Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Unlimited vacation is great. Companies offering "unlimited vacation" when they don't mean it, and building a penalizing culture around taking it, is bad.

View on HN

If you find a company that actually means “unlimited vacation”, let me know. I will get a job there and after my first couple of months, I will say, “okay, I’m going on unlimited vacation now” and never come back.

Obviously there are limits. There have to be. I’d rather know what those limits are up front.

At GitHub they limit you to 29 consecutive (calendar) days of leave. However anything over 14 days needs to be approved by your manager. And then there is a lower limit to the days you must be in the office to collect a full bonus. Finally there is a maximum time you can take off in a half year which directly relates to a negative employee review.

So it’s not unlimited, but recruiters won’t tell you the nuance.. you find out when you read the handbook and talk to your manager on day 1. But why take leave anyway, I watched someone get hired, literally do nothing, and it took 7 months for the company to let them go

>I watched someone get hired, literally do nothing, and it took 7 months for the company to let them go

If they were "literally" doing nothing, like not even joining meetings or logging in, they could be fired within a week. What you mean is they weren't writing code to the velocity and standard that was expected. Maybe that falls on you for not helping them onboard?

I work for Indeed; I take ~8w/year of PTO. No one bats an eye.

Which means you still work 44 weeks—clearly you’re within some reasonable if generous limit!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com