Adobe Shuts Down for a Week | Hacker News Reader

Adobe Shuts Down for a Week

mercurynews.com

26 pointsmcav24 comments

I've been interviewing at Adobe (strange but true) -- my interviewer said the shutdowns force people to use up their vacation pay. In CA, when you lay someone off, you have to pay them all their accrued vac. pay, which could add up to several months. The issue is that this is a liability on their books, which can affect their earnings as a public co.

No idea if this is really the reason or just what the top brass say to the worker bees.

I'd guess it's only part of the reason. The company has other ways to limit liability that don't constrain employees as much; for example they could limit the number of days that you are allowed to roll over each year.

Since people are still getting paid, according to my reading of the article, it's almost European. By that I mean that many companies in France and Spain generally shut down in July or August all at once. There's probably is an overall benefit to just about everyone (not just the company, but the country) taking their vacation at the same time.

Not exactly , from the article - "Adobe said employees are asked to use paid vacation days during the closures."

Isn't that the same thing? They're being forced to take vacation at specific times. Just like they do in Europe.

Typically, people in Silicon Valley get PTO (paid time off) to use for sick days or vacation.

By having a shutdown, people are encouraged to use up their PTO. If you don't have enough PTO, however, then it is effectively unpaid leave.

And my experience is that people save up PTO because if they leave for another job, or get laid off, they can take it as cash. So they have huge backlogs of PTO. Anyway it struck me as having some aspects of how things work in southern Europe.

Adobe employees will be fine - they get an unheard-of 24 days of PTO per year (three of which are automagically consumed during the holidays).

Thanks for reminding me again why I love Australia. (20 days Paid Annual Leave, + Sick Leave, + Public Holidays (about 8 per year or so)..

Although I am usually encouraged to take at least part of my time off on the Christmas/NY break (which is Summer for us obviously).

Just think of what you'd have at Adobe in the US: 4 more paid leave days and 3 more public holidays. :) I'm not sure what their sick leave policy is, though.

You know, I don't know of any place in Europe where employees are forced to take their holidays all at once. I'm sure there is some niche industry in some backwater country to which this applies, but I haven't heard of it. No, we are 'forced' to take our holidays all at once to spend time with our children, who DO have 'forced holidays'.

There are plenty of companies, here in Italy, at least, that shut down in August, at least for the first two weeks.

Amazing. I did not know that. And apologies for implying Italy is a backwater country, it certainly isn't!

In Spain there are still some companies that do the same, but this a less common practice each day. I guess it's because the shift from a industrial economy to a services one.

Yeah, it's becoming less common here too, but is still way more prevalent than in the US. It's not uncommon to see something like 1/3 of small shops closed in your average northern Italian town in early August.

Factory shutdowns are almost unheard of now it seems as we (in the UK) have no factories left ...

Don't know of a single place that does that here in the UK. Best not to paint broad strokes under that "Europe" term.

Edit: Actually manufacturing companies in the UK tend to shut down around christmas and new years come to think of it. I guess that counts.

> probably is an overall benefit to just about everyone

Disagree: the roads are packed, the hotels are packed, airlines raise prices a lot, and there's nothing you can do about it if you're forced to go then. I've always taken my vacations in July or September and remained in Padova during August, which is great - it's empty and has a relaxed, easy going feel which is absent during the rest of the year.

Also, if you're running a company that for some reason wants to stay open (by, say, letting your employees choose their own vacation time and having them not all go at once), you might still have a hard time of it because your suppliers and clients are all closed too.

Long vacations are good, but I don't care so much for the mass exodus in August.

It's good to hear the opposite arguments, and they're good ones, though those all seem to be specific to employees. From the company viewpoint often having employees leave for vacation individually is disruptive. Especially in so called knowledge based industries. I'm not really wedded to my theory, just kibitzing.

> having employees leave for vacation individually is disruptive.

Yes, but less so than closing the company down for a month.

The fair comparison would be 12 months of ~1/12th of the company team not being there, or 1 month of the entire team not being there.

I think it's pretty obvious that in a workplace where each member adds more than a constant value, the latter is favorable.

Edit: woah, I can't respond to your post, probably to prevent those back-and-forth chains. But you're right, it's only obvious in a simplified model of a workplace I had in my head when writing it. In real life, nothing is obvious :)

I don't think it's "obvious". If the company's completely closed, nothing at all is happening, no work is getting done, no one is available to cover emergencies. A better comparison might be to look at 1/3 of the company being gone in July, August and September, which, if you work with people to plan things just a bit, means that things keep running during those months. Also, what starts to happen here (Italy) in practice, is that in July not a lot gets done because everything is going to shut down soon, so no one starts anything new (no new projects, no hires). Things already start to slow down in June. September is reasonably productive, but it takes a bit to get things turning over again.

Staying open conserves momentum and provides some continuity.

I don't think it is that disruptive, in my company each team agrees when people will take their vacations so there's always a minimum of junior/senior people working in all depts.

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