Yes, but very expensive. The trips are not cheap at $700 a flight.
Ship captains and oil rig engineers leave their family for 6 weeks or more at a time. There are some people for whom this type of travel is workable, and some for whom it is not. If oil rig engineers can keep families and be away so much, so can programmers.
Oil rig engineers have to be away that much, or they're no longer going to be oil rig engineers. They also make disproportionately more money doing that particular job than they would if they did something else.
There's no natural requirement for programmers to leave their home/families (unless they're consulting). I suspect you're not giving your employees "hazard" pay either, are you?
If it were me, I'd want to bring my family along and turn it into a work vacation.
But what if this is condition of the job? When you apply, you are informed that you have to do this. If its unacceptable, you simply do something else.
Then you might miss out on a lot of talented people, because being away for a month at a time is a strange requirement for a programmer. Most people have families, friends, significant others, pets, or WoW guilds they simply don't want to be away from for a month at a time. The emotional toll of homesickness could very easily end up costing you.
Not to mention, if your employees are in committed relationships you're also subjecting them to a month without sex. I don't know if it's worth $2800/month to have two months a year where your employees are homesick and sexually frustrated.
There are a lot of talented people in the world and Max needs to hire, hmm, five or ten of them? Being a Japanese salaryman probably wouldn't sound that attractive to the average American but there are a few of us defective types who do/did it anyway.
(Speaking of quirky individual preferences: I'm a strict Catholic. Two months, huh. <dry>How ever would I cope.</dry> You can probably find five or ten other people with similar preferences -- it is a big Internet.)
I think he's an unmarried Catholic, so he's not having sex already; two months of not having sex amidst a lifetime of not having sex isn't really an issue for him.
He'll change his tune pretty quickly, I'm sure, after getting married (from one "strict" Catholic to another).
Oh definitely, I'm not saying he won't be able to find people. All I'm really saying is I wouldn't accept a job that required that of me, and I wouldn't be happy if my work implemented this policy.
Different strokes for different strokes I suppose. <Insert celibacy joke here.>
Imagining an existing company implementing a policy like this and forcing it on its employees is pretty different from a small startup deciding on it (with the enthusiastic buy-in of the principals) and then going off and hiring people who are excited about it.
I've worked as a consultant for years. It's a job that requires a lot of travel. We don't hide this from prospective hires, and despite having a schedule that's a lot more rigorous than 1 month in 6, and going to places that are a lot less swank than a five-star in Bangkok, we've never had trouble recruiting.
Actually I think there are a lot of people for whom the possibility of traveling twice a year to some semi-exotic locale and having their food/drinks/entertainment comped would be a big draw. As long as you're okay with the demographics that tends to lean towards -- young people, probably fresh college grads -- you might end up finding people willing to work for less, because they'd see the travel as a benefit, than if you were hiring for a cube job.
A lot depends on how you spin it, and what kind of people you try to recruit. It's going to affect the character of the company a lot though.
Absolutely true. However it also frees them to hire people who live anywhere in the world, which gives them access to a lot of cheap talent that they otherwise would find hard to access.
Given that they have 5 employees in 4 countries scattered across 2 continents, this is a pretty big benefit.
Turning into a working vacation works until your kids reach school age, or your significant other gets a job of their own that they can't just "put on hold" for a month.
Your current proposal is two trips per year. My idea was 6,or 4 extra trips. If it's $700/pp and you have 5 people, that's $3500/trip. So, my recommendation adds an extra $14K to your yearly budget.
However, staying some place for a week vs. a month should cut the hotel bills and food/meal/bar bills by 75%. You reference $200/day for food/bar. Two month-long trips is 60 days of this expense. 6 week-long trips is 42 days of this expense, or an 18 days savings, or a $3600 net savings. Factor that against the $14K increased flight cost and you're adding $10K/year, or $830/month increase. Based on the way you presented the finance details, this still doesn't seem like a big factor, and could potentially remove a lot of stress from employees personal lives if they don't have to be gone for month-long stretches. Of course, if your employees LIKE a big break from their family, then this may not add any value for them :)
You may have a point on 4 trips per year being better than 2 trips. Two weeks will certainly be more interesting, but I'm afraid that the amount of productivity may not be quite as high. If the trip is too exciting, it will drop productivity, but if people have time to get used their surrounding, they will settle down and start working.
Well, in reality if you have to keep bringing people together for a month at a time to an exotic place, you have a larger problem looming.
Assuming you have decent people and an engaging goal in the company, then these jaunts should really be more about strategizing and prototyping vs. doing "actual" work.
I would consider these more like regular "Demo Days" and brainstorm sessions. My personal bet would be that higher-frequency, shorter duration meetings would allow every one to come together, collaborate, get inspired, and then go off on an 8 week productivity binge. These little trips SHOULD be mini vacations for the team.
The more I think about this, I almost think you're doing it backwards. You'll get 2 months of high-productivity work (the 2 months the team is all together under your plan) and another month of mid-productivity work (the first 2 weeks of the next month after each trip) and then (IMO) a steady taper of productivity back toward zero until the next month-long getaway.
I think these meetings can serve to add momentum to your org. Keeping an object in constant, regular motion is usually more sustainable if the object gets a "shove" at more frequent intervals.
Typical oil rig work is 6 weeks on, 4-6 weeks off, as in, actually off, there's no office you have to show up to. So that kind of lifestyle can work pretty well, you can look after the kids or do DIY or just relax full-time between stints.
$700 is pretty cheap... Go look at what business-class flights cost on Expedia.
If you're there for a month, I imagine a few of your employees might want to "get acquainted" with the locals (more likely other tourists, in reality, but makes little difference.) Perhaps a spare room is in order? ;)
Also: I think this idea is pretty cool. I might side with others that four 2-week trips would be preferable, but traveling like this is definitely something that appeals to me.
the other issue too may be driving each other crazy after 3 weeks and having to go another week with each other. One week seems like a good amount of time to spend in close proximity without getting burned out from each other. Maybe it will take some time to figure out the best ratio. You guys seemed to do really well with 1 week - what extra benefit does 3 more weeks at the same time provide?
I also think the 5 month cycle between trips could cause a lot of repetitions of falling back into a boredom mode.
Seems more like 1 week together every 8 weeks would be more manageable and logical overall.