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Basecamp Employee Handbook

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Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#51

Post by 1337biz »

tptacek wrote: post #15

There's a lot of good stuff here. I'm surprised about their take on speaking engagements (they're OK as long as they don't involve multi-day travel obligations). I get that you don't want team members touring talks or becoming conference tourists. But a lot of companies want their employees doing speaking engagements; Matasano/NCC, my old employer, pays a pretty substantial cash bonus for every time you do that.

> pays a pretty substantial cash bonus for every time you do that

Super smart move - probably the cheapest but most personal marketing effort a small firm can create. Did they have an upper cap on the speaking gigs or available time?

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#52

Post by kzisme »

> 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.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#53

Post by felixrieseberg »

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.

At least on the West Coast it seems pretty common - considering that companies here also pay for your health insurance, it seems like an overall decent idea.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#54

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#55

Post by fnazeeri »

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.

Pretty common.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#56

Post by fnazeeri »

bluetidepro wrote: post #3

> Sabbatical - Every three years, employees are eligible to take a one-month-long sabbatical. Just give a heads-up preferably three months in advance, so we can coordinate the work-load accordingly. I wish this was more common in the tech industry. I know for other industries this is basically a standard thing, but it seems like many tech companies don't do this.

And this is different from a vacation how?

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#57

Post by goseeastarwar »

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.

I think it's fair to say that given DHH's lifestyle, Basecamp can afford to do this. No judgement on how David choses to spend his time or money, I just think it's a little disingenuous to act like they're a normal startup. It's a well-oiled lifestyle company that prints cash.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#58

Post by fooster »

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.

So how to non-US companies manage to do that? 51 weeks is mandatory in Canada for example.

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#59

Post by madmax108 »

tptacek wrote: post #41
madmax108 wrote: post #39

> TL;DR: Don't Travel With Work Data > If you don't need your work laptop (or tablet/phone), don't bring it with you! > Wipe company data from your phone before crossing the border. Restore it afterward. I've heard this advice quite a few times in recent times. Wonder how useful advice like this (and the implications of this) actually is.

Can you rephrase the question? What are you wondering?

How useful is it to clean all my work data every time before crossing the border? And if I'm asked why there's no data on my system, should I say I wiped it clean? or that it's a new system? or that it's a personal system?

Re: Basecamp Employee Handbook

#60

Post by ryandrake »

nhangen wrote: post #31
skolos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One-month-long? Isn't it too short for sabbatical? How is it different from vacation? I think I might not understand what they mean by sabbatical.

Most vacations, at least in the US, are 1 week in length. Upper middle class takes maybe 2 weeks. The wealthy of course take as long as they want. I don't think I've ever had a vacation longer than 10 days.

Most jobs I've seen (in the USA) offer up to two weeks of "paid time off" which you need to split between vacation and sickness. The concept of taking more than a contiguous week off per year for an actual vacation must be pretty rare. Usually my vacation days get used for the purpose of running an errand or taking care of a sick kid.
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