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by Laurent Bossavit.
Original Post: Holiday waste
Feed Title: Incipient(thoughts)
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Feed Description: You're in a maze of twisty little decisions, all alike. You're in a maze of twisty little decisions, all different.
Do you know anyone who will be in the office tomorrow ? Who was in the office yesterday ?
I wrote "anyone who went to work" initially, and went back to correct that. Just because you're in the office doesn't mean you're doing any work. In particular, if you're in the office on a day where just about everyone else is away on vacation, and watching the clock until it's time to take off for the New Year's Eve party, it's a good bet that you won't be doing much productive work.
Now, that's fine if you're manning the phones, watching a closed circuit TV monitor, or otherwise in a profession where your presence is intrisically valued rather than your activity, but that's not the case in the software development business. Developing software is a creative activity, which is performed collectively and requires motivation and coordination in equal measures.
Looking back, though, I can remember many occasions when, on the eve of a major holiday (Christmas, New Year, May 1st and August 15th are the main such occasions in France) I dutifully turned up at an otherwise deserted office to spend most of the day twiddling my thumbs, or sometimes chat with the one other colleague there.
I've often wondered why none of my employers had the idea of just closing for that day. There's absolutely no incentive to use up a day's vacation in such situations. If you're not going away for Xmas, it's usually because you're saving it up for some other period (or have already used up your vacation, though that tends to be much more rare in this business). The salaries will be wasted anyway, so why not give everyone a day off, or maybe offer people to stay home at half pay ?
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