Vacations and holidays

You'll find below information about how we take time-off at MadKudu and our thinking about it.

👋 Just want to know what to do before going on vacation? Click here to get straight to the check-list.

Context on vacations


At MadKudu, we believe in "work hard, play hard". Our work ethics is very strong. We know that hard work is needed to accomplish great things. At the same time, we also believe that breaks are needed to recharge and enjoy the larger journey of life.

An interesting challenge with MadKudu: we have offices in two of the most extreme countries as far as vacation policy is concerned.

France offers some of the most generous vacation policy in the world: 25 paid vacation days + 11 paid public holidays

The US offers one of the least generous: 0 mandatory paid vacation/public holidays. In practice, full-time employees earn on average 10 paid vacation days after one year of service. And companies usually give 8 days of public holidays.

We currently have to offer two different systems depending on whether you're based in the Mountain View office or the Paris office.

Kudus under US laws 🇺🇸


MadKudu has a "minimum" vacation & time-off policy.
We pretty much follow the policy of Baremetrics ("Good artists copy; great artists steal")

Some highlights:
  • There is no hard limit on the number days we can take.
  • The guideline is that you should take at least 3 weeks off throughout the year with at least one week-or-longer vacation.
  • We do track days off with the intent of "ensuring time off is being distributed and managed as fairly as possible (again, knowing that every team member is different)".

Planning to take some time-off? Here is the checklist...



Before taking time off

**Update this spreadsheet** with your future dates
Notify your team leader to confirm there is no unexpected dependencies and check if someone has taken time off already in those dates (#common-sense)
If you're under a French contract, update your day offs in Payfit (legal requirement)
Update your gmail Calendar with your vacation dates (create a full day event)

A week before taking time off

Coordinate with your team to make sure you have proper coverage and what the escalation policy should be while you're off
Schedule your email auto-responder appropriately

Kudus under French laws 🇫🇷

We follow French laws: ie. 25 days of paid vacations.