Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by themarkn 1941 days ago
I mean, there’s an upper bound on how often that can happen (how many personal days people have). Those days are intended to be used at short notice. So if people using them is a problem for the team, imo the team is not correctly matched to the workload.

I do think we often undersize our teams by ignoring the impact of vacation and personal time in taking on work ... but that’s not the fault of the people using the time they are entitled to as part of their compensation.

2 comments

I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with leave days and team sizes; those things are probably perfectly fine.

The issue is:

> I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend.

but, also...

> Yes, there is a challenge of how to compensate when there is no equity upside...

The complaint here is that people don't have 'skin in the game', so they dont care if the product succeeds, because it makes to difference to them; so they're taking personal days in a way that disrupts the (probably totally arbitrary) timelines and plans they have.

...so I mean, it's probably fair to say that if people are taking leave in a way that is disruptive, then that's more of an indicator that the team culture is totally screwed up than that there aren't enough people.

If one person wants to 'win' and everyone else a) doesn't care, b) that person has no power to punish them if the product doesn't 'win', c) there's no benefit to them personally if it does 'win'... well, its never going to work out for that one person in the long run.

Sick days are compensation?
They are where I live. The number of sick days required by law is zero.
Jesus fucking hell. And you guys get your panties in a bunch over orange man bad vs sleepy Joe? Talk about not seeing the forest in the trees.

You guys don't even see it do you?

Uh. I mean. I see it. I’m not from here, I just live here. I came from the EU where 20 vacation days was the minimum to a state in the US where no vacation or personal time is required. I’m still blown away by what companies advertise as “generous”.

Maybe calm down with the assumptions and generalizations too though.