How many days of vacation do you get a year? Five days? Two weeks? None? Imagine not only getting a lengthy vacation from your place of employment but also having your employer pay for your luxurious holiday? Sounds like a dream or some make-believe place right? It’s actually real and these spectacular perks are offered by the web development company Basecamp.
Basecamp prioritizes standard-of-living and the company views perks as a major benefit to not only the employees but also the company as a whole. Basecamp offers more-than-competitive salaries, healthcare plans, and 401(k) matching, as many companies do. But in addition, they also give their employees $5,000 a year to go on vacation. You read that correctly, they pay their employees to sit their buns on a tropical beach with a melting tropical drink in their hand to rest their minds. In addition to the annual vacation stipend, Basecamp offers their workers $100 a month for home massages, $100 a month for fresh produce, 16 weeks paid parental leave, and tenured sabbaticals every three years. If all of these benefits weren’t enough, they also have a shortened 4-day, 32-hour work weeks during the summer.
Jason Fried is the CEO of Basecamp and he said that he wants to give his employees even more perks, but he’s encountered a problem. Not that he doesn’t have the money or employees are already too spoiled. The reason is that he has already implemented all of them into his company. “I’d love to continue to give more and more things to make people happier and more comfortable, I’m just running out of ideas for it.”
“Go enjoy the weather, go enjoy the weekend, go on vacation,” Fried said. “It’s really about distancing yourself from this trend of being always on, always working.”
In fact, Basecamp encourages his employees to provide ideas for new perks. Employees submit new perk ideas, then there is a vote among the staff, and if it passes the vote then Fried will decide if the benefit is feasible. “Basically, if people ask for something that’s reasonable, we give it to them,” Fried said.
Basecamp is able to offer all of these incredible perks because the company is entirely self-funded, with no board of directors. Plus they are not a huge corporation, with little more than 50 employees.
Right now there are no open positions and the company admits that “openings are a bit of a rarity.” With those amazing benefits one would imagine that there isn’t much turnover. But you can see if there is a job opening at Basecamp here.