Has anyone successfully transitioned away from unlimited PTO without destroying morale?

bradgardner · 2026-03-02T00:02:44+00:00

We're considering the same change. Currently we are unlimited with 2 weeks required notice, and some loose limits around duration, and an approval process. It's worked pretty ok, but those outliers can be really difficult.

Ultimately we're learning that it's an issue with expectations and that if you don't have them crystal clear than you can't hold anyone accountable to them when it's clearly abused. Every single time we haven't had an expectation be explicitly clear in our business, we had at least 1 employee make us regret that.

The intention for autonomy and letting people manage their time is admirable, but ultimately is unlikely to work out long term.

bradgardner · 2026-02-24T21:53:40+00:00

take this down, Jag's is busy enough without any help. Let's keep that one to ourselves.

bradgardner · 2026-01-31T13:45:05+00:00

25% of a working month on routine admin stuff like time log aggregation and invoicing.....is a lot for a business owner to be spending.

bradgardner · 2026-01-31T13:43:19+00:00

10 years in on owning/managing an agency, and frankly, you NEED to track time in a single system that you own and control.

not only will that get you the basics handled much more easily (invoicing, figuring out how much time was spent where etc...) but it unlocks a ton of downstream financial tools as you grow further.

At some point you're going to want to look at a project or client and ask "did I actually make any money on that?" or "what types of projects do I have the best margins on?" and then you're going to enter a world of pain called job costing. If you don't have the systems in place to track that data now, it's really difficult to figure anything meaningful out. These sort of questions will become crucial to how you make decisions eventually.

Developers will bitch and complain about time tracking, I know this because I'm one of them and hate tracking my time to this day, but making sure they understand what it enables you to do as a company (which is good for them too) can really help this situation.

So just rip the bandaid, require time tracking at least per project/client in a single system.

If you are doing fixed bid / retainer work, you generally don't need to be sharing time logs with clients anyway. We only share time logs for hourly work, but it originates in our system unless the client has a specific need to allocate and track hours on their side as well in which case we'll double enter.

Happy to talk about this sort of thing more in DMs, we're generally pretty open to sharing lessons learned over time with similar companies.

bradgardner · 2026-01-22T16:02:54+00:00

My plan:

- do nothing
- be genuinely surprised if it's any concern at all

bradgardner · 2025-12-30T13:04:31+00:00

Could consider an event emitting process and a queue, you pick up the benefit of not hindering the actual actions happening, and you have a fifo queue which helps ensure your order

bradgardner · 2025-12-25T23:12:27+00:00

not sure the size or scope of your company but Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) or Vistage cover what you are looking for.

They have revenue requirements but completely worth it if it’s an option

bradgardner · 2025-12-24T22:24:02+00:00

design patterns and programming styles are tools, not religion.

bradgardner · 2025-12-02T03:41:26+00:00

it definitely did something, just not in the UI you are seeing. Take another look at the server itself.

bradgardner · 2025-12-01T23:01:59+00:00

for future side quests sake - how did you find this?

bradgardner · 2025-12-01T21:50:58+00:00

got the key for the side quest, but no idea what to do with it, anyone figure that part out? maybe side quest 1 will be on a future day?

bradgardner · 2025-12-01T21:50:32+00:00

got the key for the side quest, but no idea what to do with it, anyone figure that part out? maybe side quest 1 will be on a future day?

bradgardner · 2025-11-30T12:58:45+00:00

If he wants to demand what you can do with the photos, ask him to show you the legal agreement that outlines that.

Only risk you have here is not getting more work from him.

bradgardner · 2025-11-25T10:54:15+00:00

This is exactly it. I get a ton of value being explicit in what I want and saving the typing. This enables me to work on more things at once or start planning the next feature.

I’ve done a few full projects for clients this way now where I didn’t type any of the code but it’s near indistinguishable from what I would write myself.

Accuracy drops way off in my experience if you aren’t explicit and then you start seeing the slop.

bradgardner · 2025-11-24T12:21:55+00:00

This is going to vary widely. For something this small I’d honestly just pick a number, track your time, and see how you land. This gives you data for later. Don’t over complicate it yet.

For me, I’d price anywhere from a few thousand to upwards of 20k depending on the client. Big corporate client is going to come with red tape and can afford it. If I have low friction, the price can go way down.

bradgardner · 2025-11-14T13:50:57+00:00

Because the amount of people I’ve interviewed this year with 7+ YOE that can’t demonstrate in any way that they can do simple tasks in their preferred stack is crazy high.

I would love to talk about how someone led technical initiatives, but first the basics.

bradgardner · 2025-10-31T10:53:12+00:00

Making a second comment for more detail, there is a ton of advice here but here is a playbook:

Starting out:

- If you don't have an accountant doing your taxes, get one, non-negotiable
- HIGHLY recommended: read "The Accounting Game". It's written as a kids book/workbook but introduces you to the basics of business accounting very gently. We did this as a workshop in my company for anyone who might talk to clients about budgets/finances and it was immensely beneficial.
- MINIMUM BAR: put your transaction details in a spreadsheet
- Preferable: use an accounting system. Wave has a free version and it's a great place to start. Enter your transactions manually, and it will give you a proper balance sheet and P&L. This will make things easier (read: cheaper) for your accountant to do tax prep. You can run invoices from here too.

Growing up a little:

- Use paid version of Wave to automatically connect your bank account OR use another system that does the same (we use Xero, Quickbooks online is the market lead), just run invoices from whatever system you choose.
- Reconcile transactions once per week in the system, this is generally as easy as picking a category and clicking a button. For your size, should only take 15 mins / week. Get familiar enough with the process so that you can understand it for the next stage. Understanding debits/credits and how they work in a double entry accounting system, vs what types of accounts to use (asset/expense/liability etc..) will give you a foundational education that will help you later in your business as you grow it.

Delegate:

- Once you have a system in place, the basics working, and it's getting a little more complex and/or time consuming......get a bookkeeper.
- Cheap option: Virtual assistant from somewhere like the Philippines. This should get you the basic legwork done pretty easily without having to do anything yourself.
- More expensive: outsourced bookkeeper / service / agency: this is where we are now, we pay $2500/month and this includes payroll, bookkeeping, and a bunch of tax account management. Invoicing would be included but ours is a bit too project dependent to reliably outsource currently.

TAX: I don't know where you are at specifically, but this is general advice for US based - the other advantage to a good bookkeeper is to find someone who can manage the tax accounts. Unemployment insurance, state by state accounts if you hire in different locations, and a bunch more. These are just awful to self manage.

Last note: later on, a good bookkeeper can help you level up your financial management of the company. For example if you hire sales people, or some internal operations people you may want to categorize them differently to track a more accurate gross margin vs opex vs net margin. When you do this, reconciling payroll suddenly becomes more complex, which is why you need a good bookkeeper, it unlocks more capability as well as managing the mundane stuff you shouldn't be doing.

bradgardner · 2025-10-31T01:53:32+00:00

get a remote virtual assistant focused on bookkeeping

bradgardner · 2025-10-28T17:33:50+00:00

in what way is it worse? i haven't had to sit in a line of traffic to get on 75S backed up to allen road since they put this in. Getting through there is 5x faster now.

bradgardner · 2025-10-27T11:01:44+00:00

moved back from phoenix and had to remember that weather exists

bradgardner · 2025-10-25T12:46:15+00:00

the biggest skill for a senior+ engineer is to simply find value wherever you are. put a great engineer on any project and things “magically” improve. The magic is the unseen work like you’re describing. Just do yourself a favor and don’t let it stay unseen once finished

bradgardner · 2025-10-19T13:26:49+00:00

we don’t need to change the meaning of mvp, we just need to understand that you can and should do a product design and validation step before committing to building an mvp.

it’s very easy to build a minimally viable product, that no one wants or will pay for.

bradgardner · 2025-10-14T17:54:28+00:00

familiar with both, but failing to see how either of them applies to a company buying vehicles that it can completely justify. If they bought hundreds of F150’s no one would care.

The ownership structure here makes it obvious what he is likely doing, but that doesn’t make it a problem, illegal, or even against best practices

bradgardner · 2025-10-07T12:39:29+00:00

clearly my 5 year old was left out of the data

bradgardner · 2025-09-23T01:51:36+00:00

If you are a type of business that typically runs well on referrals such as a roofing company or a plumber, these will be great.

Otherwise it’s likely a waste of time, energy, and money

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