Very happy to read this. I’ve seen all the issues mentioned in this article, along with “unlimited” vacation turning into an ask-permission-for-vacation culture.
Additionally, you know you have a good boss when they text you to tell you they’re changing your passwords for the remainder of your vacation, and to stop checking your damn work email.
Additionally, you know you have a good boss when they text you to tell you they’re changing your passwords for the remainder of your vacation, and to stop checking your damn work email.
Doing this up-front - “hey, when you go on vacation, we’re pulling your VPN access” - is a really good idea. This forces employees to document un(der)documented bits of mission critical code they wrote and take some time to train coworkers as well.
And an interesting perspective from another industry: the Federal Reserve mandates two weeks of consecutive vacation every year for investment bankers, with zero contact back to work. It’s very hard to defraud your company or investors when you’re shut out!
The last time that I had a regular job in the US (over 5 years ago), I had 25 days of paid vacation a year and loved it. There were some concerns about my taking it though as I had too many key roles. A 3 week trip to China was a great way of forcibly resolving a bunch of those issues though.
the assumption being that they are only going to do it when they feel a hundred per cent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business – or, for that matter, their careers!
Minimum is a much better idea!
I have never been up to date on every project - so would never be able to take a vacation!
Thankfully I don’t work for Virgin group :~)
Very happy to read this. I’ve seen all the issues mentioned in this article, along with “unlimited” vacation turning into an ask-permission-for-vacation culture.
Additionally, you know you have a good boss when they text you to tell you they’re changing your passwords for the remainder of your vacation, and to stop checking your damn work email.
Doing this up-front - “hey, when you go on vacation, we’re pulling your VPN access” - is a really good idea. This forces employees to document un(der)documented bits of mission critical code they wrote and take some time to train coworkers as well.
And an interesting perspective from another industry: the Federal Reserve mandates two weeks of consecutive vacation every year for investment bankers, with zero contact back to work. It’s very hard to defraud your company or investors when you’re shut out!
Can’t agree with this more.
The last time that I had a regular job in the US (over 5 years ago), I had 25 days of paid vacation a year and loved it. There were some concerns about my taking it though as I had too many key roles. A 3 week trip to China was a great way of forcibly resolving a bunch of those issues though.
Virgin have introduced an unlimited policy:
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/why-were-letting-virgin-staff-take-as-much-holiday-as-they-want
But with this clarification:
Minimum is a much better idea!
I have never been up to date on every project - so would never be able to take a vacation! Thankfully I don’t work for Virgin group :~)
Wow, that’s basically an unspoken “god help you if you take any time off” and much, much worse than a tracked vacation policy.
Apart from the US does this apply somewhere else ? I would think this doesn’t happen here in Europe…
I think this is more a culture issue than a policy one. Does Europe not have workaholics?
sure it does :-) but it’s standard afaik a fixed number of paid vacation here
Travis is based in Berlin.
Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. I just thought it wasn’t possible to have an open policy for vacation.
If the regulation says you must offer more than a certain minimum amount of vacation, “arbitrarily much vacation” would exceed that.