I worked at a satellite office of a medium software company. A fellow programmer asked for more time off instead of pay raises. He was put on a shitlist for e

I worked at a satellite office of a medium software company. A fellow programmer asked for more time off instead of pay raises. He was put on a shitlist for even making that request. The company HQ was in a college town where there was no comparable employer for developers, but our satellite office was in a bigger city. Startups here starting offering 4 weeks vacation as a sign-on enticement. My coworker came back to management with this counter-offer and was told go to Hell. So he took the other offer and left. One by one, EVERY developer in our satellite office got the same offer, came to our management to ask if they'd match or at least increase the amount of vacation, and all got told to piss off. One by one we watched ALL of our development staff (at the satellite office) leave and not get replaced (interviewees ended up going to the startups offering more leave). Management (at corporate HQ) demonstrated they would rather ride that sinking ship to the sea bottom than budge on not giving more vacation. Why? Because there was a vesting schedule for earning leave, 10 days/yr first 6 years, 15 days/yr 6-12 years, 20 days/yr after 12 years. If they let recent hires jump right to 20 days/yr that's manager compensation territory AND it would invalidate the years those with 11 had been waiting. (You might think the silver lining is all the new companies without similar hangups employing the programmers who left; unfortunately AFAIK all of those startups folded in the couple years since then.)