Hacker News Reader

Comment by rezistik | Hacker News Reader

I think unlimited with a minimum is really the solution.

Without a minimum people are reluctant to take time off from what I've seen and read.

I've seen places that have that minimum be mandatory. As in, if you haven't taken a vacation by a certain time, they will insist, even go so far as restricting access until the vacation is over.

The great thing about a mandatory minimum (never thought I'd be saying those words), is that it doesn't allow someone to over work themselves into a frenzy, making everyone else look lazy, while simultaneously burning themselves out.

At my previous employer, this seemed to be the case in our UK offices. 30 days a year, mandatory.

that's sort of just a UK minimum in general, IIRC (fwir, at least 20)

In countries where vacation time is mandated by law, restricting access during vacation time, and ordering the employee to enjoy the vacation before its expiration date is common practice.

An employee who fails to take vacation on time or goes to the job during vacation time is actually a liability to the company.

It's also a somewhat hilarious contrast to those companies who take away your vacation time if you don't use it within a certain time period (often just 1 year).

"It's also a somewhat hilarious contrast to those companies who take away your vacation time if you don't use it within a certain time period"

This is pretty standard in the UK. If you're a permanent employee, your annual leave allowance (e.g. 4-6 weeks of holiday) covers a period of one year. If you don't take that leave during the year, you lose it (you're unlikely to get paid for the untaken leave).

Some companies may allow you to carry over some of that leave to the next year (e.g. a week) or may allow you to "sell" or "buy" some extra leave. However, this normally needs to be done at the start of the annual leave year so requires some pre-planning on the employees part.

It also tests your office's bus factor.

We have a 10-day minimum here at Khan Academy, with unlimited PTO. It's also communicated to us that the average is 20-30 days.

Couldn't agree more that a realistic minimum, with some sort of "teeth" would be a great means of preventing burnout (and other issues that arise from unhealthy work/life balance).

Company I work for (Rubicon Project), uses a different approach that is still pretty effective (in my experience, your mileage may vary) - in addition to unmetered PTO, they provide a week off for 4th of July and a week (or two, depending on how calendars fall!) for Christmas/New Year. This way, even if you take no vacation time, you still get at least 2 weeks of downtime where the company basically stops, aside from keeping the lights on functions.

Or maybe it just should be a mandatory minimum number of hours of which PTO should be used either yearly or quarterly (with exceptions)? Unlimited seems a bit odd to me if you have people who often take as much PTO as they can then they're not really working are they? Just an open question.

Plus in some jurisdictions you have to track unused vacation days and either pay them out or bank them.

I agree.

Though, where I work we have unlimited vacation and there definitely seems to be peer encouragement to take _more_ vacation, not less.

I'd expect it to work much better when there's an unlimited vacation policy from the start and the founders make a determined effort to push the culture in that direction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com