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Comment by acd | Hacker News Reader

I can highly recommend the world to adopt like in the Nordics at least 4-5 weeks of yearly vacation. Staff are more rested with more vacation so they are more productive plus you get a different perspective having time off. Also companies should allow remote work and flexible hours. Further due to increased automation we could actually work less hours keeping the same output. If we automate more work we could allow us selves more free time, still enjoying the same output.

I think tech companies will lead the way because of the competitive nature hunting for talent. Hopefully other industries will follow. Maybe California as state will lead the way in the US?

Annual leave by country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

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Increased productivity doesn't lead to increased wages and increased automation doesn't lead to less work/lower number of days/hours at work. Management plays dominance game, that only works when employees are made feel frustrated and stressed; any move towards happiness like reduced hours and work from home/remotely diminishes any gains from dominance game; relaxed employees with many options would require any monetary gains from productivity to be reflected on their paychecks.

You state this like it's a natural fact. That's how it is in many places, _today_. It doesn't have to be this way. As far as I know, there is no law of physics that has us locked into this way of operating society.

it’s helpful to articulate the status quo as a first step toward authorizing an alternative.

i agrée it doesn’t have to be that way. and i agree it’s not a natural law.

what we need is for people among is to articulate alternatives. and for us to be open minded and willing to take some risks to get toward a better dynamic.

It's a fact in majority of companies; I have experiences with two companies that ran on different principles and were wildly profitable, so it could be done differently. Also, I am pretty much disgusted by what I observe, but it's an unfortunate part of reality and I am not going to unsee it to feel better about whatever. If you want to change something for the better, you need to understand what is wrong and what is better, hoping people after you would recognize what was wrong in your approach and correct it even more instead of regressing/oscillating.

The problem is much more complex though, being happy puts no pressure to change things and leads to stale/weak societies/companies; for some reason we humans need some form of pressure to give our best... Of course, it's difficult to motivate oneself when you see that upper management turned into parasites with sociopathic tendencies, ruling you like you were animals without brain, not even hiding their intent, and giving you as little money as they can get away with even during times of exponential expansion of their profitability.

All fair points. I was discouraged when I read your original comment, because I took it at face value as "this is what it is, this is what it always will be" but that wasn't your intention.

One effect of this in the Nordic culture is that often a lot of these holidays are taken at the same time. People take 3 or 4 weeks off at once between the end of June and early August, especially in Norway. Productivity for the company effectively hits zero for 6 weeks whilst the Norwegians have their holiday, then the Swedish and Danish have their turn.

Although the few people that do work get a lot done due to having no meetings or interruptions. There were days in the summer where there were 3 of us in the office, out of 200 in the department. Bliss!

There's an important second-order benefit to this though:

Companies are forced to ensure that their business works without key personnel for weeks at a time. It forces the company to really think about what situations are emergencies where you have to disturb key personnel on their vacation, and which ones you can actually handle anyway.

In contrast in the US, a common office-politics anti-pattern is that individuals make themselves indispensable to the business, as a form of employment protection. This is ultimately bad for the company, because people quit, people change jobs, and then the business is threatened every time such an individual quits.

When every employee is gone for weeks at a time every year, it gives the company opportunity to identify weak spots like this and work around them. And this pays off whenever key personnel leaves their job, for whatever reason.

I worked in Finland in 2001-2002 in what we would call now startup and even lead managers or scientists in company were not in the office in July-August. They simply worked more during winter and spent as much of Finnish summer outside as possible. But as article mentions, it was usual to take long vacations even in government jobs - if you needed visa for your relative, you'd better have it before June, or you would get it in September, since clerks were out of office :).

I worked for a year in an incubator in Oslo, full of start ups that talked about “work hard, play hard” & having to put in extra effort. The building was practically empty by 6pm.

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