were born in the early years of startups, I feel your pain --- having children is hard . But if we'r…

By that train of logic we should be fighting for at least equal paternity leave for the average dad before there can be any discussion about more maternity leave..

There is no logic to that whatsoever. But since Basecamp doesn't make that distinction --- it has "primary" and "secondary" "caregiver" --- I don't think we need to argue this point.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#173

Post by maxxxxx »

jedberg wrote: post #166
maxxxxx wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I exercise daily at home. Probably more than most of the people who get the gym paid for. It's not a big deal but I wouldn't mind some extra cash.

One company I worked for had a benefit of paying up to $1000/yr for a gym membership OR up to $1000 of gym equipment for your home per year.

I guess I can get a really expensive yoga mat :-)

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#174

Post by dginsburg »

rdslw wrote: post #160

I find this discussion of "benefits" fascinating. In Europe, standard in IT companies (Central Europe, mind you), is: * 25 fullt paid days (or more) of vacation every year (no need to call it a sabatical and limit it to once a three years), not including national holidays etc. * one year of (or more) paid maternity leave (or more), while second parent gets few weeks (two at my country) * free gym membership (so I can…

Yeah, benefits are generally poor in the US compared to Europe. Salaries tend to be higher and taxes tend to be lower in the US. It's American culture to value those more.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#175

Post by kzisme »

kornakiewicz wrote: post #154
kzisme wrote: post #52

> Basecamp will pay up to $100/month for your gym membership, yoga studio membership, or whatever activity you do to stay in shape. Is this sort of thing common? I wish my current employer did something like this. While I'm still skimming some of the documents - Basecamp sounds like a cool place to work.

In Poland, almost all companies offer "sport card", which can be used at gyms, pools and other facilities with no limits (or very little). I could basically spend all my free time at gym or whatever. Employee has to participate in small fraction of subscription fee (say, 10$). https://www.benefitsystems.pl/en/for-you/multisport/

That sounds like a nice plan as well! I have never heard of anything like this in the US.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#176

Post by ryanbrunner »

tptacek wrote: post #40
scurvy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is curious considering DHH's involvement in Basecamp and how often he espouses European ideals. You'd think they had a year of maternity and paternity leave.

50 person companies can't as a rule guarantee year-long parental leave; that's just not realistic. They can do their best to make it work, but no company of this size in this kind of market can make promises like that.

For paid leave, you have a point - most European companies don't expect employers to foot the bill for a year of paid leave. For unpaid leave, however, this really is the norm outside of the U.S. Large and small companies manage just fine to "hold a spot" for anyone on maternity leave - either you bake it into your hiring plans, or you hire someone temporarily for the length of the paternity leave.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#177

Post by richardwhiuk »

philip1209 wrote: post #2

Wow - they advise employees to remove all company data from devices, leave the company 1password account, disable touch ID, and put their attorney on speed dial every time they go through customs.

Yeah - https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/internation... - ouch.

It feels like this has changed a lot in a very small number of years.

Does anyone know how common it is to actually be put through this rigmorole?

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#178

Post by tptacek »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #176
tptacek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 person companies can't as a rule guarantee year-long parental leave; that's just not realistic. They can do their best to make it work, but no company of this size in this kind of market can make promises like that.

For paid leave, you have a point - most European companies don't expect employers to foot the bill for a year of paid leave. For unpaid leave, however, this really is the norm outside of the U.S. Large and small companies manage just fine to "hold a spot" for anyone on maternity leave - either you bake it into your hiring plans, or you hire someone temporarily for the length of the paternity leave.

This doesn't make sense. A single engineer might represent as much as 10% of a 50-person company's engineering capacity (many of Basecamp's employees are customer support staff). Forget about the cost of a year's compensation for them: if a small company loses an engineer for a year, they have to fill the gap. What do they do about that? Besides discriminating against anyone who might potentially claim family leave, I mean.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#179

Post by tptacek »

no_wizard wrote: post #155
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not enough: they can demand that you unlock the device at the border, including powering it on. If your battery is depleted, they'll give you a charger and wait. If you refuse, they can and will confiscate the devices. You can't outsmart them: for pretty much every major country, they're better at this than you are. They can do all of this even if you're a citizen. In the US, citizens (and, to a lesser but sti…

I wonder if some form of push back on this would be timed release malware? its just crazy talk and all, I'd NEVER do this, but as a hypothetical since they are plugging your device(s) in to a machine, it would be possible to infect said machine, yes? Now that’s resistance. Also: I've heard of people who just wipe their devices and then just download really really grotesque photos to their devices to gross out the emp…

If you want to go to prison, this is definitely a way to see the inside of a federal prison cell.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#180

Post by balls187 »

dejv wrote: post #158
tptacek wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister is a public interest lawyer in Chicago who will get a few short weeks of leave --- not 6 --- and then be expected back in court advocating for her clients. It is really difficult for me to connect with fathers who claim that 6 weeks of paternal leave is too onerous. As a parent to two teenagers, both of whom were born in the early years of startups, I feel your pain --- having children is hard . But if we'r…

I guess my wording was wrong, there was no worrying about fathers at all. I just can't wrap my head about how all the people are doing it. You can't just leave that small kid somewhere, is there some way of taking unpaid leave or are people just quit the job? I don't know.

> I just can't wrap my head about how all the people are doing it. You can't just leave that small kid somewhere, is there some way of taking unpaid leave or are people just quit the job? I don't know.

People figure out a way to struggle and survive. It's in inherent to us as a species.

Some people have family help. Others have older children. Others can support on a single income. Others have paid help. Others bring their kids to work with them. Others work from home.

You just figure it out as you go.

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