
Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory - sqs
https://sourcegraph.com/blog/mandatory-vacation
======
AnimalMuppet
"If I had seven hours to cut down a tree, I would spend the first five
sharpening my axe." \- Abraham Lincoln

Many tech jobs are brain work. This is not like an assembly line. If you're
not sharp, you're not very effective. Worse, you're making more mistakes,
which are going to take time to find and fix. A tired engineer can be
literally worse than useless.

So take vacation without feeling guilty. Encourage (force?) your employees to
do so, too. But don't stop there. Go home at night when you're tired. Don't
come in for the weekend. Come back with a brain that's ready to go.

------
elhector
I agree, the motto of 'we don't have a vacation policy, just take time off if
you need it' creates usually the wrong sort of culture and dynamics, leading
to guilt, etc. Lack of clarity around expectations is commonly a source of
anxiety and stress. Whenever possible I encourage that people take 1 week off
per quarter.

~~~
zenbowman
My employer does this, I don't mind it. I took a whole month off last year as
a block.

As an employee, what you should do is actually take their statements at face-
value, but I acknowledge that this may be harder for entry-level guys.

~~~
elhector
Yes, it depends people by people, it IS OK to take that amount of time off if
the 'non policy' allows it, but most people don't do that out of fear / guilt.

------
DanielBMarkham
One of the things I've seen looking at many companies is the _mandatory
shutdown_. Key maintenance staff stays on, but the place is a ghost town for,
say 2 weeks in the summer and the last 2 weeks of the year. (The maintenance
guys have a similar system, though staggered)

That way there's no excuse of "I have to stay on because $BIGPROJECTX needs my
help." There's literally nothing going on. Go home. Get a life.

Such drastic measures are necessary, unfortunately, because just a few folks
working 1.5x hours can end up sucking everybody else in. If you make it
mandatory and set a designated date, it's much harder to have the game-
playing.

Note that this is also a good way for people who work together to do things
together. After all, you're all off during the same times :)

~~~
jaredsohn
After a startup I was working at was acquired, the company that bought us had
a week-long mandatory shutdown in mid-January. This was horrible since many of
us had already taken vacation a few weeks earlier for Christmas/New Years.
Also, this time would have counted against our vacation days which meant that
we would be less likely for us to be able to take time off during other times
of the year.

------
IvyMike
I've met a lot of people who are proud to be "the only one who knows how to do
X" where X is something very important to the company or software product.

They seem to think this makes them extra-valuable to the company. But I think
the common perception of others is that the "valuable" employee is actually
always a constant bottleneck and thus a source of pain. "We can't do X because
Timmy is at his kid's soccer game for another hour...ugh."

If you think that if you took time off "everything would fall apart", you
might want to consider how others perceive that situation.

(Personally, I've always automated what I could and trained backup people in
what I couldn't, and it''s worked out well for me. And I get to take guilt-
free vacations. :)

~~~
PeterisP
"the only one who knows how to do X" implies a Bus Factor of 1 - which is a
big weakness for the organization.

Even if some people may like being irreplaceable in this way, it's a failure
of managers if they allow it to continue.

~~~
mitchty
I always try to write up documentation and offload the crap I'm doing or at
least teach it to someone else.

Doesn't work that well in practice but it helps to demonstrate that I am
trying to get information out of my brain into others.

I hate being "that one guy" for anything to be honest. Means I get stuck with
it forever. Like one linux kernel developer said, never be the last guy to
update the floppy disk driver, you'll own that code forever.

------
antonapa
Swede here. I got 27 days paid vacation, not counting Saturdays and Sundays,
so five weeks plus two days. Plus all the national holidays. Am I right if I
understand this post as two weeks is almost an exception for Americans? If
that's the case it's really saddening.

~~~
tzs
If you think that is saddening, compare your maternity/paternity leave to what
workers in the United States get.

US workers have no nationwide guaranteed paid maternity or paternity leave,
and 12 weeks of unpaid leave (and that only if they work at a company with 50
or more employees).

A couple states (including California) do require employers to provide 6 weeks
paid leave).

------
fishtoaster
At my last employer (a small startup), we had very clear vacation rules:

\- Every week, you track the hours you worked (honor system- we just filed out
a spreadsheet). \- You’re expected to work X - 4 hours a week on average (X
being a normal work week, 4 being the number of vacation hours you accrue per
week).

So, if you work X hours a week, you’ll find yourself with about 26 days of
vacation at the end of the year. If you work long hours for a few spots and
find you averaged X + 2 hours a week, you end up with 39 days of vacation. You
could use your hours whenever you want (and even go negative if you didn’t get
too crazy).

It set clear expectations, showed that people were expected to take vacation,
and made everyone feel like they were entitled to their days off, rather than
guilty. I thought it was pretty neat.

That said, we dismantled the system about 6 months after I joined because
although most of us didn’t mind the hour tracking, a few people _really_
disliked it.

~~~
udev
Numbers like 26 and 39 vacation days tell me that you are not in North
America.

Over here we are talking about 10-15 vacation days per year.

~~~
fishtoaster
No, this was in SF. I was just fudging the numbers a little: X was actually 50
hours (which I left out because it wasn’t particularly important to the
story). So, if you work X hours a week, you get 4*52=208 hours of vacation. If
X were 40, that’d be 208/8 = 26 days. Since it’s 50, it’s 208/10 = 21 days.

~~~
fishtoaster
That said, I'm now at an "unlimited" vacation time place (still in SF), and
I've had no problem asking for time off. I took 3.5 weeks around christmas for
a trip to New Zealand, and I'll probably take a week this summer to visit
family on the east coast (in addition to a day here and there for local
trips).

------
jeena
Am I the only one who wasn't really aware of the fact that people feel guilty
about taking their vaccation days? I am working in IT since 2007 and I always
felt that I needed much more vaccation then I got and I never felt bad about
taking my vaccation. But it is perhaps because I come from a workers family
and worked as a heating engeneer and on an assembly line before my IT career?

While negotiating a higher salery my boss told me that he wasn't able to meet
my expectation moneywise and asked what I would like to have instead, a new
computer, phone, etc. I took a extra week of vaccation days instead.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the job, it was interesting and I made good
friends there, etc. but nothing beats a week abroad meeting new people,
partying and so on.

And btw. yesterday I started at a new company, and I'm going on a 2 weeks
vaccation next month already, nobody seems to have a problem with it.

------
democracy
The companies are doing it to decrease liability on some accounting
spreadsheets.

If you really care about staff you improve work life balance, pay competitive
rates, spot and remove dumb managers and assholes.

Sorry but 2 weekss mandatory vacation is not going to help much, on the
contrary it might make someone angry when forced to take time off when the
company is slow, not when a poor dev wants to actually go somewhere for
holidays.

~~~
thecage411
I didn't see anything in article about forcing you to take time off when the
company is slow. In fact this seems to contradict one of their goals, to make
sure the systems are maintainable without you.

~~~
democracy
You are right, I was talking a company I worked at :)

------
sqs
I would love to hear if any other companies are doing the same thing or
considering it, and from anyone who works in banking and has to take mandatory
time off.

Reddit comments here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1zglqs/mandator...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1zglqs/mandatory_vacations_in_tech_better_code_happier/).

~~~
oflordal
Most companies in Europe will do this (although with 5+ weeks). They tend to
be mostly competitive. It is a bit hard to understand why US tech workers put
up with not having this.

~~~
fennecfoxen
People in the US may be paying more attention to cold hard cash and less to
vacation promises.

~~~
roeme
It's not a promise when it's written in your contract.

But – in contrast to the US I guess – in the EU breaching this contract as am
employer _will_ cost you dearly; there are even courts dedicated for
employment disputes in some countries, resulting in timely rulings.

------
felipehummel
From my brazilian perspective it's very strange to read this. In Brazil,
vacation is mandatory by law. Any employee has 30 days of vacation by year.
But the moment the employee goes on vacation and how he does it (30 days
straight, 15-15 days, 20-10...) is still discussed previously with the
employer.

I'm not judging which one is better, just acknowledging the culture
difference.

~~~
roeme
Swiss here; having 25 days excluding local and national holidays.

It really is a strange sight, this theme popping up all the time on HN, with
some author proclaiming "look guys this is a good thing because X,Y,Z", when
it's an absolute no-brainer for oneself.

Mind you, 25 days is more or less a norm; the law requires only 20 days.

------
doug1001
the intuition behind the OP seems valid, but i wonder if it would succeed
given the American concept of 'vacation.'

Americans (compared with Europeans, for instance) view vacation quite
differently--in the quantity available (2-3 weeks versus 4-5 weeks); in the
amount they can afford to spend on a vacation (in Europe, disposable incomes
are generally lower and must be spread over a longer vacation period); and
perhaps most of all in the general perception of taking vacation (ie, in the
US, i have noticed many people don't even take all of their vacation and brag
about that fact). w/r/t the latter point, it almost seems to me as if vacation
is viewed as a sort of convalescence--ie, well it's available if you need it,
but if you are strong enough then of course there will be no need.

The fact is that our jobs are not physically demanding; we do need a 'rest'
from physical activity, but rather we need to rest our minds. But how do you
do that when you take your vacation consists of a few four-day weekends each
year in which you fly to an oceanside resort, sit by the pool with your
iphone, checking your email. You are still thinking about work because there
the vacation consists of nothing to replace the work thoughts. What's worse,
is that you are more stressed than ever because you are thinking about work,
following email but you are not there in the office to personally ensure
everyone is doing exactly what they should be.

When i lived and worked in Spain, i took two multi-week vacations, always of
the active kind. I enjoy alpine climbing but hiking/trekking or cycling
vacations embody the same idea. The level of mental and physical engagement
required means that i'm not thinking about work even if i wanted to (and i
don't).

------
jacalata
I'm very curious how you'd enforce "no work email except customer facing
stuff", is that just going to be self-enforced?

~~~
sqs
It'll be enforced by the team as well. After all, if the person continues to
chime in on emails or commit code, then they're not upholding their end of the
bargin with their team (that they'd build good enough systems and write good
enough code so they don't have to always be present).

And by "enforce" I don't mean that we have some formal reprimand process or
anything, obviously. But if it becomes an issue, we'll deal with it.

------
shasta
I was really impressed by my current company's 60 vacation days per year until
I realized that included weekends.

~~~
omegant
I guess you enjoy some luxury vacations each night!

------
bjelkeman-again
We have 25 days holiday per year for everyone. You are expected to take them
and I will be following up on that too.

~~~
omegant
Are you able to put them between weekends?

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Absolutely. We count days, not consecutive days. So five weeks holiday
effectively, plus bank holidays.

------
rabino
I get the point that we need to take vacations. I really enjoy mine, and I try
to take at least 3 small-ish vacations during the year, plus a big one.

Having said that... making them mandatory? We're adults, we should act like
them.

------
pmcpinto
Portuguese here: 25 days each year, more national holidays

------
dfgeheht
At my current salt rationer, sorry salary slavemonger, sorry, employer of
choice, they do give each employee a set number of days each year. The
employee can _request_ to use some/all of those days throughout the year, but,
the manager has to approve, and can veto requests. Last year our team lost
most of their holiday due to management ineptitude and gross fuckwittery in
terms of project management and death-marched delivery plans.

This year, the team, collectively have told the dates and taken it, and
basically told management to go swing. If they take action against us taking
some holiday, we all resign. Has worked so far.

