10 ms·

Paid Vacation? That’s Not Cool. You Know What’s Cool? Paid, Paid Vacation.

388 points by lorangb 14y ago

the_gipsy 14y ago
I don't like it, because essentially your boss is commanding you what to do on your vacation. He wants you to disconnect, so that you come back fully recharged. I'd rather get the money in salary and decide myself what to do with the money, without anyone dictating how to spend my free time. It is perfectly possible to disconnect and recharge spending one week slacking off and hanging around friends, just as much as a one month vacation.
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  I suspect hanging around with friends for a week would be perfectly acceptable. For others, it might be hanging on the couch, eating Taco Bell and watching bad cable all week Presumably they mean "disconnect" from the company rather than all people you know.
  - glanch 14y ago
    That was the part of the article that confused me. The point of the $7500 is to __actually spend it on the vacation__. How are you going to spend $7500 sitting around your house for 2 weeks? Seems to go against the spirit of what he wants his employees to do. Maybe I'm a jerk but I don't believe you can really get the same 'disconnect/refresh/recharge' effect from sitting at home with your phone turned off as you can from flying to a far away place and experiencing a new environment.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  That's a fair assessment. However, there's one other thing to consider: his making the decision for you also shifts the responsibility to him. If the money was just part of my salary, I would probably have second thoughts about taking an interesting but expensive vacation: I would consider being "responsible" and saving the money or something. Even if a good vacation is worth doing--and, I believe, it really is--there is still some guilt with "wasting" money on something that isn't obviously "productive". I rationally know that enjoying myself is not a waste of money, but that doesn't help deal with my inner biases! Now, I don't want to say you have to spend a lot of money to get a good vacation--you don't. But it does create more options, and some of the things I really love (like travelling to Europe) have fairly high barriers to entry. So having somebody allocate the funds for me makes it much more likely that I'll spend them on something exciting and enjoy myself with it. I suspect the sort of people working at a company willing to pay you $7500 for a vacation don't need to worry about paying the bills too much, but there is still an incessant nagging to be economical. I was actually originally thinking about this idea in a completely different context. There is a nice parallel between this and the sorts of prizes you get at hackathons (usually electronic gadgets): in a certain sense, that prize is worth more than its price because I would not have spent my own money to buy it. It's slightly weird logic, but I think it's accurate: there's a big psychological difference between opportunity cost and actual cost. Sure, I could have $500 instead of a tablet, but if I'm just going to win something, I'd rather it be the tablet. In short: I think this scheme is a good way to overcome my innate resistance to spending money on things that seem to be a "waste", even if I would enjoy spending it that way and probably get higher utility than just by saving it.
- lorangb 14y ago
  we want you to disconnect from work. if you want to hang out with friends, that's cool. just don't work (which, surprisingly, lots of people have trouble doing, especially in startups)
  - dennisgorelik 14y ago
    Is it ok to read HN on vacation?
- philwelch 14y ago
  You can take that week off and just save the 7500.
- mdkess 14y ago
  I really like the idea of "forced benefits" - free meals, paid vacations, devices as "bonuses", etc, since they force you to raise your standard of living. I wouldn't eat out for lunch every day because there are other things that I'd rather spend my money on, but since work pays for it, I'm much happier - it makes my life easier, I get to eat better/more interesting food and saves me time. Same goes for vacations - I would love to go and see China, but it'll be a while before I can justify the expense. If someone were to hand me a check for $7,500 though and say "this is for your vacation", I would do it in a heartbeat - and I think be better off for it. I mean, presumably this comes on top of a generous salary already, but I think it's a good thing to help people get over their own biases toward spending.
schappim 14y ago
That's one way to spend the investor's money... ;-)
- maigret 14y ago
  Or at the opposite to get a better return on it. If working more produced automatically more income, Japan would be magnitude richer than Europe. Food for thoughts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...
invalidOrTaken 14y ago
Hiring you say.
- bartonfink 14y ago
  They aren't making my job any easier trying to attract new blood to Mapquest by offering perks like that. I'm tempted to interview just to see what they're all about.
pjmlp 14y ago
While I appreciate getting my vacations paid like that, the article shows a bit how Americans vs other continents see the vacations. Here in Europe the only people I know that dare to have any contact with their company during vacations are usually labeled as workaholic. We appreciate our 22-30 days vacations, without any contact with the employer while enjoying friends and family.
- chiaro 14y ago
  How it should be.
- davedx 14y ago
  Here in the Netherlands, we actually get extra 'holiday pay' by law too. It makes salary calculations more complicated but it also makes me get a big grin on my face in May :)
  - masklinn 14y ago
    Belgium has something like that, I'm not sure it's by law (it might just be working agreements), basically you get a "holiday bonus" once or twice a year, which amounts to about 70% of your (net) salary each time. France has a slightly different concept (which is not universal by a long shot, but it's almost universal in some work domains) of 13th and (rarely) 14th months. Which are exactly what it says on the tin: you get 1 or 2 extra months of salary per year.
    - ricardobeat 14y ago
      In Brazil you get a 13th month salary and 1/3 extra for vacation (they don't necessarily overlap in time).
    - molmalo 14y ago
      In several countries in Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, idk about others) you receive an extra monthly salary (a 13th month) by law. In some countries, you receive it all in one payment, in others (Argentina and Colombia I think ) you receive one half in July and the other in December. You can learn more of this here: http://translate.google.com/translate?source=mog?sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A//es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguinaldo http://translate.google.com/translate?source=mog?sl=es&t... Also, in Argentina, the norm is that you have 15 days of vacation when you start working for a company. After 5 years, you have 21 days, then after 10 years, 28. Finally, after 20 years in the same company, you get 35 days. Most probably, the ones getting 35 days work in banks, state owned companies or public service.
jcampbell1 14y ago
I like the concept, but $7,500 is an outlandish amount of money for a vacation. It also represents 5-10% of total compensation for an engineer. Plenty of people take 6 month vacations for that kind of money.
- geoffschmidt 14y ago
  Since you apparently get the full $7500 regardless of how much your vacation costs, what he's effectively doing is docking everyone's pay $7500 if they don't take at least one fully disconnected vacation a year.
  - jcampbell1 14y ago
    That is not so bad, I didn't read clearly enough and was under the impression it was for actual expenses. This just means all existing employees get a $7500 raise, and are now forced to take a disconnected vacation. Future employees will just treat it as part of the compensation package.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "what he's effectively doing is docking everyone's pay $7500 if they don't take at least one fully disconnected vacation a year" That's only true if their base salary/bonuses are $7500 below market, which I doubt is the case.
    - matthewowen 14y ago
      Almost everyone's salary / bonus is exactly market, because it was by definition set by the employment market. It was market when before the $7500, and market afterwards. I'm not being pedantic and missing the point that you mean 'market average', because employment is not commodity purchase - so market average isn't meaningful unless you're painting with very, very broad strokes.
- BrandonM 14y ago
  It's pre-taxes. And an extended trip to Europe (8 cities, 2 countries, round-trip airfare from the US) just cost my girlfriend and me about $6000.
einhverfr 14y ago
I like the idea, but I wonder a little bit about the implementation. When you say "disconnect" do you mean from the company? If so then I totally agree. (Granted if I were an employee, I'd probably go somewhere on the beach, swim in the sea during the day and program my own projects in the evening or afternoon for a couple hours when the kids are taking a nap.) There is no greater joy in life than watching things that you make come to life with your mind and with your hands. It's one thing I love about brewing, cooking, gardening, and programming. That isn't so great when you work for someone else, but one thing vacations can give people with a creative drive is a chance to create their own things. So I guess one thing I would caution about is that it might be worth pointing out that IP assignment clauses shouldn't reach vacation time either.
bodolomo 14y ago
I don't know about other European countries, but at least in Germany that's already a very real thing and has been for decades. See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urlaubsgeld http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urlaubsgeld (use google/chrome translation). Not everyone gets it, it usually depends on your (or your union's) salary negotiations with the employers. While the Vacation Money is typically paid in June for the summer vacation, many companies also offer another an extra salary (or only a certain percentage of your regular monthly salary) in December for your christmas expenses.
Ra1d3n 14y ago
Well in Austria (and Germany afaik) we get a vacation bonus pay ("to be able to afford vacation"). Its about one month of regular pay. Additionally, we get another month of pay for christmas ("to be able to afford gifts for the loved ones"). It's often called the "13th and 14th month of pay". Come work in Europe ;-)
- jaimebuelta 14y ago
  The same is true in Spain (in 90% of the jobs). Of course, that means that you'll get less each month to make the same amount at the end of the year, but it is convenient.
- NonEUCitizen 14y ago
  In Netherlands they hold back part of your salary each month then give it to you in one big chunk for Holiday each June (or maybe each June and December).
- michaelt 14y ago
  I think the key feature of "paid paid vacation" is that the money can only be spent on a vacation, use it or lose it. So you can't save money by not going on vacation. Does austrian vacation bonus pay have to be spent on a vacation?
  - tlrobinson 14y ago
    It sounds like you can spend it, or save it, however you like, but you have to use the vacation days
- trin_ 14y ago
  but thats shrinking. more often you'll see the 13th split up 50% for june and 50% for december.
- danieldk 14y ago
  The same thing is common here in The Netherlands. Also, 20 days of paid holidays (excluding weekends) are mandatory, although some employers offer more. IIRC I have ~37 days of paid leave (excluding weekends), but I am not exactly sure since I never completely use it :). We also get extra days off for e.g. moving or marrying. Most of my colleagues completely disconnect during holidays (no work-related e-mail, phone calls, etc.). I think the idea of restricting the spending of holiday money to holidays only is difficult to execute in most organisations.
donavanm 14y ago
Yup, there's also been some news recently about companies with unlimited vacation policies. Both seem like a pretty cheap recruiting/retention strategy.
- smsm42 14y ago
  Unlimited vacation policy is a trick. If you really make it unlimited, you'd just be fired - they don't promise to keep you employed forever, just give you vacations while you're employed. And since you don't have defined vacation, you're under peer pressure to reduce your vacations - since your peers are working and you're slacking off.
suprgeek 14y ago
The "disconnect" rule is an excellent policy for several reasons. In addition to the ones outlined in the post - there is the concept of seeing your own work with "Fresh Eyes". I truly wish I could do this once very six months at least. I was shocked last year when I came back from a couple of weeks abroad to discover that the very first Architectural decision we had made on a project seemed blatantly off. Turns out it was - no one had considered questioning an implicit assumption - no one (especially me whose job it was) had even caught the assumption. Saved us at least 3 iterations when we fixed it.
- khill 14y ago
  Another good reason is that it ensures the company can function without an individual for a week or two. This will encourage key people to document their work and share information so the company doesn't suffer when they drop off the grid.
paraschopra 14y ago
If the team is small (if it is big, maybe chuck the teams for this purpose?), the whole team may consider going together for a week or two of company-sponsored paid vacation. Last year in December, we took the whole Wingify team to Thailand and the camaraderie couldn't have been better. All of us realized it was a great way to disconnect and a fun way to increase the team morale. Each one of us loved it :) For the curious, here are some pics: http://team.wingify.com/thailand-trip-pictures http://team.wingify.com/thailand-trip-pictures
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  I'm sure you had great fun on your trip, but for most people I believe that going with your workmates would make it much, much harder to truly disconnect. Sure, maybe you aren't sitting around with laptops and whatnot, but I'm sure all sorts of work talk will pop up.
  - paraschopra 14y ago
    Yes, I agree with you. But we tried to only have the fun.
  - tikhonj 14y ago
    On the other hand, assuming this supplements rather than replaces a normal vacation, it could just be a fun and relaxed way of brainstorming. After all, at an interesting company, chances are work talk will pop up because people genuinely enjoy it. Just talking about work a bit does not ruin a vacation! This reminds me of what one of my professors talked about recently: a skiing trip is great because you can enjoy yourself and talk about research on the ski lift. So taking your entire research group on a skiing trip would be a nice compromise between taking a break and having time to talk and think about what you're working on. I actually think it sounds great. Partly because I love skiing and partly because I also love talking about CS.
    - georgemcbay 14y ago
      "On the other hand, assuming this supplements rather than replaces a normal vacation, it could just be a fun and relaxed way of brainstorming." I agree. I'm not against "team building" vacations, but I don't think they serve the same purpose as the vacation type being advocated in the article.
marcamillion 14y ago
I love this...I bet they see a spike in job applications. This is so awesome.
Uchikoma 14y ago
That was the usual model in Germany until the 80s, then it was scaled back and now sometimes exists in big corporations ("Urlaubsgeld").
- r3m6 14y ago
  Except that you could use that money for everything you wanted. So many (most?) people simply saved it and viewed it as part of their regular salary. The new thing here is that you MUST spend the money for something fun. So it is more than just money. Its like a free lunch. They always taste better than the ones I have to pay for ;)
  - tlrobinson 14y ago
    It sounds like they'd be fine with you "hanging on the couch, eating Taco Bell and watching bad cable all week" rather than spending the money on a fancy vacation.
    - lorangb 14y ago
      yep. we're totally fine with whatever. as long as you disconnect from work.
iuguy 14y ago
I think this post shows a remarkable difference between American and other work practices. Here in the UK people get a minimum of 28 days per year off work (including bank holidays). At Mandalorian we do 30 days a year plus 1 extra day per year of service. Most people at Mandalorian don't use all the allowance (mainly because we're results oriented so people routinely check out during the day to drop kids off at school, pick them up etc.), but seem to be comfortable with the fact that they can take time off when they need/want to. When people go on holiday, they generally disconnect here although some people will take phones etc. I've just come back from 8 days on a remote island in the sea of Marmara with a couple of days in Istanbul and my total contact with work (as the owner) was two text messages and one email on the way to the airport. I have American friends who tell me that when they go on holiday they have to take their laptops and phones with them, and routinely take calls and do conference calls during their holiday, which sounds insane to me but each culture has it's own nuances. If this is doing something good for American workers then I'm all for it, but I can't help but think that if I were in their shoes I'd say keep the $7,500 and double the holiday allowance. EDIT: Thanks to willholley below for pointing out that the minimum entitlement includes bank holidays, as seen here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/employment/employees/timeoffandholidays/dg_10029788 http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/employment/employees/timeoffandh...
- willholley 14y ago
  Just for clarity, the minimum 28 days in the UK is inclusive of the 8 bank holidays.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    Also worth mentioning that while that's the minimum, for most types of jobs the practice tends to be 25 days + the 8 bank holidays. The change in the law to increase the minimum to 28 days inclusive of bank holidays was relatively non-controversial as it affected a relatively small proportion of businesses.
    - iuguy 14y ago
      We do 30 plus bank holidays, hence my initial misconception. People have to reserve a certain number of days for christmas shutdown, but generally there's enough for people to get a couple of big holidays in and time off around christmas/new year.
guynamedloren 14y ago
Somewhat off topic, but the concept of 'unlimited time off' has been brought up in the comments here. I work at a startup that uses this system. It's a great concept and very comforting to know you can have time off when you need it, but it's also somewhat confusing. Since there is no benchmark, I have no idea what is considered 'acceptable' time off. In the year that I've worked for this startup, I've taken maybe two weeks - that includes a week for Christmas, and the rest are just days here and there (like an extended weekend for an anniversary camping trip). Most of these days I'm also connected to a computer, whether it's coding for a bit in the evening or checking mail periodically throughout the day. I'm sure I could take more time off and go on an extended trip, for example, but does this weigh into my employee review? I know it doesn't make sense, but I feel like I'm cheating the company when I take time off, especially as an early employee. Don't get me wrong - I love the flexibility and freedom, but can somebody familiar weigh in? What is considered 'acceptable' or 'standard' for employees at early stage startups with 'unlimited time off'? Edit: The company is YC backed and the founders are regular HN readers. Maybe they'll weigh in :) ... or weird vibes at the office tomorrow.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I read something somewhere once that claimed that employees with "unlimited time off" actually take less than the standard US average. It's nice to say "you can take time off whenever you feel you should", but in reality it's extremely difficult to create a culture where this is actually respected. I'd actually rather have the policy of "X weeks, but we're not actually looking that hard". That way I don't have to plan things down to the very last day, and rest easy knowing there some give, but also still feel entitled to take what's mine.
  - jandrewrogers 14y ago
    What you say is true, and there a lot of reasons why. One of them is that companies that trust their employees enough to have unlimited time off also tend to give their employees substantial ownership of whatever they are working on. They want to make sure their "baby" is being taken care of properly and is looking good as a matter of personal pride. The cultural pressure is not to not take time off but to make sure what you own is as good as possible. In the case of my company, which also has unlimited time off, there is this same pattern of engineers that do not want to take vacation. Managers encourage (gently force?) people to take time off that are not taking at least a few weeks a year off on their own. The actual range of vacation taken at my company seems to be from about two weeks (that would be me) to about six weeks.
jballanc 14y ago
While I like this idea, a concept that I would love to see make a comeback is the sabbatical. Don't get me wrong, disconnecting and getting away from it all is valuable, but it also seems like the opposite end of the pendulum swing from always working. Personally, I would like something in between. Give me 6 weeks to work, but work on what I want: no deadlines, no clients, not even necessarily any deliverables. Just 6 weeks to explore...ultimately, I think that would be even more productive in the long run.
- whatusername 14y ago
  Australia/NZ has an interesting concept called Long Service Leave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_service_leave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_service_leave
- tseabrooks 14y ago
  I really like the idea of a sabbatical... but I always worried then in my (our) field you'd end up really really far behind / out of touch if you took a 2 month sabbatical.
  - GFischer 14y ago
    My impression is that you're overstating the effects of a 2 month sabbatical. Much like turning off the TV, I suspect that if you do get a 2 month sabbatical, you'll find out that most of the new developments are overstated and that you'll be able to quickly catch up.
wtn 14y ago
I would check with an accountant before I implemented this policy. I imagine FullContact treats these $7500 payments as supplemental wages. However, I would not want to explain to an auditor how this is a legitimate business expense. From the IRS: "You can generally deduct a bonus paid to an employee if you intended the bonus as additional pay for services, not as a gift, and the services were performed. However, the total bonuses, salaries, and other pay must be reasonable for the services performed." You could try to shoehorn this as vacation pay, but an auditor would question why workers are getting effectively a significant bonus for time not worked. Any employee who elects not to take a vacation would have a pretty good case to demand the vacation pay anyhow, since he performed more services than other bonus-receiving workers.
- lorangb 14y ago
  it's treated as a bonus and taxed as such.
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
I've worked in places that gave particular allowances for certain things and while I appreciate the gesture my view tends to be just give me cash and let me work out what to do with it. There are some exceptions to this (pensions mainly) but I don't think it's for a company to say how someone should spend their time off or their money and effectively penalise them if it's not in the prescribed manner. Yes holidays are good for relieving stress but so is paying down a mortgage or paying of debt for instance. What is best for the individual is probably best decided by the individual.
- Tichy 14y ago
  I think the money is meant as an incentive for employees to stay healthy. Like handing out free fruits or gym memberships. So just giving the employees the money and let them decide what to do with it would be counterproductive. Although maybe there should be some research. If more pay automatically makes people go to the gym more often, maybe it would be ok...
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    What if you have a situation where someone has debts. Is their mental health (which is what you're talking about with a holiday rather than physical health) more significantly improved by paying down their credit card by $7500 than a holiday? Or someone who wants to spend their holiday time with an old or terminally ill relative (which was my situation a few years back)? Or what if someone just enjoys taking time off to do something entirely different but at home - say DIY or some other hobby? Why should they be penalised because their idea of a holiday is different?
    - Tichy 14y ago
      Well that is what I mean by research - perhaps simply giving people more money will make them happier than giving incentives for specific stuff. But the original idea for the company is to benefit indirectly from the payments (fitter, happier employees), so I assumed the additional payments should be justified like that. Of course it could also lead to resentment: "if you can afford to pay me x$ for gym and holidays, why can't you afford to pay me a higher salary". Who knows? Actually happiness research seems to indicate that spending money on experiences rather than stuff (for example) is a good idea. But I am not sure if it follows that it still works if you make people spend on experiences instead of stuff.
Tichy 14y ago
Sounds great, and I think 7500$ is a generous offer. I am just a bit shocked that a one week vacation is supposed to cost that much. Apparently prices are very different in the US (I am in Europe).
- krschultz 14y ago
  They did mention that's for a family of 4. I'm not sure if they scale it back if you are single, but if you have a family that's probably in the ballpark.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    I just went on vacation as a family of three. We rented a flat which was I think 50€/person. Even assuming 100€/night and 1000€/person for traveling (actually I paid 200€ for us all for an 8h train ride) it is still not 7.5k. However, 7.5k really gives you some flexibility (travel further away, more expensive hotels and so on). I guess it would be easy to spend 7.5k, but I really would think twice before spending that much on holidays. On the other hand, if you only have one week per year, perhaps it comes naturally that you are willing to spend more.
    - krschultz 14y ago
      True. This is OT but still an interesting conversation anyway. My girlfriend and I spent a total of $3500 to go to Italy for 14 days. With $7500, we would have gotten better hotels (we did the hostel route) but it wouldn't have materially changed the trip. However of that $3500, almost $1500 was the airfare from New York to Milan. This is also a good example of the American vacation system screwing us, I would have stayed for 4-6 weeks if my job would have let me. 14 days was the maximum we could pull off, and my girlfriend's boss put her in as 'sick' for at least one day in there. I worked the day before we flew out and the day after we got home (as a jet lagged zombie) because I was out of vacation days.
- khuey 14y ago
  Depends on what you do. Airfare from the US to a destination outside of North America probably costs around $1000 round trip (varies by time of year, destination, etc). For a family of 4, you're already half way through your budget just to get somewhere and back. On the other hand if you pack up the car and drive to the next state over to visit Grandma, you've probably only spent a couple hundred on gas/tolls/etc.
manmal 14y ago
Being connected all day, every day is certainly not healthy, but how is 1-2 weeks in a year (52 weeks) going to help with that? Vacation does allow you to "return to your body" as I like to call it, but a few weeks per year are not nearly enough. What people need is at least 2 days per week of not being connected, and lots of pauses during each workday. THAT's sustainable.
anmi 14y ago
I just realized i totally fucked up my last two vacations. Needless to say i've been working.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
nhangen 14y ago
ha! Just hit my 1 year mark and got bumped from 2 weeks (5 days personal, 5 days vacation) to 3. Since things like getting sick and/or personal time are deducted from the balance, I had to wait until the end of my year to take a vacation (in order to make sure I had the time). So all in all I basically got a week to spend time with my family. Would kill for a policy like this.
shreyas056 14y ago
$7500, thats roughly 6 times the annual per capita income of India
- toomuchcoffee 14y ago
  But (after taxes) about 6 weeks living expenses in NYC of SF.
deleted 14y ago
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meddlepal 14y ago
Am I the only one who thinks the idea of completely unplugging oneself from their work during a vacation is wrong, particularly in the case of high tech industry professionals? It sounds nice in concept, but in reality is impractical - business doesn't sleep; especially the high tech industry. The debt just keeps piling up. I agree with the idea of trying to avoid trivial things during vacation, but if a non-trivial or business-emergency occurred and I could be of use I would hope someone would get in contact with me to resolve it - even if that means interrupting my private-life to work. In my mind that is one of the key differences between a professional and a drone - the ability to be flexible - on the other hand a lot of places do not treat their workers as professionals and see them merely as drones, for those places I say unplug and do not look back.
- tbrownaw 14y ago
  So are you saying that professionals are defined solely by their economic output, or just that they don't deserve respect? Places that actually seriously care about emergencies (like the Nuclear Power Plant my dad works at) plan ahead to have people available when needed. For example having people take turns carrying a pager (this was before there were cell phones), on a known, planned schedule. I'm one of the more senior people in my group at work, so when things go wrong I tend to get called to help fix them. This is annoying. It's not a sign of how wonderfully important I am. It's a sign that (1) I don't push back hard enough, and (2) my work is not considered important enough to rate a high bus factor.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Well, if you are self-employed, you can't unplug. That much is true. But if you are in a business with others who can cover for you it's good practice in case tragedy strikes. If the business can't survive without each member, that's a heck of a lot of risk. It's better to have someone else in the business able to resolve those emergencies than have no idea what to do when you fall off a building or get hit by a bus. And if you are the CEO, think of that as training time for the the next guy.
wtvanhest 14y ago
Is there any reason you couldn't set up the travel through the company rather than the employee, arrange plane tickets, hotels etc. pre-tax?
- khuey 14y ago
  Because that would be illegal?
  - mmcnickle 14y ago
    It wouldn't be illegal, but there would be no tax advantage. Certainly in the UK it would be classed as a benefit-in-kind to the employee and the company would be liable to pay tax on the value of the benefit. Where it may save money is with standing relationships with travel agents for favourable rates.
    - khuey 14y ago
      Right, it's only legal if you pay the taxes. But the comment I responded to specifically said 'pre-tax'.
      - wtvanhest 14y ago
        Tax law isn't that black and white and your answer doesn't really address any aspect of how to think about the problem. For example, you can send an employee on a company retreat pretax. How do you seperate a company retreat from an individual's vacation? It is a continuum where somewhere between those there is an answer where it is legal and illegal.
  - jimboyoungblood 14y ago
    Not if you also register them for a conference that happens to be going on at the same time/place. I've always assumed that's the purpose of most conferences anyway.
krschultz 14y ago
Far short of this is simply making employees take their vacation. My Dad always tells the story of having a battle every year to get one of the people that worked for him to take her vacation. She was entitled to 3 weeks, and typically took 2-3 days. It wasn't healthy, and it wasn't necessary for her to make that sacrifice. Some people have trouble just letting go.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  Some people literally live to work and find it difficult to know what to do when they're left to determine what to do for themselves.
padobson 14y ago
It made me want to see if they were hiring. Excellent blog post.
toomuchcoffee 14y ago
Might sound nice to some, but basically it's just a gimmick. Why not just offer them 7.5K more in salary and leave it at at that?
dev_jim 14y ago
<Braces for the piling on by Europeans about how inferior our vacations are> It's a nice thought, but I'd rather my employer (and my girlfriend's employer) just pay top dollar and let us figure out our own vacation plans.
- rmc 14y ago
  <Braces for the piling on by Europeans about how inferior our vacations are> That's partially because us Europeans can't really understand how you can get by with little to no holidays. It'd be like an American talking to a Soviet person (back in the day) and being suprised that they were OK with no voting and secret police.
  - doktrin 14y ago
    While I appreciate the fact that no analogy is perfect, I have to make a relatively pedantic objection here. We're talking about the difference between 2-3 & 5-6 weeks of vacation, not a radically different approach to governance and civil liberties.
    - rmc 14y ago
      There's also at-will employment in the USA (used by Zynga recently to screw employees out stock options), and lack of employee discrimination (AFAIK it's not illegal in US to fire someone for being gay or trans, while it is in EU). These laws in EU are legal minimum, so they aren't going away. I, as an employee, don't have to worry about a new management team or buy out or poor annual return which results in the company cancelling all paid leave, because the companies in the EU cannot make that sacrifice.
      - doktrin 14y ago
        I'm not sure what you are getting at, but it sounds like you are attempting to argue in favor of "your" system over another. Enumerating relatively minor differences between democratic capitalist countries doesn't make your "Soviet Union" analogy any more appropriate. However : >> There's also at-will employment in the USA (used by Zynga recently to screw employees out stock options), and lack of employee discrimination (AFAIK it's not illegal in US to fire someone for being gay or trans, while it is in EU). As seen in Spain, guaranteed / tenured employment is not all sunshine and roses. Even prior to the most recent economic troubles, younger employees were vastly over-represented among those with short term contracts. Likewise in France. For reference, sexual identity and gender orientation are protected (or not) at the state level : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_i...
silentscope 14y ago
this is an advertisement for full contact...
binarycrusader 14y ago
Hey, I hate to be a drag, but your article needs a [NSFW] tag or you need to take the naked people photo out.
kodisha 14y ago
Omg, did you read this article at all? Point is NOT about extra money. Point is about eliminating single point of failure situations, e.g. only one guy knows how to handle really important client.. That should never happen, and by paying an extra buck, and forcing you to be detached from work they are giving you incentive to build fallback measures, write better docs etc.
GigabyteCoin 14y ago
We have this in Canada already by mandate, it's called "vacation pay". Every employer MUST deduct ~3% of every full time worker's pay and then give it to them at some point during the next year. Usually when that worker goes on Vacation.
jpike 14y ago
Man 15 days... that's kinda harsh. I live in London and the idea of working whilst on holiday is almost unthinkable. I like the idea of the money though. Is working really that hard in America?
jiggy2011 14y ago
I think there's 2 things that are especially true for technical people that cause people to worry about taking vacation time (where you are completely disconnected) that are almost polar opposite. Firstly there is a worry about if your co-workers are competent enough to do take care of your time critical work in your absence, they may believe that they are but that is not necessarily true. As an anecdote, I took a couple of days off a while ago. At the time I was away an urgent issue came up which required a small reconfiguration on the server. Not wanting to bother me a co-worker attempted to resolve this himself. Unfortunately he did this in a rather hamfisted way by overriding a lot of stuff he didn't understand that I had done for security reasons. Result, I come back to an inbox full of complaints about email no longer working. After some probeing I find that our server IP address is on several blacklists for sending spam. I then discover that the server has a rootkit on it. This means that I have to work a large number of extra hours correcting this problem which more than nullifies the time I got off for vacation. The result of this is that I actually feel less stressed on vacation if I have a smartphone for my work email with me and know that people don't worry about contacting me. The other opposite problem is that perhaps your co-workers are competent and can take over your duties with no hiccup to the organisation, now suddenly you are stressed that management might not think that you justify your salary so well.
tomtom101 14y ago
Im a Brit that used to get 30 days paid plus public holidays who is now working in the US at a tech company that has no vacation policy. I love my job and work long hours and often some weekends. I have a family and love to travel, but I much prefer the environment that I work in today. I am very ambitious and want the company that I am working for to do well and I want to do well. I am prepared to put a number of years hard work in with little or no vacation as there will hopefully be a much bigger upside at the end of it. If you want 20-30 days holiday a year that you take, then consider what opportunities you are missing. I think FullContact's 15 days paid PAID policy is excellent and strikes a good balance, but Europe has gone too far. I believe the Mediterranean countries are going to get left behind in turns of development and could end up looking like 3rd world countries in 50 years from now unless the work ethic/culture changes significantly.
jasonwilk 14y ago
Sorry, had to do this: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3q251w/ http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3q251w/
trg2 14y ago
Best. Job Posting. Ever.
clarky07 14y ago
This is pretty interesting for me as I just got back from a 2 week vacation where I had very little internet access. The vacation was great, but I honestly think I would have enjoyed it much more if I had internet access and could have done some work that needed done if I wanted to. I'm running my own business and I take off time whenever I want to. I'll probably take 40-50 days off this year. That being said, I absolutely hate being completely disconnected. I also don't like not giving great customer service for my products. I am perfectly happy to take the day off and then answer a few emails when I get home. Not having that option for the last two weeks was actually annoying to me, and I enjoyed the vacation less as a result. Spending a few minutes here and there and then getting back to vacation to me is better than just being cut off for an extended period.
cbsmith 14y ago
It's funny, this isn't really a new idea, though you might consider it new for the tech business. That said, it is a good one.

388 points by lorangb 14y ago

I don't like it, because essentially your boss is commanding you what to do on your vacation. He wants you to disconnect, so that you come back fully recharged. I'd rather get the money in salary and decide myself what to do with the money, without anyone dictating how to spend my free time. It is perfectly possible to disconnect and recharge spending one week slacking off and hanging around friends, just as much as a one month vacation.

tlrobinson 14y ago
I suspect hanging around with friends for a week would be perfectly acceptable. For others, it might be hanging on the couch, eating Taco Bell and watching bad cable all week Presumably they mean "disconnect" from the company rather than all people you know.
- glanch 14y ago
  That was the part of the article that confused me. The point of the $7500 is to __actually spend it on the vacation__. How are you going to spend $7500 sitting around your house for 2 weeks? Seems to go against the spirit of what he wants his employees to do. Maybe I'm a jerk but I don't believe you can really get the same 'disconnect/refresh/recharge' effect from sitting at home with your phone turned off as you can from flying to a far away place and experiencing a new environment.
tikhonj 14y ago
That's a fair assessment. However, there's one other thing to consider: his making the decision for you also shifts the responsibility to him. If the money was just part of my salary, I would probably have second thoughts about taking an interesting but expensive vacation: I would consider being "responsible" and saving the money or something. Even if a good vacation is worth doing--and, I believe, it really is--there is still some guilt with "wasting" money on something that isn't obviously "productive". I rationally know that enjoying myself is not a waste of money, but that doesn't help deal with my inner biases! Now, I don't want to say you have to spend a lot of money to get a good vacation--you don't. But it does create more options, and some of the things I really love (like travelling to Europe) have fairly high barriers to entry. So having somebody allocate the funds for me makes it much more likely that I'll spend them on something exciting and enjoy myself with it. I suspect the sort of people working at a company willing to pay you $7500 for a vacation don't need to worry about paying the bills too much, but there is still an incessant nagging to be economical. I was actually originally thinking about this idea in a completely different context. There is a nice parallel between this and the sorts of prizes you get at hackathons (usually electronic gadgets): in a certain sense, that prize is worth more than its price because I would not have spent my own money to buy it. It's slightly weird logic, but I think it's accurate: there's a big psychological difference between opportunity cost and actual cost. Sure, I could have $500 instead of a tablet, but if I'm just going to win something, I'd rather it be the tablet. In short: I think this scheme is a good way to overcome my innate resistance to spending money on things that seem to be a "waste", even if I would enjoy spending it that way and probably get higher utility than just by saving it.
lorangb 14y ago
we want you to disconnect from work. if you want to hang out with friends, that's cool. just don't work (which, surprisingly, lots of people have trouble doing, especially in startups)
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  Is it ok to read HN on vacation?
philwelch 14y ago
You can take that week off and just save the 7500.
mdkess 14y ago
I really like the idea of "forced benefits" - free meals, paid vacations, devices as "bonuses", etc, since they force you to raise your standard of living. I wouldn't eat out for lunch every day because there are other things that I'd rather spend my money on, but since work pays for it, I'm much happier - it makes my life easier, I get to eat better/more interesting food and saves me time. Same goes for vacations - I would love to go and see China, but it'll be a while before I can justify the expense. If someone were to hand me a check for $7,500 though and say "this is for your vacation", I would do it in a heartbeat - and I think be better off for it. I mean, presumably this comes on top of a generous salary already, but I think it's a good thing to help people get over their own biases toward spending.

schappim 14y ago

That's one way to spend the investor's money... ;-)

maigret 14y ago
Or at the opposite to get a better return on it. If working more produced automatically more income, Japan would be magnitude richer than Europe. Food for thoughts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...

invalidOrTaken 14y ago

Hiring you say.

bartonfink 14y ago
They aren't making my job any easier trying to attract new blood to Mapquest by offering perks like that. I'm tempted to interview just to see what they're all about.

pjmlp 14y ago

While I appreciate getting my vacations paid like that, the article shows a bit how Americans vs other continents see the vacations. Here in Europe the only people I know that dare to have any contact with their company during vacations are usually labeled as workaholic. We appreciate our 22-30 days vacations, without any contact with the employer while enjoying friends and family.

chiaro 14y ago
How it should be.
davedx 14y ago
Here in the Netherlands, we actually get extra 'holiday pay' by law too. It makes salary calculations more complicated but it also makes me get a big grin on my face in May :)
- masklinn 14y ago
  Belgium has something like that, I'm not sure it's by law (it might just be working agreements), basically you get a "holiday bonus" once or twice a year, which amounts to about 70% of your (net) salary each time. France has a slightly different concept (which is not universal by a long shot, but it's almost universal in some work domains) of 13th and (rarely) 14th months. Which are exactly what it says on the tin: you get 1 or 2 extra months of salary per year.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    In Brazil you get a 13th month salary and 1/3 extra for vacation (they don't necessarily overlap in time).
  - molmalo 14y ago
    In several countries in Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, idk about others) you receive an extra monthly salary (a 13th month) by law. In some countries, you receive it all in one payment, in others (Argentina and Colombia I think ) you receive one half in July and the other in December. You can learn more of this here: http://translate.google.com/translate?source=mog?sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A//es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguinaldo http://translate.google.com/translate?source=mog?sl=es&t... Also, in Argentina, the norm is that you have 15 days of vacation when you start working for a company. After 5 years, you have 21 days, then after 10 years, 28. Finally, after 20 years in the same company, you get 35 days. Most probably, the ones getting 35 days work in banks, state owned companies or public service.

jcampbell1 14y ago

I like the concept, but $7,500 is an outlandish amount of money for a vacation. It also represents 5-10% of total compensation for an engineer. Plenty of people take 6 month vacations for that kind of money.

geoffschmidt 14y ago
Since you apparently get the full $7500 regardless of how much your vacation costs, what he's effectively doing is docking everyone's pay $7500 if they don't take at least one fully disconnected vacation a year.
- jcampbell1 14y ago
  That is not so bad, I didn't read clearly enough and was under the impression it was for actual expenses. This just means all existing employees get a $7500 raise, and are now forced to take a disconnected vacation. Future employees will just treat it as part of the compensation package.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "what he's effectively doing is docking everyone's pay $7500 if they don't take at least one fully disconnected vacation a year" That's only true if their base salary/bonuses are $7500 below market, which I doubt is the case.
  - matthewowen 14y ago
    Almost everyone's salary / bonus is exactly market, because it was by definition set by the employment market. It was market when before the $7500, and market afterwards. I'm not being pedantic and missing the point that you mean 'market average', because employment is not commodity purchase - so market average isn't meaningful unless you're painting with very, very broad strokes.
BrandonM 14y ago
It's pre-taxes. And an extended trip to Europe (8 cities, 2 countries, round-trip airfare from the US) just cost my girlfriend and me about $6000.

einhverfr 14y ago

I like the idea, but I wonder a little bit about the implementation. When you say "disconnect" do you mean from the company? If so then I totally agree. (Granted if I were an employee, I'd probably go somewhere on the beach, swim in the sea during the day and program my own projects in the evening or afternoon for a couple hours when the kids are taking a nap.) There is no greater joy in life than watching things that you make come to life with your mind and with your hands. It's one thing I love about brewing, cooking, gardening, and programming. That isn't so great when you work for someone else, but one thing vacations can give people with a creative drive is a chance to create their own things. So I guess one thing I would caution about is that it might be worth pointing out that IP assignment clauses shouldn't reach vacation time either.

bodolomo 14y ago

I don't know about other European countries, but at least in Germany that's already a very real thing and has been for decades. See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urlaubsgeld http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urlaubsgeld (use google/chrome translation). Not everyone gets it, it usually depends on your (or your union's) salary negotiations with the employers. While the Vacation Money is typically paid in June for the summer vacation, many companies also offer another an extra salary (or only a certain percentage of your regular monthly salary) in December for your christmas expenses.

Ra1d3n 14y ago

Well in Austria (and Germany afaik) we get a vacation bonus pay ("to be able to afford vacation"). Its about one month of regular pay. Additionally, we get another month of pay for christmas ("to be able to afford gifts for the loved ones"). It's often called the "13th and 14th month of pay". Come work in Europe ;-)

jaimebuelta 14y ago
The same is true in Spain (in 90% of the jobs). Of course, that means that you'll get less each month to make the same amount at the end of the year, but it is convenient.
NonEUCitizen 14y ago
In Netherlands they hold back part of your salary each month then give it to you in one big chunk for Holiday each June (or maybe each June and December).
michaelt 14y ago
I think the key feature of "paid paid vacation" is that the money can only be spent on a vacation, use it or lose it. So you can't save money by not going on vacation. Does austrian vacation bonus pay have to be spent on a vacation?
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  It sounds like you can spend it, or save it, however you like, but you have to use the vacation days
trin_ 14y ago
but thats shrinking. more often you'll see the 13th split up 50% for june and 50% for december.
danieldk 14y ago
The same thing is common here in The Netherlands. Also, 20 days of paid holidays (excluding weekends) are mandatory, although some employers offer more. IIRC I have ~37 days of paid leave (excluding weekends), but I am not exactly sure since I never completely use it :). We also get extra days off for e.g. moving or marrying. Most of my colleagues completely disconnect during holidays (no work-related e-mail, phone calls, etc.). I think the idea of restricting the spending of holiday money to holidays only is difficult to execute in most organisations.

donavanm 14y ago

Yup, there's also been some news recently about companies with unlimited vacation policies. Both seem like a pretty cheap recruiting/retention strategy.

smsm42 14y ago
Unlimited vacation policy is a trick. If you really make it unlimited, you'd just be fired - they don't promise to keep you employed forever, just give you vacations while you're employed. And since you don't have defined vacation, you're under peer pressure to reduce your vacations - since your peers are working and you're slacking off.

suprgeek 14y ago

The "disconnect" rule is an excellent policy for several reasons. In addition to the ones outlined in the post - there is the concept of seeing your own work with "Fresh Eyes". I truly wish I could do this once very six months at least. I was shocked last year when I came back from a couple of weeks abroad to discover that the very first Architectural decision we had made on a project seemed blatantly off. Turns out it was - no one had considered questioning an implicit assumption - no one (especially me whose job it was) had even caught the assumption. Saved us at least 3 iterations when we fixed it.

khill 14y ago
Another good reason is that it ensures the company can function without an individual for a week or two. This will encourage key people to document their work and share information so the company doesn't suffer when they drop off the grid.

paraschopra 14y ago

If the team is small (if it is big, maybe chuck the teams for this purpose?), the whole team may consider going together for a week or two of company-sponsored paid vacation. Last year in December, we took the whole Wingify team to Thailand and the camaraderie couldn't have been better. All of us realized it was a great way to disconnect and a fun way to increase the team morale. Each one of us loved it :) For the curious, here are some pics: http://team.wingify.com/thailand-trip-pictures http://team.wingify.com/thailand-trip-pictures

georgemcbay 14y ago
I'm sure you had great fun on your trip, but for most people I believe that going with your workmates would make it much, much harder to truly disconnect. Sure, maybe you aren't sitting around with laptops and whatnot, but I'm sure all sorts of work talk will pop up.
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Yes, I agree with you. But we tried to only have the fun.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  On the other hand, assuming this supplements rather than replaces a normal vacation, it could just be a fun and relaxed way of brainstorming. After all, at an interesting company, chances are work talk will pop up because people genuinely enjoy it. Just talking about work a bit does not ruin a vacation! This reminds me of what one of my professors talked about recently: a skiing trip is great because you can enjoy yourself and talk about research on the ski lift. So taking your entire research group on a skiing trip would be a nice compromise between taking a break and having time to talk and think about what you're working on. I actually think it sounds great. Partly because I love skiing and partly because I also love talking about CS.
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    "On the other hand, assuming this supplements rather than replaces a normal vacation, it could just be a fun and relaxed way of brainstorming." I agree. I'm not against "team building" vacations, but I don't think they serve the same purpose as the vacation type being advocated in the article.

marcamillion 14y ago

I love this...I bet they see a spike in job applications. This is so awesome.

Uchikoma 14y ago

That was the usual model in Germany until the 80s, then it was scaled back and now sometimes exists in big corporations ("Urlaubsgeld").

r3m6 14y ago
Except that you could use that money for everything you wanted. So many (most?) people simply saved it and viewed it as part of their regular salary. The new thing here is that you MUST spend the money for something fun. So it is more than just money. Its like a free lunch. They always taste better than the ones I have to pay for ;)
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  It sounds like they'd be fine with you "hanging on the couch, eating Taco Bell and watching bad cable all week" rather than spending the money on a fancy vacation.
  - lorangb 14y ago
    yep. we're totally fine with whatever. as long as you disconnect from work.

iuguy 14y ago

I think this post shows a remarkable difference between American and other work practices. Here in the UK people get a minimum of 28 days per year off work (including bank holidays). At Mandalorian we do 30 days a year plus 1 extra day per year of service. Most people at Mandalorian don't use all the allowance (mainly because we're results oriented so people routinely check out during the day to drop kids off at school, pick them up etc.), but seem to be comfortable with the fact that they can take time off when they need/want to. When people go on holiday, they generally disconnect here although some people will take phones etc. I've just come back from 8 days on a remote island in the sea of Marmara with a couple of days in Istanbul and my total contact with work (as the owner) was two text messages and one email on the way to the airport. I have American friends who tell me that when they go on holiday they have to take their laptops and phones with them, and routinely take calls and do conference calls during their holiday, which sounds insane to me but each culture has it's own nuances. If this is doing something good for American workers then I'm all for it, but I can't help but think that if I were in their shoes I'd say keep the $7,500 and double the holiday allowance. EDIT: Thanks to willholley below for pointing out that the minimum entitlement includes bank holidays, as seen here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/employment/employees/timeoffandholidays/dg_10029788 http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/employment/employees/timeoffandh...

willholley 14y ago
Just for clarity, the minimum 28 days in the UK is inclusive of the 8 bank holidays.
- vidarh 14y ago
  Also worth mentioning that while that's the minimum, for most types of jobs the practice tends to be 25 days + the 8 bank holidays. The change in the law to increase the minimum to 28 days inclusive of bank holidays was relatively non-controversial as it affected a relatively small proportion of businesses.
  - iuguy 14y ago
    We do 30 plus bank holidays, hence my initial misconception. People have to reserve a certain number of days for christmas shutdown, but generally there's enough for people to get a couple of big holidays in and time off around christmas/new year.

guynamedloren 14y ago

Somewhat off topic, but the concept of 'unlimited time off' has been brought up in the comments here. I work at a startup that uses this system. It's a great concept and very comforting to know you can have time off when you need it, but it's also somewhat confusing. Since there is no benchmark, I have no idea what is considered 'acceptable' time off. In the year that I've worked for this startup, I've taken maybe two weeks - that includes a week for Christmas, and the rest are just days here and there (like an extended weekend for an anniversary camping trip). Most of these days I'm also connected to a computer, whether it's coding for a bit in the evening or checking mail periodically throughout the day. I'm sure I could take more time off and go on an extended trip, for example, but does this weigh into my employee review? I know it doesn't make sense, but I feel like I'm cheating the company when I take time off, especially as an early employee. Don't get me wrong - I love the flexibility and freedom, but can somebody familiar weigh in? What is considered 'acceptable' or 'standard' for employees at early stage startups with 'unlimited time off'? Edit: The company is YC backed and the founders are regular HN readers. Maybe they'll weigh in :) ... or weird vibes at the office tomorrow.

potatolicious 14y ago
I read something somewhere once that claimed that employees with "unlimited time off" actually take less than the standard US average. It's nice to say "you can take time off whenever you feel you should", but in reality it's extremely difficult to create a culture where this is actually respected. I'd actually rather have the policy of "X weeks, but we're not actually looking that hard". That way I don't have to plan things down to the very last day, and rest easy knowing there some give, but also still feel entitled to take what's mine.
- jandrewrogers 14y ago
  What you say is true, and there a lot of reasons why. One of them is that companies that trust their employees enough to have unlimited time off also tend to give their employees substantial ownership of whatever they are working on. They want to make sure their "baby" is being taken care of properly and is looking good as a matter of personal pride. The cultural pressure is not to not take time off but to make sure what you own is as good as possible. In the case of my company, which also has unlimited time off, there is this same pattern of engineers that do not want to take vacation. Managers encourage (gently force?) people to take time off that are not taking at least a few weeks a year off on their own. The actual range of vacation taken at my company seems to be from about two weeks (that would be me) to about six weeks.

jballanc 14y ago

While I like this idea, a concept that I would love to see make a comeback is the sabbatical. Don't get me wrong, disconnecting and getting away from it all is valuable, but it also seems like the opposite end of the pendulum swing from always working. Personally, I would like something in between. Give me 6 weeks to work, but work on what I want: no deadlines, no clients, not even necessarily any deliverables. Just 6 weeks to explore...ultimately, I think that would be even more productive in the long run.

whatusername 14y ago
Australia/NZ has an interesting concept called Long Service Leave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_service_leave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_service_leave
tseabrooks 14y ago
I really like the idea of a sabbatical... but I always worried then in my (our) field you'd end up really really far behind / out of touch if you took a 2 month sabbatical.
- GFischer 14y ago
  My impression is that you're overstating the effects of a 2 month sabbatical. Much like turning off the TV, I suspect that if you do get a 2 month sabbatical, you'll find out that most of the new developments are overstated and that you'll be able to quickly catch up.

wtn 14y ago

I would check with an accountant before I implemented this policy. I imagine FullContact treats these $7500 payments as supplemental wages. However, I would not want to explain to an auditor how this is a legitimate business expense. From the IRS: "You can generally deduct a bonus paid to an employee if you intended the bonus as additional pay for services, not as a gift, and the services were performed. However, the total bonuses, salaries, and other pay must be reasonable for the services performed." You could try to shoehorn this as vacation pay, but an auditor would question why workers are getting effectively a significant bonus for time not worked. Any employee who elects not to take a vacation would have a pretty good case to demand the vacation pay anyhow, since he performed more services than other bonus-receiving workers.

lorangb 14y ago
it's treated as a bonus and taxed as such.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

I've worked in places that gave particular allowances for certain things and while I appreciate the gesture my view tends to be just give me cash and let me work out what to do with it. There are some exceptions to this (pensions mainly) but I don't think it's for a company to say how someone should spend their time off or their money and effectively penalise them if it's not in the prescribed manner. Yes holidays are good for relieving stress but so is paying down a mortgage or paying of debt for instance. What is best for the individual is probably best decided by the individual.

Tichy 14y ago
I think the money is meant as an incentive for employees to stay healthy. Like handing out free fruits or gym memberships. So just giving the employees the money and let them decide what to do with it would be counterproductive. Although maybe there should be some research. If more pay automatically makes people go to the gym more often, maybe it would be ok...
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  What if you have a situation where someone has debts. Is their mental health (which is what you're talking about with a holiday rather than physical health) more significantly improved by paying down their credit card by $7500 than a holiday? Or someone who wants to spend their holiday time with an old or terminally ill relative (which was my situation a few years back)? Or what if someone just enjoys taking time off to do something entirely different but at home - say DIY or some other hobby? Why should they be penalised because their idea of a holiday is different?
  - Tichy 14y ago
    Well that is what I mean by research - perhaps simply giving people more money will make them happier than giving incentives for specific stuff. But the original idea for the company is to benefit indirectly from the payments (fitter, happier employees), so I assumed the additional payments should be justified like that. Of course it could also lead to resentment: "if you can afford to pay me x$ for gym and holidays, why can't you afford to pay me a higher salary". Who knows? Actually happiness research seems to indicate that spending money on experiences rather than stuff (for example) is a good idea. But I am not sure if it follows that it still works if you make people spend on experiences instead of stuff.

Tichy 14y ago

Sounds great, and I think 7500$ is a generous offer. I am just a bit shocked that a one week vacation is supposed to cost that much. Apparently prices are very different in the US (I am in Europe).

krschultz 14y ago
They did mention that's for a family of 4. I'm not sure if they scale it back if you are single, but if you have a family that's probably in the ballpark.
- Tichy 14y ago
  I just went on vacation as a family of three. We rented a flat which was I think 50€/person. Even assuming 100€/night and 1000€/person for traveling (actually I paid 200€ for us all for an 8h train ride) it is still not 7.5k. However, 7.5k really gives you some flexibility (travel further away, more expensive hotels and so on). I guess it would be easy to spend 7.5k, but I really would think twice before spending that much on holidays. On the other hand, if you only have one week per year, perhaps it comes naturally that you are willing to spend more.
  - krschultz 14y ago
    True. This is OT but still an interesting conversation anyway. My girlfriend and I spent a total of $3500 to go to Italy for 14 days. With $7500, we would have gotten better hotels (we did the hostel route) but it wouldn't have materially changed the trip. However of that $3500, almost $1500 was the airfare from New York to Milan. This is also a good example of the American vacation system screwing us, I would have stayed for 4-6 weeks if my job would have let me. 14 days was the maximum we could pull off, and my girlfriend's boss put her in as 'sick' for at least one day in there. I worked the day before we flew out and the day after we got home (as a jet lagged zombie) because I was out of vacation days.
khuey 14y ago
Depends on what you do. Airfare from the US to a destination outside of North America probably costs around $1000 round trip (varies by time of year, destination, etc). For a family of 4, you're already half way through your budget just to get somewhere and back. On the other hand if you pack up the car and drive to the next state over to visit Grandma, you've probably only spent a couple hundred on gas/tolls/etc.

manmal 14y ago

Being connected all day, every day is certainly not healthy, but how is 1-2 weeks in a year (52 weeks) going to help with that? Vacation does allow you to "return to your body" as I like to call it, but a few weeks per year are not nearly enough. What people need is at least 2 days per week of not being connected, and lots of pauses during each workday. THAT's sustainable.

anmi 14y ago

I just realized i totally fucked up my last two vacations. Needless to say i've been working.

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nhangen 14y ago

ha! Just hit my 1 year mark and got bumped from 2 weeks (5 days personal, 5 days vacation) to 3. Since things like getting sick and/or personal time are deducted from the balance, I had to wait until the end of my year to take a vacation (in order to make sure I had the time). So all in all I basically got a week to spend time with my family. Would kill for a policy like this.

shreyas056 14y ago

$7500, thats roughly 6 times the annual per capita income of India

toomuchcoffee 14y ago
But (after taxes) about 6 weeks living expenses in NYC of SF.

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meddlepal 14y ago

Am I the only one who thinks the idea of completely unplugging oneself from their work during a vacation is wrong, particularly in the case of high tech industry professionals? It sounds nice in concept, but in reality is impractical - business doesn't sleep; especially the high tech industry. The debt just keeps piling up. I agree with the idea of trying to avoid trivial things during vacation, but if a non-trivial or business-emergency occurred and I could be of use I would hope someone would get in contact with me to resolve it - even if that means interrupting my private-life to work. In my mind that is one of the key differences between a professional and a drone - the ability to be flexible - on the other hand a lot of places do not treat their workers as professionals and see them merely as drones, for those places I say unplug and do not look back.

tbrownaw 14y ago
So are you saying that professionals are defined solely by their economic output, or just that they don't deserve respect? Places that actually seriously care about emergencies (like the Nuclear Power Plant my dad works at) plan ahead to have people available when needed. For example having people take turns carrying a pager (this was before there were cell phones), on a known, planned schedule. I'm one of the more senior people in my group at work, so when things go wrong I tend to get called to help fix them. This is annoying. It's not a sign of how wonderfully important I am. It's a sign that (1) I don't push back hard enough, and (2) my work is not considered important enough to rate a high bus factor.
einhverfr 14y ago
Well, if you are self-employed, you can't unplug. That much is true. But if you are in a business with others who can cover for you it's good practice in case tragedy strikes. If the business can't survive without each member, that's a heck of a lot of risk. It's better to have someone else in the business able to resolve those emergencies than have no idea what to do when you fall off a building or get hit by a bus. And if you are the CEO, think of that as training time for the the next guy.

wtvanhest 14y ago

Is there any reason you couldn't set up the travel through the company rather than the employee, arrange plane tickets, hotels etc. pre-tax?

khuey 14y ago
Because that would be illegal?
- mmcnickle 14y ago
  It wouldn't be illegal, but there would be no tax advantage. Certainly in the UK it would be classed as a benefit-in-kind to the employee and the company would be liable to pay tax on the value of the benefit. Where it may save money is with standing relationships with travel agents for favourable rates.
  - khuey 14y ago
    Right, it's only legal if you pay the taxes. But the comment I responded to specifically said 'pre-tax'.
    - wtvanhest 14y ago
      Tax law isn't that black and white and your answer doesn't really address any aspect of how to think about the problem. For example, you can send an employee on a company retreat pretax. How do you seperate a company retreat from an individual's vacation? It is a continuum where somewhere between those there is an answer where it is legal and illegal.
- jimboyoungblood 14y ago
  Not if you also register them for a conference that happens to be going on at the same time/place. I've always assumed that's the purpose of most conferences anyway.

krschultz 14y ago

Far short of this is simply making employees take their vacation. My Dad always tells the story of having a battle every year to get one of the people that worked for him to take her vacation. She was entitled to 3 weeks, and typically took 2-3 days. It wasn't healthy, and it wasn't necessary for her to make that sacrifice. Some people have trouble just letting go.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago
Some people literally live to work and find it difficult to know what to do when they're left to determine what to do for themselves.

padobson 14y ago

It made me want to see if they were hiring. Excellent blog post.

toomuchcoffee 14y ago

Might sound nice to some, but basically it's just a gimmick. Why not just offer them 7.5K more in salary and leave it at at that?

dev_jim 14y ago

<Braces for the piling on by Europeans about how inferior our vacations are> It's a nice thought, but I'd rather my employer (and my girlfriend's employer) just pay top dollar and let us figure out our own vacation plans.

rmc 14y ago
<Braces for the piling on by Europeans about how inferior our vacations are> That's partially because us Europeans can't really understand how you can get by with little to no holidays. It'd be like an American talking to a Soviet person (back in the day) and being suprised that they were OK with no voting and secret police.
- doktrin 14y ago
  While I appreciate the fact that no analogy is perfect, I have to make a relatively pedantic objection here. We're talking about the difference between 2-3 & 5-6 weeks of vacation, not a radically different approach to governance and civil liberties.
  - rmc 14y ago
    There's also at-will employment in the USA (used by Zynga recently to screw employees out stock options), and lack of employee discrimination (AFAIK it's not illegal in US to fire someone for being gay or trans, while it is in EU). These laws in EU are legal minimum, so they aren't going away. I, as an employee, don't have to worry about a new management team or buy out or poor annual return which results in the company cancelling all paid leave, because the companies in the EU cannot make that sacrifice.
    - doktrin 14y ago
      I'm not sure what you are getting at, but it sounds like you are attempting to argue in favor of "your" system over another. Enumerating relatively minor differences between democratic capitalist countries doesn't make your "Soviet Union" analogy any more appropriate. However : >> There's also at-will employment in the USA (used by Zynga recently to screw employees out stock options), and lack of employee discrimination (AFAIK it's not illegal in US to fire someone for being gay or trans, while it is in EU). As seen in Spain, guaranteed / tenured employment is not all sunshine and roses. Even prior to the most recent economic troubles, younger employees were vastly over-represented among those with short term contracts. Likewise in France. For reference, sexual identity and gender orientation are protected (or not) at the state level : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_i...

silentscope 14y ago

this is an advertisement for full contact...

binarycrusader 14y ago

Hey, I hate to be a drag, but your article needs a [NSFW] tag or you need to take the naked people photo out.

kodisha 14y ago

Omg, did you read this article at all? Point is NOT about extra money. Point is about eliminating single point of failure situations, e.g. only one guy knows how to handle really important client.. That should never happen, and by paying an extra buck, and forcing you to be detached from work they are giving you incentive to build fallback measures, write better docs etc.

GigabyteCoin 14y ago

We have this in Canada already by mandate, it's called "vacation pay". Every employer MUST deduct ~3% of every full time worker's pay and then give it to them at some point during the next year. Usually when that worker goes on Vacation.

jpike 14y ago

Man 15 days... that's kinda harsh. I live in London and the idea of working whilst on holiday is almost unthinkable. I like the idea of the money though. Is working really that hard in America?

jiggy2011 14y ago

I think there's 2 things that are especially true for technical people that cause people to worry about taking vacation time (where you are completely disconnected) that are almost polar opposite. Firstly there is a worry about if your co-workers are competent enough to do take care of your time critical work in your absence, they may believe that they are but that is not necessarily true. As an anecdote, I took a couple of days off a while ago. At the time I was away an urgent issue came up which required a small reconfiguration on the server. Not wanting to bother me a co-worker attempted to resolve this himself. Unfortunately he did this in a rather hamfisted way by overriding a lot of stuff he didn't understand that I had done for security reasons. Result, I come back to an inbox full of complaints about email no longer working. After some probeing I find that our server IP address is on several blacklists for sending spam. I then discover that the server has a rootkit on it. This means that I have to work a large number of extra hours correcting this problem which more than nullifies the time I got off for vacation. The result of this is that I actually feel less stressed on vacation if I have a smartphone for my work email with me and know that people don't worry about contacting me. The other opposite problem is that perhaps your co-workers are competent and can take over your duties with no hiccup to the organisation, now suddenly you are stressed that management might not think that you justify your salary so well.

tomtom101 14y ago

Im a Brit that used to get 30 days paid plus public holidays who is now working in the US at a tech company that has no vacation policy. I love my job and work long hours and often some weekends. I have a family and love to travel, but I much prefer the environment that I work in today. I am very ambitious and want the company that I am working for to do well and I want to do well. I am prepared to put a number of years hard work in with little or no vacation as there will hopefully be a much bigger upside at the end of it. If you want 20-30 days holiday a year that you take, then consider what opportunities you are missing. I think FullContact's 15 days paid PAID policy is excellent and strikes a good balance, but Europe has gone too far. I believe the Mediterranean countries are going to get left behind in turns of development and could end up looking like 3rd world countries in 50 years from now unless the work ethic/culture changes significantly.

jasonwilk 14y ago

Sorry, had to do this: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3q251w/ http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3q251w/

trg2 14y ago

Best. Job Posting. Ever.

clarky07 14y ago

This is pretty interesting for me as I just got back from a 2 week vacation where I had very little internet access. The vacation was great, but I honestly think I would have enjoyed it much more if I had internet access and could have done some work that needed done if I wanted to. I'm running my own business and I take off time whenever I want to. I'll probably take 40-50 days off this year. That being said, I absolutely hate being completely disconnected. I also don't like not giving great customer service for my products. I am perfectly happy to take the day off and then answer a few emails when I get home. Not having that option for the last two weeks was actually annoying to me, and I enjoyed the vacation less as a result. Spending a few minutes here and there and then getting back to vacation to me is better than just being cut off for an extended period.

cbsmith 14y ago

It's funny, this isn't really a new idea, though you might consider it new for the tech business. That said, it is a good one.