Ask HN: What’s your take on unlimited vacation?

Meaningless. Half the junior employees basically never take it, the other half takes the normal two weeks a year. Division leads and directors take "what they need," but that's because they have sway and no one pushes back on them for being unavailable for several weeks in the summer with their families.

The only real, meaningful consequence is that, unlike places with contractual PTO, you don't end up accumulating the PTO you don't take, so you don't get a payout when you leave the company.

Absolutely horrible ripoff, and an excuse for companies to not pay back the unused vacation when the employee leaves.

I worked at a startup and by conventional numbers I would have had easily accrued ~2 months of salary with unused vacations, but I left and didn’t see any of it. And clearly taking vacation was never “the right time” over the years because there was always some fire to extinguish.

After that I only worked in companies with fixed vacation days, some of which also paid the unused days at the end of the year rather than rollover or losing them, which was nice.

It is a phycological trap. Don't force employees to be shamed (real or perceived) for taking time off. If for some reason this was a mandated policy, it should come with mandatory minimums.

Take as much as you need but at least 15 days a year.

I wouldn’t mind the payout in years like 2020 where you can’t leave the house. But I’ve been unlimited PTO for about 7-8 years now and probably averaged about 3-4 weeks per year. I’m confident in my output so I take the time.

Whenever I see that, I question whether I should even apply. It signals that the company will play games and implement these gimmicky things.

It's bad for employees. There will be a ton of unwritten pressure to take less vacation than you'd be able to from a job with a fixed number of days.