Two weeks off during Christmas

Comments

# PatriotB said on February 15, 2006 9:13 PM:

It's a good idea for manufacturing companies to have "shutdown" weeks like that.  That way, they can have a time to do equipment maintenance without affecting production.

The place my dad works at used to have a shutdown week during the summer, until they got bought out.  Now, the "idiots in charge" got rid of the shutdown, citing "you can't serve the customer when you're shut down".  And so, now equipment runs until it breaks, ultimately costing more in unexpected downtime.  Good stuff.

On the other hand, I don't think mandated vacation makes sense for a software company.

# Ivan Joseph said on March 3, 2006 6:13 PM:

Certainly not from a maintainance standpoint but might even be more efficient from a productivity perspective.

Today with people taking time off at different times during the year often in meetings we find that someone is unavailable since they are on vacation. Under such a situation, while people would still take time off, to an extent we would have reduced the number of people who are away.

Even from a planning perspective, if we know this in advance, we can plan work around these holidays and so maximize uptime.

Some of the benefits are hidden but if we tried to analyze them in detail, might turn out to be non trivial.