
The limits of "unlimited" vacation - MrValdez
http://jacobian.org/writing/unlimited-vacation/
======
tptacek
It seems like there's no reason companies can't do both: have an official
good-as-money PTO allocation for employees, like most companies do, _and_ have
the policy that employees can take any reasonable number of vacation days.
That policy works exactly like "unlimited vacation", while also (a)
maintaining a minimum annual number of days that every employee is _entitled_
to, regardless of how their team is managed, and (b) provides a fair cash
payout when the employee leaves.

This may be all the author is arguing for; I can't quite tell.

Unless there's some legal reason this policy can't work, the absence of a
formal allocation of vacation days in an "unlimited vacation" policy would
fail a sniff test for me --- your policy might be "unlimited" as a devious way
of not committing to any particular number of vacation days.

(Full disclosure: we just do a normal accrued vacation day policy.)

~~~
munificent
> have an official good-as-money PTO allocation for employees, like most
> companies do, and have the policy that employees can take any reasonable
> number of vacation days.

This is google's policy except that the latter bucket is _non_ -vacation time
off. Vacation -- time off work for your own enjoyment -- is tracked using
regular PTO.

If you're sick, need to wait for a delivery, have a dentist's appointment, had
some errands run long, etc., that's all untracked.

I really like the policy. If vacation was untracked, what that means is that
it would be effectively be _socially_ tracked. There would be informal mores
about how much you can take, and people would spend time observing how much
their coworkers take to get an idea of what an "OK" amount is. I think that
would be stressful and likely lead to vacation shaming.

At the same time, it really makes my life simpler to be able to schedule
appointments whenever it's convenient and not have to worry about "stealing"
time from work or having to think about burning PTO on it. In practice, I
haven't seen abuse of the policy.

~~~
eitally
This is how most exempt jobs work in the US. Paid vacation but untracked
personal time. generally speaking, untracked overtime offsets the cash value
of the benefit, which is sort of the point.

------
ulfw
'Unlimited' vacation is the biggest BS trend ever. How is it unlimited? Can I
take 365/6 days a year off? No? Well - then it's NOT unlimited, is it? Can I
take 100 days off? No - most likely I'll lose my job then. How about 50 days?
Can I take 50 off? Nope. Highly doubt I'd still be part of the team/company
then. How about 20? That's not much, right? Little 4 week vacation in SE Asia
or so? No? We have deadline? Team 'depends' on me? Hm...

Unlimited... riiiiight

~~~
umanwizard
The Netflix slide deck makes it clear that the company seeks to reward
performance only, not poor proxies for performance like number of days worked.
So if you took 100 days off, yet were still as useful to the team as the guy
who didn't take any, you'd be treated the same way as him in reviews.

Whether this is possible is up to you. Also, having not worked at Netflix or
Heroku, I can't speak to how well it works out in practice.

~~~
petilon
The problem is that it is often very hard even for experienced managers to
guess how long a software development task should take. So you do end up
measuring proxies such as how many hours a day you have been working, plus
your reputation and so on.

~~~
overgard
Estimation is hard, but, In most places I worked, after a couple of days it
was very obvious which people were the solid contributors and which people
were just along for the ride. Granted, those jobs were in the trenches where I
was working along side people so I would see what they were doing day in and
out, but I think that if you're a programmer, it's pretty obvious whose
productive and who isn't.

------
georgespencer
We have unlimited vacation at Rentify. Actually the policy is "take enough
vacation to avoid burnout, we don't count the days". The expectation
established when people join is that if work is being done, we don't care if
you take a few extra days of vacation.

The policy exists because I was once declined an extra vacation day by a
company I worked at which meant I had to take a flight costing an additional
$150. The extra day they got out of me in the office was my least productive
day of all time.

Vacation time is still approved by a line manager and is occasionally still
declined. Generally people act in the company's best interests but sometimes
we have to give context on why we can't allow a holiday.

The policy gets tricky when people leave the business, because we have to have
a formula to explain to them what the calculation is for their remaining
holiday pay. We try to be generous here and not simply take the UK statutory
minimum (iirc 28 days). One person asked for ∞ accrued vacation days to be
paid back to them which gave us a fun conversation about the difference
between "infinite" and "unlimited".

~~~
crystaln
"Generally people act in the company's best interests"

This is exactly the reason this policy is bad. People need to act in their own
interest and take vacation they need, which may not be in the company's best
interest.

Your language here is a huge red flag for this policy. This policy presumes,
incorrectly, that what is good the employee is good for the company. While
that is sometimes true, it is often not true.

The basic premise and expectation is that people should take only as much time
off as they need to remain good little not burnt out workers. That is not
something I agree with.

~~~
georgespencer
> People need to act in their own interest and take vacation they need, which
> may not be in the company's best interest.

It's almost always in the company's best interest for employees to be well
rested and not burned out

> This policy presumes, incorrectly, that what is good for the employee is
> good for the company.

Because it is, in this instance.

> The basic premise and expectation is that people should take only as much
> time off as they need to remain good little not burnt out workers.

The premise is that people can take as much holiday as they like. Some people
will take the minimum, and some people will take long periods.

~~~
Bahamut
While it may almost always be in the company's interest to have employees well
rested, sometimes employees want to schedule vacation that can't be
rescheduled at a particular time that may coincide with an important deadline.

In this situation, you run into some awkwardness that could screw over the
employee.

~~~
zwily
This happens no matter what your PTO policy is.

------
6cxs2hd6
I often found it discouraging to contemplate how much time and energy is spent
thinking and arguing about PTO (paid time off) policies. It turns everyone
into a FlyerTalk forum member. Worrying about how to game the system, or
prevent it from being gamed. Worrying that someone else is getting a better
deal. It's a huge time and morale suck.

Sometimes I wonder how much of the problem is the "P" in PTO. When you're paid
not to work, you're effectively getting a bonus -- being paid _more_ for the
time you _do_ work. This also makes it a hot button for labor law -- if you
leave with unused PTO, you need to be paid for it. Because it was never really
about the time off. It was about the money.

Instead, what about simply having "UTO" \-- unpaid time off? Take as much time
as you need or want. Everyone will understand you're not getting something
"extra" they're not getting. You're simply choosing to work somewhat less and
to be paid somewhat less.

And to be clear, if an organization switched from PTO to UTO, they should give
a one-time equivalent raise to make people whole.

I definitely don't claim this will resolve all the issues (humans in an
organization will always find _something_ upsetting). But wouldn't it
eliminate a very big chunk of the ill will?

~~~
callahad
A UTO plan sounds enticing, but it wouldn't address individuals who are
reluctant to take time off at all, leading to burnout. This is listed as
Jacob's first "Con."

Perhaps a combination? A minimum number of annually expiring PTO days, with an
open policy of UTO beyond that?

~~~
Fishkins
I agree this would be a major problem. It's one of the biggest problems listed
with unlimited vacation, and that's when you're still getting money for it.

I think the underlying problem is the conflation of hours worked with value to
the company. I think most people will be more productive for a company working
reasonable hours for at most 50 weeks a year than working all 52 (minus
holidays in both cases).

Accordingly, I think it is appropriate for a company to pay you to not work
some of the time. I think that fits with your suggestion pretty well: give an
employee 4 weeks PTO (or whatever you think will optimize their productivity
and happiness), with the option to take more UTO that might not be an upside
for the company.

edit: There should probably still be some reasonable cap on the additional
UTO. Not pay their salary during vacation still doesn't account for fixed
costs like health insurance and office space. In practice I don't think most
people would take enough UTO for this to be a real issue, especially with the
work culture in the U.S.

------
ChuckMcM
We have a pretty flexible vacation policy and I've observed one person (no
longer with the company) who was pretty abusive of that policy. That persons
behavior definitely had a negative effect on other's perception of them.

There is a certain type of person who will push the limit for the limit's
sake. And they will inspired others to push it. Have you sat in a line of cars
with a shoulder open, when somebody decides "hey I'm just going to pass
everyone on the shoulder" and once they decide that a bunch of other people
jump out into the shoulder because they don't want to be "chumps" waiting
while some "not chump" gets away with driving on the shoulder? Group dynamics
can have a huge effect on these sorts of policies (for good and bad).

~~~
afterburner
No I haven't seen that while driving, because passing on the shoulder feels
dangerous enough and you usually can't get ahead of the jam that way.

~~~
j79
Before I moved to California, I lived in a state where passing in the
breakdown lane (during certain hours) was permitted. I had coworkers who were
unaware of this rule and felt those passing were "jerks". Even explaining that
it wasn't illegal, they still felt they were "jerks" for not waiting with
everyone else...

I guess it's similar to lane splitting by motorcycles. Moving from a state
where this is illegal to one where it's legal was a shock (although I see a
ton of people lane splitting at insanely dangerous speeds...)

~~~
afterburner
I admit I've never heard of legal shoulder passing (other than obvious common-
sense exceptions).

------
JoeAltmaier
Article advises setting policies about what is normal, and then tracking. How
does this resemble an 'unlimited' policy in any way? It's nearly what we have
at every company now: a company vacation policy.

No, instead I'd advise setting a vacation minimum ("Everybody has to chill for
2 weeks minimum!"), then saying "take more if family contingencies come up"
such as debate tournaments, sick parent etc.

~~~
eli
RAND Corp pays employees extra for days they take off. Though of course it's
therefore tracked.

------
snowwrestler
Financial companies force certain employees to take 2 uninterrupted weeks off.
This is to reduce fraud--to get the employee out of the system so they
auditors can look for irregularities. But if course it's a great way to force
otherwise driven people to check out for long enough to reduce burnout.

Some companies also close entirely at times--usually the week between
Christmas and New Years, but I have heard of a few places that pick a week in
the spring or summer to close.

------
mattbee
Has any company with "unlimited" but tracked vacation actually revealed how
many days their staff take? And what disparities there are between individuals
and departments?

I'd bet that it's overall _less_ time than companies where vacation is
metered, but compulsory. e.g. mine in the UK is 25 to 32 days depending on
time at the company, plus bank holidays, and you've got to take it.

Peer pressure must conspire to _reduce_ what people take, especially in
companies that do "360 degree" peer reviews. And it would only take a hint of
management pressure to make staff feel guilty about booking holidays (or
cancelling those that they'd already booked).

For me "unlimited holidays" translates to "unlimited work hours", and I'd be
suspicious of companies that promote it as a perk.

~~~
0x0539
I don't know of any official revelation but I did get a little insight into
the amount of vacation taken at the company I work for when I had taken
'significantly more' vacation than the rest of my coworkers.

The most anyone else took was around the 4 weeks mark. I had taken a little
over 6 weeks and that was the upper limit that had my boss telling me I was
taking too much vacation. I felt a little shafted by than since my last job
was 5 weeks + sick time + bank holidays.

So that's not a lot of information for you but that would confirm your
suspicion that it is less. That said it does not translate to unlimited work
hours but our work is contract work. We get contracted out to other companies
so though we are expected to get the work done and sometimes work >8 hours the
expectation is that it will average out to 8hours a day. Be it 4hours one day
followed by two 10 hours days or what have you.

------
badman_ting
I work for a company that offers unlimited vacation, and I am skeptical of the
skepticism around this. To me it feels like some kind of backdoor
justification for the standard, shitty two weeks most American firms offer.
While I certainly agree that unlimited vacation can become a defacto way to
prevent employees from leaving at all, why would you work at a place that does
that to their employees?

In the case of my company, it's a long-standing practice and works very well.
People just say they're not gonna be around, and then they aren't. There's no
grousing about who takes too much time off. That actually would be working
against one's own interests -- I don't bitch about people taking time off
because I want to take time off too. (And yes, people can take _really really
long_ vacations to pray on a mountain in India or whatever)

I agree about the decoupling of unlimited and untracked, though. It could be
useful to have numbers about who takes how much time, as long as it's used to
encourage people who are working too hard to take time off, and not in the
other direction.

I think a company thinking of offering this benefit should make sure they
really mean it. Because if they don't, that's where all the trouble starts.
You probably need to be big enough to be in a position where Steve or Grace
can take a week or two off without dire consequences. High bus numbers.

------
cyberpanther
My experience with unlimited time off is that it almost always still needs to
be approved by your superior so whether it works or not depends on her. This
is means you can have widely varied results. I like your suggestions but they
inch closer to just having a set policy on PTO. So my suggestion is just be
generous with PTO but have a limit. If you don't have a set limit then people
who are intimidated by their superior will always ask for too little PTO. Set
the social norm in your company and don't make it so up in the air.

Open vacation policies kind of feel like the theory behind offices with
cubicals and open office spaces. Open offices and cubicals were originally
created to encourage collaboration between employees by tearing down walls
between people. Sounds good right! In practice this doesn't work because
people are scared of being too loud or of interrupting other employees. I
worked in an open office for a while, and it was horrible. It was such a
boring place because everyone was trying to be so polite not to make noise for
others.

I would love to see some numbers on whether open vacation policies encourage
or discourage people to take more vacation. It may be positive now, but I have
a feeling as it gets implemented by bigger companies it will turn into the
cubical of our generation. Office Space 2, The Endless Vacation? You heard it
hear first!

------
nraynaud
I would do a simplified minimal french system: five week paid, and if you want
more, it's unpaid. The boss approves the vacation, but in a collective code
ownership, that helps the bus size.

------
JimmyL
It depends on the jurisdiction, but a lot of the "guideline amount + tracking"
philosophy is driven by the law (and financial accounting).

For example, here's an except from some guidelines around the Ontario
Employment Standards Act:

 _Employers are required to keep records of the vacation time earned since the
date of hire but not taken before the start of the vacation entitlement year,
the vacation time earned and vacation time taken (if any) during the vacation
entitlement year (or stub period), and the balance of vacation time remaining
at the end of the vacation entitlement year (or stub period)._

So at least in Ontario, your employer is legally obligated to record your
vacation time each year, and on demand, produce a report on it. There are also
rules around when an employee has to take their vacation by, for example:

 _The vacation time earned with respect to a completed vacation entitlement
year or a stub period must be taken within 10 months following the completion
of the vacation entitlement year or stub period. The employer has the right to
schedule vacation as well as an obligation to ensure the vacation time is
scheduled and taken before the end of that ten-month period._

Since Ontario is also a jurisdiction with legally-mandated vacation time, at
any point in time the vacation that an employee has accrued but not yet taken
(or has rolled over from another year) should also be recorded as a liability
on a company's books, since it could be forced to pay out the equivalent
vacation pay (if the employee leaves, for example). The obvious way to get
around this - and I've seen it done in a few places - is to pay everyone their
full statutory vacation pay every year and then not count the vacation days
taken, but that's basically giving everyone a 4% raise, and isn't even an
option in some jurisdictions.

All of this is to say that unlimited and untracked vacations may not even be a
legal option everywhere, regardless of what we think of them.

~~~
pbreit
And this is why we need less government.

~~~
walshemj
Agreed employment law should be reformed and have one binding federal set of
employment laws instead of 52 state + Federal Laws.

with say 4 weeks stautory leave plus public holidays.

Of course thise meas a few less jobs for HR and lawyers but hey thats what you
call a win win suitation.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I thought states rights was a core tenant of libertarianism?

------
7Figures2Commas
"Unlimited vacation" is largely an accounting trick. Unused PTO is an accrued
liability on a balance sheet. By replacing PTO with "unlimited vacation",
companies are simply eliminating this liability from their balance sheets.
When you have a large, highly-paid workforce, this adds up.

~~~
logn
Absolutely true. I used to work at a company that was begging us to use our
PTO because it was impacting the books too much.

------
afterburner
Just offer 5 weeks of vacation minimum already (or more). Fixes the burnout
problem, satisfies those who like vacations.

------
dmourati
My last two companies have offered or will shortly offer this benefit. I read
the Netflix benefits deck a while ago and mention it frequently in
conversations with colleagues.

One benefit to this policy that goes unmentioned is the decrease in friction
in tracking PTO. In previous companies, I've had to find a PTO form, fill it
out, submit to manager for signature, submit that to Payroll/HR for tracking
and then finally take the time off. Payroll/HR has had to submit this number
to ADP who has had to track it on my paystubbs. My manager has had to track my
vacation and make sure I wasn't taking off without filling out the forms. When
I left, we had to reconcile PTO banked but not taken and pay that out.

With an "unlimited" vacation policy, all that friction, or at least most of it
is gone.

The one part about PTO I strongly dislike is getting "approval." If PTO is
offered as part of your job, you shouldn't need approval to take it. Notice,
yes, sure. Letting your team know you will be out is just good professional
ethics and behavior. But requiring your manager to "approve" has always
bothered me.

~~~
Namrog84
I was never a huge fan of taking full days off weeks in advance. I've always
preferred half days off. Some places won't always let you do this but my last
job of 5 years. Let me go home on a 1 minute notice or email my boss in the
morning that'd I'd be taking a half day off. Coming in late or not at all.
This was discussed with him beforehand and he did the same with his boss. I
was only give about 2-3 weeks total a year and I was always ahead on my work
and never did it during busier crunch like times. I can't imagine having to
fill out that kind of paperwork to take time off. That just sounds miserable.

Where I worked agreed with your statement. It's your assigned pto. You can
take it anytime you want because that's what it's their for. Obviously
everyone was ethical and respectful of timing. But it was a very relaxed and
low stress work environment with the ideal that the work will be done when it
gets done.

------
throwaway58142
This is a great article with some interesting proposals. It mirrors my
experience with the "unlimited" vacation policy at my cargo-cult startup
employer quite strongly.

The article didn't touch on one of the biggest selling points for pseudo-
unlimited vacation policies at startups: It frees the company from having to
account for and, depending on state laws, compensate employees for unused
vacation time. Unused vacation time is a financial liability in many
circumstances, so pretending you don't track vacation time frees you from
owing employees any extra compensation when they leave.

Also, it makes your job offers appear more attractive in comparison to other
companies' offers. Unlimited vacation time, in theory, is more desirable than
even a generous offer with 5 weeks of vacation time. Unlimited > limited. In
theory.

Honestly, after deeply burning out within a company with a supposedly
unlimited vacation policy, I wish we had just had a defined and tracked
vacation policy. We're allowed unlimited vacation, as long as we don't have
any big outstanding tasks to finish. The catch is that we're a startup trying
to accomplish too much with too few people, so everyone is always too busy to
take vacation.

This has all sorts of unexpected consequences that leave the company worse off
in the long run. Smart employees quickly learn that taking on new
responsibilities will quickly lock them out of taking vacation time. The
solution? Don't take on new responsibilities so you can justify vacation time
when you need to.

Meanwhile, a few bad apples will always exploit the unlimited vacation policy,
leaving the remaining employees with more work. Naturally, this makes the
remaining employees even less able to take the vacation they need. To make
matters worse, management responded by strongly and publicly discouraging any
use of vacation rather than addressing the few people who abuse the system.

Compounding our problems, the new unspoken anti-vacation sentiment from
management drives everyone to conceal their vacation plans until the last
minute. If you announce your intent to take vacation a month from now, that
gives management an entire month to come up with reasons to deny your
vacation. But if you announce on Thursday that you'll be out all next week and
the flights are already booked, there isn't much that can be done. As a
result, we have to scramble to make ends meet every time someone disappears
for 1-3 weeks without notice. And of course, management tightens the strings
even further on anyone who formally asks for vacation time in advance because
we're already short-handed due to other's vacation.

Finally, the unlimited vacation policy is strongly at odds with our
management's strong stance against any form of working from home. Those of us
who aren't disappearing at the last minute for 3 week vacations to foreign
countries have attempted to alleviate the resulting burnout by working from
home a few days per week. Management clamped down on that as well, demanding
that we spend our days physically in the office. As a result, it's now more
advantageous to _not work at all_ than it is to work from home for a couple
days each week because working from home is taboo while spontaneous unlimited
vacation doesn't actually conflict with policy.

Burn out abounds. Those who need vacations never have the opportunity to take
it or feel too guilty to force it. Those who need to work harder are M.I.A.
all the time. Employees are choosing to switch companies or quit outright as
the strings are tightened further on working from home or actually taking time
off.

In short, poor management and the resulting unintended consequences and
misaligned incentives from a poorly executed unlimited vacation policy can
have disastrous effects on the well-being of the team. Like any management-
style fad, it must be implemented with attention to the details. Cargo-cult
implementation that cherry-picks only the pieces that are convenient to the
company (no tracking, better sounding offers, less financial liability) will
quickly burn out employees as the unfair elements of the system come to
dominate. This article has some interesting suggestions that I would love to
see implemented by my company, though.

------
gsk22
As a relatively recent graduate now working for a startup with an unlimited
vacation policy, I find there are a whole slew of other uncertainties related
to unlimited vacation.

Am I expected to take as much time off as the 20-year industry veteran? Is
that equitable? What if he only takes one week per year?

As a recent hire, when is the socially-acceptable first time to take a long
vacation? Not the first month, certainly, but what about after three months?
Six? A year?

In my first four months at the company, I have seen one employee take two days
off. I live in a city with bitterly cold winters, so I understand many
vacations are taken during the summer months, but I find it hard to believe
the average vacation time per employee will exceed two weeks per year.
Unfortunately, I would prefer to take more than that (3-4), but I don't want
to be seen as lazy or less invested in the company than everyone else.

I love the flexibility of unlimited vacation, but I find the lack of
consistency or limits to be mentally draining.

------
m0nastic
I wonder if we're going to eventually wind up with policies similar to
commercial aircraft crews. Like, for every N weeks of work you are required to
take Y time off. It seems like the logical endgame (even though I hate
vacations, and would be annoyed by being required to take them).

I don't think that the companies who are advertising unlimited vacation are
doing so as a way to covertly pressure their employees to not take vacation;
even if it might be having that effect unintentionally. Or maybe some are, but
I can give most of them the benefit of the doubt.

I still have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that the eventual
makeup of businesses is a sea of 1099's, self-organizing around particular
projects and then dissolving at the project's conclusion. People seem to have
way too adversarial a view of employers for this not to seem like the future.

------
bowlofpetunias
I find it an unnecessary gimmick that leads to complications (some of them
mentioned in the article), especially in countries that already have a
considerable amount tightly regulated vacation days. (I.e., every Western
country besides the US.). For instance the legal obligation to pay out
remaining vacation days if someone leaves means you have agree on a number and
keep track of them.

In practice, 25 days vacation (with the option to save at least some of them
up over time) is more than enough for most people, and you'll be hard pressed
getting most motivated workers to actually use them all up.

Especially if you are a decent employer that allows people to work from home
if convenient and doesn't deduct vacation time for trivial matters.

~~~
walshemj
Actualy in the UK employers can and do enforce a use it or lose it - Reed
Elsiveer for example did not alow any carry over.

And its common to limt the carry over to a week.

------
rdl
I think I'd be happiest with 4-12 weeks of "vacation" per year, but in a way
which is minimally disruptive to the company. This isn't necessarily part of
the "unlimited" aspect of vacation, but can be related.

1) Flexibility to take short vacations whenever there isn't anything to be
done at work. This doesn't often happen in an early startup, but it's not too
uncommon in a larger company to have a day or two where there is some external
block. If you can work from home or otherwise be on email, there's no
particular reason to just sit in the office that day.

2) I personally count most conferences, even when speaking, as vacation --
even if the company is paying expenses. Essentially, if it's something I'd go
to myself, I'm happy to be going on the company dime, and it serves a lot of
the purpose of vacation.

3) When long distance travel is involved, I'd usually strongly prefer to take
a day or two before/after as vacation, particularly if it's somewhere
interesting (which, for me, could be a lot of places). Sometimes this is at
employee expense, but there are a lot of cases in consulting where flying
someone back for the weekend is more expensive than paying for a weekend
hotel. "Be reasonable" seems like the best policy for the expense part, but if
you don't have kids or another reason to go home on the weekend, why not spend
the weekend in Berlin or LA or something? (relatedly, I'm willing to use my
frequent flyer miles to help the company on travel when it's expensive, in
exchange for getting to use preferred carriers when the price isn't
unreasonable.)

4) In ops, it's often useful to have people show up on weekends (for a
consumer service, sure, you can push updates on Tuesday at 9am, but for
enterprise stuff, weekend upgrades are actually pretty common); offering 1:1
comp time for that is the baseline, but I'd probably go to 2:1 or 3:1.
Similarly with covering emergencies (higher premium if unscheduled) or
holidays (I personally love working on most holidays, but if I had to get
someone else to do it, I'd expect to pay at least 3 days of vacation per day).

------
wmt
The big problem of unlimited is that those who need it the most take it the
less. If they want to go all in, why not just give 6 weeks of vacation +
unlimited paid sick days? This gives everyone a healthy time off without the
problems of fairness.

------
WalterSear
A former large corporate employer of mine switched to this, a did this a while
ago, and it was clearly a thinly veiled way to replace actual PTO and
recuperative time with the odd extra three-day weekend. The H1 staff weren't
going to complain about it - they just waited until they had a critical mass
before switching to this.

I'd be equally critical of a start up that offered unlimited vacations. The
idea of there being a 'good time to take a break' runs directly contrary to
most start up's raison d'etre, and strikes me as equally disingenuous.

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lnanek2
He advocates tracking so everyone can take equal amounts...that kind of
removes the whole point of people taking as much as they need, which will be
different for everyone. I think he completely misses the concept that the
manager right above the employee is going to see everything and talk to the
employee if there is a performance problem anyway. It's not like you can fire
someone without paperwork indicating that anyway nowadays.

------
cwp
I wonder what would happen if vacation time were tracked and made public
(within the company). I'm sure outliers would come under social pressure to
conform to group norms, but it'd be interesting to see where the norm
stabilized. It probably depends a lot on other aspects of company culture.

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thrush
Why not educate potential employees on how they should utilize unlimited PTO?
This could be taught in school or some other non-biased source. If people
aren't taught how to utilize their PTO (or vacation days for that matter),
then there will always be the option for abuse.

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thelastpizza
This seems like a great way to avoid giving accumulated vacation time when
someone leaves the company.

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borplk
Tell me "unlimited vacation" and I will run as fast as I can and never look
back.

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jusben1369
It's an interesting statement that something as completely awesome as
unlimited time off whenever you want can be turned into a negative. I mean
people in other sectors would kill for this. Yet here it's viewed as a
potential tool of sxploitation. I think this is a symptom of a much bigger
problem worth discussing. If I state unequivocally that there is an open ended
no asterisk vacation policy and you say "you need to go further than that" am
I really the one with the problem? Or do you need to look inward a little more
and ask if you're at the right company/industry etc

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baddox
Did you read the article? There are clear examples of how it could very much
be a negative, including it causing people to take very little vacation time,
and enabling managers to discriminate against minorities or other groups.

~~~
jusben1369
I read it thoroughly. Ask yourself two questions. I) if your company
discriminates or exploits its workforce you've got bigger problems than set
time vs unlimited. II) it confuses causation. Companies with set time off will
still discriminate against employees if that's their DNA. So your back at "hey
If my company gives unlimited time off and I still feel uncomfortable maybe I
need to make a change" vs going on and on with ever more tweaks.

~~~
baddox
Discrimination can happen unintentionally, and it doesn't have to be limited
to specific groups of people. A manager could have a rough month due to some
family issues, and end up turning down more vacation requests during that
month. That sort of thing. If you have a set number of vacation days, it
becomes a lot harder to unintentionally discriminate, and a lot easier to
notice intentional discrimination.

~~~
jusben1369
If you have unlimited vacation policy he can't turn down your request though.
You just take it.

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nawitus
For starters, there should be unlimited sick days. In fact, that's the norm in
most Western countries, but not in the United States.

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leccine
unlimited PTO is saying that "we would like to give you something that you
can't potentially use". the sad reality is that in countries like France or
Brazil where you have 30 days, it is actually guaranteed that you can take
that many days off, while unlimited PTO startup employees end up using 10-15
days per year of the "unlimited PTO". it is like a bait to get more people to
work for them without actually giving anything. I would argue that we need 4
days work weeks that would be fair. The reason why we have 5 days is purely
based on the greed of the corporations. if i open my startup I am going to
offer 4 days workweeks instead of unlimited PTO, that is a better way to
respect your employees that giving a useless bait.

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michaelochurch
_This is in stark contrast to the trend of lumping both sick time and time off
into a single limited “PTO” bucket. Having an unlimited budget of time off
means you don’t have to worry about “banking” time in case you get sick._

Those policies are fucked-up. It's Enron-style accounting, a way for a company
to say, "we offer 15 days off" while lying through its fucking teeth. Counting
sick days against vacation is evil. By effectively forcing people to come into
work when ill and making the whole office sick, they're fucking with _my_
health (and everyone's, most of all the people who are already sick and
deserve rest).

Companies that have that pooled "PTO" bucket end up with people getting more
colds because sick people come in to work. So, even though people are in the
office more days, nothing gets done all winter. Like most mean-spirited HR
policies, the bulk effect on productivity is negative, but it enables HR
douches to look like they're saving money while externalizing costs to the
rest of the company.

Whoever came up with that "innovation" deserves to be sold into Roose Bolton's
captivity.

 _If unseen opportunities or obligations come up – invited to speak abroad?_

Companies that expect people to count conferences against vacation time should
be burned to the ground. (Figuratively speaking, of course, or literally but
only at 2:30 am when no one is in the building.) Professional development is
_part of the fucking job_ , assholes. If you're a scrappy startup and can't
pay for conferences, that's one thing. Making people take vacation to go is
just mean-spirited and horrible.

What there should be is:

(1) two week mandatory vacation, every year. Banks have this, to prevent
repeats of the SocGen disaster.

(2) 4 weeks vacation. That should establish 4 weeks as "the norm". If people
need more, they can take time unpaid. If they use a little less, they can
carry it over.

(3) sick time unlimited. If you suspect abuse, ask for a damn doctor's note.

(4) no vacation penalty for conferences related to the job.

(5) no stigma against unpaid leave, which should be unlimited as long as it
doesn't directly hurt the company. (Obviously, the CEO can't take 3 months off
without pay.)

If there's no stigma against unpaid leave, why is (2), the 4-week allocation,
so important? First, because in reality, unpaid leave will always carry some
stigma. So it's better to set the "official" PTO at 4 weeks, rather than at 2
while paying 4% more. Second, because I don't think there's any benefit to the
company in someone working 50 vs. 48 weeks per year and so it doesn't deserve
to be compensated as a general principle. (I'm all for people being paid back
for unused vacation when they leave, but I think that people should be
discouraged from taking less than 4 weeks off per year.)

~~~
praptak
What you described is pretty close to what the labor code guarantees in
European countries, only in EU it's a bit stronger. If an employee takes too
little vacation time the employer gets fined, period. This is nice - I don't
want to compete against workaholics or those easily pressured into
"voluntarily" working with no vacation.

