I had lunch with a colleague and friend Ilya Pozin, who never sleeps, and one of many fascinating things we discussed was the answer to a GeekyBookClub question/discussion about vacation time.
The GeekyBookClub (actually, it's not called that, it's named the LAJUG Study Group, but how pedestrian is that?) ... well, as I was saying, the book club was discussing a new practice where no fixed/definite vacation time is given by the employer.
Instead, the employee is free to take whatever time He wishes (yes "he," that's for Brian Cantrell, the Pronoun Prick at Joyent, the Pronoun Fascists, where this is a firing offense. I'm feeling edgy and daring here as I defy their PC conventions!).
The discussion in our club took a rather negative view of this. Based upon a lot of Dilbertian experience, the members feared that this amounted to less or no vacation time, for fear of the consequences. And one member pointed out that they also re-evaluated your "contribution to the team" each year, so that your salary might get "adjusted," based upon your vacation time requests! This was not thought to be desirable.
Not at all.
Does anyone wonder why?
Or are you all living in Dilbertian comic strips, as I suspect?
But my colleague said that they way it worked in his company -- Ciplex -- was that everyone had commitments for revenue production. If they wanted to take time, anything desired was fine, so long as someone was covering for them. Or, for example, someone might say "I'm going to Hawaii next week -- but I'll make sure this projects gets done." So, basically, it amounts to -- as Ilya put it -- "treating the employees like adults, rather than children."
Novel idea, that.
Sounds like a pretty good policy to me.
I Remain,
TheHackerCIO
