
Paid Vacation? That’s Not Cool. You Know What’s Cool? Paid, Paid Vacation. - lorangb
http://www.fullcontact.com/2012/07/10/paid-paid-vacation/
======
pjmlp
While I appreciate getting my vacations paid like that, the article shows a
bit how Americans vs other continents see the vacations.

Here in Europe the only people I know that dare to have any contact with their
company during vacations are usually labeled as workaholic.

We appreciate our 22-30 days vacations, without any contact with the employer
while enjoying friends and family.

~~~
ekianjo
In Japan you guys wouldnt survive :) You get 10 days vacation a year, and you
will be damn lucky if you can take them all since it depends on the
willingness of your employer to allow them when you want them. People usually
work late and night and often on saturdays depending on the work pressure.

I am not saying whats wrong or right, but I know my friends back in Europe
think its crazy to work such a long time.

~~~
kalleboo
Yeah, it can be nigh-impossible to get vacation time in Japan. Add to that the
loyalty to their employer (I call it stockholm syndrome) and many won't even
ask. My girlfriend is lucky if she gets 2-3 _weekend days_ free a month, let
alone any vacation days. On top of that it's not unusual to have to leave home
before 5 AM only to not get home again until after 8 PM. For 2-3 days in a
row. And she's not especially well-paid either. My and her mother keep
prodding her to quit, but of course her position in the company is essential
and she'd never want to "betray" her employer. No matter what explanation I
try, she doesn't understand how it's her employer who's exploiting her...

~~~
jmcqk6
You only have one life. Why would anyone want to spend the vast majority of it
doing work for someone else? The rare case is that they are passionate and
care about the work. Anything else, and I just don't understand it.

~~~
kalleboo
I have a hard time imagining a world where _nobody_ worked for anyone else.
Who would drive the garbage truck?

~~~
jmitcheson
A robot.

------
guynamedloren
Somewhat off topic, but the concept of 'unlimited time off' has been brought
up in the comments here. I work at a startup that uses this system. It's a
great concept and very comforting to know you can have time off when you need
it, but it's also somewhat confusing. Since there is no benchmark, I have no
idea what is considered 'acceptable' time off. In the year that I've worked
for this startup, I've taken _maybe_ two weeks - that includes a week for
Christmas, and the rest are just days here and there (like an extended weekend
for an anniversary camping trip). Most of these days I'm also connected to a
computer, whether it's coding for a bit in the evening or checking mail
periodically throughout the day. I'm sure I could take more time off and go on
an extended trip, for example, but does this weigh into my employee review? I
know it doesn't make sense, but I feel like I'm cheating the company when I
take time off, especially as an early employee.

Don't get me wrong - I love the flexibility and freedom, but can somebody
familiar weigh in? What is considered 'acceptable' or 'standard' for employees
at early stage startups with 'unlimited time off'?

Edit: The company is YC backed and the founders are regular HN readers. Maybe
they'll weigh in :) ... or weird vibes at the office tomorrow.

~~~
potatolicious
I read something somewhere once that claimed that employees with "unlimited
time off" actually take less than the standard US average.

It's nice to say "you can take time off whenever you feel you should", but in
reality it's extremely difficult to create a culture where this is actually
respected.

I'd actually rather have the policy of "X weeks, but we're not actually
looking that hard". That way I don't have to plan things down to the very last
day, and rest easy knowing there some give, but also still feel entitled to
take what's mine.

~~~
jandrewrogers
What you say is true, and there a lot of reasons why. One of them is that
companies that trust their employees enough to have unlimited time off also
tend to give their employees substantial ownership of whatever they are
working on. They want to make sure their "baby" is being taken care of
properly and is looking good as a matter of personal pride. The cultural
pressure is not to not take time off but to make sure what you own is as good
as possible.

In the case of my company, which also has unlimited time off, there is this
same pattern of engineers that do not want to take vacation. Managers
encourage (gently force?) people to take time off that are not taking at least
a few weeks a year off on their own. The actual range of vacation taken at my
company seems to be from about two weeks (that would be me) to about six
weeks.

~~~
MattRogish
We offer unlimited time off and I, as the CTO, do keep track. But only to make
sure folks are taking time off! I push people to GTFO - unplug, etc. I also
have a sense during my weekly 1:1s, who is getting a little frazzled. I then
encourage them to unplug for a bit. I think it works well.

There's a bit of a meta-meme right now of "No managers!" which is pushback
against "Command and Control" - which I whole-heartedly agree with. However,
for hard-working "Type A" sorts of programmers, it's easy to get so focused
that you don't take care of yourself, even as a responsible adult.

I view my job as a gardener - tending to the care and feeding of folks that
work with me. Every now and again a person needs a mental "weeding", and so a
vacation is needed. :D

~~~
mkopinsky
I have a friend who works as an electrical engineer for the Israeli army. He
told me that in some ways working for the military is better than working as a
civilian, since a boss only cares about the work you, whereas your officer is
responsible for you as a person, including your health and well-being.

------
iuguy
I think this post shows a remarkable difference between American and other
work practices.

Here in the UK people get a minimum of 28 days per year off work (including
bank holidays). At Mandalorian we do 30 days a year plus 1 extra day per year
of service. Most people at Mandalorian don't use all the allowance (mainly
because we're results oriented so people routinely check out during the day to
drop kids off at school, pick them up etc.), but seem to be comfortable with
the fact that they can take time off when they need/want to.

When people go on holiday, they generally disconnect here although some people
will take phones etc. I've just come back from 8 days on a remote island in
the sea of Marmara with a couple of days in Istanbul and my total contact with
work (as the owner) was two text messages and one email on the way to the
airport.

I have American friends who tell me that when they go on holiday they have to
take their laptops and phones with them, and routinely take calls and do
conference calls during their holiday, which sounds insane to me but each
culture has it's own nuances.

If this is doing something good for American workers then I'm all for it, but
I can't help but think that if I were in their shoes I'd say keep the $7,500
and double the holiday allowance.

 __EDIT: Thanks to willholley below for pointing out that the minimum
entitlement includes bank holidays, as seen
here:[http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/employment/employees/timeoffandh...](http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/employment/employees/timeoffandholidays/dg_10029788)

~~~
willholley
Just for clarity, the minimum 28 days in the UK is inclusive of the 8 bank
holidays.

~~~
vidarh
Also worth mentioning that while that's the minimum, for most types of jobs
the practice tends to be 25 days + the 8 bank holidays.

The change in the law to increase the minimum to 28 days inclusive of bank
holidays was relatively non-controversial as it affected a relatively small
proportion of businesses.

~~~
iuguy
We do 30 plus bank holidays, hence my initial misconception. People have to
reserve a certain number of days for christmas shutdown, but generally there's
enough for people to get a couple of big holidays in and time off around
christmas/new year.

------
jballanc
While I like this idea, a concept that I would love to see make a comeback is
the sabbatical. Don't get me wrong, disconnecting and getting away from it all
is valuable, but it also seems like the opposite end of the pendulum swing
from always working. Personally, I would like something in between. Give me 6
weeks to work, but work on what I want: no deadlines, no clients, not even
necessarily any deliverables. Just 6 weeks to explore...ultimately, I think
that would be even more productive in the long run.

~~~
tseabrooks
I really like the idea of a sabbatical... but I always worried then in my
(our) field you'd end up really really far behind / out of touch if you took a
2 month sabbatical.

~~~
GFischer
My impression is that you're overstating the effects of a 2 month sabbatical.

Much like turning off the TV, I suspect that if you do get a 2 month
sabbatical, you'll find out that most of the new developments are overstated
and that you'll be able to quickly catch up.

------
dev_jim
<Braces for the piling on by Europeans about how inferior our vacations are>

It's a nice thought, but I'd rather my employer (and my girlfriend's employer)
just pay top dollar and let us figure out our own vacation plans.

~~~
rmc
_< Braces for the piling on by Europeans about how inferior our vacations
are>_

That's partially because us Europeans can't really understand how you can get
by with little to no holidays. It'd be like an American talking to a Soviet
person (back in the day) and being suprised that they were OK with no voting
and secret police.

~~~
krschultz
Well I bitch about my vacation all the time (I get 2 weeks and 13 holidays,
which really sucks for someone that likes to travel).

But on the flip side, the European vacation schedule can be destructive. I've
worked with an Italian company that was trying to expand their market into the
US., and the 6 week summer vacation literally sank any chance of their
entrance. They invested millions of dollars, hired a bunch of people in the US
(and didn't give the US employees similar vacation to their Italian ones), and
were really rolling. In the spring they signed a couple million dollars in
deals with distributors. Then July/August rolled around and the parent company
went entirely on vacation. You couldn't even get the CEO. Phone calls went
unanswered. Orders went unfilled. That literally sank their entrance to the
market. A year later, they are effectively done and have lost all of their
investment. No one will buy from them.

Imagine trying to compete with an American startup company but taking 6 weeks
off completely. What happens during that time? I'm all for individual
employees taking vacation to avoid burn out - honestly right now I could go
for a week off - but shutting down the entire company for multiple weeks in a
row puts you at a huge disadvantage. China, Japan, the US, and the BRICS
aren't taking 6 week vacations. I don't care how efficient you are, if your
company shuts down while your competitors keep rolling, it is unlikely that
you will succeed in any competitive markets.

~~~
enraged_camel
This sounds like an edge-case, and the solution seems rather simple: implement
a policy so that only X% of employees in any department can be on vacation at
any given time. Just like employees in retail have to coordinate their shifts
(and have to find substitutes if they can't cover their shift), you can have
this policy to ensure business continuity.

~~~
thetrb
That helps, but doesn't completely solve the problem. This is actually done by
many companies in Germany that I know of.

However, if you set the X% relatively high (e.g. 40%) then you still have the
problem that the whole department might not function that well any more during
this time.

If you set it very low on the other hand (e.g. 10%) then many people won't be
able to take their vacation during the summer months and they will be pissed.

Sure, there's a way to find a middle ground that works out somehow, but still
the original problem isn't completely solved.

------
einhverfr
I like the idea, but I wonder a little bit about the implementation. When you
say "disconnect" do you mean from the company? If so then I totally agree.
(Granted if I were an employee, I'd probably go somewhere on the beach, swim
in the sea during the day and program my own projects in the evening or
afternoon for a couple hours when the kids are taking a nap.)

There is no greater joy in life than watching things that you make come to
life with your mind and with your hands. It's one thing I love about brewing,
cooking, gardening, and programming. That isn't so great when you work for
someone else, but one thing vacations can give people with a creative drive is
a chance to create their own things.

So I guess one thing I would caution about is that it might be worth pointing
out that IP assignment clauses shouldn't reach vacation time either.

------
Ra1d3n
Well in Austria (and Germany afaik) we get a vacation bonus pay ("to be able
to afford vacation"). Its about one month of regular pay. Additionally, we get
another month of pay for christmas ("to be able to afford gifts for the loved
ones").

It's often called the "13th and 14th month of pay". Come work in Europe ;-)

~~~
darklajid
Working in Germany.

The companies I've worked for offer neither of these payments, so you're
getting 12 salaries. Of course my exposure is limited to tech companies and
small one at that, but for me these 13th or 14th salaries are unavailable,
that is only present in big corporations or interestingly for non-academic
jobs (i.e. metal work shops I know do pay these, so do some construction
companies). IT? Nope.

~~~
yitchelle
I think that this style of salary is getting less common in Germany. My work
in Germany also doesn't offer the 13th or 14th salaries. Someone else
mentioned that these extra payments just means that you annual salary gets
divided by 13 or 14 rather than 12, so the total annual payment is the same.

------
suprgeek
The "disconnect" rule is an excellent policy for several reasons. In addition
to the ones outlined in the post - there is the concept of seeing your own
work with "Fresh Eyes". I truly wish I could do this once very six months at
least.

I was shocked last year when I came back from a couple of weeks abroad to
discover that the very first Architectural decision we had made on a project
seemed blatantly off. Turns out it was - no one had considered questioning an
implicit assumption - no one (especially me whose job it was) had even caught
the assumption. Saved us at least 3 iterations when we fixed it.

~~~
khill
Another good reason is that it ensures the company can function without an
individual for a week or two. This will encourage key people to document their
work and share information so the company doesn't suffer when they drop off
the grid.

------
bodolomo
I don't know about other European countries, but at least in Germany that's
already a very real thing and has been for decades.

See <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urlaubsgeld> (use google/chrome
translation).

Not everyone gets it, it usually depends on your (or your union's) salary
negotiations with the employers.

While the Vacation Money is typically paid in June for the summer vacation,
many companies also offer another an extra salary (or only a certain
percentage of your regular monthly salary) in December for your christmas
expenses.

------
jcampbell1
I like the concept, but $7,500 is an outlandish amount of money for a
vacation. It also represents 5-10% of total compensation for an engineer.
Plenty of people take 6 month vacations for that kind of money.

~~~
geoffschmidt
Since you apparently get the full $7500 regardless of how much your vacation
costs, what he's effectively doing is docking everyone's pay $7500 if they
don't take at least one fully disconnected vacation a year.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"what he's effectively doing is docking everyone's pay $7500 if they don't
> take at least one fully disconnected vacation a year"_

That's only true if their base salary/bonuses are $7500 below market, which I
doubt is the case.

~~~
matthewowen
Almost everyone's salary / bonus is exactly market, because it was by
definition set by the employment market. It was market when before the $7500,
and market afterwards.

I'm not being pedantic and missing the point that you mean 'market average',
because employment is not commodity purchase - so market average isn't
meaningful unless you're painting with very, very broad strokes.

------
Tyrannosaurs
I've worked in places that gave particular allowances for certain things and
while I appreciate the gesture my view tends to be just give me cash and let
me work out what to do with it.

There are some exceptions to this (pensions mainly) but I don't think it's for
a company to say how someone should spend their time off or their money and
effectively penalise them if it's not in the prescribed manner.

Yes holidays are good for relieving stress but so is paying down a mortgage or
paying of debt for instance. What is best for the individual is probably best
decided by the individual.

~~~
Tichy
I think the money is meant as an incentive for employees to stay healthy. Like
handing out free fruits or gym memberships. So just giving the employees the
money and let them decide what to do with it would be counterproductive.

Although maybe there should be some research. If more pay automatically makes
people go to the gym more often, maybe it would be ok...

~~~
_delirium
I guess I don't see a necessary connection between taking a trip somewhere and
health. I _do_ see the advantages of disconnecting from work/email for 30
days. But why do I have to fly to Hawaii or Europe or something to do that?
Can't I take 30 days off to putter around my house, reconnect with
friends/family in the area I haven't seen enough recently, read a few books,
participate more in local cultural activities I neglect due to being too busy,
etc.? To me, the most relaxing vacation is taking time for myself in my
hometown, with people I know.

I find vacations sometimes interesting and educational (see other societies,
etc.), but not generally relaxing. To me, packing, flying places, and living
in hotels is a bit stressful. To some extent, it actually makes me feel _more_
busy, because it's one more thing, along with work, that gets in the way of me
spending more time on the local stuff I'd like to spend more time on.

~~~
rahoulb
The article does mention staying at home and watching TV

------
kodisha
Omg, did you read this article at all? Point is NOT about extra money.

Point is about _eliminating single point of failure_ situations, e.g. only one
guy knows how to handle really important client..

That should _never_ happen, and by paying an extra buck, and forcing you to be
_detached from work_ they are giving you incentive to build fallback measures,
write better docs etc.

------
schappim
That's one way to spend the investor's money... ;-)

~~~
maigret
Or at the opposite to get a better return on it. If working more produced
automatically more income, Japan would be magnitude richer than Europe. Food
for thoughts:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_hour_worked)

------
krschultz
Far short of this is simply making employees take their vacation.

My Dad always tells the story of having a battle every year to get one of the
people that worked for him to take her vacation. She was entitled to 3 weeks,
and typically took 2-3 days. It wasn't healthy, and it wasn't necessary for
her to make that sacrifice. Some people have trouble just letting go.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Some people literally live to work and find it difficult to know what to do
when they're left to determine what to do for themselves.

------
shreyas056
$7500, thats roughly 6 times the annual per capita income of India

~~~
toomuchcoffee
But (after taxes) about 6 weeks living expenses in NYC of SF.

------
wtn
I would check with an accountant before I implemented this policy. I imagine
FullContact treats these $7500 payments as supplemental wages. However, I
would not want to explain to an auditor how this is a legitimate business
expense. From the IRS:

"You can generally deduct a bonus paid to an employee if you intended the
bonus as additional pay for services, not as a gift, and the services were
performed. However, the total bonuses, salaries, and other pay must be
reasonable for the services performed."

You could try to shoehorn this as vacation pay, but an auditor would question
why workers are getting effectively a significant bonus for time not worked.

Any employee who elects not to take a vacation would have a pretty good case
to demand the vacation pay anyhow, since he performed _more_ services than
other bonus-receiving workers.

~~~
lorangb
it's treated as a bonus and taxed as such.

------
paraschopra
If the team is small (if it is big, maybe chuck the teams for this purpose?),
the whole team may consider going together for a week or two of company-
sponsored paid vacation. Last year in December, we took the whole Wingify team
to Thailand and the camaraderie couldn't have been better. All of us realized
it was a great way to disconnect and a fun way to increase the team morale.
Each one of us loved it :)

For the curious, here are some pics: <http://team.wingify.com/thailand-trip-
pictures>

~~~
georgemcbay
I'm sure you had great fun on your trip, but for most people I believe that
going with your workmates would make it much, much harder to truly disconnect.

Sure, maybe you aren't sitting around with laptops and whatnot, but I'm sure
all sorts of work talk will pop up.

~~~
tikhonj
On the other hand, assuming this supplements rather than replaces a normal
vacation, it could just be a fun and relaxed way of brainstorming. After all,
at an interesting company, chances are work talk will pop up because people
genuinely enjoy it. Just talking about work a bit does not ruin a vacation!

This reminds me of what one of my professors talked about recently: a skiing
trip is great because you can enjoy yourself and talk about research on the
ski lift. So taking your entire research group on a skiing trip would be a
nice compromise between taking a break and having time to talk and think about
what you're working on.

I actually think it sounds great. Partly because I love skiing and partly
because I _also_ love talking about CS.

~~~
georgemcbay
"On the other hand, assuming this supplements rather than replaces a normal
vacation, it could just be a fun and relaxed way of brainstorming."

I agree. I'm not against "team building" vacations, but I don't think they
serve the same purpose as the vacation type being advocated in the article.

------
jiggy2011
I think there's 2 things that are especially true for technical people that
cause people to worry about taking vacation time (where you are completely
disconnected) that are almost polar opposite.

Firstly there is a worry about if your co-workers are competent enough to do
take care of your time critical work in your absence, they may believe that
they are but that is not necessarily true.

As an anecdote, I took a couple of days off a while ago. At the time I was
away an urgent issue came up which required a small reconfiguration on the
server.

Not wanting to bother me a co-worker attempted to resolve this himself.
Unfortunately he did this in a rather hamfisted way by overriding a lot of
stuff he didn't understand that I had done for security reasons.

Result, I come back to an inbox full of complaints about email no longer
working. After some probeing I find that our server IP address is on several
blacklists for sending spam. I then discover that the server has a rootkit on
it. This means that I have to work a large number of extra hours correcting
this problem which more than nullifies the time I got off for vacation.

The result of this is that I actually feel _less_ stressed on vacation if I
have a smartphone for my work email with me and know that people don't worry
about contacting me.

The other opposite problem is that perhaps your co-workers _are_ competent and
can take over your duties with no hiccup to the organisation, now suddenly you
are stressed that management might not think that you justify your salary so
well.

------
the_gipsy
I don't like it, because essentially your boss is commanding you what to do on
your vacation. He wants you to disconnect, so that you come back fully
recharged.

I'd rather get the money in salary and decide myself what to do with the
money, without anyone dictating how to spend _my_ free time. It is perfectly
possible to disconnect and recharge spending one week slacking off and hanging
around friends, just as much as a one month vacation.

~~~
tlrobinson
I suspect hanging around with friends for a week would be perfectly
acceptable.

 _For others, it might be hanging on the couch, eating Taco Bell and watching
bad cable all week_

Presumably they mean "disconnect" from the company rather than all people you
know.

------
tomtom101
Im a Brit that used to get 30 days paid plus public holidays who is now
working in the US at a tech company that has no vacation policy. I love my job
and work long hours and often some weekends. I have a family and love to
travel, but I much prefer the environment that I work in today. I am very
ambitious and want the company that I am working for to do well and I want to
do well. I am prepared to put a number of years hard work in with little or no
vacation as there will hopefully be a much bigger upside at the end of it. If
you want 20-30 days holiday a year that you take, then consider what
opportunities you are missing. I think FullContact's 15 days paid PAID policy
is excellent and strikes a good balance, but Europe has gone too far. I
believe the Mediterranean countries are going to get left behind in turns of
development and could end up looking like 3rd world countries in 50 years from
now unless the work ethic/culture changes significantly.

------
meddlepal
Am I the only one who thinks the idea of completely unplugging oneself from
their work during a vacation is wrong, particularly in the case of high tech
industry professionals? It sounds nice in concept, but in reality is
impractical - business doesn't sleep; especially the high tech industry. The
debt just keeps piling up.

I agree with the idea of trying to avoid trivial things during vacation, but
if a non-trivial or business-emergency occurred and I could be of use I would
hope someone would get in contact with me to resolve it - even if that means
interrupting my private-life to work. In my mind that is one of the key
differences between a professional and a drone - the ability to be flexible -
on the other hand a lot of places do not treat their workers as professionals
and see them merely as drones, for those places I say unplug and do not look
back.

~~~
tbrownaw
So are you saying that professionals are defined solely by their economic
output, or just that they don't deserve respect?

Places that actually seriously care about emergencies (like the Nuclear Power
Plant my dad works at) plan ahead to have people available when needed. For
example having people take turns carrying a pager (this was before there were
cell phones), on a known, planned schedule.

I'm one of the more senior people in my group at work, so when things go wrong
I tend to get called to help fix them. This is _annoying_. It's not a sign of
how wonderfully important I am. It's a sign that (1) I don't push back hard
enough, and (2) my work is _not_ considered important enough to rate a high
bus factor.

------
clarky07
This is pretty interesting for me as I just got back from a 2 week vacation
where I had very little internet access. The vacation was great, but I
honestly think I would have enjoyed it much more if I had internet access and
could have done some work that needed done if I wanted to.

I'm running my own business and I take off time whenever I want to. I'll
probably take 40-50 days off this year. That being said, I absolutely hate
being completely disconnected. I also don't like not giving great customer
service for my products. I am perfectly happy to take the day off and then
answer a few emails when I get home.

Not having that option for the last two weeks was actually annoying to me, and
I enjoyed the vacation less as a result. Spending a few minutes here and there
and then getting back to vacation to me is better than just being cut off for
an extended period.

------
invalidOrTaken
Hiring you say.

~~~
bartonfink
They aren't making my job any easier trying to attract new blood to Mapquest
by offering perks like that. I'm tempted to interview just to see what they're
all about.

------
padobson
It made me want to see if they were hiring. Excellent blog post.

------
manmal
Being connected all day, every day is certainly not healthy, but how is 1-2
weeks in a year (52 weeks) going to help with that? Vacation does allow you to
"return to your body" as I like to call it, but a few weeks per year are not
nearly enough. What people need is at least 2 days per week of not being
connected, and lots of pauses during each workday. THAT's sustainable.

------
Uchikoma
That was the usual model in Germany until the 80s, then it was scaled back and
now sometimes exists in big corporations ("Urlaubsgeld").

~~~
r3m6
Except that you could use that money for everything you wanted. So many
(most?) people simply saved it and viewed it as part of their regular salary.

The new thing here is that you MUST spend the money for something fun. So it
is more than just money. Its like a free lunch. They always taste better than
the ones I have to pay for ;)

~~~
tlrobinson
It sounds like they'd be fine with you "hanging on the couch, eating Taco Bell
and watching bad cable all week" rather than spending the money on a fancy
vacation.

~~~
lorangb
yep. we're totally fine with whatever. as long as you disconnect from work.

------
GigabyteCoin
We have this in Canada already by mandate, it's called "vacation pay".

Every employer MUST deduct ~3% of every full time worker's pay and then give
it to them at some point during the next year. Usually when that worker goes
on Vacation.

------
Tichy
Sounds great, and I think 7500$ is a generous offer. I am just a bit shocked
that a one week vacation is supposed to cost that much. Apparently prices are
very different in the US (I am in Europe).

~~~
krschultz
They did mention that's for a family of 4. I'm not sure if they scale it back
if you are single, but if you have a family that's probably in the ballpark.

~~~
Tichy
I just went on vacation as a family of three. We rented a flat which was I
think 50€/person. Even assuming 100€/night and 1000€/person for traveling
(actually I paid 200€ for us all for an 8h train ride) it is still not 7.5k.
However, 7.5k really gives you some flexibility (travel further away, more
expensive hotels and so on).

I guess it would be easy to spend 7.5k, but I really would think twice before
spending that much on holidays. On the other hand, if you only have one week
per year, perhaps it comes naturally that you are willing to spend more.

~~~
krschultz
True. This is OT but still an interesting conversation anyway.

My girlfriend and I spent a total of $3500 to go to Italy for 14 days. With
$7500, we would have gotten better hotels (we did the hostel route) but it
wouldn't have materially changed the trip. However of that $3500, almost $1500
was the airfare from New York to Milan. This is also a good example of the
American vacation system screwing us, I would have stayed for 4-6 weeks if my
job would have let me. 14 days was the maximum we could pull off, and my
girlfriend's boss put her in as 'sick' for at least one day in there. I worked
the day before we flew out and the day after we got home (as a jet lagged
zombie) because I was out of vacation days.

------
jpike
Man 15 days... that's kinda harsh. I live in London and the idea of working
whilst on holiday is almost unthinkable.

I like the idea of the money though. Is working really that hard in America?

------
donavanm
Yup, there's also been some news recently about companies with unlimited
vacation policies. Both seem like a pretty cheap recruiting/retention
strategy.

~~~
smsm42
Unlimited vacation policy is a trick. If you really make it unlimited, you'd
just be fired - they don't promise to keep you employed forever, just give you
vacations while you're employed. And since you don't have defined vacation,
you're under peer pressure to reduce your vacations - since your peers are
working and you're slacking off.

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wtvanhest
Is there any reason you couldn't set up the travel through the company rather
than the employee, arrange plane tickets, hotels etc. pre-tax?

~~~
khuey
Because that would be illegal?

~~~
mmcnickle
It wouldn't be illegal, but there would be no tax advantage. Certainly in the
UK it would be classed as a benefit-in-kind to the employee and the company
would be liable to pay tax on the value of the benefit.

Where it may save money is with standing relationships with travel agents for
favourable rates.

~~~
khuey
Right, it's only legal if you pay the taxes. But the comment I responded to
specifically said 'pre-tax'.

~~~
wtvanhest
Tax law isn't that black and white and your answer doesn't really address any
aspect of how to think about the problem.

For example, you can send an employee on a company retreat pretax. How do you
seperate a company retreat from an individual's vacation? It is a continuum
where somewhere between those there is an answer where it is legal and
illegal.

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toomuchcoffee
Might sound nice to some, but basically it's just a gimmick. Why not just
offer them 7.5K more in salary and leave it at at that?

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nhangen
ha! Just hit my 1 year mark and got bumped from 2 weeks (5 days personal, 5
days vacation) to 3. Since things like getting sick and/or personal time are
deducted from the balance, I had to wait until the end of my year to take a
vacation (in order to make sure I had the time).

So all in all I basically got a week to spend time with my family.

Would kill for a policy like this.

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jasonwilk
Sorry, had to do this: <http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3q251w/>

------
silentscope
this is an advertisement for full contact...

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binarycrusader
Hey, I hate to be a drag, but your article needs a [NSFW] tag or you need to
take the naked people photo out.

------
cbsmith
It's funny, this isn't really a new idea, though you might consider it new for
the tech business.

That said, it is a good one.

------
anmi
I just realized i totally fucked up my last two vacations. Needless to say
i've been working.

------
marcamillion
I love this...I bet they see a spike in job applications. This is so awesome.

------
trg2
Best. Job Posting. Ever.

