Hey HN! I built StretchMyTimeOff as a quick experiment using Cursor (Anysphere's AI code editor) and GPT-4o to see how far AI could go in building a simple, functional site.
What it does: The site helps you get the most out of your vacation by suggesting optimal days to take off around national holidays, maximizing long breaks with minimal vacation days, anywhere in the world and for any calendar year.
It's an idea I've had for a while, and building the algorithm with GPT was a fun challenge. Any feedback or ideas I'm all ears :)
Nowadays, I find that the best time to take PTO is when I feel like taking PTO. Taking a long weekend when I’m feeling burnt out or disengaged goes much further for me than grinding for the entire first half of th year to get a week off for 4th of July. YMMV.
As such, taking off Fridays tends to get me less ROI while Mondays tends to be nice because while everyone deals with problems from the last week head on, I can roll in on a Tuesday with the benefit of their insights and progress. Then there’s the fact even if I’m off on Friday people I socialize with are likely still working anyways so… it could be any day for myself.
Looking at the calendar and seeing the next holiday is 6+ weeks away can really drag you down.
I don't know, seems much easier that if you dont want to work then don't!
I mean the tool OP posted recommended 2 weeks off at the end of March into April on the easter holiday (because of the friday and monday holiday)... who is honestly doing that?
This topic has always rubbed me the wrong way I think because its way too closely tied to the whole workaday / "work sucks" / ratrace / 9-5 mentality.
One other thing as I continue my rant, related, the whole "plan your holidays for the next year so we can figure out the resource planning, even if you move your holiday!" Ugh so depressing, I always am like "welp next year is planned already and its only November". Nothing spontaneous, nothing interesting.
Anyway, I realize also I am likely in the minority here, HN folks will do anything for a "hack".
sad parents tied to school holidays noises.
If your trying to maximize "contiguous days off" and you truly don't care when it is, a tool like this is super helpful.
It's like peak cross country season?! Still loads of snow, but nice weather. I skied in shorts and a tshirt for days this easter!
You know you don't have to do as the tool says? It just highlights one of many variables you can use when deciding when to take your time off. If you have other needs (as your weather thingy, or spontaneity, or when kids are off school), you are of course free to take that into account.
i am absolutely lost in why anyone would do that. And on other side, resource planning is only lame excuse.
But AFAIK most of western europe goes that way.. which is a preliminary planned existance. Boring like hell. Where is Life?
Anyway, OP has a point. I hate traveling on the same day everyone else plans to due to some holiday gap / bridge / whatever.
« In […], there are 11 public holidays in 2024.
Let's stretch your time off from 25 days to 61 days »
61 actually adds up my time off (25) with adjacent week ends and public holidays (27). The 9 missing are week ends already next to public holliday but without any proposed time off extension. If you’re gonna count the WE next to PU it would be fair to include them in the initial count.
The inconsistency is that I didn’t count one Saturday next to a public Holliday in Sunday, while the +9 I’m referring above are Friday/Monday next to week ends.
I know this does not make your product less useful, but in a psychological perspective it toggle my defence mode instantly [0] in the same way an over promising advertisement as the opposite effect than expected.
0: discussion ongoing here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42113449
He would count the days of, than all the weekend, then all the hours I am an home across the year (so double counting what he subtracted before) etc, ending with zero days left for school.
This was driving me mad when I was walking to school :)
Making it super customisable would be tough, as then it becomes just a personal calendar. Maybe showing the rankings transparently (3 options tied, choose which one wins) could be nice.
for example, my company has mandatory shutdown days, I have x additional days leave, and z study days leave that I expected to not use more than 1 study day in the same week and I need to use some of my leave by 30 jun as australia businesses manage the financial year as july to june, not jan to december.
Like maybe make the days clickable and give us a popover button for : it'd like this day to be free - and just tread this day as a holiday from there (while deducting the day from the quota)
I was wondering where you got the list of countries from or whether you're using a library for the dropdown?
(Curious because visiting the site from Taiwan it lists it as "Taiwan, Province of China")
I can see there was already much discussion about this topic over on their repo https://github.com/michaelwittig/node-i18n-iso-countries/iss...
- The subtitle telling me I can "stretch [my] time off from 20 days to 42 days" is quite misleading. This tool doesn't magically give me more vacation days.
- Much of the page isn't helpful (in NL there are 6 consecutive months without holidays), would suggest only showing months where "stretching" is possible.
This year it looks like you can achieve the following: In december, take 23rd and 27th off and you get 9 days consecutive time off between 21st and 29th. Add 30th and 31st, and you'll get 12 days consecutive. Add 2nd and 3rd of January and tada, you have 17 days vacation for the price off 6 PTO days! The website linked in this post doesn't get this quite right, as 24th is technically not a public holiday but the vast portion of companies regard it as such.
"Lördag och söndag räknas inte som semesterdagar annat än i fall som avses i 9 § tredje stycket. Med söndag jämställs allmän helgdag samt midsommarafton, julafton och nyårsafton."