I'm an SRE at Google. I switched to 3 days/week (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday) on January 1, 2018, and it's been insanely great. Every weekend is now a 4-day weekend. I now have the time and energy to make meaningful progress on personal projects on which I was previously stuck for a long time.
As expected, my annual vacation time (along with my salary, bonus, stock grants, and stock vesting) is 60% of what it was when I was full-time. However, holidays that fall on Monday or Friday (of which there are about 8 per year for U.S. Googlers) now generate comp time for me to take whenever I want. Furthermore, about once per quarter I have a week-long oncall shift which requires me to be in the office for 8 hours on Monday and Friday; each of these oncall shifts generates 2 comp days for me to use later (a total of 8 comp days per year).
Working only Tue/Wed/Thu means I can go away for 11 consecutive days by taking only 3 days off. So far this year I have:
- taken a 10-day trip to Japan,
- taken a 10-day trip to Iceland and the UK, and
- done a 10-day silent meditation retreat.
Google has HR policies that support flexible work schedules. I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case at most of the larger tech companies.
As expected, my annual vacation time (along with my salary, bonus, stock grants, and stock vesting) is 60% of what it was when I was full-time. However, holidays that fall on Monday or Friday (of which there are about 8 per year for U.S. Googlers) now generate comp time for me to take whenever I want. Furthermore, about once per quarter I have a week-long oncall shift which requires me to be in the office for 8 hours on Monday and Friday; each of these oncall shifts generates 2 comp days for me to use later (a total of 8 comp days per year).
Working only Tue/Wed/Thu means I can go away for 11 consecutive days by taking only 3 days off. So far this year I have:
- taken a 10-day trip to Japan,
- taken a 10-day trip to Iceland and the UK, and
- done a 10-day silent meditation retreat.
Google has HR policies that support flexible work schedules. I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case at most of the larger tech companies.