How we’re fixing “unlimited” vacation | Hacker News Reader

How we’re fixing “unlimited” vacation

baremetrics.com

32 pointsbcaulfield26 comments

He talks about how important it is for people not to feel judged for taking more than the minimum amount of time off, then calls out a member of his team by name:

"Tyler has taken over double what most of the rest of the team has at this point."

But it's fine, because Tyler has a legitimate reason that we're assured no-one is judging him for:

"Tyler got married and went on a honeymoon. Literally no one in the company is mad that he did that."

What if my reason is because I just wanted to have some time away? Or because I had some deeply personal reason that I don't feel comfortable advertising? This system doesn't exactly scream 'psychological safety' to me.

That's what I took from it as well. Apparently using your vacation is ok as long as you have a 'good reason' for doing so, and 'good reason' is to be defined by your manager at an arbitrary time. I don't see how this 'fixes' anything.

There is some danger here, to be sure, but I think time off is a tricky beast. People can get resentful it they think they have to shoulder the work burden for others who are taking too much time off. Also people tend not to take vacation for the same reason, that they don't have a good social excuse. I think a minimum vacation policy is a step in the right direction to rectify this. I'd certainly like to force people to take at least a week off every quarter or two, and at least 2 weeks off once a year. I think it's too valuable for employee productivity, and it has a double value of showing where you don't have enough skill/responsibility overlap as a manager.

What do you view as alternatives? It seems to me like this is a huge improvement on unlimited vacation, so you should add suggestions for improvement rather than knocking it down.

* Give fixed, but generous vacation allowances (4 weeks/year good, 5 weeks/year better)

* Vacation time use stats can be shared internally if your culture demands it, but should never be shared externally except in aggregate (violates the privacy of your employees)

* Don’t advertise unlimited vacation, because it’s not truly unlimited

* Properly account for staff being out in your capacity planning. If someone isn’t able to take their vacation time because there isn’t sufficient slack in the workload, you have failed and have essentially taken their compensation from them

Bonus points: Parental leave (offer what you can afford if you feel you need to compete on that benefit)

> What do you view as alternatives?

Some sort of vacation budget system, where you can take a certain amount each time period.

(Perhaps a certain amount could roll over from time period to time period.)

That manages expectations, and assuages anxieties about taking vacation. No need to constantly question "Has Mary/Dave/I earned this?" Big culture win.

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Apologies for the snarkiness, but this ultimately seems like a self-imposed problem.

Might it be better to force you to use any remaining vacation time at the end of the year? That way, there shouldn't be any pressure to not use your vacation time.

The trick of "unlimited" vacation is two-fold. Most people don't have the balls to take what they deserve and when they quit or get fired, the company doesn't have to pay them for the vacations days they earned since that number doesn't exist.

The company I work for implemented what I think is a pretty novel solution. Mandatory vacation.

Everyone gets 4 weeks PTO, and more can be awarded on a discretionary basis.

As the end of the year nears, if it becomes evident that an employee will not be able to use all their vacation up by the end of the year, their system access is revoked and they are forced to take vacation.

I don't think this policy has actually been tested, since everyone just happily takes their time off. But it's a cute way of telling people that you're serious about them taking time off.

Yes, I wish more companies took this approach. It can easily be planned for and scheduled appropriately - you know how much time everyone has remaining.

And disabling system access is good - they should not be on "vacation" and still responding to emails on their phone, etc.

Man I love working somewhere with 29 days paid leave, plus bank Holidays, plus the option to buy 5 more days, plus 3 days a year volunteering with the charity of your choice. And then recently just made paternity leave the same as maternity leave (6 months full pay followed but 6 months statutory pay). Which is certainly good for the UK, but not unheard of - imagining working with only 4 weeks leave a year :(

Paternity leave is still 2 weeks but the recent changes mean you can curtail the maternity leave (/pay) early and both parents can take what hasn't been used as shared parental leave/shared parental pay.

i.e. by taking this option the mother (or primary adopter) will have to go back earlier. I gather the take up isn't particular high (beyond a week or two) although it's been very useful in my situation.

Statutory pay is also very low (£140/week) after the first 6 weeks, although most professional jobs tend to offer better rates.

But your right - in general the attitude to leave seems a lot healthier in the UK!

Yeah, lucky to work at a company that offer 6 months full pay for men and women for sure, esp when you look at what Americans or even Canadians get. Stat pay is hard to get by on, but hopefully gives many people the chance to spend a little more time with their kids. I really like the fact that if a couple worked at my company, between them they could have 2 whole years spent with their child, or 1 year between them fully paid - think it would do so much for dad's to have the option to have that time with their kids. They'd be crazy not to take it. Sadly we'll not be having any more so I can't take advantage of it, but am lucky enough to be able to currently support my wife/family so she can look after the kids full time and head back to work when we wants/is ready.

Interesting that this blog basically publicizes the vacation schedule and dates for every employee in the company.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EhvYITqDk-vGzM9yy1uS...

It looks like the average number of vacation days for an employee of Baremetrics in 2017 was 36! 7 weeks per year average. Amazing yet... kinda crazy.

My solution to this is to have a fixed vacation time (like most companies), but the following years vacation time is docked by the amount you didn’t take, creating a strong incentive and justification to take all of your vacation each year.

On top of that, a randomly selected day or week per year as mandatory vacation (to build team resilience since any person might not be available).

I agree that “unlimited” vacation is often a trap so I appreciate the concept of a minimum vacation policy, but isn’t it a security/privacy issue to publicly disclose the exact dates that employees are on vacation? Is everyone on the team OK with this information being public?

http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2015/03/04/the-cost-of-unused-va...

Even with more structured PTO plans, Americans are not taking enough time off work. People could use some more non-work related activities!

So when someone quits or is fired, how much earned but unused vacation time do you pay back to the employee?

In the US I don't think anyone earns vacation time, as there's no minimum?

In traditional compensation plans, you get “X vacation days” as part of your compensation plan[1]. It can be as low as 0 since there’s no legal requirement for them, but if it’s more than 0 then thecompany also provides an earning schedule. At some companies, they allocate all PTO at the beginning of the year. At others, they allocate a prorated amount per pay period. For example, say you have 12 PTO days and are paid twice monthly. You’ll “earn” 1 PTO day per month, or half a day (4 hours) per pay period.

You can then either roll them over and stockpile them, or take them. A lot of people take less vacation than they earn, and when they terminate employment they have an accrued balance. The company is required in some jurisdictions to convert this accrued/“earned” PTO time into their equivalent salary for that amount of time and pay it out as a lump sum.

[1] Startups and other companies that advertise “unlimited” vacation are different. Unlimited is really a euphamism for 0, but with an explicit agreement to still let you take “unlimited” days off even without having any days accrued. Since you don’t accrue any days, they don’t owe you for any when you leave.

Yeah I'd be interested to know how this would work with California law that requires employers to pay out unused vacation hours.

Unlimited PTO/Vacation time is an HR hack to get around such laws.

In such schemes, you don’t earn any vacation time, so there’s not technically (and legally) any to pay out. You’re basically lazy-provisioned PTO time as it’s taken, so your legal balance of PTO Time is always zeroed out.

Evernote has gives $1000 for taking a vacation at least 5 days off.

Irregardless of vacation policy, the manager or CEO sets the tone about work/life balance with vacation just being a part of the conversation.

From your timesheet I see that there are more people taking more than 20 days off, than not. This seems to contradict your premise..?

The line numbers don't start at zero. The guy on the left has 9 days (spot on), the rightmost 21.

By the way this post is from May 2016! I wonder how they are doing by now.

You can see their vacation spreadsheet as it's public!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EhvYITqDk-vGzM9yy1uS...

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