
Unlimited Vacation and Other Forms of Guilt-Based Management - miraj
https://mfbt.ca/unlimited-vacation-and-other-forms-of-guilt-based-management-44413269a184#.d4fcxdkoj
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wtracy
I'm inclined to believe the claim that "unlimited vacation" was originally a
way to get around having to compensate employees for unused vacation days when
they leave the organization.

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vinayan3
For publicly traded companies the PTO which has not been taken is actually on
the balance sheet as a liability. If that corporation moved to an unlimited
vacation time they can make the balance sheets look better. Also, most
companies would make people get paid out if they hit the cap. A good amount of
people weren't taking vacation and took the extra pay checks.

A big tech company changed the polices when I used to work there for the
aforementioned reasons.

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dethswatch
In addition, there was also the, "The company is closing down during the week
before New Years so that you may spend more time with your family."

Which is a not so clever way of clearing vacation off the books also.

I will no longer work for companies that play similar games.

I urge others to consider doing the same.

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MandieD
It's better to give a generous fixed vacation allotment - then everyone knows
where they stand and what's expected of them. Maybe even combine it with
conference allotment, if there are conferences your employees really want to
go to, but not to staff your company's booth.

I get six weeks vacation per year, and therefore don't mind spending one of
them helping out with a conference I love.

However, there are no rollover days, and my manager would catch hell from the
works council if I hit November with four weeks still available for the year -
unless I already had approval to take December off from earlier in the year.

Edited to add: I live in Germany, and my employer has a contract with IG
Metall, the big metalworkers union, and six weeks vacation was part of that
deal.

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e28eta
What are the other forms of guilt-based management?

Flexible working hours and/or free meals, with a work culture that has people
working long hours?

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vibrato
Scrum, particularly the daily standup, burn down charts, and retros

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sportanova
Horrible, infantile practices that somehow became "best practices"

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georgeecollins
I recently worked at a "no vacation policy" aka unlimited vacation company.
Anecdote is not data, but here are my experiences:

\- Like many startups, people did not take much vacation.

\- It was probably cheaper and certainly easier for them not to reimburse you
for unused vacation.

\- When in my second year I proposed taking a second trip (two weeks off
total) I could sense the disapproval. I'm a reasonably senior person and
taking two weeks off a year does not seem like that much to me.

\- Vacation was sometimes the precursor to giving notice. People knew they
were leaving, so it became safe to take a vacation and then give notice at the
end of it.

I would avoid companies with this policy.

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ahh
'patio11 put it well: "Suppose your company offered 'unlimited salary'." Makes
it pretty clear the social pressures that would show up.

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npiazza83
Some do... in the form of scaling bonuses based on peer review, overtime used
by salaried positions, and overall contribution to the company. Essentially a
pool of money is set aside based on how well the company performed for that
quarter. That's your "upper limit" just like there are 365 days in a year for
vacations.

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Alex_Butters
What about the idea of mandatory vacation? If a company gives you 2 weeks, you
must take it. If 2 weeks before the end of the year you have not used it, you
can't come in then.

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sokoloff
> In 2008, when you’d have been among the first companies to try [unlimited
> vacation]

Nonsense; I had this in 1997 and I think it was "far from unique" even back
then.

