I worked at a small company where I was paid hourly and didn't even have paid vacation. The upside was you could take as much time off as you could afford. The

I worked at a small company where I was paid hourly and didn't even have paid vacation. The upside was you could take as much time off as you could afford. The downside was I couldn't afford much, though I did come into a little money from an outside project and managed to take a nice 4 week vacation. :-) I think a hybrid of that approach could work, where you get X weeks of paid vacation and can take more as unpaid leave. That way, everyone gets the benefit of being encouraged to take a certain amount of time off, and those who want more can have it without other employees feeling like people are cheating the system. However, I asked about this at my current job and was told that unpaid leave was "strongly discouraged". I think there's also some risk of being seen as "not a team player". But I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would rather have more time off than money.