“Vacations are for the weak”
sethbannon.com
sethbannon.com
One might argue that two weeks is sufficient for a week-long vacation every six months, but most people I know use most of their time off for family obligations and "work outside of work" like home repairs. This is a crap situation.
* Quotes because it is becoming less and less common to work for a company for decades, so the traditional system of awarding vacation based on length of tenure is becoming more and more insane. How many people never even get past the initial level of paid time off before switching jobs?
I know that every time I do, I feel extremely guilty.
It just took me that long to get back into things. I'd lost a lot of those "unsaid practices" that tend to accumulate.
Dude, it's a fine prison you built for yourself. This from a guy in tech, tech being one of the few areas where labour supposedly still has negotiating power.
A large portion of my extended family works in retail where 2 weeks is pretty standard for entry-level positions. It's tenure-based all the way.
Do you mind if I ask what kind of software/position? That sounds like a gulag.
I'm hoping building some experience here will give me a better chance in the future, although I'm a bit worried that working with such an old tech stack might not work in my favor.
(I'm a dev, not a recruiter, no financial interest in this).
I declined.
Of course, that job sucked for a variety of other reasons which led to me leaving after six months. "Oh, we hired you as a programmer? Babysit this Excel spreadsheet for me."
We'll get through an entire interview process where they know I have 15+ years of expertise and team lead level of what they are looking for, yet they still offer 2 weeks vacation.
Fortunately, I've found this to be the most easily negotiated point of the offer as it doesn't actually cost against anyone's budget. I'd put it at around 20% of companies total that absolutely can't be flexible and offer more than two weeks for a new employee at the senior level.
Point is, there's always a reason to hold off on the vacation and waiting for the "perfect timing" isn't a good idea.
How do you measure this?
Pro tip from someone who has worked for 4 companies in 6 years, and taken 6 weeks per year of vacation: once you have been offered the job, tell them you have a vacation already planned (approved by your last job) and it can't be rescheduled. This gets you an exemption from rules like no vacation during the first 6 months of employment, and it sometimes also lets you get your 2 weeks upfront, instead of having to accrue them. This is also your opportunity to get a longer vacation approved (e.g. my last job offered 3 weeks, or I had 3 weeks banked up that I had to use).
Why should I expect the next employer to give me the three weeks of vacation that "are coming to me", if I've already taken cash for them?
Is your situation different ?
He's simply asking the new company for an exception to the normal vacation rule. Instead of waiting until the days are all accrued, he wants to use them ahead of time.
If the new hire is a great match and the company is eager to have them on board, allowing him to virtually start a few weeks later than planned isn't that big of a problem. Or if he disappears for 3 weeks a little while after he's started, so be it.
You can ask for (and receive) a hell of a lot more out of a new employer before your start date than you can after it.
Exactly. Few employers will approve a 3 week vacation when you've only been on the job 2 months, but if you tell them the vacation is already scheduled, they pretty much have to grant it.
@philsnow My point was mainly getting the vacation approved in the first place. I wouldn't push my luck by asking them to front me the 2 weeks, but half of my companies offered it (you just start negative, and by the end of the year you have 0 days).
Yes. The most power an employee will almost ever have in the relationship is after they've offered you the job but before you've accepted it/started working.
Lots of companies have mechanisms to let employees go into "vacation debt" of 1-2 weeks when needed. Asking to take vacation may cost them exactly zero, since they're going to pay you those days eventually anyway.
I'm a "doesn't pick up on the taboos I'm violating" sort of person.
So more or less all Europeans get at least 6 weeks off per year. In the wealthier EU countries it's often 7 or 8, if you count both fixed and movable vacation (e.g. the legal minimum in Denmark is 5 weeks movable + 9 fixed days).
One thing I'm not sure how I feel about, is the combined sick/vacation PTO -- you end up with a larger number of days that you can use as vacation, but usually a smaller number of days overall (my current company is 18 days total PTO, previous company was 5 weeks). This works out great for people like me, who never need to take sick days (if I have a bad cold, I can work from home usually).
Now what would work really good (and what I think my current company had before I started), is one vacation pool, which us use when you are going to be off for 2 or more consecutive days, and a separate large pool of PTO days for either under-the-weather days, actual illnesses, or "fix the garage door / wait for Cable installer" days.
Another thing to look for, is how the vacation is rolled over. The best is where you earn X.something hours every paycheck, and can be sitting at any one time on what you would earn in 2 years. So a previous employer (Motorola) gave me 3 weeks a year, but I was always sitting on 6 weeks available until I had to take some time off to avoid losing new accumulation.
U.S. workers really need to revive the labor unions, it's unfortunate that the population has been so effectively persuaded into regarding them as a bad thing. Sure they can make a dent to the profitability, but the improved quality of living makes it worth it.
I guess an alternative model is to take it really collective and just have the state pass laws mandating working conditions that all employers have to follow, that way nobody needs to negotiate those conditions. That's the approach California took with just banning noncompetes by statute, for example.
Why does it matter to you or the employer why you are taking a day off?
What if I don't get sick? I would have to lie to my employer or let paid time off go unused.
As long as the sick day count is rolled into the total vacation allowance, the only change is not having to lie when taking a day off.
To make sick days more manageable for employers, in Germany the health care system takes over, paying wages after 6 weeks - down to 70% under the assumption that you don't have certain costs related to work (such as health care payments, commute) while sick.
I think some employers take extra (private) insurance for earlier coverage.
Of course, there is some abuse which is, of course, an immediate termination reason. As mitigation, sick days policies require (by law) to see a doctor if it's more than three days, and most employers require it for the first day.
Yes, all that is terribly unfair to those healthy employees that don't get to enjoy feeling miserable in bed...
And to be honest, it's one of the biggest reasons I don't dream of moving to the US anymore - even though nearly all of the interesting jobs in my niche are over there.
Here it's at least 24-25 days off, plus holidays (6, easter, ascension, pentecost, 2 days Christmas and January 1st). Sick leave doesn't count as off days. When you get sick during your time off and you consult a doctor those days don't count, too.
Mind you that The Netherlands, although liberal compared to the US, ranks amongst the lowest number of paid time off in Western Europe. I'm not complaining though, 25 days is a sweet spot for me: 3 weeks summer holiday, 1 week in the winter (goodbye dreary, cold days, hello sunshine!) and some days for personal stuff. I work part-time (4 days a week), so I get 20 days of paid vacation instead of 25, but for every week I take off they subtract only 4 days.
The combination of a decent amount of paid time off and the abiliy to work part-time makes for a much, much healthier work-life balance. I really hope this is something you guys across the pond will take over someday.
Edit for clarification: I realize i make it sound like we have some kind of socialist paradise here. There's another side to this: a heavy tax burden. With all the income tax, property tax, VAT (21%) and ridiculous gas prices (about $6.60 per gallon) life isn't exactly cheap here.
Life seems cheap in the US - until you realize you need to save like crazy: for sending kids to college, for retirement, etc. After you factor all that stuff in, it's much less rosy than it seems at first sight.
Our middle class has been demolished by the Satanic trinity: housing, healthcare, and education costs.
Tuition: our reputable public universities are comparable to European private ones in cost. Our private ones cost almost $50k per year. It's also competitive enough to get into the top universities that the game increasingly starts in high school or before; in New York, it's very typical for merely middle-class parents to hawk up $30k per kid per year from ages 4 to 18: admissions are that competitive.
Health insurance is another nightmare. Decent plans cost $500 per month for an individual in a employer-provided plan (and, increasingly, "employee contribution" of 25-100% is the norm). If you're on the individual market, you're fucked: it's closer to $1500 per month if you're healthy and have no children.
Then there is housing. You can actually get a good deal (say, $150 per ft^2) in wide swathes of the country-- but those are in places with imploded job markets. To buy anywhere with an active job market is pretty much unaffordable on the typical software engineer salary, and even rents will typically be 20 to 40% of after-tax income.
Europe has a lot of issues and extended liabilities, but the U.S. is far more fucked in the coming decade. I'd gladly pay $7/gallon for gas not to have to worry about healthcare (even if you have insurance, it will often fail you at the worst time) or, in the future should I have kids, education costs.
I wonder if there are arbitrage opportunities for the education of the children. You live in the US but you have your kids study in Europe - French universities for example are free, so if the kids can speak French it will be cheaper to have them study there, and as Americans their chances of admissions must be pretty high.
Any comparison with the US reminds me just how much value I'm getting in exchange for my tax. I pay it gladly. We still have a functional middle class.
However, I _don't_ think the answer to this is to depend on companies to issue more vacation time. That's expensive for everyone, and it's hard for little guys to compete with the bigger guys who can afford to pay 6-12 weeks of salary to someone who isn't working. The answer, I think, is for each individual to take more individual responsibility, save their money, work in contracted increments, and go on vacation between contracts.
We should complete the transition and get out of the uncanny valley.
Strongly disagree with you when you say that no one can pay 6 weeks of vacations, using this as an argument to say "no one can pay vacations at all".
It's clearly the question of our social model that you are asking and I will say that: the social model I want for me, my children, and the others, is a world where you don't have to sell yourself as a work slave if you don't want. Paid vacations are not perfect, they are expensive, but they also are a not so bad approximation of a world where you can live your life outside of the work if you want (at least periodically).
Also, I think that while "contract" employment is nice for programmers, there are a large number of jobs (majority?) for which that simply doesn't make much sense because it increases training costs for employers. It is still, to this day, very common for employers to look for employees who plan to stick around for awhile. They want the best of both worlds, basically, long-term employees who can be laid off at a moment's notice.
So basically, this is only a problem if you want a 13 month vacation.
If you're a contractor who is working in 3-6 months contracts you very likely aren't going to have employer health insurance coverage to begin with (thus COBRA doesn't apply to you) and will need to have your own individual plan... which (even with Obamacare in its current state) is going to cost you on average significantly more than an employer offered plan would because of economies of scale and our steadfast refusal to make real changes to the way healthcare insurance works in the US.
I don't disagree with your greater point about the US system, but my experience is that ACA individual policies were about the same cost as what I can purchase as an (admittedly very small) employer.
If you buy an ACA plan, you're in a much larger risk pool than any individual employer can provide.
This is another aspect of our current system that has some negative side effects -- a lot of people don't realize what the actual overall cost of their healthcare insurance is. I currently pay $46 per two-week pay period for good single-person PPO coverage (of course the actual cost to the employer is significantly more), so $92 a month. That cost becomes my mental baseline for insurance, and then I go look at the cost of ACA plans which apparently average $328 and that seems insane, over 3x the cost!!! Thanks, Obama!!! (of course, it isn't really more, the overall cost of my prior coverage has just been obscured by the old system where my employer subsidized me).
Not that it isn't true, mind you, but given all of the policy debate around the ACA that's happening it seems a little unfair to bring the ACA into it at all.
To be fair, that's part of why you charge more per hour when contracting than you'd be making as an employee. There's also taxes (that your employer covered but now you do), vacation time, etc. You want to charge an hourly rate as an independent contractor equal to at least what it cost your employer to have you on payroll, not what they actually payed you. The difference is significant.
This is not the situation glesica was describing:
...can't afford to be without health insurance for two weeks every few months...can't justify paying for private health insurance when their employer forces them to accept its own coverage (and won't give them the cash equivalent).
Either you are part of the individual market (in which case your vacation doesn't affect your coverage) or the employer market. In either case, you can do exactly as cookiecaper suggested. Glesica's objection is simply wrong.
I have no idea what "economies of scale" you are referring to.
It's not as sensible a system as single payer, but it's a big step toward making people less dependent on their boss for their health.
In practice: I'm on an ACA plan, was formerly on COBRA coverage from my previous employer. Dollar for dollar, an ACA plan with the same monthly premium as my former insurance gets me both a significantly lower level of coverage AND a network that's at most 20% the size of my old PPO plan.
On the NY state exchange (I can't speak for other states), there's no way to pay more money for a larger network: every ACA provider in NY offers only an ultra-limited "EPO" network . I believe that 3 out of the 8 providers are even literally the same network, as two of them are licensing their network from the third.
The only compelling reason to use the exchanges is if you qualify for subsidies.
I tried to look up plans on my former insurer, but they just referred me to eHealthInsurance; after entering my zip code, eHealthInsurance came up with a handful of plans from a single insurer that were all on the exchange.
What I would do is assemble a list of every health insurance provider in New York and directly visit each website and/or call each company to see what the options are in your area.
I'd also check with an actual insurance agent who might have a clearer picture of the situation where you are. Even though I knew I needed to go to Regence Blue Shield and that they have coverage in my county, I still went to a local agent to help me make sure I got everything right.
EDIT: NYT actually did an article on this in October[1]. They point to eHealthInsurance, but also GoHealth.com, which I haven't seen before.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/your-money/health-insuranc...
http://www.thehealthsherpa.com/
It gives pretty accurate information (within a $20-30 margin for me) and if a plan looks too expensive try calling the provider and getting a quote.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2013/november/25/sta...
Under the ACA, health care is very much tied to employment, and (except that the new employer mandates have been delayed in implementation) even more employers are required to provide insurance. It's true that there is a new additional individual mandate that falls on people who both have a certain minimum income level and do not have employer-provide health insurance, but the existing incentives that tie health insurance to employers remain and new mandates that encourage employer-tied health insurance exist.
> It's not as sensible a system as single payer, but it's a big step toward making people less dependent on their boss for their health.
This is true insofar that the exchanges by existing, the larger risk pools for individual insurance purchases, and the subsidies for low-to-moderate income workers (and the Medicaid expansion for lower incomes) make it less likely that you will end up with no insurance that you can afford if you lose your job, it doesn't do much to make it any less likely that you won't be financially able to retain your existing insurance (and access to the particular provider network it has) if you lose your job.
Indeed, one should also not depend on their employer to tend to their personal health obligations. Honestly the entire employment model is outmoded, and was never suited to office work. People should stop allowing corporate bigwigs to push them around, and start demanding acceptable working arrangements.
Maybe it's just that I'm so personally unemployable for long periods that I've learned to adapt and not rely on a single party for any of these fundamentals. I've never held a "real job" for more than eight months, there's always been some beyond the pale behavior in superiors that's pushed me over the edge and caused me to turn in my resignation. On the other hand, I've had some clients on contract for 4+ years and we continue to get along swimmingly. Things are much less intense for everyone if you don't allow that co-dependence to develop.
That's been my approach for the last few years, except I do it as a full-time employee. Your employer gives you 2 weeks paid vacation, but you can also take additional time as unpaid vacation. I have averaged 6 weeks of vacation per year for the last 5 years by taking a month unpaid each year.
This is the basis of the misconception that time off is optional. For a healthy life, time off is not optional. Denying employees sufficient time off is effectively asking them to sacrifice their health and well-being for the company, a condemnable practice.
As to how much time off is sufficient or necessary, and in what sized chunks of time, I would leave that to the professional psychiatrists to figure out.
Also, I don't know if you've ever been involved with a small business before, but "can't afford it" in that context usually means "literally do not have that much money", not "can't afford to take it out of my bonus because then I'd have to buy last year's yacht model".
With unemployment in the US at 7 % and voluntary quits still unusually low the picture isn't nearly as sunny as you paint it. One does wonder why you are saying things that aren't quite so.
If you are running a small business yourself, consider that in more civilized countries, like the EU, small businesses are exempt from many regulations.
If you are running a small business that isn't doing too well, perhaps it's time to let it go under - the market has spoken, it shouldn't be kept afloat for a few months more on the backs of your employees.
The reality is far from that, the business owner is taking far bigger risks, has much more to lose and suffer due to failure and at any given point of time is going through far more stress, putting a lot of effort and has much more bigger role to play than some one who just joined the company can possibly fathom.
Now you are virtually asking them to pay you, while you don't work for nearly half the year(If you take vacation, sick leaves, and weekend off's into account). Then you have this 'working from home' thing, which is synonymous with having to take a leave, without officially taking one(Sorry but that's how WFH is being abused these days). Then you have pay them health insurance, be perfectly OK with this 5 hour work per day thing.
Putting this all together, work hardly gets done. Now not all businesses fit into a typical engineering domain, where money can be made non-linear to efforts(It's exceptionally difficult even for these businesses). There is no way ordinary office businesses can survive, let alone make profit in such situations.
If you want them to simply shut down. Its likely they will start up in some other country where the math makes sense.
An utterly meaningless question. In your "modern" contracts-only world, it's still the employers who pay for it, because the employees would earn the money for between-contracts "vacations" through sufficiently high contract rates.
> Also, I don't know if you've ever been involved with a small business before, but "can't afford it" in that context usually means "literally do not have that much money"
The technical term for a business incapable of paying its employees is "bankrupt". Keeping such a business running is, in many jurisdictions, a crime.
Not granting adequate time off is effectively the same as failing to pay wages, and a business that cannot do it needs to die sooner rather than later.
No, its "insolvent". Insolvency can lead to bankruptcy, but they aren't the same thing.
> Keeping such a business running is, in many jurisdictions, a crime.
[citation needed]
Mere trading while insolvent, without dishonesty and intent to defraud, appears to be an unlawful-but-not-criminal act that results in personal civil liability for company debts. "Unlawful" and "criminal" are not the same thing.
Few large companies are offering more than 2-3 weeks vacation to new hires any more. I don't think any are offering 4-6, much less "6-12".
For longer tenured employees, getting an extra week off after 3 or 5 years is equivalent to a 1-2% raise each year. If a business can't support that, something's wrong.
It might work for small time "innovation" like snapchat and domylaundry.com, but I highly doubt you can get the kind of work we saw come out of Bell Labs with anything less than a well-paid team of long-term employees who'd been working there for a while together.
If I had an ACA-based health insurance policy, I would be covered there, but any other benefits via the company would be canceled for the time period.
I think there needs to be a bigger push for benefits that we select and maintain ourselves with companies just contributing some sort of minimally mandated stipend related to salary level.
I value the freedom of my time over wage (salary, but still) slavery the older I get.
I like the idea of benefits that are not tied to the employer but to which the employer contributes some amount of money. Although at that point, might as well just pay me more and let me take care of it.
Edit: fix some grammar
With that said, I would still walk out on an abusive employer...
Terminating employment without compromise because they won't let you break the rules sounds cool when you pretend you did it on the Internet, but please don't use this as an employee-employer relations strategy in real life. If you quit because they won't let you count installing cable TV or something as work time, that is almost certainly not the reason why you quit, unless your priorities are very strange.
Edit: To be clear, the companies where I quit when they had no empathy were body-shops.
And I'm glad I replaced the sump pump. It rained for 3 weeks straight after I gave notice.
Oh yeah. The deadline "we couldn't miss"? It got pushed 3 weeks.
The writing was on the wall for what they expected. But I was young and "stupid" living under the auspice of my father's work life (2 jobs his whole life - 20 years in the Army and 20 years for the State of Alabama). So I worked the hours because I wanted to be the team player. I wanted to help. In the end, I was shown that the relationship was one way. So now I'm old and more careful and less willing to put up with one-sided relationships.
7 days a week and canned for a day off? That should prompt anyone with self respect or integrity to walk out the door and drop emails asking for help or pointers with the codebase.
After I left, it was probably 4 months before everyone but the 2 sales guys and President were laid off. They lasted 3 more months before folding.
I actually left a good job to take this one. Lured me away with money :) Like I said - young and stupid.
If you work for a company that expects you to pull all nighters, but doesn't re-comp you for an extra hour or two for the unavoialble/banalities of random real life problems...that's a huge red flag if not an immediate need to hit the eject button. There is plenti of kubuki theatre in the workplace, but this is a point of fundamental fairness.
I know if I have people working for me like that, they are either getting the next friday off or a morning off or something else as an aknowledgement. Most jobs that require his kind of work and comittment are also (typically) cyclical, and there should be some 'slack' in the workflow that follows a big push.
So I don't think the only options here are bluster vs exploitation, and that goes for you or those that work for you. Just my $0.02.
I have quit a job due exactly to an obsessive focus on HR nonsense.
I did, however, wait a week to cool off just to convince myself I wasn't behaving rashly. Not as cool sounding, but whatever. I don't regret the decision.
I have a hard time imagining a more dysfunctional method of "negotiation". There are better ways to address differences in work expectations.
I understand the idea that you should be fairly compensated for fulfilling work expectations. I also understand that it's common for companies to have flexible PTO rules. But I've also heard of companies, very good ones to work for, that are not flexible about these things. It might not be the manager's choice. Or it might, and it might be possible to work around his/her style. Or it might not matter that much in the grand scheme of things. These are things you should be thinking about before you randomly quit over a rules quibble.
Justrudd isn't advocating staying and breaking the rules. He's advocating leaving when the informal expectations of the employer and employee don't match. I hardly see how it's "dysfunctional" to end a relationship that isn't making both parties happy.
For me, fair is what doesn't harm me financially and/or emotionally. It is easy to be glib and say things like "cable being installed" but what about sump pump being busted and my basement being flooded? Or a limb fell through my roof? Why is it OK for a company to expect me to put in extra effort but when I need a little kindness, empathy in return it's OK for them to say no? Sorry. You'll never convince me there are good companies to work for that do that. I am all for making money and increasing stock value (especially if I have options), but there has to be some give here.
Where I've been handed a formal policy document at a tech employer, it's always said something along the lines of "Hours are X to Y or as your manager directs". The latter part of that means in effect "this is between you and your manager unless you can't work it out".
If you can't work it out, best to go elsewhere, because that's a toxic culture for a tech company.
Most people do not have white-collar jobs. Tech workers are absolutely not in any way representative of the general population.
Now, if I'm not performing up to standards then get rid of me. If I'm excelling who cares when I take time off?
Hopefully I will never have to work in a company that cares more about office time than work done again.
I only have 14 days of PTO a year, and that includes sick time. I use almost all those days visiting family, especially my parents, all of whom live hundreds of miles from me. I took the week of Christmas off this year and still ended up committing some code. It wasn't much, but the people who weren't taking off easily could have done it (i.e., it wasn't something that only I knew how to do). I was still asked to do it.
Although I could easily pay cash for a nice European vacation, I won't go on one this year because I don't have the time.
I'm making my job sound terrible. It's not, far from it, but your extremely mechanical interpretation of the parent post is pretty frustrating for me to read. This sort of policy has real effects on real people's lives. It doesn't just affect me, either--it affects my parents who can only see me a few weeks out of the year. I don't know about you, but I don't believe in an afterlife, so this is all the time I've got for them. I don't own a home, but if I did and I had to use some of my very valuable PTO just to do home maintenance, while still being expected to commit code while taking PTO or in the evenings occasionally, you can bet I'd be pretty upset.
Neither of these is an indicator of a quality company to work for. Both are strong indicators that the company is not good to work for.
Nine months later, after buying a house, I was canned for violating that butts-in-seat policy, largely because I was attending to the many little things a new house requires: inspections, installations, etc. Under the old regime, coming in later and working later, or working from home, being accessible by video chat, IM, and email would have raised no eyebrows. Under the new one it was cause for termination.
I should have seen the writing on the wall and simply started to look for a new job as soon as that more restrictive company took over. I was pressured to stay by the ties I had to stock options, my good professional relationships with co-workers, and my desire to get into a house quickly. The end result was that I went into a lot of bad debt in the months following my layoff, and almost lost my house as I ran out of cash. I could have avoided it if I had planned better. Needless to say I was under a lot of stress for a while.
The long and short of it is, I agree with parent. If you have the freedom to do so, disassociate with companies who have unreasonable time-off or flex work policies, sooner rather than later. Your mental, physical, and financial health are at stake.
If they do demand unpaid work, and for some weird reason I agree to that, then the door is definitely open for paid non-work. Whatever the deal is, it works both ways.
Some companies are changing this approach and allowing remote working. Many people on my team will work remote and a day they need to get the garage repaired and just work around their work requirements. Combine with flex time it works out pretty good.
It was enough to make me decide to stay in London when my H-1B came through. Very short-sighted for a CA company trying to attract international talent too, since the biggest cost of moving is the lack of ability to easily visit loved ones, and short holidays make transatlantic trips uneconomical.
There is too much silence on this topic though.
This is because outside of Silicon Valley, and outside of software development in general, corporations have been gaining more and more power over their employees. You can see this when you look at stagnating wages for everyone outside the executive class. Don't like your job? Too bad. You should just be grateful that you have a job in the first place. Don't have a job? Better go door to door begging everyone to employ you. Haven't had a non-minimum-wage job for the past year? Good luck convincing any HR person that you're worth even an interview. Etcetera.
What this country needs is another labor movement. The first one gave us things like healthcare and retirement benefits, improved workplace conditions (especially safety), and the five-day workweek (down from six). Hopefully, the second one will give us remote work, paid paternal leave, 30-day minimum vacations every year, and a hard cap of 50 hours per week.
Well, closer to the root cause. The root cause is culture.
(Well, actually the root cause is human nature, when placed in certain circumstances. But that's too theoretical to be useful in political practice.)
"What this country needs is another labor movement"
Trade unions and collective bargaining can produce some outstanding results for workers, but the only way they can have any teeth is through a coordinated "attack" against hostile work environments. It's hard to imagine how a loosely coupled workforce like IT professionals could effectively "wage war" on their employers. Words like "attack" and "war" might sound like hyperbole, but these types of disputes can get ugly; when describing the 1984 Miner's Union strike in the UK, Margaret Thatcher characterized the situation as:
"We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within,
which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."
Part of the solution to this adversarial standoff between employer/employees might be a move to normalizing and standardizing the collective bargaining process. As a high school teacher I work as member of a heavily unionized workforce. Disputes about pay and conditions are baked into the system and occur on a rolling basis. In South Australia, where I work, our enterprise agreement is renegotiated on a rolling 3 year basis. The last agreement took a year longer to finalise which means that negotiations for the 2012,2013,2014 enterprise agreement overlapped the 2015-2017 negotiations (which went on in parallel). From my perspective I see a functioning system which brings great results for me as an employee while protecting my right to a safe workplace.
To give an example of the conditions which teachers in my state have fought for:
- 13 weeks paid vacation
- 10 paid, no questions asked sick days
- Excellent salary. I'm earning 20%-30% more as a teacher than I did as a developer
- 2 weeks paid paternity leave
- 14 weeks paid maternity leave
- 22 hours of class time per week
- Tight unfair dismissal laws
- Ongoing unconditional pay increases that outpace inflation.
absolutely agree with you there. There was a lively discussion on HN a while ago about whether making salary information public is a good idea. Employers don't want employees to have this information because one of the things it can lead to is collective action along the lines of "...hey we all want to get 110k/yr just like Joe over there..."
I'm not sure how exactly the lessons from not-for-profit, tightly regulated workplaces like schools can be applied more broadly to the rest of the economy, but what I do know is that my standard of living, autonomy and ability to actually stop and smell the roses has increased immeasurably since I became a teacher.
I think the labour movement that you're calling for needs to be broad based. Instead of a teacher's union and a miner's union I think a broad based worker's union regardless of sector needs to arise which demands that the fruits of our collective labour need to more evenly and fairly be distributed. The 1st world is a rich place, but you'd have trouble spotting with much of the modern day wage slavery that must be endured.
See, that's the thing. Nobody is willing to lose their job for another week of vacation a year. Especially if it looks like there isn't another one coming.
Also, as an Australian, you have the privilege of living in one of the best managed economies in the world. Which means teachers aren't faced with "do you want layoffs or pay cuts this year?" every year for a decade.
More like, luckiest. The resource bonanza of digging up Australia and selling it to China has not much to do with good management.
This is definitely an issue, however in my experience it is exaggerated by the media. Yes there are some who shouldn't be teaching, but they are far outnumbered by regular hard working people.
As for the other protections enjoyed by teachers i'd say they have a positive effect on employee mental health and would therefore have a positive flow on effect on student learning.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/RCPHBS
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECICOM
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USAAHWEP
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EMRATIO
(Wages have stagnated because companies have shifted compensation to untaxed non-wage benefits.)
...another labor movement. The first one gave us things like healthcare and retirement...
This is not the result of a labor movement. It's the result of working around a dumb law. Employers wanted to raise wages in order to compete for employees but there were laws against pay raises and wage competition. Net result: "we pay the same as everyone else, but also free health care/retirement/etc."
If only there were some kind of national organization that could mandate that all employees receive a certain minimum amount of time off per year!
Israel has 12pto + 18 sick days iirc and I wouldn't work for an employer that gives so few days off.
The norm starts at 18pto for juniors and then it climbs up annually.
The same national organization, while at it, could also mandate minimum salary of $200K and minimum vacation policy of 50% of the business days, not including holidays of every religion, sick days and days where going to work just doesn't feel like something one would enjoy. I think such national organization would be a huge thing, can't wait for it to appear.
But what we really need is more self-realization like this at the top. This is where the change for these sorts of policies can happen. On one hand, it's really sad that we're so work obsessed here - money is more important than people so much of the time. But, on the other hand, there is still room and freedom to make your own way and write your own rules.
I think about this topic a lot, especially because I am fighting burnout myself. I didn't do any work for most of xmas break and when I went back this week I kept thinking "I need another few months off". I even had to push for the two days after xmas off - there was a little push back from the ceo since we're a small 4 person company. But, I'm a little older than everyone and I was thinking "fuck it, I need to chill".
Ideally, my dream job is to just work for myself (I'm sure that's everyone else's too). Sure, there are tradeoffs with that, but there's something about working when you want, where you want. I think there can definitely be a balance between being on vacation a lot and outsourcing all the non-important work to other people who will do it. Time Ferris is a great read for this type of living and it exemplifies the work to live not live to work thing (or work as little as possible and really live).
I did a vacation a few years ago where my wife and mother in-law went to Spain. It was awesome, my first time there, but I was 'pressured' by work to keep crankin on our app. It was such bullshit and I was really pissed about that pressure - vacation was not vacation. I told myself: 1) I'd never work for someone else on vaca again - ever, and 2) I'd never make anyone else do that. Needless to say after a few days I was like, 'fuck this, this is the stupidest thing in the world. I'm in one of the best food and historical places in the world and the guys at home want me to keep coding. Bullshit.'
I think there's a point where you either keep going with everyone else's rules or you make your own. Get busy livin or get busy dyin. I'm at the point in my life where I'm getting to the last of dyin for someone else's deal and starting to live for my own. It's not impossible, just take discipline and focus. Otherwise, me, and everyone else is working under someone else's thumb, by their rules, working on vacation. Dumb.
Tim Ferris has some great things to say, but there's also the inherent risk that when working alone and taking a vacation, no one else is there to watch your back.
Culture at some companies is definitely more what like what you described, particularly at finance firms, but there are definitely cultural shifts happening right now as less college grads are going straight to finance every year, allured by the perks that tech firms have to offer such as unlimited PTO in some cases.
It seems like your situation is very different from that though. Working at a small startup is really hard, particularly when you already have a family. I wish you and your startup the best of luck in the coming year.
"Unlimited PTO" is usually a bad thing, at least in startups. I don't like vacation tracking-- I think it's a waste of electrons and ink-- but the one company over 10 people where I worked that had "unlimited vacation" was a place where 2 weeks would usually get a person fired for "culture fit".
I'd be more inclined to work for a company that offered 5 weeks (more than I need, at this age) than one that offered "unlimited". If nothing else, the former is better because it gives you the ability to say, "I'm used to 5 weeks" in negotiating a job offer and increasing the likelihood of a match. If you say, "I'm used to 'unlimited vacation'" you make it sound like you worked at a disorganized company and you won't get matched.
When I see "unlimited" PTO mentioned in job ads, I get the sense that someone put it in there because they got the idea (from some medium post or somewhere) that this is what all the other "it" startups are offering, and so hence, they should, too. Without like, you know, taking a couple of seconds to think about what it actually means.
What's rare, but an extremely nice bonus on top, is when you get to "accrue" a small amount (maybe a week a year) as well that you never dip into but's there to be paid out to you when you leave. But that's not something I'd expect to be able to negotiate for at my next job, so if they didn't have it I'd try to just get a bit more salary to compensate...
Keep in mind you're only talking about America among developed countries. All others have much more leave, maternity, sick days mandated by law, and people take them.
I think this notion is more widespread in other cultures (as you say, from many other more developed countries) and from that stems legislation. Based on my experiences, I do firmly believe that most of us would benefit by getting out of our home countries, more often and for longer.
“Vacations are for the affluent/rich”
Absolutely. But tens of millions of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, so they can't even afford to take a week or two off and stay at home reading/relaxing/playing with the kids/whatever.
Basically, they are slaves, they just don't know it.
It is only the result of these choices that they 1) need paychecks and 2) have already spent those paychecks.
I have a friend that works on a fish boat for 4 months out of the year, and spends the rest of the year hiking.
I have a friend that teaches middle school, and spends the summer months travelling.
They probably make less money per year than the paycheck-to-paycheck person you have in mind, yet they have the time to travel because of their lack of obligations.
It sounds like you think someone that chooses to have a couple of kids and a stable household deserves to be in perpetual servitude.
Open your eyes. It's not like that elsewhere.
Don't worry! You'll be in the same situation someday, and then you will realize how ridiculous your statement is.
Who says it is about money? What if it is about making an impact upon the world? About creating products that touch millions of lives, about doing our small part to make the world a better place?
Then again I'm not good at vacations. I don't switch off well, I'm the guy reading a book or playing a game while watching TV. Heck at times I'll play two video games at once, or play a game while reading an article. A two second pause in action in one game is plenty of time to alt tab out, read half a sentence, and alt-tab back in.
Heck two seconds feels like an eternity at times!
> Ideally, my dream job is to just work for myself (I'm sure that's everyone else's too).
Nope, although a good profit sharing plan would be appreciated! I love working within a team of people, we can get a lot more done together than as individuals!
But I've recently signed on with a company with around ~6.5 weeks leave a year. I already have it worked out:
- I go to Hawaii for a week, to Surf.
- I'm going to New Zealand for a week, to Ski.
- I'll be buying an around the world trip for the other 4 weeks.
All of these will be very active and I don't have to turn off I'll have my laptop with me at all times.
> Who says it is about money? What if it is about making an impact upon the world? About creating products that touch millions of lives, about doing our small part to make the world a better place?
I find this hard to swallow, if you're talking about an amazing piece of software it might take X hours to build, if it's cleaning up the oceans it might take Y hours, either way a holiday only delays that and allows you time to yourself.
Business is about money. You want to make an impact on the world? Go into something other than business: volunteering, activism, organizing, politics, any of that stuff.
I strongly disagree.
Ford, made a huge difference in the world.
Apple, huge difference.
Microsoft, huge difference.
The original AT&T, huge difference.
Key decisions by individuals at those companies have had more impact on the world than most of us can ever hope to have in politics or through volunteering or any other activity, and though at least partially technical merit, it is possible to get into a position to be the one making those decisions (which often time can consist of nothing more than a developer making wise well thought out choices in a design!)
Corporations are huge force multipliers, capable of pulling of feats of engineering that small teams just do not have the resources to do.
I recently experienced something similar but possibly even stupider. At the end of November I caught the flu from my niece and took a very rare sick day off work. I laid in bed and slept and felt miserable, which is totally expected, of course.
The ridiculous part was the fact I also felt guilty for doing nothing all day except lay around and sleep. Here I was, totally unfit for doing any work at all, experiencing guilt for not working and also for not doing anything around the house.
This is unhealthy and I only partially relate it to being part of the tech community. I think another big part of it is my upbringing in a traditional, immigrant Protestant family with a powerful work ethic. That can help you get ahead but it also brings with it a lot of bullshit.
I don't think there is any thing wrong with that kind of an attitude.
And I can also assure that's some thing not restricted to our profession alone. A lot of people have to be in the game to feel comfortable. There are tons of people who are supposedly in retirement but still put in crazy hours to keep themselves sane.
Beyond the craving to be seen by your own self as productive. Showing up for work has other benefits, like socializing, meeting people, knowing things, current affairs and continuous learning. None of that is possible sitting at home.
Another thing that I see among people who while away time at home is their attitude towards their family. If there is some one around more productive ego clashes are inevitable. And human mind always seems to converge towards doubts, uncertainty, fear and in general negative emotions when left alone.
Other people understand what's wrong with it, sometimes on their deathbed.
Others die in the regret that they didn't even try.
"no one on their deathbed ever wishes they'd spent more time at work" :)
(disclosure: 4-6 weeks off foreigner in the US going what the hell to 2 weeks leave+no perf. bonus. Its bullshit, I don't get why people roll over and just take it. Love punishment? Validated by being victims? What the hell)
To their great credit (in my eyes!), nobody ever said a thing about this. Just before I left I found out that the receptionist had taken to noting down when I came in just so they had some sort of record of which days I worked (so I guess they missed the days I came in after 5pm, but hey).
Sadly, I am now aware of vacation days, and duly check with my manager before taking time off... TT
1. Protestant Work Ethic (work is morally good, not-work is morally bad, therefore do work)
2. Capitalism race to the bottom (if you take 2 vacation days, the company can fire you and hire someone who will take only one, then fire him for someone who will take none)
It really, really sucks. But if you get any ideas about standing up for your rights or organizing your labor, remember that the nail that stands up is hammered down. That, plus most coworkers will look at you bug-eyed if you propose that working conditions can be improved by worker organization and negotiation with employers-- after all, they're just trying to do their part and earn their portion, not get involved in some scary organized/unionized/socialist political mess.
There's not even a cultural foundation to build something like a campaign for more sensible vacation policy. Indeed, the cultural foundation is predisposed against such things.
Thank you very much, I do not want any of this crap nowhere near me.
[1] http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/27/crime-rate-in-camden-nj-go... [2] http://www.suntimes.com/news/24282009-418/state-prison-offic...
Have you ever worked for yourself? Because I can guarantee you, unless you bill $500 / hour and have a lifestyle you can sustain on $4000 / month, you will never 'work when you want, where you want'. Ferris is a charlatan - like most self-help books, there are some fundamentally good (if vague) ideas in his books, but please don't fall in the trap of believing that what he describes is doable as easy as he makes it out to be, and/or in a sustainable way.
(I work for myself, and I prefer it over working for a boss, but in the end it's still the same bullshit you need to put up with - and then some).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/us/politics/us-median-inco...
Previous poster explicitly stated "one salary."
You have access to nearly every piece of human knowledge on demand for almost no cost. You can communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time, for virtually no cost. You have access to more sources of entertainment than you could consume in a lifetime, at a very low cost. In your pocket you carry a super computer with a multi-core processor, high resolution display, solid state storage measured in gigabytes, with voice and touch interface, that can access all these things over a wireless high speed internet connection.
Every person living in a developed country is living a lifestyle that would have required many servants in any other era. People are just spoiled, greedy, entitled shits. They have no appreciation for how good their lives are. They have no comprehension of the complexity of the underlying systems that make their lives so incredibly easy. And yet they always want MORE.
When I think of "living like a king" I don't particularly imagine "14th century royalty", but I do imagine being able to buy the latest laptop with ample memory and an SSD, for example, without having to think twice about the expense.
(also, $4000 / month pre tax and expenses is less than $2000 / month pretty much anywhere in the developed world.)
In some companies I've worked for, HR can force you to take holiday if it looks like you've not been using it.
I'm not claiming the UK is a Socialist paradise, but I shudder when I look at the terms of employment with US companies.
Do you want a happy, healthy, dedicated, and motivated workforce? Or do you just want to burn people out as quickly as possible and then replace them?
I can also buy more days if I wanted to, my manager does for example so he can spend more time on his sailing hobby.
It's a ridiculous class system we have in this country, no doubt.
Also, business owners don't like government telling them how to run their business. If a company mismanages their talent and burn them out, that's the company's problem, not the government's problem.
I'm not heartless but I also wouldn't like the government telling me how to run my business. That many mandatory days off can crippling for smaller companies.
That, and the lack of an affordable healthcare system (I pay less than $1000 a year for private health insurance but if I couldn't afford that I could get healthcare free of charge - the main difference is longer waits for elective surgery) mean that working in the US really isn't that appealing despite the startup scene being more exciting.
More employers need to understand this. At my last job I felt like I was close to burning out. I was getting involved in management duties, customer service, hardware design(not area of expertise at all), maintaining a back-end and front-end, dabbling in some networking, aiding in negotiating airtime rates, and looking up new parts to cut costs.
For the first few months it was all fun as we were trying to give legs (and profit!) to an offshoot business from the main business. I was the only technical person with the flexibility to to juggle all of those tasks and keeping costs low was a priority so I was happy to help this fledgling business by giving my time and energy to all these different areas. I never learned as much as I did during that time but there came a time when I felt the burnout coming on. I was getting less done and was losing interest in going to work.
I decided to take a 'staycation'. I filed for a week off where I planned to just stay at home and do whatever I saw fit for that week.
I got teased about taking time off just to stay at home. "Why don't you just come to work if you're planning to stay home? What's the point of the vacation? You sure are lazy."
All of these comments were light heartedly and in jest, but it seemed like most people really didn't understand the concept of taking some time off just to catch a breath.
I took the time off and came back fresher than ever and pushed through my todo list faster than I had been before I took time off. All I did during that week was manage my finances, watch netflix, clean my apartment and run some errands that had been piling up.
I am getting to the point of feeling bored and longing to get back to work. Awesome feeling.
I never get why most Americans have so much trouble with taking/giving time off. Or working part-time, for that matter, which is basically impossible, from what I've heard.
I dislike this type of policy, which essentially acts to obfuscate your true gross income.
"Oh, you understood that we would add vacation money? We included vacation money in the quoted income, sorry."
I'm not in the Netherlands but I've been in this situation and had to take frustrating legal action (which, under new legislation, I would now have to pay for).
On a side note, true gross income doesn't say that much. You have taxes, 401K plans that are sometimes partially included, meal plans, etc. i had a bigger paycheck at my last job, but my net income is higher at my current job. Unfortunately, the only way to truly know what you're making is to wait a month after starting working somewhere, and check your bank account.
Btw, I'm Canadian, can we speed up the process?
never mind, the tax rate is higher. but seems like a great place to work. or be financially poor but live a great quality of life from social benefits.
Tax rates are pretty high, with the exception of big multinationals. Think U2, Gucci, KPMG. They're officially based in The Netherlands because of the tax breaks.
On a side note: as a Canadian, you probably would like it here. Climate and mentality are pretty similar, and I know several people who made the switch. My elementary school teacher was from Canada.
Furthermore, another day of work != another day of productive work. I'd say that when I'm put in an office for 40 hours a week, week after week, I get less and less productive as the process becomes more and more tedious. Very infrequently do I have one full day of solid work with no distractions. However, when I've been away from the office for a while, I notice that my work becomes more interesting for me, and I can give it more focus. I'd be willing to bet this is true for others as well.
Someone offers you a job with $30k more but you have to drive an extra hour each way plus you get only 3 weeks vacation, at some point that will start to look like a bad deal, but when if you were younger it might look like a great deal.
Look for companies that offer you decent vacation time (and make you take it). Sometimes those that give you "unlimited" will pressure you into not taking it by piling on work, or guilting you into working, so beware.
You only have one life to live, at the end maybe you'll be excited about designing an awesome SaaS system or Android app, but chances are you'll probably be happier about time spent with your close family.
Before I came to work at FullContact, I went through the same sort of guilt every time I left for vacation.
Nevermind that I was working 60-hour weeks. Nevermind that I was plugged in, often checking email & sneaking in work, while away on "vacation" (much to the annoyance of my fiancee). And it wasn't unique to me - talking to most of my friends, it seemed like a common thread in the startup world. If we take vacation at all, we don't leave work at work. I guess I had been in it so long, I didn't even notice anymore.
This year I took my first Paid, Paid Vacation - no email. No internet. No work of any sort allowed. And I came back more refreshed than I can ever remember being. Not only with ideas that had germinated while away, but also an extra drive I hadn't had in a long time. It was freaking amazing.
Sad thing is, I probably wouldn't have done it, were I not working for a place that made "unplugging" a condition of my getting a bonus. The overwhelming "work more" startup culture is a tough thing to break free of.
Makes no sense.
Anyway, here's the obligitory six year old blog post:
http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks-vaca...
There's more to life than work. Without adequate time off you've no time to live.
Sure, but it's a useful perspective to help make a strong business case for it.
Not every company cares if their employees have "lives" and are "well-rounded individuals", but talk in terms of dollars & cents, and more businesses will pay attention.
Case in point: our office has been closed for the holidays for the past couple weeks, and I haven't seen evidence of anybody doing any serious work on non-side projects (outside of the unavoidable on call responsibilities). Nobody had to use precious PTO for this or feel bad about traveling overseas to visit relatives.
I'd say it's highly dependent on company culture, though. We were always encouraged by our founders and office managers to take plenty of time off, and they led by example in this way. If that wasn't the case, it might not be working out well for us. I've certainly heard of other companies where it leads to less vacation.
There were worries initially by some about employees abusing this policy, but that has not happened once in the 6+ years we've been around. However as we've grown, I strongly suspect that the opposite is happening, i.e. employees are not taking as much vacation as (I feel) they should, perhaps due to the feelings of guilt mentioned in the article. This sucks because, unlike jobs where vacation days are tracked, we can't even compensate them for any unused days.
So over time I've come to believe that unlimited vacations days is something that sounds good in theory but not so much in practice, especially as a company scales. I would instead recommend the traditional model of tracking vacation days, but with a very liberal number of days (vs. the typical measly 10 days a year or whatever).
I think people often feel like they are the technology equivalent of a professional athlete and need time to recover, yet while they are working, they never actually push themselves to their physical (and mental) limits.
No argument that if you work hard, you need vacations. Thats absolutely correct.
You could argue that in the long run, only those who push themselves see any kind of career progression. For the likes of your example the future holds stagnation or, in the most extreme case, unemployment/unemployability.
Racing is of course a different matter, but even the hardest working athlete (say during the playoffs or a major tournament) is only playing every other day. The Tour de France riders are some of the hardest working, but even then the top riders are only expected to actually be competitive in one major race per year...
I guess it depends on your definition of extreme. My definition is that they are constantly pushing the boundary of what they are capable of, i.e. always just surpassing their current proficiency so that they can constantly get better.
I don't see that same level of intensity in most tech workers I've met.
That said, I'm not sure we're completely disagreeing, perhaps it's more semantics than anything else... but my definition of intensity also includes a time factor - and a professional athlete has loads of rest time available, something a lot of (most?) tech workers don't seem to have.
There are some sample times here (no guarantees of accuracy, but they seem in line with what I've read previously in interviews), the highest seems to be about 40hrs/week:
http://www.timeout.com/london/events/fitness-tips-from-olymp...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080908091244AA...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130115143443AA...
I hear about "feeling burnt out" so infrequently that I'd argue the opposite is true, and I work around a LOT of hard working people. Then again, I'd have no proof of such a claim.
Excuse me? You don't just take a vacation so you can be more productive at work.
He didn't say "take a vacation so you can work better."
Take a vacation to discover a new country. Learn to SCUBA dive. Go trek the Himalayas, bungee jumping or rock-climbing because they are FUN.
Not because they'll recharge you for work.
She was on a date with a man who bragged, "I only got three hours of sleep last night." Huffington replied, "This dinner would be more interesting if you had gotten six."
Big successes take a long time -- Dropbox is almost seven years old now and still has a long way to go. If you burn out after a few years, it's unlikely to be good for anyone.
Now doing "Work to live". Moved to a 4 day week. 3-day weekends. Any extra hours are my own choice (and rare). 27 vacation days a year[1] giving me 1 week off every ~3 months plus an extra week off around Christmas. Never get near burnout.
Shame it took me so long to realise that "Work to live" is much better than the former.
1. Pro-rated to my reduced hours though. This is the UK so I also get 8 bank-holidays a year.
Everyone is different and even comparing muscles is not the same.
Some people may need to take time off to prevent burnout others may not. I worked 5 or 6 years without a break and didn't think anything of it.
That said it's probably natural to try and elevate oneself when you have some ability that someone else doesn't appear to have. Some people do need less sleep (not me) and would almost certainly have an opinion of someone who need more than 8 hours.
The thing about "making fun" of other people is that you isolate one thing (that you identify as negative) not everything about them. And there is nothing wrong with trying to perk yourself up because you can do 20 pullups with your feet out while the other guy (who only needs 4 hours of sleep) is focusing on his extra productivity as a way of feeling good about himself.. Human nature.
Later on I worked for a great company called Creo. We had "banked time". If you had to work long hours to get stuff done you could bank that time and take it off later. And people did that. 3-4 weeks vacation on top of that. With that we created about $1B of value over ten years. Some people abused the system but they were a minority and since we had 360 review they normally wouldn't get away with it.
Here in Canada we have parental leave. When you have children, husband and wife can take up to 35 weeks (combined). You don't get full pay but many employers will top up to full pay. You can't be fired or laid off for taking this time off. When my youngest daughter was born I took 2.5 months off... When I work on something I am 100% committed. I work hard, long hours. However I will take vacation and disconnect completely. Guess what, when I'm back it's as if I just left yesterday. As they say, when you die you'll never regret not having worked more.
At the same time, burnout is real. I tend to moderate myself on a daily basis, taking the time I need to get enough sleep, exercise, eat well, socialize, etc. Others follow a pattern of working too hard daily and then need whole weeks off to recover now and then. But looking at rest, whether daily or in chunks, as an investment in long term productivity, is the only thing that makes sense to me.
The fact that you are competing with people like that in every marketplace means that not needing, or even desiring a break or vacation may be a key determinant of success in a highly competitive market.
I think that is why you see this no rest attitude so prevalent in very competitive schools, elite military units, wall street and other hyper competitive markets where razor thin distinctions can mean big differences.
Both are pretty bold claims actually and I'd be surprised to see someone back them up, but I'm pretty dubious there is any merit to them.
The standard counter is that some X-factor like a creativity multiplier comes into play that the "overworked" person doesn't have. I have also heard/read the "Over x amount of hours worked per day productivity drops." I think that holds for most people but not for the outliers who choose not to take vacations.
Interesting interpretation as well about markets as all of the examples I gave were decidedly not entrepreneurial in nature so I don't agree with your assessment that I made that "bold" claim, however I would probably extend the theory there as well.
This idea of more work is better is intuitive only at a completely trivial level and one that's unlikely to bear out in an environment of any sort of complexity.
Sure, I suppose if you're talking about a widgit factories where people repeat a task and have quotes, maybe more hours is better. (Though even then maybe not if on the whole you have higher burnout rates.)
You appear to take this at face value without even doing much digging. There is a myriad of evidence to support the contrary to your claim. Heck try Googling: "Working more hours is more productive" and you'll only find articles supporting the contrary.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=working+longer+hours+is+more+...
However, I don't think this advantage is genetic, and is more likely a function of age and lifestyle, both of which will change over time. Not only that, these outliers are often below average in other important areas like fitness, communication with others, and personal integrity.
The other point to consider is that work longer does not mean working smarter. I would chose the latter, and I personally work hard at finding ways to be smarter at what I do without working 15 hour days. I also believe that outside activities, other hobbies, socializing provides less obvious but valuable benefits to your skill.
It also can carry a perhaps heftier social stigma than extensive vacationing if viewed in the wrong light, because of the potential for abuse. If I watch a movie in the middle of the day between working, how is that viewed? Is it different than if I were to take a mid-afternoon bike ride on a Tuesday for a couple of hours? They are both ways that I can decompress and allow me to come back to ideas later with a fresh perspective, and that's sometimes the most valuable thing to me when I'm working.
I would take flexible scheduling over excessive vacation time any day of the week, and I'm fortunate that the software engineering field is one where working from anywhere at any time is extremely easy.
I never thought I would type this out, but there you have it. I did actually have some vague ambitions of working in the US once, but I have eventually realized that the work environment is a bad fit for my style of work. Declined an on-site interview with Microsoft this fall due to a vague feeling that my questions about vacations and overtime were answered too vaguely, and after reading this thread I think I finally have a grasp on what stopped me.
It's really too bad. You guys have the most interesting environment for software developent in the whole world, with a huge amount of opportunities for growing and learning. But it's just not worth it.
If you've run a marathon, you trained months for it and you have run the 26 miles (made your startup ramen-profitable) then then you can take time off.
If you haven't even run a marathon yet, yeah maybe you've run 5mi a couple of times, what do you want to take time off from? You need to run 15mi another 10 times now and the run the 26 mi marathon. Then you can take time off.
I think once a startup is ramen profitable, the founders can take some time off, because then it's much more about making the right strategy decisions, which formally take 0 time. It's just a matter of connecting all the variables correctly and that works much better in a balanced mind than in an overworked mind.
If the product of the startup isn't even finished though or it doesn't have traction yet, putting in the hours is much more needed than creativity, because thinking about strategy is a waste of time anyway before you get to the next milestone. It will all change once you launch anyway.
Contracting (think on site day rate) has allowed me to do this but only because I engineered it this way, I looked at Job boards a few years back and saw the qualifications I needed to get to get to the position and sort of rates that would allow me to take that time off to strike a good work/life balance.
I work 6 month contracts (sometimes longer) and take a month or so off at the end. Doing so not only allows me free thinking time and the opportunity to meet new people, travel to great places and experience new things but I also find I'm a lot more refreshed and valuable to the hirer for the next contract.
I know this isn't possible for everyone, hell, people need to work permanent roles right, but striking a good work / life balance is possible if you look for it.
Which helps forcing even people who avoid vacations to have some.
In my opinion, those who don't travel don't live, and that's where you need vacations. Visiting your relatives, too.
With the amount of technology and automation we have, and how productive we have become, we should be heading towards 4 day weeks, and month long vacations.
No shame in taking a break at all here. Also, work to live, don't live to work; or you'll miss out on everything important.
The implied equation of sleep and vacation is far too crude. Mixed in the post is the golden nugget that it's necessary not to burn out. Vacation is simply one very specific way to account for that, and probably not even the best. I'd say a much more effective way is to make realistic expectations of team members and yourself, such that no one is being over-worked for indefinite periods. That is much more culturally advantageous. But I do acknowledge the difficulty of instituting that in a startup, what with its bursty nature of stress and periods of slack, so vacation might be more appropriate there then elsewhere.
That's not to say vacation isn't important. It definitely is. Just not as the primary defense against burnout.
Don't ever do this unless you understand the financial situation of your employees. I've seen so many complaints about bosses taking even reasonable amounts of holiday when they go somewhere fancy tell everyone about it excitedly or with pride come back and yammer about it all day or longer... working class common sense is to not do this :P
although by working class magic when a co-worker does it thats fine...
you are probably fine in a tech office and if you are US based the level of wealth is high enough that its pretty likely your employees can afford a holiday abroad, or even somewhere local and nice and don't use their holiday days sitting at home trying not to spend their money...
But I'm not an American. If I understand correctly, Americans often get only 2 weeks off per year, and are often pressured to work more than 40 hours per week. It's clearly a cultural thing. Though to me it seems that this "sacrifice your life for work" culture is very harmful.
I did half of my PhD research at UC Berkeley and it was quite insane for me to note how rare it is that grad students take vacation. I love vacation and I love coming back fully charged to work thereafter. Can't quite fathom how you can adhere to a "no vacation" way of life.
Staying well rested comes not only first, but will also increase your productivity when measured over a longer period.
For me, a relaxing "vacation" is snugging up in bed for an entire weekend and doing nothing but eating, sleeping and watching fun shows with a loved one. If you find it difficult to get away from work in your own home, try to structure your day so you don't have time to check on work.
Oh, thanks a lot, that really gives me peace of mind. I'm going through a rather bad insomniac phase, I get to sleep roughly once very 36 to 72 hours. Mix that with writing C all day you start acting odd. The other day I made some coffee, then realised I had used molasses instead of coffee grounds.
I never feel guilty when I am getting some sleep or being frivolous.
I'm getting ever closer to forty and I've never taken a vacation and it has been at least a couple of years since I've even had a day off due to illness (and, then, only because I was so ill that I physically could not crawl out of bed). My boss has been prompting me for dates when I want to use my vacation for the last several years, because I've always been maxed-out, and I've been coming up with excuses and delays to not have to take the time away.
A lot of that has to do with work-ethic. I strongly adhere to the belief that a man's work is his legacy. It is his definition. More of it has to do with how much I enjoy my work. If my work were more of a chore than a joy, I would probably want to take vacations and would surely not hesitate to take a day or three off when sick.
It's the same way that some people talk about how they can't wait for their in-laws to go away when they're in-town and you never hear a word from other people. In-laws are only a problem if you don't like them or can't stand them. That isn't the case with everyone. Just like vacations and work.
But, I hope you're not also suggesting that everyone else adhere to that standard. Because many of us appreciate time with friends, family and the like as much as time working. For those people, who very well may love their jobs as well, vacations are the necessary balancing point allowing the other parts of their lives to share some of the daylight hours.
If you don't really enjoy what you do, then you would probably spend most days watching the clock, so you can go home. Watching the calendar, so you can have one or two weeks to yourself.
Of course, you may love what you do and can't wait to do more of it, but have external obligations and contexts that make you feel you need a vacation (from life more than work) and, therefore, take time off to go do that. But that isn't the context of most of these discussions. Most of these discussions are presented as some sort of meager escape from the toils of oppression. That's sad.
I don't know how feasible a system would be though (I've heard of places that do that for regular PTO, but not vacation).
Yes, but I don't see vacations (only) as a way to prevent burnout. To me, it's an opportunity to travel the world, read, spend more time on my hobbies and so on.
I highly recommend Culebra to anyone in the US who likes white sand beaches. One of my top 10 in the world, and top 3 in the Caribbean.
The ancient Greeks were spot-on: «παν μέτρον άριστον» (all in good measure).
I was disappointed.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Taking break really is part of the job, it strikes me even more reading this article, because when you are expendable, you don't want to be burnt out as it you make easy target as a scapegoat.