Comment by zadjii | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zadjii | Hacker News Reader

Lemme just chime in real quick as someone at MSFT who this applies to (thoughts are my own, not a stance of the company, etc, etc.) I'm absolutely stoked. I'm well aware of the potential for this to end up reducing the number of days someone takes. I think all the ICs (individual contributors, AKA non-managers) on my team do as well. We're aware of the potential downside, so we're all going to be proactive to make sure this doesn't negatively impact us.

I personally am starting up a spreadsheet today to make sure I take the same amount of leave this year as I'd usually be owed.

The old policy tended to end the year with everyone taking most of December off for the holidays (and to burn remaining PTO that wouldn't carry over). Do I expect that to change? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

This is probably going to come down quite a bit to manager discretion, and I'm extremely pleased with my manager's stance towards taking time off. I can definitely see how there'll be folks in the company where this might hurt more. I think the broad majority of managers currently are pretty chill with letting folks take vacation when they need it, and I don't expect that to change.

Overall, I think if you're proactive, and have a halfway decent human being as a manager, you'll end up better off.

Yeah, very similar experiences across multiple different managers back when I worked at MSFT. The first one was always supportive and encouraging people to take time off, I really appreciated having her as my first manager at the company.

And the second one had a very full-on laizes-faire attitude where as long as your work was done, he couldn't care less where you were or what you were doing. Literally told me once "if you are going to be out for a week or longer, just let me know ahead of time, otherwise it's your business".

But he was also the one who was entirely no-bs, and if you were abusing this or slacking, you won't be on his team for long. One of the very few MSFT managers I've met who actually was willing to fire people (but it happened very rarely, as people knew not to slack or mess around on his team). If you manage to get all your work done in 4 days instead of 5 or prefer to work short days and then catch up on things at late night hours? Your call, as long as the results of your work are there.

Ironically enough, he was known in the org as someone who was really smart and got his team to consistently deliver on expectations and beyond. Turns out that when you hire the people for your team who get that attitude, and then you treat them like humans and not like some cattle, the results tend to follow. I feel very fortunate to have worked with that manager, not in the least because he was also incredibly sharp on a technical level (but was also smart enough to understand that he shouldn't be spending any significant amount of his time as a manager writing code).

> have a halfway decent human being as a manager,

doesn't that explain why it's not a good policy? Basically the employee's right has changed to manager's generosity.

Indeed. The commentor above is basically replying "I got mine!" Hopefully they don't get transferred to a less ideal manager later, seems like a very short-sighted viewpoint.

With reorgs I once had five different managers in a single year while I worked at Microsoft, and a few of them were not so great. One was even very publicly fired (publicly as in being the subject of a WSJ and other main stream media articles). Worst year of my professional life. So much can change so quickly with a change of manager.

If the manager doesn't support a reasonable amount of vacation time, then there are almost certainly other issues. It is hard for me to fathom the intersection of "good manager" and "doesn't support vacation time" not being NULL. If someone is in this situation, they should vote with their feet - the manager clearly doesn't have their best interests at heart, and this will impact them on multiple dimensions.

I wonder how it affects women. I've often read that part of the gender gap is because women tend to be less aggressive in negotiating an offer.

Based on that it'd make sense that they would ask for fewer days off.

> I've often read that

must be true then.

s/I've often read/It has been proposed

At least the people who advance this idea should investigate unlimited PTO policies. Because if true it's akin to enforcing a policy that lower women's compensation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com