A old leader in an evolving workforce

As a recovering workaholic, I still really enjoy being in the office. I get up on Saturday mornings and go through any emails I missed from Friday. Much to the displeasure of my team, I send them emails based on thoughts I have but didn't have time to share. If we've ever talked at great length, I have probably shared my mantra about always working, "when sharks stop swimming, they die". I love working, interacting, meetings, etc.

I was at ebay for several years and loved the progressive nature of their business. One day while reading email, ebay unveiled their sabbatical program. If you accumulated 5 years of service you were entitled to 4 weeks off with pay. I mulled this over and determined that this was in conflict with my desire to be awarded my gold railroad watch after 25 years. "How could I take 4 weeks off"? "If they can do without me for 4 weeks, they don't need me". This did not compute with me and I chose to not to take my sabbatical (as I watched others enjoy free time off).

Also while working at ebay, I inherited a team that worked in Europe. I was introduced to a widely accepted concept called "holiday". Employees were given 4 weeks off to enjoy the summer months. Now i'm starting to believe in the demise of modern civilization. Of course, while I was overly concerned about "how do we cover for all of these people"? I was reminded that this is not a new concept and, in the end, it all turned out well.

So now i'm beginning to doubt my old school work ethic disciplines. I've always been a believer in humanity and when dealing with people I've always been a student of "if we work together, it WILL work out". Am I slowly becoming a dinosaur? I'm in a bit of a professional dilemma.

The next chapter in my evolution was when I was informed that there are companies who are offering PTO with no limits. My internal primal scream was deafening. How could?, What if?, What about? All of the same questioning came to mind. However in spite of my lack of comfort, I was reminded that "it not only WILL work out, it has worked out in my past". So like all of those people who are members of "Polar Bear Clubs", I chose to strip down and jump into the freezing water. Midwest Cloud Computing offers unlimited PTO to all of its Administrative and Leadership staff.

Strangely enough it has worked out very well. Work gets done, customers are happy, and there is no drop in service. I'm feeling that i'll be very open minded when the 4-day work week becomes our new reality. There's probably several "moral of the story" or "in conclusions" to this story. However, i'm taking the afternoon off so I don't have time.