This Startup Is Paying People To Take A Two-Week Vacation Before They Even Start

Startup employees these days enjoy some of the sweetest perks, from free massages and yoga classes to helicopter rides and even four-week shutdowns.

42Floors, a San Francisco-based real estate startup, is taking it up a notch with a job offer that includes a pre-vacation period: You have to take a two-week paid vacation before your first day.

42Floors' CEO Jason Freedman calls this a "pre-cation."

According to Slate's Will Oremus, Freedman came up with this concept while talking to a job candidate he wanted to hire. The guy was looking for a new job because he was totally burned out from his previous job. Yet, when he talked to other companies, all he was asked was, "How soon can you start?"

Freedman ended up convincing that guy to join his startup with a "pre-cation" clause, and now it's something offered to all new hires, he says.

"The day they get their offer letter, it's kind of like Christmas morning, in that they have a new job and they've already thought through the vacation they're about to go on," Freedman told Oremus.

Even with such perks, however, Freedman says the "pre-cation" hasn't cost his company anything because the total vacation time of his employees hasn't increased at all. In fact, he says, the "pre-cation" program is helping boost his company's profit because his employees are happy at work.