Nobody likes having limits placed on them. After all, this is the land of all-you-can-eat breadsticks, right? And if more is better, unlimited vacation time might be the sweetest treat of all. But can you really let your team take as much time off as they want? What are the rules? And what's the impact if you do?
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Carl: Old people are manipulative.
Gene: That's a hashtag.
Carl: It is, and I just want [crosstalk 00:01:37] for everybody who listens to the podcast instead of watching it, you don't see our cold opens. So, you have no idea why we're talking about-
Gene: Go over to YouTube.
Carl: Not trusting old people.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: I'm not going to explain it. You can go to YouTube and you figure out. Gene, how are you doing?
Gene: I'm all right, man.
Carl: You're all right? You got lightning coming out of your head.
Gene: [inaudible 00:02:04].
Carl: That's kind of cool.
Gene: See what's behind me?
Carl: Mjollnir.
Gene: Yes. Hey, you said it right.
Carl: Dude, come on. Who are you talking to?
Gene: Most people say mule-near.
Carl: That sounds like mule-dear.
Gene: It is Mjollnir. Mjollnir. Yeah, that's awesome, man. Are you from Sweden?
Carl: Yeah. Hey, thanks for letting me know that I did it right.
Gene: You did.
Carl: Gosh. So condescending. The feedback we get on the show is, why is Gene so condescending to you? Often what I say is, he's just an ass.
Gene: He's just a jerk.
Carl: He's just ass-faced jerk. I almost said jerk faced ass.
Gene: It wouldn't [crosstalk 00:02:47] man. I really don't care.
Carl: Speaking of jerks, today's episode is about unlimited vacation.
Carl: Y'all didn't really think it was unlimited, did you?
Gene: In many cases, unlimited vacation means, actually, you can't take any vacation.
Carl: Right? Oh, it's unlimited, but it is locked up. It's... No. Okay. So, I know people are going to get mad at me about this.
Gene: I know.
Carl: It was back in the mid 2000's when we first heard unlimited vacation. Right? Now people are saying it's a new thing, which I get, this is [crosstalk 00:03:32].
Gene: Well.
Carl: This is part of being old. Right?
Gene: What's old is new. Everybody thinks they're inventing stuff.
Carl: Wait, The Scorpions didn't record Can't Explain first?
Gene: Right?
Carl: No, that was The Who. Okay? But then we hit that same thing, right? Everything's a remix.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Everything's coming back.
Gene: Right.
Carl: But we had this conversation recently. It was in the slack channels, it was that owner camp in Palm Springs, just this idea of unlimited vacation, and what happens is, and this, I don't, I don't know. Did period three ever even have to think about this kind of stuff?
Gene: No.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: We had unlimited vacation.
Carl: Yeah. Hey, we don't have any work to do. Go home. Oh, you can take unlimited vacation. That doesn't mean we're not changing the locks.
Gene: Well, you don't get paid, so.
Carl: Exactly.
Gene: What you want.
Carl: We didn't say unlimited paid vacation.
Gene: Yeah. That word, that adjective needs to go in there.
Carl: Everybody listening going, they're just having so much fun, but this is not helping me. So, unlimited vacation is making a comeback.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: It's making a comeback because there's a talent war.
Gene: So, is it like... They basically don't have a policy and they're just saying this is an amenity?
Carl: Yeah. I mean, well that's, okay. So [crosstalk 00:04:58].
Gene: That's what it feels like.
Carl: Say unlimited vacation and then here [crosstalk 00:05:02] come at me.
Gene: I mean, sign me up.
Carl: It's a marketing.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Phrase.
Gene: Right.
Carl: I's, we say unlimited vacation because other people say it. You can say, no, no, no. We really have unlimited vacation. But it's as long as you get the work done.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: There's a component to it that a lot of people just of ignore.
Gene: Right.
Carl: There's a lot of challenges that come with it. I'm even going to say downside, that we've heard about, I mean, like I said, it was mid 2000's. I heard about it in Ernest in 2012. Ernest goes unlimited vacation. Ernest. [crosstalk 00:05:42] There's an old reference.
Gene: Builds the web.
Carl: Exactly. That explains a lot.
Gene: You know what I mean, Vern?
Carl: Know what I mean, Vern?
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: Good God, that guy made a career out of that.
Gene: He did.
Carl: That was amazing. But... Totally lost it now. Thanks.
Gene: Ernest often will make you lose your train of thought.
Carl: He totally will. So, when we start looking at it, most people... When I found out about it in 2012, it was because, again, there was Google does it, Facebook does it, Amazon does it. Whoever. Netflix notoriously was the first [crosstalk 00:06:20] 2004 to say our employees come and go as they want. Right?
Gene: Yeah. But if you don't get this shit done.
Carl: Exactly. It doesn't mean you aren't fire-able.
Gene: Right.
Carl: It, but it does have that sound like bottomless mimosas.
Gene: Right.
Carl: If you start, if you have like seven mimosas, which actually just sounds disgusting to me.
Gene: After a while, it's not good.
Carl: Well, let's look at this. So, if you have bloody Mary's and you have mimosas, but you tell me you can't make a screwdriver. Oh, I'm coming at you because you got all the good stuff there.
Gene: If you have seven bloody Mary's, wouldn't you just get full? I mean [crosstalk 00:07:04]
Carl: Just one is a monster with a burger on top.
Gene: That's like eating two or three steaks. I mean.
Carl: Yeah. So, unlimited, but you know what? I'm going to bring this back around.
Gene: Do it.
Carl: Unlimited vacation is a lot like those big bloody Mary's.
Gene: Yep. Cool.
Carl: Those unlimited mimosas. Because, let's go into some EDM. Mimosas.
Gene: Yay.
Carl: People don't take unlimited vacation. The biggest issue with it, is that because it's no longer a disposable resource, right?
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: Disposable resource. What am I looking at? Because it's not a perishable, right? It's not going to go away.
Gene: Sure. There you go. Yeah.
Carl: Yeah. It's, people think, oh, well, you know what? I'll just get around to it. They don't see a number of days that they have left. They just see this infinite, the sense of infinite number of days and people actually from a lot of shops I've talked to, they take fewer days off when it's unlimited.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Except for a few people who are going to take off more and more.
Gene: Right.
Carl: This is where the downside starts.
Gene: Which I feel like you're going to have that same scenario of that person that's going to sort of abuse the system no matter what the system is. You're going to have those people [crosstalk 00:08:23].
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: If you have a team of a certain size.
Carl: Well, right. I mean, and this sounds horrible, but you know who those people are?
Gene: Isn't there some, is it? I don't know if it's a named rule or law or whatever, but it's a certain percentage of people actually do the work in an organization. It's like, if you have four people, two people probably doing 80% of the work or some shit. I've heard that somewhere.
Carl: You're making stuff up, but I'm going to go with it.
Gene: Okay, cool.
Carl: Gene, I'll allow it.
Gene: We need to, we need a producer that looks the stuff up.
Carl: Oh, we should do a fact check like they do on armchair experts.
Gene: It's supposed to be me. Not the Joe Rogan podcast.
Carl: Oh... No.
Gene: You don't knock Joe Rogan.
Carl: Oh, I will knock him. I'll knock him on his ass.
Gene: You, probably not. But you could do whatever you want.
Carl: Yeah. Well I'm going to be in a car.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: If Joe Rogan gets hit by a car today, I'm in a lot of trouble. We might need to edit that out. What the, what are we talking? Oh, yeah. Unlimited vacation.
Gene: Unlimited vacation.
Carl: So, yeah. So, you do get some people who are going to take advantage. You get other people who are just not going to take as much, and then you get a cultural rift. Right? And this was something that was already happening. People already knew who was taking advantage. But now you've given them almost like a platform, a public platform to take advantage.
Gene: Right.
Carl: I would argue not to do it for this reason, but it does kind of smoke some people out.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Then you can go, well, well, well, Franklin. Should have known this when I hired somebody named Franklin. But you want to take another three weeks off. I mean, and that's the thing though. It's, most people won't. A few people will.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: What we've seen just watching the bureau community is a lot of people shift to mandatory vacation.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: Where there's a minimum amount you have to take off.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: That, to me, it's interesting, right? Because you're trying to build a place that people want to stay at.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: But you're trying to build a place that you want to be at. If you follow the trends of a company like Google that makes a million dollars per employee, you're going to lose.
Gene: That's a lot of millions.
Carl: I did not make that up. Somebody else did and I'm just quoting them.
Gene: Well, speaking of not making up, I quickly found this article on Forbes. Only a small percentage, two to 5% of employees are top performers. Meaning one to two standard deviations above the average output. Right?
Carl: Oh, three deviations above [crosstalk 00:11:05]
Gene: If you read the rest of the article, what that's saying is of your organization, top in 5% are actually producing a hundred percent of the work, which is crazy.
Carl: Well, no. I mean, that is crazy. If you could just figure out who they are. Ditch everybody else.
Gene: So, to your point, just like we talk about we have to take care of ourselves as leaders and owners, we have to fuel ourselves and rest and make sure we're taking care of the whole airbag first thing. We have to take care of those people who probably never take time off.
Carl: Right.
Gene: Because they [crosstalk 00:11:40].
Carl: I mean [crosstalk 00:11:41].
Gene: Whatever reason they are top performers, they're top performers.
Carl: A lot of us who started our shops [crosstalk 00:11:47].
Gene: We're top performers.
Carl: We're top performers.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: We don't take it ourselves. So, that becomes the other thing. It's like, and you know this, we set up these plans to try to create culture.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: I firmly believe you can only guide culture. You can only create a place for it and then hope that you get it somewhere.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Because it's not in your hands, but you hope that you create something and then if you don't participate in it though, a lot of your employees are going to go, that's a head fake.
Gene: Yeah. Right.
Carl: They're going to be like, well, Carl's still working 50 hours a week, which I'm not. But it's that idea of, okay, well they're still working. They're still here all the time. I haven't seen them take a vacation. I'm not going to do it.
Gene: Yeah, and he's off on a sailboat.
Carl: Exactly, right?
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Where's my sailboat?
Carl: If you're going to do unlimited vacation, be one of the first people to do it. It's like, if you take the team out for dinner, you should be the first one to order. You know what? Order the goddamn tasting menu.
Gene: Oh, so they can follow what you're doing.
Carl: So, they go, oh, we can order whatever we want.
Gene: Gotcha.
Carl: Right? Because if they don't see you set the precedent for what's going to happen.
Gene: Right.
Carl: [crosstalk 00:12:57] hold back because they don't want test it. They don't want to cross a line they can't even see.
Gene: Right. Right, right, right.
Carl: But some of your other employees aren't going to have that problem. They're, before you even get to order, they're going to say, can we have a bottle of wine?
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: Maybe seven for the table?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Going, oh, there's Franklin again.
Gene: Yep. There's the unlimited vacation employee.
Carl: Damn it, Franklin. If you were here, I would fire you.
Gene: We'd save some money, Frank.
Carl: That's the other thing about unlimited vacation. A lot of times, it's hard to get the person back in so you can fire them. That's tricky.
Gene: That's where they get you.
Carl: But the thing is, I firmly believe in taking a lot of time off. I think, no, I do. Dude, it's like, you know it.
Gene: There are people that listen to this podcast going Carl's lost his ever loving mind.
Carl: Because I think you should take a lot of time off?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: I think if you don't take at least five weeks off a year.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Which, I haven't done in a long time. But, but no, you need that time. We all know this. Come on, Gene. You're just messing with me.
Gene: I am.
Carl: Yeah. Damn it. But you need that time to regenerate, restore, to renew, to reinvigorate yourself, to remind yourself that you do like doing this stuff.
Gene: If you want to, and this is speaking to those people. But if you want to test yourself, the next trip you take, even if it's a two day trip, leave your computer at home. See if you can do it.
Carl: Who are you?
Gene: I did that one time and I was like, so [crosstalk 00:14:35].
Carl: Never again.
Gene: Yeah, I was so worried the whole time. Nothing happened, but I was just like, oh, shit. What happens if?
Carl: Oh, that's it, right? I mean, hell. Put on your vacation reminder, do all those things. But here's a suggestion that I have for everybody. This was something that we did at Engine, and I know sometimes it's like, you two were so great. [crosstalk 00:14:57] You know what? It was. It was so great. If you're listening, you know who I'm talking to.
Gene: You know.
Carl: [inaudible 00:15:06] great, why is it still around. Just shut up. But what I [crosstalk 00:15:12].
Gene: Franklin.
Carl: You're, yeah, Franklin. Stupid Franklin. All I can think is pictures of that turtle. Franklin was a turtle, right?
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Okay.
Gene: There was a kids show, Franklin.
Carl: What I get for hiring a turtle.
Gene: You know what's weird about that show though, is that it was animated animals, but the animals that talked and lived in the society, they had pets. Franklin had a pet cat. Now explain that one.
Carl: The cat couldn't talk?
Gene: No, it was a cat.
Carl: Okay. All right.
Gene: But whatever it was, it's weird.
Carl: Now I'm just getting upset. You have got to treat all of your animated characters the same.
Gene: Right.
Carl: You're creating a cast system. It's not going to work, and this is why I hate Franklin.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: I think we figured it out. Now I have a question for you.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Okay. Donald has Daisy. Mickey has Minnie. Goofy has nobody.
Gene: He got Pluto.
Carl: But Goofy, who can't talk, but Goofy can. Goofy occasionally dresses up like a woman, and Goofy has a nephew.
Gene: Yeah. That's weird.
Carl: What is happening with Goofy? Has anybody talked to him?
Gene: Yeah. I feel like they're not really writing his story. They're just doing whatever they want.
Carl: They are. He's doing surfing lessons. Okay.
Gene: I don't get it.
Carl: Whatever, Goofy.
Gene: Yeah. Why does a mouse have a pet dog anyway?
Carl: Goofy's got, I don't know what's happening [crosstalk 00:16:48] Pluto's tail looks like a weapon.
Gene: It is a little whip.
Carl: Could hurt you on that.
Gene: So, what does it do with Engine?
Carl: If Engine was so great, why didn't you marry it? Well, I did for 14 years.
Gene: Still kind of married for a little bit. Still in alimony.
Carl: We got to a point where if you wanted time off, you didn't ask me, you asked the team you were part of. Right? What that does, when you get permission from your team to take off, first of all, you're putting some coins in there that somebody else is going to want later. You're saying, okay, I'm going to take some time off. Other people are like, oh, well, Carl took that time off.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: He went on a trip, blah, blah, blah.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: I'm covering for him. That's why you ask them, ask the people that are going to be most impacted.
Gene: Right.
Carl: Right? But the other thing is, what we saw happen, which I didn't realize would happen. People started planning vacations after they knew they had a deliverable that was going to drop. So, if you were working on a project for a few months, when you saw that project was going to come to an end, and it could be six weeks, eight weeks, whatever. A long way out, you could do this, but you could tell the team, Hey, as soon as this app gets through QA and everything's looking good, I'm going to take three weeks and I'm going to go over to Germany. Right? Then people would say yes or no. Nobody ever said no.
Gene: Right.
Carl: Because they know it's going to come back, and they might adjust it though and say, Hey, could you actually wait another week before you go? Because this thing is really complicated and if you're gone and it falls apart, we are going to be hurting.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: That, it worked really well.
Gene: That's cool.
Carl: If it worked so well, why aren't you still doing it?
Gene: But you never had any cases where anybody said no? There weren't any, there was never any [crosstalk 00:18:41].
Carl: Not that [crosstalk 00:18:41].
Gene: You never had to intervene on.
Carl: Not that was a big enough irritant that-
Gene: Cool.
Carl: They pulled me in.
Gene: Cool.
Carl: I'm sure there were some things. I'll check with Lori, because she was a big part of that.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: I mean, that was just always, I thought, great. People at the beginning of the week would say, Hey, I'm going to be out Thursday afternoon or I'm going to be out this or be out that day. We didn't track it. You just had to let people know and make sure that your responsibilities were covered.
Gene: So, we kind of [crosstalk 00:19:07].
Carl: Were adults.
Gene: That's beautiful. We kind of do that here. I mean, I don't have employees, but I have Greg.
Carl: I don't have employees, but I got Greg. I got him and Franklin in the storage closet.
Gene: Yeah. He's [crosstalk 00:19:21].
Carl: Going through the Post-It notes.
Gene: Yeah. Greg doesn't listen to my shit. So, whatever. Right now, he's up in North Carolina working on his mountain house or whatever. I am like, I'll cover for you. I got the emails, your last line. If I need you, I'll ask you something, but you go work on your shit, so you can come back, Tuesday or whatever and be clear. When I went a couple of weeks ago to, or Tuesday to deal with my dad, he's like, look, I got it all day. You won't hear a pee unless I need you, whatever. We give each other, if you're off, I got you back.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: I think that's important.
Carl: I think it's huge.
Gene: I don't know how that translates to an organization of 50 plus people.
Carl: Well, I mean, we were in the high 40s.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: Very high 40s when we started this. I mean, honestly, I think it's, you're on a team on a project. Maybe you're on two projects, but I think most shops I know now really do limit the amount of projects a certain team has. Right?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: I mean, that's what Sprints is all about. That's [inaudible 00:20:26] evolution from 2012 forward I think has been huge, but that means that even if I'm part of a company of 10,000 people, but my immediate impact is 30 people, then I just need to check with those 30 or check with. It's not like everybody's got to approve it. It's really [crosstalk 00:20:48]
Gene: Right, yeah.
Carl: About that core that you're apart of.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: That you support every day.
Gene: Yeah. It's a quick thing. Yeah.
Carl: Yeah. I mean, and I'm sure that HR departments are going to have issues with that and that kind of thing when you get really big, but, or maybe not. But the thing is the majority of people in the community are in that 30 to 50 range.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Right? We're still, we can do what we want. Right?
Gene: Yeah. I think the problem is when there's a problem. But again, it comes down to leadership, right? It's the same stuff we talked about with your policies. You can't hide behind the policies. If somebody's taking advantage of it, you need to go talk to them.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Explain to them the impact and how it's hurting, the repercussions and here's what's going to happen. Here's how we fix it. You got to do that.
Carl: Well, I mean, I think you're absolutely right. A lot of times when you're thinking about difficult conversations, you're thinking about giving feedback, you're think about all those things, one of the key things to do is separate the person from the problem.
Gene: That's right. There you go.
Carl: But in some instances, it is a misfit.
Gene: I love your [crosstalk 00:21:54].
Carl: Your person is no longer the right person for the work [crosstalk 00:21:56]
Gene: You gave some great advice. I think it's, maybe you can talk to it a little bit. It's a good time in the show here. In Slack, just a couple days ago, somebody was asking about, they have to have an uncomfortable conversation with their employee. They're going to go into it, whatever. Do you remember the advice you gave them?
Carl: Well, they thought they [crosstalk 00:22:13] made up having to fire the person.
Gene: Yeah. There you go.
Carl: That's what it was. They had somebody that had been acting out, not making their deliverables.
Gene: Right, right, right.
Carl: Not keeping their commitments on that sort of stuff [crosstalk 00:22:24]
Gene: Which is the same thing as not respecting their team, disappearing all the time.
Carl: Right.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: It is. So, basically, and this was something I learned when I was in my early twenties because I got tasked with letting people go in my early twenties. I mean, firing people that were 40, 50. I mean, literally twice my age in some instances.
Gene: You go in there.
Carl: Why? I'm the intern. No. Sorry, Tom.
Gene: You were [crosstalk 00:22:54] Franklin.
Carl: Franklin's down.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Right? But no, but basically you go in and you just say, Hey... It doesn't seem like you've been happy lately.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Then they will, you just give them that space, you let it be a little uncomfortable and then they will start to fire themselves. They will say, well, I just don't understand why we're always having this meeting on Monday when I could be doing the work. Also, the work, some of the things the client asked for just don't make sense and I'm tired of getting put together with this to team, because honestly they're not as good as everybody acts like they are.
Gene: Right.
Carl: They'll just go, or they'll say the hours are too much [inaudible 00:23:38]. Then you basically just say, you know what, I hear what you're saying and I appreciate that's the place you want to be. That's not this place. All the things that you're bumping up against that you don't like are the things that we have to do.
Gene: Are you firing me right now? T.
Carl: He best thing we can do, Gene, is find you maybe another podcast.
Gene: Wait, you're firing me.
Carl: Where you would actually produce it.
Gene: What's happening right now?
Carl: I just, I mean, if you want, I'd be happy to help you try and find that. I've actually put together a list of 10. Five I contacted and they said no way, but the other five, if you want to contact them. So.
Carl: But yeah, no. That, I mean.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: I think a lot of times, people aren't happy where they are. I mean, back to the unlimited vacation, that could be part of why you start to see that. You start to see.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: People taking advantage. But I do want to say there are definitely benefits to it. I think it's, I don't think you should start unlimited vacation. Oh my God. I think I'm about to, I got a hot take. Should I do it now? Hot take?
Gene: Let me check. Yeah, yeah. Go, go for it.
Carl: Okay. Don't start unlimited vacation or any other type of perk because you see somebody else doing it. Start it because you think there's a benefit to your team and your company and the way you want to be involved.
Gene: I dig it.
Carl: So, with unlimited vacation, by all means, have a flexible policy, but don't call it something that's going to create confusion. Call it open vacation. I really like that. It's open.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: We're not going to put limits on it, but you're still going to have to get approvals to do stuff. The other benefits that really come out of it are that it shows that you trust the team and then they in return trust you more.
Gene: Hmm.
Carl: I think this is true with all kinds of different, you can call them perks or you can call them what you want. But the more that you can trust people, the more they're going to be able to trust you. I get this is tough right now because so many people on the team are new and so many of you that had like that really strong right hand, they've left.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: That's the challenge, but don't do something because you see somebody else doing it. Investigate it, think about it, and if it makes sense, by all means. But don't just say, Hey, maybe we should do a four day work week and not think through what the impact is going to be.
Gene: That's pretty good stuff.
Carl: Thanks. Edit out some of the stumble mumbles, would you? Oh, right. There weren't any.
Gene: Mm, perfect. All right, man.
Carl: Gene.
Gene: I feel smarter.
Carl: I want to ask you one question.
Carl: What was your childhood nickname that you hated?
Gene: Crawfish.
Carl: Crawfish? Yeah, of course. Of course. And yet you use that sometimes.
Gene: Yep. I got over it. What about you?
Carl: I do not use mine. Mine was Casper. I was so light skinned.
Gene: Man.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Were?
Carl: On certain days. Oh, I, this is my dark tan.
Gene: We're kind of the same here right now.
Carl: Kind of similar. Yeah. But no, it was Casper. People called me Casper.
Gene: Yeah, that would me off too.
Carl: Yeah. Yeah. Luckily I was a dork as well. So I've able to defend myself.
Gene: Oh, boy.
Carl: All right, Gene. Time to find coffee and make shit happen. Have a great day everybody.
