
My strange aversion to vacations - jaf12duke
http://42floors.com/blog/my-strange-aversion-to-vacations/
======
jlarocco
I have to say this article really annoyed me.

Maybe I read too much into it, but he seems to be snubbing people who take
vacation. I'm glad not vacationing works for him, and it's his life to live,
but that's not for everybody. I wouldn't write an article snubbing people who
work all the time, and I don't see why he needs to snub people who take
vacation.

Second, he seems incredibly proud to be working all the time. A good portion
of the article is basically, "Hey, check me out! I'm working all the time! How
cool am I?". Get over it.

Third, the author has a hugely exaggerated sense of self-importance. Reading
the article, you'd think he's curing cancer and AIDs and cleaning up the
environment all at once. Take this, for example: "But startups are different.
Startups are a mission; a belief that something impossible is actually
possible. It’s being part of a team that is working toward some distant
horizon. It’s this competing against the impossible that makes it so much
fun."

And what is the distant horizon he's working toward? From the 42 Floors home
page, it's "The best place to find office space." That's the impossible he's
making possible? That's why he's working 100% of the time? What a joke.

~~~
aashaykumar92
"And what is the distant horizon he's working toward? From the 42 Floors home
page, it's 'The best place to find office space.' That's the impossible he's
making possible? That's why he's working 100% of the time? What a joke."

I respect all your prior annoyances, and don't care to comment on them, but
this one pissed me off. 42Floors seems to be doing a fucking awesome job in
helping startups, even well established companies, find office space. Pissing
on their efforts by making some snide remark ('what a joke') is completely
uncalled for. Finding office space IS a huge problem for companies, especially
startups who don't have much money but still need some space...42Floors is
making that process (which I'm sure can sometimes be seemingly impossible) far
simpler by providing the service that they are.

~~~
jlarocco
Yeah, it's a great service they're offering, and I didn't mean to imply it's
not.

But the author seems to be putting it right up there with fighting for civil
rights or vaccinating children or helping the poor. And that's taking it too
far.

It's good to be motivated and passionate about work, but it's also good to
have perspective.

~~~
jaf12duke
I don't think passion is limited to fighting for civil rights.

But you're right in that I do talk about startups as a mission. And that's
because a startup's default result is failing. It takes extraordinary efforts
to avoid that default result and very, very few ever make it.

For what it's worth, I worked for 5 years running a non-profit as well. Loved
that job too. I don't find passionate work to be limited to either startups or
non-profits.

------
minimax
"Your coworkers are your friends. It’s so much closer to a life style than a
job that taking a vacation from your startup doesn’t have the same
connotation."

This guy does not get what vacations are about. I know what it feels like to
work hard with people you like at a job you enjoy, but I also know what it's
like to kill two weeks lounging around southern Europe and swimming in the
Mediterranean Sea every day. Both things are good but they are not the same
thing. If you think satisfying work is a substitute for a good vacation you
are doing it wrong.

~~~
Dewie
My mother once said to me that vacations aren't as much about relaxation as
they are about doing different things than what you usually do. I've come to
believe the same thing, and in that regard going to a different country is
definitely an effective way to take a vacation from your normal life.

~~~
randomdata
While I like that definition, it perhaps makes it difficult to draw a
distinction between work and vacation. For instance, I spend a few weeks each
year tending to my farm. Its an enjoyable break from routine, but it is still
technically work. That is vacation to me, but to an outsider it looks like I
don't take vacations.

------
larsberg
People mimic their management chain. If the CEO/managers don't take vacations,
neither will their directs.

One of the most balanced (and productive) teams I've worked on was under a
general manager who had 8 kids and made it a point to attend _every_ event
they had and go on regular vacations. Since everybody ran into his policy at
some point (reviews scheduled at 5pm canceled or him out of town for a week or
two), the whole org was pretty good about doing the same. And it was very
different from other orgs in the company, many of which had the usual long
hours + weekends culture.

~~~
onemorepassword
I have to disagree with that premise. Our two founders are around 4 days per
week, usually go home around five and tend to take long vacations.

The rest of us have to be encouraged to take our vacation days.

There's a culture of everyone taking days off on a regular basis without too
much formality ("won't be in this friday, see ya"), but long vacations are
rare.

~~~
mpyne
Yeah, my boss takes days off all the time (and deservedly so), but I'm
accruing "use or lose" days at a scary rate now and I have no vacation plan in
sight other than a few days in May for family and a week in July for family.

Edit: And to be clear, I think this has been and will continue to be
detrimental to my work product overall, the only reason I haven't taken a
break yet is being I'm triple-hatted for now until July or so. By then I'll
have a chance to think about what I want to do with my break, I hope.

~~~
assemble
Good companies should not have a single point of failure. If they do, the only
way they'll learn to live without you is if you're not there.

Just take a break. Go somewhere that doesn't have cell phone coverage.
(Alternatively, just turn it off when you get on the plane and leave it off
until you get off the plane coming back.) Don't pay for internet. I did that a
few months ago on my trip to Italy. Best. Vacation. Ever.

------
jonathanjaeger
I feel like startups that have no vacation policy at all (as in, take as much
as you want) run into the problem where employees might feel guilty about
taking vacation or forget to take all their days because they're busy. However
if the norm is 7 days or 10 days or 14 days per year, it's more concrete and
you don't feel guilty for taking them. I think it's psychological.

Personally I don't really ever feel the need for a vacation more than one day
every few months, but that's just me now in a particular time and place. I
think that'll change as the demands on my life change.

~~~
onemorepassword
It works both ways, the other problem with "take as much as you want" is that
it makes it more difficult to call people on not taking enough time off.

You may not think you need a vacation, but others may feel your work is
getting sloppier and you're more easily irritated. Most human beings are
usually the last to notice these things about themselves.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
I also think it can be job-specific. For example, I'm working on a website on
the side which requires both more administrative work and more
product/creative work than my day job. My day job is in marketing, and the
more time I take off the more time I'm not running performance marketing
campaigns that generate revenue every day. I think vacation is very specific
to job function in many cases -- in one I would definitely reach burn out and
in another I wouldn't. In creative work, like if you're a graphic designer, I
can imagine not taking a break would have greater repercussions on the
creative process than in my job.

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eCa
As a european it feels equally strange every time I read about "unlimited"
vacation. IMHO, it's just as bad as unlimited bandwidth, or whatever. It's
just not unlimited.

Where I work I have 30 days paid vacation (in adition to big holidays). If I
don't use them, I get to push 5-10 of the unused days to the next year (and
can save them for up to five years, after which I get their worth in salary; I
guess about $150-200 per day).

Currently I have ~20 days saved, so theoretically I could take 50 days
vacation this year (work permitting).

This system sets both a lower and upper limit to how much vacation is
expected. Much fairer for the employee - no more guessing when it becomes too
much vacation.

I'm guessing most employers in USA would consider 30 days to be too many?

And yes, even though I don't work for a startup I still consider my team mates
my friends.

------
purplelobster
My wife and I come from two different continents and live in a third. That
results in a whole lot of traveling just to visit family, and basically no
time left for "vacations". It feels rather unsustainable. Would love an
unlimited vacation policy, but in the end probably feel guilty to be taking
way more than the average person at the company. In less than a year though,
we'll move to my home country which has minimum 5 weeks vacation, with many
people having 6-7 weeks. Not only does that mean we can cut our "family visit"
traveling in half, but also increase vacation by roughly 70%. It'll mean
taking a pay cut, but honestly it's worth it.

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rdouble
Unlimited vacation policies are mainly a way for the employer to avoid the
accounting and financial burden that occurs when providing defined vacation
benefits. Vacation benefits are not required, but if a company offers them,
most states require the employer to track employee absences and leave accrual.
Unused vacation must be paid out when the employee leaves the company.
Unlimited vacation policies remove the need for tracking and payouts for
unused vacation time.

~~~
jaf12duke
That's not the case for us. The administrative burden is not heavy. Most
payroll solutions include this out of the box. The much bigger issue for us is
that we don't like rules and policies. We try to take 'do what you think is
right' to the nth degree.

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bluedino
I end up only using about 5 days for a week-long trip each year. Then November
rolls around, and I try to schedule all my remaining days before I lose them
at the end of the year.

I can't get anything done at the office because nobody else is there. Sure I
can work on things and enjoy peace but without graphic artists or designers
there I can only go so far, I'll end up throwing stuff out because it's not
what they wanted.

But if I stay home, I'm stuck doing holiday stuff or running around to the
homes of friends and family. When I get back to work after New Years I need a
vacation.

~~~
pc86
My fiance and I have taken to using our vacation when others generally don't.
She has an unlimited vacation policy while mine is very strict ( _n_ hours per
pay period) but generous. Taking vacation at odd times means it's less crowded
where ever we go (if we go anywhere) as well as if there is a large absence of
employees from her firm or mine, it's almost like a second vacation where we
can concentrate on getting our individual tasks completed.

There is less of a pronounced absence at the end of the year for my company
because hours roll over and the cap is somewhere around 2.5 years of time.

------
helloburin
I've felt the same way for my whole life, and the idea of a pre-cation is how
I have to trick myself into taking time off too.

My first jobs were "in my spare time", and instead of taking a vacation from
school to go party in Cancun for Spring Break (spend time AND money), I'd
work. Mostly to pay for more school OR for that sweet computer I wanted.

Since having a "real job", my brain still considers vacation as "time I'm not
earning money", even though it's Paid Time Off. Even when I do manage to trick
myself into vacation, they're usually "active" trips, where I feel like every
minute needs to be spent doing something "productive" like snorkeling or
feeding sharks. You won't find me laying out on the beach anywhere!

The ironic thing is that I work in the travel industry and I know how
important this stuff is! I think our problem is that we want to create value
with our limited time on this planet, so maybe we need to consider it to be an
investment that will pay us back in inspiration later down the road.

------
greenyoda
I really liked their idea of a "precation", two weeks of paid vacation
_before_ you start:

 _"At 42floors, we heavily, heavily recommend that all new people take two
weeks of vacation starting exactly on their first official day. What this
means is that when you get a job offer from us, you’ll pick a start date. And
that’s the day we start your payroll. And that’s the day you leave for
vacation.

And you get to take that time to transition from one chapter of your life to
the next. If your startup just failed or you hated your last job, you get a
couple weeks of mental and physical recovery. If you have a significant other
that’s been dying to get away with you, you can go away someplace nice knowing
that your first paycheck will be waiting for you when you return."_

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superkvn
As a fellow entrepreneur, your challenges with vacation resonates with me. We
offer hefty vacation plans in our company but no one actually takes advantage
of them because they're motivated, self starters that love to work.

The precation concept is interesting.

~~~
jwoah12
Or, many of them do want to take advantage of their vacation, but the culture
is such that they feel like they shouldn't take vacation because nobody else
does.

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xradionut
I understand the precation.

One of the best trips I had was after getting laid off from a large
dysfunctional corporation that was under going a re-org and having few years
of accumulated salary in the bank due to never having a chance to take a
"real" break from work in several years.

HR was shocked when they realized that I hadn't taken more than few days off
in my tenure. I had over 6 months of "combined" time that had rolled over year
after year.

But I was the chump that got things done, covered during the holidays, for
installs, moves, covered Y2K, and when everyone else had a life and babies.

Never again.

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scrabble
I've never worked for a startup, but I've always had an aversion to vacation.

It's not that I don't like going places or enjoying myself, but I hate being
away and I hate not being involved and getting things done.

A good vacation for me is a day off to relax here and there, or a weekend
away. Taking more than 3 days at a time always seems like too much and I end
up wanting to get back. I still need to take that week long vacation every
year for the enjoyment of my wife and kids, but it seems too long.

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hai2ashwin
In India, the concept of a long vacation is still alien. This year we are
going to experiment with 5 day shutdown during xmas.

Most people here don't have a sense of holidaying. So they end up too bored
that they turn back to work!

~~~
lutusp
> In India, the concept of a long vacation is still alien ... Most people here
> don't have a sense of holidaying.

I think this is a holdover from the colonial era, when the British, before
embarking on a fox hunt, expressed the view that the natives shouldn't be
wasting their time holidaying.

~~~
hai2ashwin
Perhaps. Also the economic momentum has made people more driven and those who
are not that driven, would still get to work due to peer pressure. We need a
'slowdown movement' of our own!

------
nicholassmith
As an effective manager you should make sure you're leaving your developers
time to go do something. Makes them better developers and keeps burnout at
bay.

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anonu
whats the point of life if you are working all the time? Life is about balance
and not taking a vacation - ever - sounds like your balance is off kilter.

~~~
randomdata
I'm not really sure what I would do with a vacation. Travelling doesn't
particularly interest me, and I would get bored fast if I stayed at home to
watch TV all day long. I get paid to do my hobbies, so that would technically
qualify as work.

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supreeth
Have you tried work holidays, where the team takes off to work for a couple of
weeks at a vacation spot? Works like a charm.

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d4vlx
This post makes me want to work at 42floors. Mission accomplished Jason ;)

