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Comment by larsberg | Hacker News Reader

People mimic their management chain. If the CEO/managers don't take vacations, neither will their directs.

One of the most balanced (and productive) teams I've worked on was under a general manager who had 8 kids and made it a point to attend _every_ event they had and go on regular vacations. Since everybody ran into his policy at some point (reviews scheduled at 5pm canceled or him out of town for a week or two), the whole org was pretty good about doing the same. And it was very different from other orgs in the company, many of which had the usual long hours + weekends culture.

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I have to disagree with that premise. Our two founders are around 4 days per week, usually go home around five and tend to take long vacations.

The rest of us have to be encouraged to take our vacation days.

There's a culture of everyone taking days off on a regular basis without too much formality ("won't be in this friday, see ya"), but long vacations are rare.

Do you think everyone would take those random days off on a regular basis if your founders instead worked 6 days a week and never took vacations? (honest question based on your situation, not rhetorical/sarcastic)

Sometimes, particularly with young people (no family and no college buddies around), I had trouble getting them to take vacations because frankly they just had nobody to hang out with for a long period of time. You can only sit at home (or on the beach) and play WoW for so long, so it didn't really bother me much when they didn't, as long as they were taking enough random days off to stay fresh and motivated at work.

Yeah, my boss takes days off all the time (and deservedly so), but I'm accruing "use or lose" days at a scary rate now and I have no vacation plan in sight other than a few days in May for family and a week in July for family.

Edit: And to be clear, I think this has been and will continue to be detrimental to my work product overall, the only reason I haven't taken a break yet is being I'm triple-hatted for now until July or so. By then I'll have a chance to think about what I want to do with my break, I hope.

Good companies should not have a single point of failure. If they do, the only way they'll learn to live without you is if you're not there.

Just take a break. Go somewhere that doesn't have cell phone coverage. (Alternatively, just turn it off when you get on the plane and leave it off until you get off the plane coming back.) Don't pay for internet. I did that a few months ago on my trip to Italy. Best. Vacation. Ever.

There's a lot of truth to this. I take a vacation every quarter now. And I do so unapologetically. It does help convey that vacations are socially acceptable.

I came to the conclusion a while ago that without a significant ownership stake (where I benefit when the company profits or is sold), not taking time for myself and family means lost opportunity for life.

IMO every cost should have a potential positive return. Work = paycheck. More work = vacation, unless more work = windfall.

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