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Comment by scurvy | Hacker News Reader

Ugh. I'm not trying to be super negative, but he's setting a bad precedent by taking half the amount of allowed leave. "We offer 4 months, but Zuck only took 2. Wanna be like Zuck?" He should take the full 4 months and show everyone that it's OK.

This is like the unspoken mantra of "unlimited vacation" really being only 2 - 2.5 weeks.

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At Google it was pretty common for new fathers to take half of the allotted leave at the baby's birth and then save up the remaining half to use for emergencies, vacations, or milestones over the next year. (You could bank paternity leave for up to 1 year at the time; it may be more now, since IIUC Google increased paternity leave from 6 weeks to 6 months around when I left.) So for example, if your wife needed to go to a conference or had a heavy workload at her job, you could take leave to cover the baby. Or if you wanted to take the kid to visit grandparents/great-grandparents, you could use up paternity leave instead of vacation time.

Zuck may be doing something similar.

I'm actually splitting mine up right now, but I told everyone up front the dates and the plan. I doubt this is what Zuck will do, unless it's under pressure from backlash.

As I understand it, the maternity/paternity leave at Facebook can be taken at any time. He could return to work after the initial 2 months, and later take more time off, up to a total of 4 months.

It must be tough being the CEO of facebook. This is his own company which I'm sure he loves running and wants to continue to do so. But he's in a situation where the social and political climate basically dictates that he take paternity leave. The same climate also dictates that if he takes any less than the full amount, he's sending a message that the whole four months is a gesture of goodwill and you should only take half of that. If he takes an entire four months, he probably gets criticized for being lazy and for not making the board their money. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

Dude can do whatever he wants for the rest of his life. His only handcuffs are the ones he chooses for himself.

So can you (or me), or all the lucky ones above a certain threshold. We all have the same time! Which is the biggest leveler. Our only handcuffs are our own making, say after you have FU money[1]. (e.g. having a million dollars net worth is not safe enough. Got to be at least 10s of million dollar networth. And this would keep changing. )

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI (NSFW. Had seen if shared on HN few years back, can't recall by who)

He is probably busier than the average FB employee.

That kind of thinking can lead to a culture where people don't want to take vacation because it means they are less "busy" than others and by implication, less important.

It becomes a badge of honor to let unused vacation expire at the end of the year because you just didn't have time to take it.

I've seen it more than once.

Facebook has hundreds of mid and upper level managers. I doubt that Zuckerberg is that involved in the intricacies of everything. After all, that's why you hire and delegate to managers in the first place.

What this really means is, no acquisitions for Facebook once leave starts (except maybe the ones he's already greenlit). At the CEO level, you focus on direction, strategy, and top-level execution of said direction and strategy. You're not designing and doing grunt work. If anyone can step back from a large corporation and watch things keep on humming along, it's the CEO.

Hopefully he can delegate and has trust in this. A lot of managers, even senior, can't. It is a skill.

> This is like the unspoken mantra of "unlimited vacation" really being only 2 - 2.5 weeks.

I think it depends on your company and management chain. When I worked at Netflix I took more vacation than every before. I'm not even sure how much, since it was untracked, but definitely more than 4 weeks a year.

Our management made sure to set a good example by taking plenty of vacation.

Netflix is the exception, not the rule. Take a poll of what "unlimited vacation" means to most companies with the policy, and you'll see 2-3 weeks being the overwhelming response.

I tried to google my way through verifying your statement, but didn't get very far. The number of companies offering "unlimited" or "discretionary" leave is very small. LinkedIn is the only other company I could find that I'd even heard of. I could find no statistics length of vacation for any of the companies I found.

Kickstarter removed it's "unlimited vacation" policy because it found that employees were not taking enough vacation. This seems to be a strong statement from the company that they want to encourage vacation taking.

I can find no evidence that most companies with "unlimited vacation" policies are trying to limit the amount of vacation for its employees. It would be great if you could furnish it, as I'm interested in this topic.

California requires employers to cash out unused vacation days to employees when they leave the company [0]. Therefore instead of giving a certain number of days, some sketchy companies have an "unlimited vacation" policy, so they can claim to offer great benefits, when they're really just trying to save money. The norm at these sketchy companies is definitely no more than 2-3 weeks vacation in practice.

[0] http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_vacation.htm

Correct. Since employees don't accrue vacation hours, companies are not required to carry the equivalent pay on their balance sheet as a liability. It varies state by state, but California (where most startups are currently located) does convert this liability to an employee cash out upon leaving the company.

Unlimited vacation means no accrual so no balance sheet hit. It's a sketchy way to save money while effectively hinting that you're not supposed to take vacation. At first, people took unlimited vacation at face value. Now, the industry largely knows that it is industry speak for "2-3 weeks vacation but up to manager discretion."

>Now, the industry largely knows that it is industry speak for "2-3 weeks vacation but up to manager discretion."

Funny, because neither company I've worked for has that unspoken policy. You should come in and dictate the actual culture to us since you know it so well. I don't need to tell you the companies of course, since you're already well acquainted with them obviously.

"Unlimited vacation means no accrual so no balance sheet hit."

This is true.

"Now, the industry largely knows that it is industry speak for "2-3 weeks vacation but up to manager discretion."

This is generally false for a certain size of company (> 1000 employees). In my case, 4 weeks is common, it varies.

I'd take the entire year off just to fuck with their definition of "unlimited" vacation.

The point of unlimited is that it's not limited by HR, its negotiated with your manager. 4 to 6 weeks is common. More, it depends on your circumstances.

Then it's not unlimited and should not be billed as such.

Have you ever worked for a large company? It's unlimited by policy rather than by hewing to minimum government standards or gain-weeks-by-seniority as has been the case for 80 years. That's the point. There's no confusion here except to be pedantic.

Worked at such companies for the last 15 years or so. Took a full month of paid leave when my son was born. The same company now has a 3 month parental leave.

Or how about just taking a full year off. The guy is worth billions and basically never has to work again. He is also not the Steve Jobs of FB either. It's not like he massively contributes on a day to day level. What's the point of being so rich if you can't spend some time with your kid and wife.

Isn't 2 a good balance between all and none?

Not really? Maybe I'm a bit pushy, but I think that people should take all of the time allotted for them to take care of their kids, bond with their kids, and support their partner. If he is banking it for later, great, if not, the work you're doing on social media is not more important than your child.

Considering his wealth, Zuckerberg could leave the company and dedicate his life to his child. In that light, is the 4 vs 2 months really relevant? Aren't both choices failing to uphold the principle you've stated?

I think working sets a good example for your child. When you have a newborn, your partner is recovering, etc. all of the extra help is really important -- add on top of that the countless studies that show how important bonding is for fathers in the first few months. It's not really quite a fair comparison.

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