161–170 of 336 posts
When people need to be "available" while on vacation it usually means that there is way too much dependency on that person or insufficient knowledge-sharing. It shows the glaring holes on what's being hacked together and where systems can strengthen.
Of course the other reason for 'unlimited vacation' is so when an employee leaves, the company doesn't have to pay them for unused vacation days. Huge red flag when a company has 'unlimited vacation'
IIRC, the company doesn't have to pay you for unused vacation days even if you don't use them. It's pretty much at the discretion of the company.
Other states view vacation as just an agreement between you and your employer. You basically agree that there are so many days you don't have to show up to work and they'll still pay you. That's it.
In the past I worked remote for an Atlanta-based company, and their employee handbook stated that they will pay out vacation up to a maximum of 40 hours. Anything in excess of 40 hours you had in the bank, you forfeited. I lived in a St Louis suburb in Illinois at the time, and as an Illinois-based employee they paid me my full vacation bucket when I quit.
Similarly, a friend of mine worked remote for the same company, but lived just across the river in Missouri. When she left, she got her vacation capped. MO and GA are among the states that do not view vacation as earned compensation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you do this without creating a bloated organization? For example if you have 20 team members and expect for 2 to be gone for some kind of vacation at any point. When all are at work you have a 10% inefficiency. I wonder if it would be more effective to have have stretches of intense work (4-6 months) with long rest periods (1-3 months) between. This would minimize the operational switching frequency, though it…
You are conflating hours with productivity. Let's assume that no engineer is getting less than 2 weeks of vacation off a year on paper. Most of these articles are written by people giving 4 weeks of vacation. So we're talking about the difference between a 'stingy' vacation policy and a generous vacation policy being 2/52 weeks in the year. If people gain more than 4% productivity by avoiding burnout, you net win by…
He is divorced, and his kid is across the US, so he ends up using all his vacation to see his kid. Now he is left with nothing to take a real vacation with his current spouse, and they both really want to.
Of course the other reason for 'unlimited vacation' is so when an employee leaves, the company doesn't have to pay them for unused vacation days. Huge red flag when a company has 'unlimited vacation'
It's sad that works in the US. Here in Australia you have to give a full time employee a minimum of four weeks (paid), which accrues if unused. So somebody at a company with unlimited vacation would be no worse off of they never took holidays than someone who worked at a company with the regular 4 weeks.
With unlimited time off there's no longer any reason to stockpile days for that giant trip I keep putting off or to think of vacation days as being money that my employer owes me.
Before leaving the US I had 6 weeks annual leave, 4 rostered days off, 13 public holidays and usually a few extra days of stand down when the office was closed over Christmas (call it 50 days off).
Even coming from that I don't feel worse off now that I have unlimited time off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you do this without creating a bloated organization? For example if you have 20 team members and expect for 2 to be gone for some kind of vacation at any point. When all are at work you have a 10% inefficiency. I wonder if it would be more effective to have have stretches of intense work (4-6 months) with long rest periods (1-3 months) between. This would minimize the operational switching frequency, though it…
Inefficiency in the short term, yes, but it still leaves you in a position where a single surprise (an accident, a firing) can erase _all_ the efficiency gains. It's the same way that buying extra hard drives for backups is "inefficient," since you rarely use those drives, but still far more efficient than recreating all of your lost data from scratch.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, unlimited days off (or "open") and zero days off are identical. If you have unlimited vacation people are inclined to take less and people respect the vacation you take less ("as you can always take more!"). Here's a study[0] (PDF) called "Overwhelmed America: Why Don’t We Use Our Earned Leave?" It is biased (travel association) but interesting nonetheless. According to this…
As someone who works for a company that offers unlimited vacation, I don't think its as cut and dry as you make it, although I see where you are coming from. I think the success of unlimited vacation really depends on the company, your manager, your peers, and you. That is a lot of things to get right, but if everything works out, I think unlimited vacation is really great. At least for my team, I think everyone shar…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a company only has 10% inefficiencies, they are doing a fabulous job. Most companies probably have 50% of their workforce surfing the web at any one time.
Well the former is structural, the latter is behavioral, so there is difference in kind. Said another way, you can't get work from a ghost, but you can find incentives/realign people so they are more productive.
By giving them more vacation maybe?
Why do companies even try out these weird policies? They've gone from having unlimited days (then admitted it was a mistake for 2 whole years) and are now blindly trying out another unusual strategy. I don't see why they don't just offer a standard solution which seems to work for most companies, instead of trying to be extremely controlling of people.
Like the article describes, most people including myself took off less time. I know for myself I felt guilty and didn't want to be seen as taking advantage of the new open policy.
I'm going to talk to my new job's management and ask them to setup a minimum vacation day policy.