

Responsible Vacation Policy - prospero
http://blog.factual.com/my-vacation-policy-is-better-than-yours

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varelse
Because I am a workaholic who doesn't trust management to look out for me, I
want a formal vacation policy that accrues vacation days so there's no chance
for misunderstanding either way.

If you can solve the problem of finding a management chain that truly looks
out for its employees rather than chasing maximal profitability and/or
covering its own a$$, I salute you. Until then, I'll stick to a formal
vacation policy as the 80% solution that just isn't broken.

~~~
s73v3r
The problem with that is it will take quite a while when you join before you
can actually do anything with your vacation.

~~~
varelse
That's why more Americans need to take at least a month off between jobs, no?

------
andypalmer
Paragraph 3 of the RiverGlide employment contract (
[https://github.com/RiverGlide/contracts/blob/master/employme...](https://github.com/RiverGlide/contracts/blob/master/employment.md)
)

The law entitles You to a minimum of 28 days of paid leave per year. This
consists of 8 public holidays and 20 days of paid leave per year. We expect
you to take at least the minimum amount of leave each year. We also encourage
you to take as much additional leave as you need to maintain the health and
well being of yourself and the company, as long as to do so would not cause
harm to You, Us or any client We are engaged with.

Basically, we expect our employees to take a minimum amount of time off but we
don't track it. Hopefully the other paragraphs make sense to responsible
adults too

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wink
I'd really like to know if they have any actual Europeans working there? I
wouldn't call myself a slacker, but having worked only in Germany I like my
25+ days of paid vacation very much.

Oh, and about every person who moved to the US (i.e. the valley) said they
miss their vacation time a lot. And they also said they love their jobs...

~~~
prospero
Sure, we do. They take advantage of the vacation policy just like the rest of
us.

~~~
wink
I was referencing this exact paragraph:

> Imagine an employee who takes this policy and chooses to live like a
> European with umpteen weeks off every year. What to do about that? Simply
> tie it back to performance and things become clear.

It's probably just my bad English that I don't get the nuance, but it sounds a
little condescending.

Are the Europeans actually taking more time off due to being used to it? Is
their performance judged more because of this, if they do? I can't really
imagine anyone answering YES to that, but it just struck me as odd to include
this.

That said, your model sounds very good (compared to what seems to be the
American standard) :)

~~~
dirtyvagabond
Author here. Definitely didn't mean to condescend. I used "like a European" as
short-hand for, "this is an employee who regularly chooses to take off far
more time than the typical American would generally be expected to take off".

This section of the article was meant to speak directly to management who may
be concerned about using this policy due to this particular possibility. The
following text is attempting to answer their concerns. That is, don't worry so
much about this. Rather, judge the results, as you should be anyway.

