
Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy - michaelochurch
http://www.paperplanes.de/2014/12/10/from-open-to-minimum-vacation-policy.html
======
Someone1234
I've said it before and I'll say it again, unlimited days off (or "open") and
zero days off are identical.

If you have unlimited vacation people are inclined to take less and people
respect the vacation you take less ("as you can always take more!").

Here's a study[0] (PDF) called "Overwhelmed America: Why Don’t We Use Our
Earned Leave?" It is biased (travel association) but interesting nonetheless.

According to this study[1] you need at least ten __consecutive __days of leave
to "de-stress" from work. Short vacations aren't as effective as long ones. In
"europe" a two week vacation (10 work days) is common/standard. As opposed to
American's "long weekends."

A lot of these "unlimited" places have a "as long as your work gets done"
policy, meaning you can take tons of short days off or afternoons off, but
almost no extended holidays (e.g. travel abroad, out of state, etc).

[0]
[http://traveleffect.com/sites/traveleffect.com/files/Overwhe...](http://traveleffect.com/sites/traveleffect.com/files/OverwhelmedAmerica_FullReport_FINAL_0.pdf)

~~~
mightybyte
> According to this study[1] you need at least ten consecutive days of leave
> to "de-stress" from work. Short vacations aren't as effective as long ones.

That can't be true across the board. I haven't taken a vacation in 3 or 4
years by that definition. And frankly, I feel fine. I work with awesome people
solving cool problems and love what I do. I've had friends tell me I should
take a vacation, and my response is, "why?" I enjoy my time at the office and
I enjoy my leisure activities away from the office. I typically work more than
40 hours, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes I'll put in 12-hour days for
awhile, but I always make sure to get some recharging time. The longest
"vacation" I've taken in the last 4 years was something like a long Thursday -
Monday weekend. Those leave me feeling plenty recharged and ready to get back.
I can even get that from a lazy Sunday where I just stay home and relax.

If a billion dollars dropped into my lap tomorrow, I probably wouldn't do much
differently. I might think about taking some time off, but I'm working on
things I actually want to accomplish. Even if I did just take off on an
extended vacation, I'm pretty sure I'd want to get back to my current job
before too long. Part of me might want to work fewer hours since I wouldn't
need the money, but that would probably slow down my rate of progress on the
things that I want to accomplish.

~~~
tspike
The fact that you're an outlier doesn't mean that the findings of the study
are invalid. There are lots of people who are genuinely good at their jobs,
but who would do something completely different with their lives if a billion
dollars dropped into their laps. Those people stand to gain much more from a
long vacation than you do.

~~~
mightybyte
Yes, I realize that...hence my first sentence "That can't be true across the
board." But people tend to cite these things like they're a fundamental truth
about humans. I think the generalization is less useful than it might seem.

~~~
Sammi
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy)

------
sportanova
Of course the other reason for 'unlimited vacation' is so when an employee
leaves, the company doesn't have to pay them for unused vacation days. Huge
red flag when a company has 'unlimited vacation'

~~~
debacle
IIRC, the company doesn't have to pay you for unused vacation days even if you
don't use them. It's pretty much at the discretion of the company.

~~~
ben1040
It depends upon the state. Some states, CA and IL for example, treat vacation
as earned and owed, yet unpaid compensation. Because of this, it represents a
liability, so it's got to be shown as such on the books. Which is also another
reason why you see CA companies adopting "open vacation" policies, it takes
that vacation liability off the balance sheet.

Other states view vacation as just an agreement between you and your employer.
You basically agree that there are so many days you don't have to show up to
work and they'll still pay you. That's it.

In the past I worked remote for an Atlanta-based company, and their employee
handbook stated that they will pay out vacation up to a maximum of 40 hours.
Anything in excess of 40 hours you had in the bank, you forfeited. I lived in
a St Louis suburb in Illinois at the time, and as an Illinois-based employee
they paid me my full vacation bucket when I quit.

Similarly, a friend of mine worked remote for the same company, but lived just
across the river in Missouri. When she left, she got her vacation capped. MO
and GA are among the states that do not view vacation as earned compensation.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Not only is vacation time treated as earned and owed in Illinois, the offers
of the company can be held personally liable for the funds in the event the
company goes out of business and does not pay this out. _This applies even if
the company is in federal receivership_. I know this from first hand
experience having worked with the Illinois Labor Board to resolve a matter.

------
jcadam
I like this idea of minimum vacation. Most companies I've worked in use
vacation days as some sort of reward for sticking with the company for X
number of years (i.e., "When you hit your 5 year anniversary, you get an extra
1.5 days of paid vacation. Won't that be nice!"). And when I say paid
vacation, I really mean PTO with no separate 'sick leave' days. Which means
people show up to work sick.

Funny enough, the company I work for was recently bought, and in the interests
of making things 'uniform', we were forced to adopt the purchasing company's
vacation policy, which meant an across the board cut in everyone's PTO hours
(to include folks that negotiated additional vacation days when they were
hired -- those agreements were declared null and void). Apparently the execs
thought the hit to morale/retention was worth the 'cost savings'.

On the other hand, I once interviewed at a company with an 'open' vacation
policy and was immediately suspicious of it. My first thought was "I'm
guessing people don't take much vacation?" That didn't go over so well with
the interviewer.

It's nice to see an employer that treats vacation as a means to increase
employee productivity and retention (burnout prevention, etc.), rather than as
a pure cost to be minimized as much as possible.

~~~
walshemj
Hmm is that not a breach of contract could in a tech company lead to an exodus
of staff.

~~~
kabdib
You shouldn't be surprised at the number of execs who don't really care. at.
all. about attrition, and who are clueless about what motivates engineers.

~~~
walshemj
I wouldn't :-) but that just means you competitors just got a free shot at
your best and brightest.

The really clever ones volunteer for redundancy and the pay off and then go
and work for a competitor.

------
cellover
I really like the tone of this post. It makes me think that this person is
trustworthy and I'd be glad to work for him.

I wish my company had such an open communication!

------
danielweber
> A company has to learn how to function when people are on vacation and
> unavailable, however important their role is.

Yes, this is essential for having a viable company. If the company grinds to a
halt without person _X_ , the solution is not to get rid of person _X_ 's
vacation.

Also, in finance, required vacations are often a compliance aid. If someone is
running a scam, it tends to need near-daily tending, and it will explode when
they are out for two weeks (unless they find a co-conspirator).

~~~
nekopa
Wow, remind me never to work in finance, too much paranoia for me (though I do
know it's justified a lot of the time- I taught some IT folks at a bank once
and they told me about a branch manager who went on holiday and forgot to turn
off his automated money siphoning software. That was the only reason he got
caught)

------
tdumitrescu
I last moved from a shop with unlimited PTO (where in practice people settled
around 4-5 weeks per year) to one with 15 days per year. Quality of life is
noticeably worse with the limited PTO, and people tend to hoard their days
because they're scarce. Travis's tracked minimum vacation sounds better than
either of those policies.

~~~
nilkn
I'm at a company where you start with 14 days of PTO per year, including sick
time. It was a huge shock coming from college, and it's the main complaint I
have about my job. It jumps up to 19 after two years.

I honestly think 20 days PTO is the bare minimum for a decent work-life
balance, and even that isn't all that great. If I were changing jobs, I'd
actually be willing to exchange salary for extra PTO, if the default PTO were
less than 20 days.

------
asafira
As a graduate student, I feel that (at least within my research group) there
is this "unlimited time off" policy, but in the end it's not really taken
advantage of very much and it certainly doesn't take any stress away from
work. Even this holiday season, I'll be taking a week off from work, and I
always phrase it as "I promised my mother I'd be home for at least a week".

The minimum vacation policy sounds like an interesting alternative, but I'm
not sure it could fit within the academic community. Any professor has the
power to instate such a policy, but at any given moment there's an "important"
project that rests on one or two people working hard to get results. Often, in
academia, you have those people that are precisely the kind that will work
hard and get shit done, and honestly I can't imagine there being an
understanding of "minimum time off". It's more convenient to the professor and
the ambitious PhD student/post-doc to have the "take time off when you want"
policy, and let the unwritten rules and undertones dictate when you should
take time off (e.g., when you just finish a project).

I know the article wasn't trying to apply things to academia, I just thought I
would consider it in that light.

~~~
nekopa
I would think that in academia a minimum time off policy would be great:
depending on where you are in the project, sometimes stepping away from a
problem can lead you to the solution.

------
KennyCason
I see a lot of people saying that they would "never work for a company with
unlimited vacation." I also understand their reasoning and have seen similar
examples.

At DataRank we balance this with a small amendment. It's unlimited vacation
but you MUST take a minimum of two weeks off. We are also very flexible about
remote work. If you feel the itch to travel to Japan for a 2 week vacation + 2
weeks working remote, go for it. If you just feel burned out and want to watch
Netflix at home all day. Go for it, just let someone know.

------
acd
You can also view it likes this.

In the end of your life when looking back at it. You can think of asking two
questions of yourself.

Did you wish you worked more hard days for your company? or Did you wish you
spent more time with family and gaining new experiences?

Obviously you will need to find a work / life balance but if you only
work/play hard you might regret it later and you cannot get lost time back.

------
padobson
If I worked somewhere that had an unlimited vacation policy, I think I'd
probably stop working on Fridays all together. An unlimited vacation policy
could be an open invitation for a 4-day work-week (or 3 day or 2 day...)

~~~
wahnfrieden
It's expected that you don't abuse the policy. While what constitutes abuse
may be a line that needs elaboration, making your standard work week 2-3 days
under this policy is not a gray area.

~~~
johnward
Which is exactly why these policies suck. It's "unlimited" but it's implied
that you don't take too many days. It's like the comcast of vacation policies.

~~~
wahnfrieden
That's what the minimum days you must take is for. If the company culture is
right, it's a liberating policy. At my new job now it feels like I'm spending
a precious commodity instead of booking vacation feeling like reprieve due in
the wake of hard work or payoff.

~~~
johnward
Oh I agree. I like the idea that the article was talking about. I'll be
interested in seeing how it works out. It reverses the stigma to almost be
where you'd look bad for not taking enough time vs taking too much time.

------
superuser2
Mandatory vacation is not only a good idea, it is a security feature.

When one employee takes over another's "world" within the company, it is very
likely that they will notice if the employee on vacation has been embezzling,
defrauding customers, etc. In the financial industry, this is not only good
practice, it is a regulatory requirement. People who do not want to take
vacation are seen by auditors as highly suspicious because that behavior often
indicates a desire to cover up fraud.

~~~
jacques_chester
I think pairing with frequent rotations is going to be more effective, but
most shops don't practice pairing.

------
sqs
This is a great post. At Sourcegraph, we had a similar realization, based on
our own experiences.

We wrote a blog post about it and it got picked up by the BBC:

[https://sourcegraph.com/blog/mandatory-
vacation](https://sourcegraph.com/blog/mandatory-vacation)
[http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140903-relax-or-
else](http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140903-relax-or-else)

------
foolinaround
What I found to be even more relaxing is if all the employees of a company are
forced to take the same time off ( 2 days to a week) and other flexible time
off where the employee can choose his own time.

Then, there are no email or updates to come back to...

~~~
antr
From my point of view, that's the way it should be. At my company we make you
take vacations. If by the end of the year you have plenty of days left you
tend to take a long christmas/new year's break... and in some exceptions move
a couple of vacations days to the next calendar year.

The unlimited vacations days, in my eyes, creates considerable
pressure/anxiety on workers. If you are in the US and want to treat employees,
just go for a fair number of paid vacations days like in most European
countries... Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Italy, etc, all have approx. 28
days...

~~~
pestaa
Sounds like a mature way to run a business. Where do I sign up?

------
butwhy
Why do companies even try out these weird policies? They've gone from having
unlimited days (then admitted it was a mistake for 2 whole years) and are now
blindly trying out another unusual strategy. I don't see why they don't just
offer a standard solution which seems to work for most companies, instead of
trying to be extremely controlling of people.

~~~
izacus
Uh, having 20-25 (almost mandatory) days of per year is implemented by law
here in most countries of EU. How is that a "wierd" policy?

(By "almost mandatory" I mean that at least here, you must use up your
vacation days until end of next year.)

~~~
johnward
In the US that's weird because the mandatory days off per year are 0. A good
amount for most people in the US is 10 days per year (or two weeks). I get 4
weeks which is pretty great but many of the people I work with end up not
taking all of those days or taking days and also working on them due to
culture. It's ridiculous.

~~~
baddox
> In the US that's weird because the mandatory days off per year are 0.

Only if you assume that a nation-wide law is the only condition under which
non-zero vacation days will emerge.

~~~
johnward
Most people get some time off but a significant amount of people still get no
time off and work on holidays.

------
javery
We have an unlimited vacation policy at Adzerk and I try to lead by example by
taking at least 2-3 weeks off a year (especially in the summer). We also try
to encourage everyone to take at least one solid week off a year and it seems
to work pretty well.

I think that's the real issue with unlimited policy - if the leaders don't
take vacation no one else thinks they can.

~~~
oakesm9
Is 2-3 weeks off a normal amount of time in the US? I get 28 days off per year
in the UK, which is around the standard amount.

~~~
CalRobert
Outside tech (which is dripping with privilege) it's common to have 0-2 weeks
of vacation in the US. There is no legal minimum, and I've had jobs offering
0, 1, and 2 weeks of vacation. In some cases you can take time off and simply
not be paid for it.

~~~
organsnyder
Not only that, but many employers aren't required to offer maternity leave
(let alone paternity leave). My wife has had to combine accrued vacation time,
sick days, and unpaid leave just to get to six weeks of maternity leave.

~~~
zelos
That's pretty crazy. Do many companies actually tend to provide maternity
leave as a benefit?

It makes a bit of a joke of gender equality in the workplace, IMHO.

~~~
rudolf0
Many companies do provide maternity leave, many (but fewer) also provide
paternity leave, but companies below a certain size are not federally required
to provide either (though I believe there are some arrangements where you can
take unpaid maternity leave but legally can't be fired during your maternity
leave).

~~~
jacalata
It sounds like you're thinking of the Family Medical Leave Act, which doesn't
apply to everyone.

------
qeorge
Another upside is forcing the company to learn to run without its founders or
other key employees for a meaningful period of time.

This forces good processes to be put in place, and is an excellent fire drill
in general.

~~~
nekopa
Talking fun, I think it would be fun for a company to run a bus factor fire
drill from time to time -:just point to one employee and say "Bam! You're hit
by a bus, leave the office now here's $2K, come back next Thursday. No email,
no remote working and no phone contact with anyone from here."

I wonder how many companies (let alone startups) could deal effectively with
this situation.

~~~
exhilaration
A chaos monkey that takes out personnel instead of servers. I like it.

------
ngmaloney
I jokingly refer to Unlimited Vacation Policy as Guilt Driven Vacation Policy.
IMHO, it is a sham so companies don't have to take liability for accrued
vacation time on their books. While I commend Travis for coming up with a
workable solution wouldn't it be easier to just say: "Everyone has 4 weeks
vacation, use them!".

~~~
hedwall
Isn't that exactly what they did? Everyone has to take 5 weeks minimum, and on
top of that you may take more if you want/need.

------
chton
"We tried something that didn't fit our culture, and it didn't work."

Taking less vacation time is not necessarily a bad thing. For myself, not
having to meet a minimum quota means I enjoy the vacations I do take more,
since I take them when I need and want instead of mandatory ones. It means, as
long as I'm feeling good, I can keep the momentum up.

The bigger problems is that employees didn't respect others' vacation time. Or
their own, for that matter. That is a cultural problem, and a change in
vacation policy won't help (much). If you want the people in your company to
be happier with their time off, work on respecting it.

    
    
      "The guilt of taking time off takes over, and you "just check in" or promise to be available if anything comes up."
    

That is, to me, a sign of an unhealthy culture. Fix that before trying yet
another vacation experiment.

~~~
organsnyder
What you're proposing is unlikely to work in many environments. Even in the
best of environments, where trust and respect course through every coworker
interaction, people will still be looking to their coworkers (especially their
superiors) to get a feel for how much vacation time is acceptable. In fact,
companies with exceptionally strong cultures may be worse, as people really
won't want to be a burden on their coworkers by taking more vacation days than
average.

This is especially true for anyone with any sort of leadership role—whether
it's an official senior position, a mentor, or just someone who is known for
being a model employee. Your own behavior serves as a model for others, and no
company policy is going to tell people any different.

I work for a small nonprofit organization with an extremely dedicated
president. She's been very gracious with the freedom she allows her employees
(though the official policies could be better), but I'm always wondering if
she thinks that I'm actually working hard enough—not because of anything she's
said, but because she puts in a ton of hours. I know many of my coworkers feel
the same pressure.

If you're forced to take vacation time even when you don't need it, then try
to find other pursuits—personal projects, reading, volunteering—that are still
"work", but of the unpaid variety. Take the time to catch up with friends and
family (especially if you have kids). Vacation doesn't just have to be about
traveling and/or resting; it can also be an opportunity to catch up on other
priorities.

~~~
chton
I definitely agree that people in any form of leadership role serve as an
example. They do on many more things than just vacation time. In general,
that's one of the ways to influence culture, by being the best example of it.
Conversely, if you don't act as an exponent of your own culture, it breeds a
"do as I say, not as I do" atmosphere, which is just as negative as not trying
to fix your culture.

I also agree that people will look at their colleagues to know what is
'acceptable'. I don't now if that is inevitable. If it is, that makes the
example roles all the more important to guide that. If your president would
take more vacation time and worked the same hours as everybody else, the
pressure on you would be lifted. I realize that might be difficult for her to
do, but that is the effect it has.

My problem with forced vacation time isn't the lack of work, it's that I don't
need it. I already pay close enough attention to my work/life balance, so when
I do take vacation time it's on my own terms. Being forced to meet a quota
just means it feels like I'm wasting days that I could be productive doing the
things I'm actually being paid for.

Incidentally, since I've become a freelancer my vacation time that I actually
want to take has gone up a bit. The situation is far simpler (either I'm
working and I get paid, or neither), and not having to go through any official
process or multitude of forms, means it's much easier to take the occasional
day when I want it.

~~~
dasboth
"Being forced to meet a quota just means it feels like I'm wasting days that I
could be productive doing the things I'm actually being paid for."

But surely if you want to get your work/life balance right, you would
naturally end up taking ~25 days off a year without feeling like you're forced
to? I guess it varies from person to person.

~~~
chton
It does vary from person to person, and from job to job. For me, it's less
than 25 days, on average. Others might need much more. I won't judge anyone
for taking more vacation time, and I'll respect it as best I can. I just like
having the option of not taking time if I don't want it :)

------
kpmah
"unlimited" days off are nonsense. Can I take off 365 days a year? If the
answer is no it's not unlimited. There's a limit, you're just not specifying
it.

~~~
alkonaut
I have a feeling this only works in places where you can be fired for
performance reasons.

~~~
kpmah
Sure, but my point is if you can be fired for taking too many days off, it's
not unlimited. It's limited by the amount of work you're expected to
reasonably do, and that's decided by your boss and colleagues. Except now
instead of having a hard number where you know you are safe, it's completely
subjective how many days off you can take.

------
dalke
If anyone wants to read more about unlimited vacation policies, here are some
of the previous HN threads on the topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125973)
,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4874743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4874743)
, and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613526)
. The last contains comments about the Jacob Kaplan-Moss essay that was
mentioned in this thread's link.

------
my_username_is_
I'm glad to see someone trying this out. It's something I've been wondering
about [1], and it seems pretty uncommon. I'll be looking forward to seeing how
this works out for them, and any other companies that are so inspired to try
to improve the status-quo.

Frankly the American culture of working continuously seems like a negative to
employee and employer both--and even if it were only a negative to one, it
would be something worthy of change.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053580)

------
eyeareque
My job went from 20 days paid off per year where we accrued hours per pay
period, to an open vacation policy. The company did this because of the cost
of having to keep money saved up to pay out to employees who have saved up
their vacation hours.

Like the article describes, most people including myself took off less time. I
know for myself I felt guilty and didn't want to be seen as taking advantage
of the new open policy.

I'm going to talk to my new job's management and ask them to setup a minimum
vacation day policy.

------
spir
It's like all these high-powered technology executives never opened an
economics textbook.

------
genghisjahn
The company I work for has open vacation and it works out fine. People take a
few days, a week here and there and it winds up being 4-5 weeks a year. This
is in the US. I'm sure there's no big payout for unused vacation when people
leave, but no big deal. When you're sick, you stay home, when you need time
off, you take it. The CTO and upper managers are all coders and have worked
hard at maintaining a good work culture.

------
jbb555
very good. Except "now has a required minimum of 25 (paid) vacation days per
year, no matter what country they live in." Well no. If they live in the UK
for example they have a mandatory limit of 28 days not 25 because it's the
law.

~~~
TillE
But is that an enforced minimum? Is an employee _required_ to take that many
days off work? Because that's the distinction being drawn here.

~~~
hessenwolf
Yes, it is. And, just, seriously, what sort of a society doesn't mandate
holidays?

~~~
philwelch
A society that's not into proclaiming mandates.

------
hgh
".... and you "just check in" or promise to be available if anything comes up.
You respond to just one email or just one GitHub issue."

When people need to be "available" while on vacation it usually means that
there is way too much dependency on that person or insufficient knowledge-
sharing. It shows the glaring holes on what's being hacked together and where
systems can strengthen.

------
larsberg
I definitely saw the "being totally unplugged" problem both previously when I
worked at Microsoft and now when working at Mozilla. It's arguably even worse
at Mozilla with the shift of many people (myself included) to IRCCloud, which
is a wonderful service but turns what was supposed to be an asynchronous,
loose availability chat system into a realtime, all-hours interruption
mechanism.

------
turnip1979
Genuine question: how do companies/teams that run services deal with peak
vacation periods? E.g. Christmas holidays. Even if everyone wants to take the
last two weeks of the year off, you have to have someone keeping the lights
on. Also, what happens if a high priority problem comes in? Are the team
leads/managers careful not to schedule work around the holidays?

~~~
liveoneggs
I am on vacation next week but am still the primary on-call.

I will take pages if I'm available or pass/escalate to the next guy if I'm
not.

Since I'm on vacation it's understood to be a best effort.

Normally I would switch with someone but it's a busy vacation week so we just
figure it out.

I took a two hour call the morning of thanksgiving, for reference.

~~~
jellicle
> I am on vacation next week but am still the _primary_ on-call.

Whatever that is, it isn't vacation.

~~~
coldcode
It's like the difference between vacation and prison. In both case you are
away from home.

------
whoisthemachine
Interesting take on paid time off that I've never seen before. Will be looking
forward to the update on how this works out.

------
asgard1024
I would go even further and postulate that lack of rules about who is in power
kills societies. Many equate "lack of rules" with "freedom", but it's a
problem. People without conscience will freely abuse the lack of rules or
start to fight with each other, while the good people will get screwed.
Eventually, the good people, who usually just want to do the work, will get
unhappy and leave.

This applies not only to vacation, but to governance as well. So called
"consensual democracy", where there is no hard and fast rule about who has how
much power, has the same kind of problem. The most important thing about
democracy is that it is very specific - everybody has the same amount of
power. That discourages political fights, because you cannot (without
explicitly changing the rule) accrue more power. In my opinion, many
institutions (for example Wikipedia) suffer from this problem.

~~~
innguest
This is a bunch of leftist FUD to be honest.

Read up on libertarianism. You've even managed to get the definition of
"freedom" wrong. Lack of rules? Are we using arguments from decades ago? It's
lack of rulers. There's never a lack of rules because we all understand
natural law.

~~~
krapp
>There's never a lack of rules because we all understand natural law.

No we don't.

More to the point, I can guarantee that not everyone agrees with _your_
understanding of whatever 'natural law' is, or with your inalienable right to
exercise that view in their presence. Not even Libertarians agree on that.

~~~
innguest
It's not something for which there is "my understanding" and "your
understanding".

It's obvious stuff. If you punch someone in the face you can expect
retaliation. If you trade with others you can expect peace for the duration of
that contract. And so on.

I'm not saying there's a list of the natural laws that I imagine people know
of. There's no list. There's only the obvious stuff. Obviously I'd have to
retaliate if I thought my life were in danger, and obviously I'd do my best to
keep alliances that benefit me. Others will do the same. It all ends up
working itself out. No need for a Hammurabi.

~~~
krapp
Even the most barbarian, uncivilized tribes have had a shaman or chieftain and
a set of principles to follow and taboos to avoid. Arguably (since I Am Not An
Archaologist), Hammurabi's insight wasn't having laws, but writing them down,
and abstracting the force of law away from the immediate will of the god-king.

------
legohead
So here's a slightly different view from someone I know -- they are slotted X
number of vacation days, but actually need more.

He is divorced, and his kid is across the US, so he ends up using all his
vacation to see his kid. Now he is left with nothing to take a real vacation
with his current spouse, and they both really want to.

~~~
eru
He should perhaps look for a better job?

------
dyadic
There are a few people here commenting about how their employer's unlimited
vacation policy allows them to take two weeks vacation and then work remotely
for a week or two extra. That's great, and it's good to see companies allowing
it but remote work is still work, and it certainly isn't a vacation.

Many people are working remote by default* and already have to fight certain
perceptions that they are just sitting in their pants, watching tv, and eating
chips all day, and it certainly doesn't help when others liken working
remotely to being a holiday.

It's definitely a good thing that more companies are opening up to remote work
and trusting their people to get things done without being watched over, let's
not perpetuate this idea of it just being a bunch of slackers that do it.

* including me, obviously, and hence this response.

------
gadders
As a counterpoint, most investment banks enfore a mandatory 10 working day
break where all remote access capabilities are disabled (including
blackberries).

This is less out of altruism, and more so that any untoward activities can be
uncovered whilst the person is out of the office.

~~~
e40
_This is less out of altruism, and more so that any untoward activities can be
uncovered whilst the person is out of the office._

I'd love to hear more about that.

~~~
danielweber
Here's an example:

[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/easy-
street/credi...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/easy-
street/credit-suisse-makes-life-little-harder-aspiring-rogue-traders)

Everyone has at least a two-week period every year when they are completely
cut off from the job. If you have been doing something off-the-books, that's
enough time for it to explode. Or, if the auditing department suspects you of
something -- or even if they don't -- this is the natural time to bring in
forensics to dig through your books and figure out exactly you've been doing.

It's not as important in non-finance, but it can still have some use. I know
of at least two cases where a sysadmin was on vacation and then outsiders were
brought in to find all the backdoors he had installed.

------
evanpw
I don't think I see a single negative comment here about long vacations, so
allow me to play devil's advocate. (These questions don't necessarily reflect
my own opinions.)

1\. If this is such a free lunch (employees are both happier and more
productive overall), then why isn't lots of vacation offered everywhere (in
the US)? Can it really be the case that the vast majority of US companies are
too short-sighted to make a policy change that would be in their own best
interest?

2\. If, alternatively, more vacation is really good for employees, but
slightly bad for employers, why doesn't the labor market adjust? In this case,
you would expect employees to offer to work for a lower salary in exchange for
more vacation time.

~~~
jarek
> Can it really be the case that the vast majority of US companies are too
> short-sighted to make a policy change that would be in their own best
> interest?

You can ask that about anything. Are the U.S. banks really so short-sighted to
offer absolutely crap person-to-person transfers and get undercut by any
number of hacky startups? Were the U.S. car manufacturers really so stupid?
Are California taxpayers really too short-sighted to realize how Prop 13 hurts
the state? The entire federal administration in lead-up to the Iraq invasion?
Etc, etc

~~~
evanpw
I don't disagree that bad decisions are made all of the time, but the
questions is how the same bad decision can be made everywhere in a competitive
marketplace. You've given a couple of good examples where the answer is
government: banking is highly regulated, so breaking into the industry is
tough, and the big U.S. auto companies actually would have gone out of
business and been replaced without a bailout.

But if increasing vacation time makes your employees happier and you also get
more productive work out of them, why don't the companies that switch then get
all of the best employees and eat the lunch of everyone else? I can't think of
any regulations that make it more significantly more expensive to offer lots
of vacation, so I don't think government is the answer in this case.

I think the biggest clue is given in the original post: people (Americans)
won't take vacation even when you offer it to them! In that case, offering
more vacation is doubly bad for the company: you still pay your employees for
the vacation time, but they don't actually take it, and lose the productivity
benefits. Either this is because Americans actually rationally prefer higher
salaries to more vacation, and the system is working, or they systematically
underestimate how much good a vacation would do them, in which case we need
things like mandatory minimum vacation policies or laws.

~~~
jarek
> But if increasing vacation time makes your employees happier and you also
> get more productive work out of them, why don't the companies that switch
> then get all of the best employees and eat the lunch of everyone else?

Because marketplaces aren't as competitive as you think they are. An advantage
in one factor isn't sufficient to decisively kill off a competitor.

To give an example: Do you think one could find ten people who could each do a
better job than your local muffler shop? Do you think one could find ten
people who could each create a company that would eventually do a better job
than IBM? Than Yahoo? Than Facebook? Then why does IBM still exist?

How come, in a competitive marketplace, corporations still make decisions
based on where the CEO lives and who the executives play golf with?

------
mrottenkolber
Just be a freelancer, every day will be a holiday and christmas is just just
another hackaton. ;p

------
mariusc23
Glad to see a new approach on the open vacation policy. I think this policy
would work better if vacation days are only tracked until the minimum is met,
otherwise I have a feeling it will be perceived as exactly 25 days, not more.

------
zakvyn
"Minimum" vacation gives employee the authority to take vacation without
feeling guilt. Else some companies use open vacation policy to reduce the
number of vacations that employee take.

------
thoman23
The only thing surprising to me about this is to hear that this founder
apparently had noble intentions at the start. I just assumed that every
company that does this is cynically inducing more (short-term) work out of
their employees while clearing some liabilities from the books, all at the
cost of long-term success and morale. I would never work for a company with
one of these "unlimited" vacation policies.

------
alecthomas
Twitter also had this policy when I worked there (two years ago) and I thought
it was really poorly thought out. Apart from all of the (relatively obvious)
issues mentioned in the post, any vacation at Twitter was at the discretion of
your immediate manager. So if you happened to have a hard-arse manager, or one
who hated you, tough luck. Really a bad idea.

------
hero454545
Nice post... I especially liked the touch of posting a link to their hiring
page right after describing their mandatory 25 paid vacation day policy.

------
vertAlign
I bet the people with families abused the hell out of this and went to Disney
World every month. While all the bachelors never took a day off.

------
stevenkovar
I can see the merit for enforcing more vacation; but is more vacation the
solution to burnout, or is working less overall?

------
zakvyn
I like the idea 'minimum' vacation that allow people able to take more than
'minimum' vacation.

------
fishnchips
In all fairness "open vacation" policy is a yet another iteration on the age-
old idea of Panopticon ;)

------
jimmyislive
i said it first :)
[https://twitter.com/jimmyislive/status/495440322197876736](https://twitter.com/jimmyislive/status/495440322197876736)

------
pierotofy
Society needs more free time in general.
[http://t.co/68fyM3950D](http://t.co/68fyM3950D)

------
gutsy
This is phenomenal.

------
rebootthesystem
I'd like to see the inclusion of data related to the structure and dynamics of
the family unit. In the US the family desintegrates as kids are encouraged to
leave home as soon as they finish high scool, say, 18 years of age.

This, in a huge number of cultures and countries around the world is an
unthinkable attrocity. It isn't uncommon to have children live with their
parents until they are ready to form their own families, say, 25 to 30 years
of age. Under the stereotypical US culture this is looked down upon to the
point of making fun of those still living with their parents.

Having millions of socially unprepared kids go off to try to make it on their
own created, in my opinion, a society filled with various levels of
dysfunctionalities. People tend to grow up, to some degree, in a "wild"
setting where selfishness can become a necessity. In this context it is easy
to see how work time can take the place of the social context lost due to
having left the nest.

Having grown up and lived in three cultures it is easy for me to remove myself
from my US culture and watch it from afar as a visitor from another planet
might. Americans are said to seem socially inept and dry from the perspective
of other cultures, and this is true. All you have to do is spend six months in
Italy or Argentina to undrerstand this. Americans men develop a weird
homophobic form of "macho" that is down-right funny from the perspective of
other cultures. Hugging, or worst, kissing, another man is frowned upon. Human
contact, in general, is just not considered to be "normal". I have lived in
cultures where it was quite normal to greet your kids parents with hugs and
kisses on the cheeks. In fact, it would be rude to come to a party or
gathering and not go around the room kissing everyone, man, woman, kids. Yes,
you kiss your friend's wives. School friends do this in high school when they
greet each other. Again, unthinkable in the US. In fact, a teacher can get in
trouble with the law for greeting a student with a hug and a kiss. Showing
affection is alien. Weird.

In general terms, as much as TV shows and commercial try to stereotype this
warm southern cowboy culture at the ranch with grandma this is, for the mist
part, not the norm. The US family scatters and the kids are left to navigate a
very important phase of their lives on their own.

Sorry to harp on this but i do think this is a very important part of the
equation and one that explains so much about US society, their behaviors,
beliefs, relationships, work and family life. Once you realize that some of
these people become politicians that shape US policies and laws it is easy to
see where some of our problems might come from.

There are subtle examples of this. For example, let's say you are working with
a US friend on a project in their garage. He will use phrases like "give me my
hammer" or "it's in my toolbox". In other cultures this becomes "give me the
hammer" and "it's in the toolbox". I am convinced this egocentric view of the
world is connected to leaving the nest early.

Another example that is particularly bothersome to me are cases where parents
pay their children for things that in what I am going to call more socially
adjusted societies is simply unthinkable. One of my friends pays his 18 year
old kid to go pick him up at the airport. Another pays his kids to help paint
the house. My neighbor across the street pays his kid to mow the lawn. Viewed
from far more family-centric cultures these woukd be examples of seriously
dysfunctional family units. As a teenager I helped my parents in their
business. Money was never a part of it. This is simply how a family behaves in
other cultures.

Of course I am painting with a wide brush. There are lots of cases of families
that behave very differently from this. And, of course, the US has lots of
multicultural families, such as mine. Yet I still think that a huge portion of
the attitude towards work has to do with a bunch of single people existing "in
the wild" and a setting where work can easily become a substitute for the
family unit they effectively lost.

