
Employee benefits at Basecamp - antouank
https://m.signalvnoise.com/employee-benefits-at-basecamp-d2d46fd06c58#.15drxex98
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goodJobWalrus
> One-Month Sabbatical Every Three Years: Every three years, employees are
> eligible to take a one-month-long sabbatical.

For some reason, I keep being surprised how a month long vacation is called
"sabbatical" in American terms while in Europe everyone gets 4-6 week vacation
every year, and it's not that rare to take it all at once.

4 days summer work week is nice.

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davidw
> everyone

I lived in Italy for most of the past 15 years, and no not everyone gets that
kind of vacation time. A lot of people don't:

* The unemployed. There are a lot of them - with youth rates approaching 40% at one point.

* People who do not have a "Permanent Job", which includes a lot of younger (under 40 is 'young' in Italy) people.

* Even people with permanent jobs are starting to take smaller vacations - 2 weeks, for instance - because the model of "hey, let's shut down the entire country during August" isn't really sustainable when you're competing against people who stay open and stay productive by taking turns taking time off.

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ajford
> "hey, let's shut down the entire country during August"

Puerto Rico does this with all schools & daycare. From the middle of July to
the middle of August almost everywhere is closed. If you don't have family on
the island and have younger children, you're screwed. Daycare is expensive
(relative to cost of living) in Puerto Rico, and independent childcare is even
more so. Sitters are also difficult to find due to cultural reasons.

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goodJobWalrus
Out of curiosity: What cultural reasons?

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karmajunkie
I think overall this sounds like a great benefits package, but I find it
troublesome that there is such a disparity between maternal and paternal
parental leave. This is one of the standard policy disparities which puts a
great deal of the career coat of parenthood on women, and I'd urge Jason and
company to reconsider the disparity.

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basseq
This is a little unfair.

I agree with you in spirit, but this policy is pretty damn close: note that
"primary caregiver" leave is also a full 16 weeks. I've seen companies move
away from "maternity" vs. "paternity" terms and just talk about "primary
caregiver" and "secondary caregiver". Which not only gets away from the
gender-specific career costs, but also covers non-birth parents (e.g.,
adoption, surrogates).[1]

In other words, the father[2] is more than able to step into the primary
caregiver role and allow the mother to return to work and minimize career
impact.

Now, there's a _separate_ argument that _both_ parents should get equal time
off. I agree with that view as well, but it's a different philosophical
argument.

Finally, I would be interested to know if there's a tenure requirement for
parental leave at Basecamp. It's often 12 months "vesting", which is a bummer
for those with children on the horizon. I recently switched jobs and had a
kid: I gave up an 8-week parental leave benefit at my old company for no
benefit whatsoever at the new one. I made the decision that the cost (losing
the benefit) was worth the opportunity, but I could see others deferring a job
change in that instance. This is a rather insidious form of Family
Responsibilities Discrimination that adds a career cost to both men and women
(and moreso for women).

[1] Traditional maternity policies are often focused on the medical aspects of
childbirth rather than newborn bonding and care.

[2] Replace with other terms as appropriate.

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karmajunkie
I see where you're coming from but couldn't disagree more. In a balanced
world, there is no such thing as a primary caregiver—both parents are equally
responsible. A company should be completely agnostic with regards to who is
giving what care to the child and when.

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basseq
We don't disagree. My point is that Basecamp is "above average" on parental
benefits, and their policy isn't "standard". Could they be better? Yes. And is
it fair to ask them to be even more of a leader? Sure. But let's recognize how
far they've come, rather than chastising them for not reaching "ideal" goals.

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karmajunkie
I believe I did note that they have a great benefits package overall, but
especially in light of all of the attention on diversity in tech issues, I
believe it's even more incumbent on us to point out egregious double
standards. Perhaps because they do provide a generous maternity leave, it's
especially noteworthy (and to me, irksome) that the maternity leave is almost
three times longer than the paternity equivalent. Stopping at a pat on the
back for coming this far isn't enough.

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pjungwir
I appreciate how the vacation is no-nonsense and clearly spelled out, unlike
the trend of "unlimited vacation" or combining all PTO into one bucket. At
first I thought 3 weeks was a little low for senior people, but when you add
in 4-day weeks in summer, that is a huge amount of time off. Combine that with
the 40-hour week and Basecamp is one of the few companies I'd trust to make
vacation-in-deed equal vacation-in-word.

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basseq
This is a solid benefits package. The "core" benefits (insurance, 401(k),
vacation) are competitive. (6% match is strong, and 15 days vacation plus "a
few" more is pretty good in of itself.) The "perks" (work-life balance,
sabbatical, allowances) put this over the top and emphasize the company's
commitment to it's people.

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bengale
4 day weeks in the summer sound awesome.

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klue07
It's a pity not more employers do this. I've always been a big proponent of
4-on-3-off work schedules. Traditional work 5 out of 7 was arbitrarily chosen.
Regular 3-day weekends really rejuvenates you. If 40 hours of work a week is
mandatory, spreading the 8 hours of the fifth day into the 4 days isn't so
bad.

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protomyth
We do 4 day 40 hours weeks in the summer. It isn't that bad but it does get a
little long. Most do 4-3 but we were doing a two week cycle of 4 (MTWH) on, 4
off, 4 (TWHF) on, 2 off.

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dasmoth
Given that 8 hour workdays generally seem to involve a fair amount of faffing,
and a fair number of people report diminishing returns beyond about 6 hours,
what are those 10 hour days like? Does the expectation of a long weekend get
everyone fired up, or do the last couple of hours really drag?

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protomyth
Weirdly, what time I eat lunch was the determinate of the day dragging. Noon
or earlier and the day dragged. I'm off this week so I cannot give you a live
feel today.

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solipsism
3 weeks meaning 15 vacation days, or 3 weeks meaning 21 vacation days?

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caw
When employers talk vacation it's based off 8-hour business days. So 3 weeks
is 15 days vacation, or 120 hours if your work days aren't 8-hour based like
shift work or factories where you may work 4 10hour days per week.

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_RPM
Sounds like a paradise. I hope I get good offers after I graduate in December.
Currently interning now with zero benefits;

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michaelvoz
What a lame corporate, promotional, piece. Seems like an excuse to:

1) Get their name on here despite them no doing anything interesting / News
worthy.

2) Attract hires / advertise for free

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Phlarp
As someone who works for an employer who has only very recently begun
embracing proper compensation and benefit packages, articles like this are
awesome as they draw attention to how far most US based employers still have
to come.

I think it's invaluable to have comprehensive break-downs like this published
online for companies with some amount of name recognition-- proof that you can
take care of your employees and remain profitable.

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jpeg_hero
They stumbled into an entrenched market position, and now the want to give
away some of that to employees.

Wasteful. Most companies reinvest that money into the future growth of the
firm, and run their business like a business.

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AH4oFVbPT4f8
They are reinvesting it, just not in a traditional way. Reading a benefits
package such as this gets people like me to consider working at Basecamp, so
they end up getting good employees who want to work hard as they know the
company is taking care of them.

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jpeg_hero
> who want to work hard

at 32 hours a week?!

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maxxxxx
32 hours of actual work is a lot. Of the people who "work" 60 hours a week I
bet a lot of them work only 32 hours or less and do something else for the
other 28 hours. With meetings and stuff I am happy if I get 20 hours of work
in.

