Hacker News Reader

Comment by vinu76jsr | Hacker News Reader

I believe opposite case is usually prevented, people don't usually take time off for no reason, they go on vacation, family emergency etc., an observed side-effect of unlimited time off is usually people don't take time off at all, purely a cultural(company's) thing.

View on HN

We are afraid of people taking too little time off. We're considering introducing a formal performance review point that will penalize the team member and/or manager if someone took less than two weeks of vacation (full weeks, not counting days) for not taking care of themselves. But we're not sure yet this is needed. For now the executive team tries to set the right tone by taking vacation themselves. I'm going to burning man and Hawaii this year and I don't work weekends.

Thanks. I didn't mean to be confrontational. I had just thought that after Kickstarter's change, the winds were turning against unlimited vacation policies, and that fixed vacation time was becoming status quo again.

I didn't take it as being confrontational, no worries. Not being able to measure if people take enough vacation is a drawback of unlimited vacations. But we feel that having to ask for vacations and administering them doesn't rhyme with our value of focussing on results instead of hours.

having a remote company also means if you have a cold you're not going to come in and pass it to everybody, and often you can still work no problem (no coworkers getting grossed out/annoyed by constant sneezing, no getting cold on transit on the way etc.) which likely means you need to take less time off, and being remote also means being able to deal with random daytime appointments much more easily, making time off for that not necessary either

Reply on news.ycombinator.com