Unlimited Vacation Time

I've been working overseas for over 4 years, and I'm only now getting used to the amount of vacation time we get. We are actually encouraged to use all of our vacation time. --It works out like this:

By law we get 5 weeks of vacation a year. My employer throws in an extra week as a perk, but that week gets used last, and can't roll over - basically use all 6 weeks or lose one. And then you can roll over up to 2 weeks if you don't use it all. So in practice, this means that you'll take at least 3 weeks, and almost everyone takes the full 6 weeks, unless they're planning something for the next year and know that they'll want an extra two weeks.

When I had a few employees in Manhattan, my policy was "Sick days, holidays, vacation --just do what makes sense." It all worked out fine.

My office manager, whose main house was a couple hours outside NYC, took 3 and 4 day weekends at the slightest pretext, e.g. some Jewish holidays I've never heard of before or since. Once she even got it up to 5 days. On the other hand, the only time she took a solid week off was when I insisted she fly to her estranged mother's funeral. And she didn't get sick much.

My #2 office guy was Catholic, and didn't need the Jewish holidays. About the only time they overlapped on a day I wanted to be open was for Good Friday (which of course usually falls during Passover).

It all worked out fine.

Similarly, both there and especially in the Boston area where people drove to work, my policy was "Good heavens, don't start at 9:00 am and fight the worst of rush hour unless you really want to!" Some chose 8:00 am, some 10:00 am. I had more coverage, and it was all good.

We've talked about this a fair bit at 42Floors. The consensus is that the more senior people need to make an example of themselves by liberally taking vacation. If they set the example, then everyone else will take vacation.

At a previous startup, we had pretty much unlimited vacation time, and the result was that no one took any. So clearly this doesn't work unless you make a point of encouraging people to actually take advantage. We thought about setting a minimum vacation policy where you have to take at least a certain amount, but some people didn't like the idea of being forced to take vacation.

Since I haven't taken any significant vacation since I started (6 months ago), I recently made a deal with Jason (the CEO) that I need to plan a significant vacation by the end of February. Suggestions welcome...

So we agree unlimited vacation really means "vacation at the mercy of your manager."

The problem with "quit and find a company that doesn't lie to you about its culture" is that you can't tell if they're lying until you've made the enormous investment of quitting your previous job and getting hired there.

Even if they're the good guys(tm), their investors can kick out the previous CEO, and management styles can change dramatically for the worse.

If you accept "unlimited vacation," you're negotiating a scenario where a non-trivial portion of your compensation is tied to the goodwill of your counter-party, whose inherent interests are opposed to yours, and where the costs of you "fixing" the situation are dramatic.

Caveat emptor.

I agree. I've now worked for two companies with unlimited vacation policies, and there have been some stark differences. At my previous job, where there was previously an accrued vacation system that switched to an unlimited policy, no one felt good about taking vacation days. At my current employer, everyone from the founders on down advertise and celebrate their vacation. Same policy, different context.

From an hours-worked-metrics standpoint, the policy is a success at my previous employer and a failure at my current job.

From an employee-health and burnout-rate standpoint, the policy is a failure at my previous employer and a massive success here.

I can't advocate either policy over the other without that context, but I'm skeptical of the value of introducing unlimited vacation as a benefit over an existing accrued vacation policy that employees are generally happy with.