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Comment by seldo | Hacker News Reader

"Unlimited vacation" translates to "no vacation".

What does "as long as you're getting your work done" mean? There's no point in the year when nobody would be happier if you got something done sooner. There's never a time when taking vacation doesn't mean that some work you might have done doesn't get pushed to somebody else, or never done. The point of vacation is that you should be able to relax, but if you're worrying that you're screwing the company by not getting your work done, how can you relax?

Unlimited vacation sounds nice, but in practice it doesn't work.

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Have you worked at a company that offers unlimited vacation?

I do (it's a recent change for us). It works fine. People take time off when they want to (one of the guys on my team is on a 2-week vacation in Thailand right now). Yes, some people (including myself) do the illogical guilt thing on occasion. But if your manager isn't encouraging you to take time off periodically, he's doing a bad job as your manager.

Right now I'm planning a week and a half in Peru for this spring, and I'm toying with the idea of a southeast Asia trip this summer for a similar amount of time. I also took four days off beyond normal holiday days around the New Year. A week and a half ago I was very ill and stayed home for three days without having to worry about "taking a sick day" (not to mention that my colleagues thanked me for not coming in and getting them sick too).

If you work for a company that has "unlimited vacation" but makes people who use it feel stigmatized, quit and find a company that doesn't lie to you about its culture. They do exist.

It makes me sad that this "unlimited vacation doesn't work" comment is the top-voted one right now. It's absolutist and entirely nonsensical.

So we agree unlimited vacation really means "vacation at the mercy of your manager."

The problem with "quit and find a company that doesn't lie to you about its culture" is that you can't tell if they're lying until you've made the enormous investment of quitting your previous job and getting hired there.

Even if they're the good guys(tm), their investors can kick out the previous CEO, and management styles can change dramatically for the worse.

If you accept "unlimited vacation," you're negotiating a scenario where a non-trivial portion of your compensation is tied to the goodwill of your counter-party, whose inherent interests are opposed to yours, and where the costs of you "fixing" the situation are dramatic.

Caveat emptor.

So we agree unlimited vacation really means "vacation at the mercy of your manager."

Vacation is always at the mercy of your manager, regardless if it's unlimited or not.

So ok, you clearly are flat-out cynical about all this stuff so... don't work for a company with unlimited vacation. It works just fine for some of us, who work for reasonable companies. That's a fact, regardless of your feelings on the matter.

People take time off when they want to (one of the guys on my team is on a 2-week vacation

What if I wanted a 2 month vacation instead of a 2 week vacation? I've yet to hear of a place that would forbid you taking two weeks off once in a while. Using the word "unlimited" and then talking about days and weeks seems kind of counter-intuitive.

We actually did have on employee take a full month. He was one of our rock start developer/architects who had basically built the foundation for our current generation of product. There was a natural, "division" line for him to take some time off.

In general, though, your managers have a target that they manage to - and they negotiate you to that number. In our company, "Unlimited Vacation" means two weeks a years.

> In our company, "Unlimited Vacation" means two weeks a years.

So, that's significantly less than the minimum you're getting by law in, say, a European country. And it sounds like you have to negotiate (or be perceived as a prodigy) to even get that. Am I missing something here? Because it sounds just awful.

Shhh! Americans are blissfully unaware that everyone in Europe is legally entitled to 2-3x more vacation than Americans get.

25 days of vacation is the biggest thing I miss about working in London :-p

Most people can get the two weeks if they put minimal effort into arranging projects to create an opening. Maybe one in 25 takes 3 weeks. I only know of two people ( in 500) who took a months vacation.

Have you considered minimum vacation time?

In France we get 5 weeks minimum (some companies give more). If you don't take your vacations, that's not good for the company.

The accumulation of vacations is considered a debt in the accounting book, and if you leave they need to pay it cash.

In a previous job I remember seeing the accountant sermoning my boss (the CTO and cofounder) because we was not taking any vacations.

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