[ugiox]

Good for them. And great of the Patagonia mgmt to give them off.

I am myself off - the company I work for gives us paid time off (not deducted from our paid vacation) from Dec 22 to January 8. Each year. Apart from our 35 days of PTO. Plus 4 days to attend school events. Apart from German public holidays. Oh, and we work less during the spring and summer months. We go down from 38 hours per week to 35. German engineering manufacturing company - 250 employees. Family owned - 5 generations.

[cashsterling]

US startup I work for is also shut down this week and has a very liberal unlimited PTO policy. I took about 6 weeks of PTO this year, for a variety of reasons, and no one asked a question about it.

A lot of folks in the office work 35 hour weeks, sometimes less, but we are meeting or exceeding our company goals (which were already aggressive).

I think this as really good way to run a company... everyone is always firing on all cylinders when we're working... and when we need a break, we take one.

[godelski]

It's weird to me that this isn't more common in tech. Because we're working with our minds there is not a good direct link to hours worked and output. Certainly No one is constantly able to have 8hr highly productive days (or any) so why not optimize towards high efficiency? Doesn't running "your machine" down just end up creating more, often compounding, (usually small) mistakes that only then need to be fixed later? Isn't what makes humans particularly unique is the ability to do complex and long term planning?