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Comment by kabdib | Hacker News Reader

Apple used to give people the week between Christmas and New Years Day off (maybe they still do, I don't know).

I was was part of a startup that a number of Apple engineers went to; over half of our engineering org was from Apple, and were used to having that time off, our management chain was fine with it, and we just took it as part of our startup's culture.

The New CEO, a real sales guy, had different ideas. "I think that people can be really productive during that week." He was adamant that he wanted to see butts in seats, across the company. Engineers? Not special. (We were working until the early hours of the morning, nearly every day).

We were told by our director not to worry about it, and just not show up if we didn't want to. What was he going to do, fire half of his engineers?

Some people just don't get it.

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Sounds like you had a great director who was willing to shield their org from bs top-down demands.

I didn't appreciate this skill until I had a manager who did the same for me. Having a manager who can ruthlessly prioritize, set expectations, and help navigate all of the corporate bureaucracy is a godsend.

While the corporate world is strange and toxic on many levels, being on a solid team where everyone has each other's backs (necessary because of the warring-fractions-like relationships within the same company), is a bonding and exhilarating experience.

Having once been that manager, let me just add that there is a price to pay: all the corporate BS normally reserved for a whole team now lands on one person's shoulders. Combined with some personal stuff, this broke me.

When you come across a clear occasion of crap having been deflected from landing on you, do the right thing: show some appreciation for it to your manager. It goes a long way.

It sounds like you were a fantastic manager who cared about their team, I'm very sorry to hear that. Seems like it can be a very thankless job a lot of the time.

Hopefully we can normalize showing appreciation from all directions (direct reports, sr mgrs, directors, etc.) for those who deserve it.

Apple also often gave Thanksgiving week off. BUT... Steve Jobs wouldn't send the E-mail telling us that until the last minute.

After several years of this happening, I decided to book plane tickets to see my family before the prices got astronomical. Sure enough... that was the one year we didn't get it off.

I went anyway.

> Apple used to give people the week between Christmas and New Years Day off (maybe they still do, I don't know).

This was HIGHLY team dependent. I know people that were still busting ass 12+ hour days around the holidays due to deadlines/etc.

Not sure what org you were in but Apple engineering orgs I was in always seemed to “power down” around Thanksgiving. Trying to schedule meetings or get new things done was tough.

Tim got in the habit of giving everyone Thanksgiving week off, and while I don’t remember the specific Christmas shutdown schedule, PTO days were generous enough that you could supplement two or three and create a 2 week vacation.

I wasn't. Dated someone who was. This was years back while Steve was still alive. It made planning difficult at times.

It’s not very team dependent. There are a few tiger teams that work between Christmas and new years, but they are the exception (outside of retail). Those days are official shutdown days on the company holiday calendar.

This was hardware QA many many moons ago.

QA working when everyone else has off is efficient, if not pleasant for those QA workers.

Unless it's Thanksgiving or Christmas and you actually want to spend some time with your close ones.

the efficiency is relative; you would have a pile of defects to deal with when the dev team comes back. also it's not equitable.

as qa, I've experienced this. those bugs just get thrown in the backlog and the technical debt grows until it's crunch time and we're blamed we're not finding bugs fast enough, despite being available more on the project than the team which had a week off.

the main reason you can be real productive that week is that almost everyone else is gone.

I did once work that magic week at Apple. You got triple time if you did, but it had to be okayed by nosebleed levels of management.

I was tracking down one of the hardest bugs I've ever found, it took most of that week (the fix was embarrassingly simple, just swapping two lines of assembly).

I really didn't want to work that week, but the pay made it worth it.

Dollars per LoC? Real engineers measure their work in dollars per byte.

I honestly don't get why CEOs would bother worrying about this stuff. How can you make the big important decisions if you allow yourself to be distracted by micromanagement?

In our startup it seemed to be a case of the CEO wanting to be "in charge".

He could have gone for showing competence, gaining the respect and trust of engineering, and being a source of understanding and compassion to a group that was working crazy hours trying to meet impossible schedules. Instead he decided to beat us up.

It did not go well. I was gone within a year, as were a number of other people. The company kept making crappy decisions, got bought for a song, and eventually my sweat equity (and real invested dollars) ended up as 17 shares of Oracle (fuck me, I hate that company).

> He was adamant that he wanted to see butts in seats, across the company. Engineers? Not special. (We were working until the early hours of the morning, nearly every day).

He might see my butt in a seat that week, but he damn sure wouldn't see me working past 5, and I'd be looking for a new job.

> I think that people can be really productive during that week.

There are some really special people with horizons till their office wall. Of course this is a huge benefit but it is also where it starts. Benefits like this allow for crunch time in times of need. If there is a constant time of need there is no need for extra work.

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