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Comment by austinl | Hacker News Reader

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the company I work for shuts our offices down from the 24th to the 2nd. Engineers submit availability for on-call schedules, and get a gift card for each on-call day they're responsible for. I feel very spoiled, but I think this is generally a trend amongst west-coast tech companies?

I've had a similar experience at previous places, and it seemed like the rationale for the holiday shutdown was "we don't want to risk any downtime while lots of engineers are out and potentially unreachable if something breaks". All that is to say, if it's within your power to leave, the grass is potentially much greener elsewhere.

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As long as "elsewhere" is SV or some other big city, that grass will never be green enough for me.

SV is a big suburbs, not a city. SF (and Oakland) are medium sized cities.

San Jose is over a million people. That counts as "big" in the US, I think? 10th most populous.

The "suburbs" between SJ-SF-Oakland range from very dense urban areas, to very sparse (and expensive) bedroom communities, to uninhabited (protected land) areas.

I think it's fair to loosely characterize SV as a big city, from almost all US perspectives.

> corporate slave-driving overlords

> big city, that grass will never be green enough for me

Take your pick, I guess. I like cities, and I certainly don't want to feel like I'm a slave.

My employer does this, and is the only one in town who does. It isn't deducted from our 4 week of vacation either. Its the only reason I stick around despite subpar pay.

It turns out the HR books are right and pay isn't the primary consideration after a certain point. The problem is that most HR people take that and say, "We're already soooo generous, we already offer unlimited vacation (lol), so we don't have to pay people too!"

Once you have a full time employee who is "the HR person" who has a department to run, and has OKRs, unless there is absolutely stellar company culture pushing for the contrary, that's it, that's the end, all your good benefits are going to get micromanaged away.

> we already offer unlimited vacation (lol),

I offered unlimited vacation in every business I started or ran since 1989.

But the abusive bullshit many companies have pulled while claiming “unlimited vacation” has justifiably made people cynical. This stated policy has become a warning sign instead of a benefit.

So in my new company we have a written policy four weeks but there is no way to track it (where the law permits this). sigh

I have worked 3 places with unlimited vacation, and there was zero pressure to not take vacation.

One company specifically said they we needed to get our asses out of the office because they saw people not taking at least 3 weeks a year.

That’s how it’s supposed to be.

> On the opposite end of the spectrum

I'm so stockholm-syndromed into typical corporate apathy, I'd probably feel so weirded out if I found out myself in such an environment I wouldn't be able to handle it like somebody who spent 50 years in prison is unable to cope with the reality of life on the outside.

It isn't uncommon in industrial situations to shut the plant down for two weeks or so around Christmas/New Years.

Since A: The staff want it off and B: It gives a good window to do heavy maintaince and such

Who does that maintenance?

Hopefully split off among staff so nobody works more than 1 or 2 days during those 2 weeks off, plus they get a bonus.

This is probably a silly question, but she not just give the cash value of a gift card instead of a gift card itself? I've heard from people who work in HR that gift cards given to employees are still taxable as income for the value as if it were cash, but maybe that's changed or just a conservative interpretation of IRS guidelines.

The real rationale is to remove a metric shitton of accrued PTO from their books if paying out PTO on employee departure is something the company does.

Hmm... in a few companies I've worked holiday shutdown was not coming out of PTO budget.

How does shutting down the office remove PTO obligations?

I worked at a company where we had 10 days of vacation + the office shut down for the last week of the year. Nobody had to use vacation time during that 1-week shutdown. If anything, it increased PTO accrued obligations because nobody had to use their PTO for time off during that week.

It varies by company. Accrued PTO is carried on the balance sheet as a liability, since it's owned to employees and would generally have to be paid out in cash if the employee is terminated. Reducing that liability makes several financial metrics look better. Some companies shut down for a week and require employees to use up their accrued PTO (or take unpaid leave). Other companies give it "free" essentially as company holidays. There's no right or wrong here, it's just one of many factors you have to consider when deciding where to work.

Worked at a company that would do that (using PTO or unpaid) with a couple months notice.. really messes with any vacation plans you might have made before you've been there long enough to accrue significant PTO!

In my experience xmas to NY holiday shutdowns are more likely to not come out of individual PTO, but I'm sure this varies.

We do something like this now, and the rationale is that it's a positive experience for the staff, gives everyone a bit of a break, and you only "lose" days that nobody was very focused in anyway.

Our office shutdown doesn't use PTO, either.

My friends in agency life used to have their office shutdown from the time of the holiday party, until the new year. Which was about 2 to 2.5 weeks.

My office shutdown this year is three full weeks, from the 20th to the 7th. Nobody is burning PTO.

Where I work everyone gets Dec 24 - Jan 2nd off, "for free." You can also take PTO along with it if you want a longer break.

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