PT employees doing good in the world

I've written extensively on this blog about my sabbatical, but I've given short shrift to the Principled Technologies' program that made it possible.  I'm very proud of this program and the good works many PT employees have done while on their sabbaticals, so I thought I'd tell you a bit more about it here.

In your seventh year as a full-time employee at PT, and in each seventh year thereafter, you are eligible for a seven-week paid sabbatical.  (You have to work out the timing with the folks who depend on you, and you can delay the sabbatical to later years, as I did, but you don't lose it.)  You can do anything you want with that time.  If, though, you choose to spend a week of it working with a charity to do some good in the world, then PT will pay five grand either to the charity or to cover your expenses to do the work.  So, if you want to work for a local charity, as I did, PT gives the full $5K to the charity.  If you want to fly to Europe to work on a charity, PT will pay your expenses for the trip--and then pay any money left over from the $5K to the charity.

So far, PT staffers have worked with charities locally, in South America, in Europe, and in Africa.  They've worked for all sorts of charities. 

I'm very proud of all they've done.

At PT, we've long believed that we should do good things for the right reason--because they are good things--rather than for any sort of publicity.  So, we've kept our good works quiet.  As we've grown and learned to see things from the perspectives of the charities and their causes, we've come to believe that sometimes it will do even more good to tell folks about what we're doing.  So, with caution and much thought, we're beginning to do that.

Part of that outreach is coming in the form of videos about what different staffers have done on their sabbaticals.  We're going to put those videos in a PT sabbaticals playlist on our YouTube channel, and we're also going to offer the videos to the charities for their free use.  The first of those videos is now live, so I thought I'd share it with you.  Enjoy.