Two Weeks Vacation is only a Recommendation, not a Rule

How much vacation time did you take last year? If you're like most workers in the States, it was probably less than 3 weeks. That's all your company will give you, right?

Wrong.

3 weeks is the amount of PAID vacation your employer will compensate you for. The actual amount you take has nothing to do with that number. In practice, the amount of vacation time you can take is directly related to your value to the company. And let me give you a little hint: You are a lot more valuable to your employer than they are to you.

I stumbled across this idea early in my career, and didn't even realize it. I was about 3 years out of school, working as an environmental engineer at a big consulting firm. It was the mid-90's, at the height of the downsizing era. Morale was low and people were leaving the company fast.

One day, I was looking at a little backpack I owned and it occurred to me that I could probably fit enough in that pack to live on for 3 months if I wanted to. Hmm… I hear the climbing in Southern France is pretty good. Maybe I'll look into a flight…

Two days later, ticket in hand, I strolled into the office of my department head. I caught the flash of exasperation on his face before he greeted me (he was fielding about one resignation a week at this point, so he probably expected the worst). "Don't worry," I said. "I'll be coming back in August."

That was it. No begging, pleading or anything. Just a bit of shuffling to make sure my plate was clean before heading out, and that was that. Life at the company didn't skip a beat, and 3 months later I picked up where I left off just like I would have after a week in Cancun.

At first, I figured that this must have been a special case. The company was in tough shape, and I was in a unique position to take advantage. Turns out though, that I kept finding myself in this position of advantage time and again over the years. So much so, that it finally dawned on me just how valuable a good employee really is to an organization.

Cut to 3 years later, and I'm on a small, tight programming team for a little dot-com startup. I've been there for almost a year, and it's time for a bit of R&R in Central America. 6 weeks off should just about do it. So I sit down with the boss, and start listening to the old "yeah… we're kind of in crunch mode right now… I'm not sure we can spare you for even 3 weeks, let alone Six…", so I just cut it short:

"Well, I'd really hoped I would be able to come back when I was done. I really like this company, and it's too bad to hear that I'll have to be leaving…"

And that was that. The tone of the meeting turned on a dime, and the next day I had a 4-week leave of absence approved and tacked on to my 2 week vacation request.

So here's the one thing you need to take away from this:

You are more valuable to your employer than they are to you.

It is nearly impossible to hire a good developer. Talk to anybody that's ever had to do any hiring in this industry and they'll tell you that there are simply no good candidates out there. It will take at least 6 months effort to hire a developer that can find his arse with both hands. If you are already in the door and delivering code, you can be assured that your company does not want to lose you. Sure, they'll do their best to make it sound like they don't care about you. They might even utilize the industry standard "Layoffs Are Coming!!! Panic NOW!!!" motivational techniques. But believe me, if push comes to shove, they'll find a way to keep you.

Tell them you're planning to take 2 months off. Don't ask. Tell them. Make it clear that you're going to go regardless of whether there's a job waiting when you get back. They'll accommodate you. Trust me.

A few Caveats to the above:

• You're not going to get paid for those 2 months off. You'll get the first 2 weeks or whatever paid for, but from there on out it's just a leave of absence. You'll need to save up a pile of cash ahead of time. If you've dug yourself so far into debt that you can't float along a measly 2 months without pay, I guess you're out of luck.

• This only works once every couple years. Don't get into the habit of storming into the boss's office every 3 months demanding another month off. You'll soon find yourself with all the free time you need.

• This only works if you are actually good at what you do. Take a quick self assessment first: Can you code your way out of a sack? Honestly? Cool, go for it then.

• This only works if you are prepared for the possibility that your employer will call your bluff. You may very well end up without a job as a result of doing this. If the prospect of having to look for work is that scary to you, then you should probably just sit tight and book that 5 night package holiday to The Bahamas. But then, if the idea of unemployment is really that scary, it's likely that you were fibbing a bit on that self assessment above. Jobs are plentiful for the truly skilled.

How Google killed Search

It's official. It is now completely impossible to find things on the web using a search engine. Try this out. Go to Google and see if you can find a

cheap hotel in new york

What comes up? Any hotels? Not really. Just page after page of spammy affiliate sites that promise to find you great deals, but will really just send you off to other affiliate sites. Click along and you'll fall down this black hole of non-content and Google Ads with no hope of ever finding a real website where you can book a cheap hotel in New York.

I blame this phenomenon on Google's Pagerank algorithm and its reliance on link counts. The quickest way to get to the top of the rankings is to produce tons of empty pages all across the web, all linking back to your thing. So you get this huge global competition to see who can produce the most useless content and shove it out onto the web. Everybody knows it's not really content, but the game is to fool the search engines into indexing it anyway. Let this strategy play itself out for a few years and you get the Internet in its current state. 21,800,000 pages all wanting to tell me about cheap hotels in New York. Only 1 of which is Expedia.com (and it's not in the top 30.)

It's a lot like the state of professional boxing in the '80s. You had this kid who could fight, so you'd put him in against some guys you thought he could beat and he'd get some ranking points for himself. Then you'd find some highly ranked fighters who were on their way out and let him fight them, boosting his ranking some more. Then you'd get some other kids that weren't really all that good to start with, but you'd boost their rankings in the same way until they had enough points to put in against your guy. He'd beat them easily and get even more points for himself.

This would go on for a few years, with your kid steadily climbing the rankings without ever really fighting anybody good, since everybody you put him in against had had their ranking inflated by the same means. Finally, there comes the day when he's earned himself a title shot. What happens? Mike Tyson knocks him out in 18 seconds and that's the last you ever hear about him. (And Don King pockets another $20 Million.)

So maybe that's what Google needs, the SEO equivalent of the Tyson fight. If your site manages to weasel its way into the top 5 for a given keyword, you get some real people to put eyes on the thing and see if it can hang with the competition. That way, people like you and me would never have to sift through search engine results from www.dealz-4-hotelzz.pl just because they managed to link spam their way up the rankings.

ps. I'm in no way guilt free in this area. Before writing this today, I spent the morning trolling around editme.com and picking up a couple high-ranking domains from them (travel.editme.com and wus.editme.com), which I am now using for shady SEO practices...

pps. Check out the new changes to the World Browser at Blogabond!