For very young companies, it's also typically a case of "we don't know how to write a handbook and policies, so we'll just wing it, make up our attendance polic

For very young companies, it's also typically a case of "we don't know how to write a handbook and policies, so we'll just wing it, make up our attendance policy as we go along, and approve people's vacations on a case-by-case basis". Since it's a young company, most employees are indespensible, and without any written guarantee saying "you have X days of vacation a year", everyone is too afraid to even ask for any time off. I worked for one of those. I'm glad I got out. Unfortunately, I landed at a company that's ridiculously stingy with PTO (10 vacation days, 8 holidays, 7 sick days -- this is slightly mitigated by the fact that you can make up hours you miss without using PTO, so I've done things where I leave early one day but stay late the next), however because company policy requires that employees take all our vacation days every year, at least I know what their expectations are. I took a vacation this year because I knew I had the days for it and so I just filled out our standard form and gave it to my boss, knowing it would be accepted. On the contrary, I didn't take a single vacation during my time at my previous employer, and in fact I never even asked for one, because we were bouncing from crisis to crisis, and I could just imagine my boss saying "are you crazy?".