4 ms·

Do you get unlimited vacation though like Salesforce employees? When I worked there nobody worked those days anyway. Will this really have an impact on when peo

Do you get unlimited vacation though like Salesforce employees? When I worked there nobody worked those days anyway. Will this really have an impact on when people take time off?

joe_guy 4y ago
Can you elaborate on what unlimited vacation means?
- pbw 4y ago
  Some companies offer unlimited PTO. The catch is the culture often discourages people from taking more than a few weeks off. It's been shown if the company just offers N weeks people take more time off than if it were unlimited, which seems ironic. https://www.betterup.com/blog/unlimited-pto https://www.betterup.com/blog/unlimited-pto
  - milkshakes 4y ago
    the catch is that this is a shady technique employers use to avoid having to pay out accrued pto
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      My company has unlimited vacation. I take time off regularly, and the CTO explicitly calls me out on it in all-hands meetings as someone to emulate. A coworker that typically holds the heavens up like Atlas felt like he's burning out, so he's about to take 3-6 months off to do yoga in Switzerland or something. Everyone's happy for him. It sucks for project schedules I'm sure, but it's better to take a break and come back fresh than burn out and leave. Another coworker just came back from a 3 month sabbatical, and her fresh mental state will be a great productivity boost. I just spent a week on a family vacation, then another week volunteering at a solar car race, and then another few days visiting family. I was looking forward to actually getting some focused work done this week, but now I'm out sick and only have the mental capacity to read HN and sleep. I suppose I feel about as productive as I usually do, since I can still respond to people on slack all day!
      - wutbrodo 4y ago
        Yup, this is my experience too. The maximalist complaints about unlimited PTO being a scam seem to be a mix of: a) sour grapes b) people being unwilling to admit that they prefer paternalism instead of being capable of making their own decisions about how to balance work and life (FWIW for me, making my own decision looks like "4-5 wks per year, not including a handful of ad-hoc 3-day weekends throughout the yr")
        kevinmchugh 4y ago
        I think defined vacation plans: 1) give me a monetary benefit if my manager doesn't allow me to use my vacation 2) allow me to evaluate a job offer more concretely 3) allow me to negotiate confident that a change in manager won't wipe out my gains Are there other benefits or forms of comp where it's preferable not to agree on amounts beforehand?
        sgtnoodle 4y ago
        Not to imply you are, but it's certainly possible to over-analyze things. There are plenty of qualitative aspects to a workplace that will compound into financial gain. If you join a worthwhile project with a long term outlook and dedicated and supportive coworkers, then the expected value of any equity you earn will likely be higher than otherwise. My current company's leaders want everyone "doing their life's best work" and would genuinely feel bad if they were wasting everyone's time. That includes themselves, and with every year the company grows and gains more momentum. To an extent I've been very blessed in my career, and I've always been able to accept new jobs based on my fit with the project and the team. I've also had success negotiating compensation to serve my interests. I've never seriously factored in vacation days into any sort of comparisons. I've never found myself in an environment where my manager had any expectation of proscribing when I should take time off. On the contrary, every manager I've ever had has been wholely supportive whenever I've taken time off. I think a large part of that comes down to my attitude and work ethic. I've certainly become spoiled, though. Unless my situation changes drastically, I wouldn't consider working somewhere with less flexibility than I currently enjoy. I would work for less compensation if it was the right project, though.
  - throwtheacctawy 4y ago
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Some companies offer unlimited PTO. The catch is ...that unlimited PTO can't be accrued, and is usually still subject to approval to use like regular limited PTO, which makes it an easy mechanism for arbitrary favoritism by managers without the fallback that if your PTO isn't approved you at least keep and accrue your balance which can be used later in your career or cashed out, and which the company then has an incentive to allow.you to use to clear the liability from their balance sheet.
  - hoherd 4y ago
    Also there's no vacation accrual, so there's no payout when employees leave. Because of this I always recommend the folks on my team to be proactive about taking vacations and odd days off for personal time, and to keep the amount of vacation they've taken in mind. If they don't use that benefit, it's their loss. If they take advantage of it, I believe it's better for team and individual well-being.
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    FWIW, people confidently disclaiming that this is always and necessarily how unlimited PTO works are wrong (which should be obvious....). I worked at a company that was extremely intense and deadline-driven and unlimited PTO was pretty great. In the almost 4 years I was there, I took an avg of 5 wks/yr, not counting the scattered 3-4 day weekends I took throughout the year. Hell, I think there was even a policy where managers would ping employees who took less than X days/yr (this happened to me during one of the lockdown years).
- _jal 4y ago
  Effectively, it means you have to ask current employees how much vacation you get. The theory is you can "take what you need" so long as you're getting your work done. In practice, company culture of course dictates what's considered reasonable, and as best I can tell it is highly variable between companies. At my "unlimited" place, it seems like 3 weeks is considered reasonable, especially if split up. But I know someone at another company who has had trouble getting more than a week for a couple years running.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  If you are consistently meeting or exceeding the expectations of an engineer at your level, you can do ridiculous things like take 60 days off a year. I know I did back when I was in a FAANG sorority^W eng team! It also means if you are not meeting expectations, you’ll probably self-select to get zero time off. Engineering pays well because you are supposed to work magic. If you can’t produce the magic then the dark clouds gather quickly. The elite sports team analogy is a good one. Keep up an unlucky run of bad games and you’ll get benched then sacked. I don’t condone any of the above but this is the mindset of “unlimited PTO”. More so than that which I’m seeing others describe, here.
  - paulcole 4y ago
    > Engineering pays well because you are supposed to work magic. I thought it was because you have to pay people a lot to spend time around engineers who say things like this.
    - burnished 4y ago
      I don't know how it would be possible to work in software and not experience at least a little awe.
      - paulcole 4y ago
        I'm a janitor not a miracle worker.
      - the_only_law 4y ago
        The awe disappeared once I started to get good enough at it and I saw the "magic" for what it is.
        burnished 4y ago
        You're just in the valley, dig deeper and you'll find the awe again. Just the things required to make networking even work are practically magic. Just the existence of error correcting codes makes me feel that way, for an example.
zdragnar 4y ago
PTO is usually at the discretion of the managers; they're more inclined to decline requests for time off when enough people are already taking off (to avoid the situation of someone on the skeleton crew getting sick and not enough people are available to handle an emergency). It really depends on your customer's needs; slack going down for a day or two over the holidays is unfortunate but not the end of the world. Salesforce going down could, I imagine, easily cause massive financial losses. I'd like to think it should be easy enough to put people on emergency call rather than forcing them to put 8 hours of butts in seats for no reason, but apparently that's not how Salesforce wants to roll.
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  If you need bums in seats the professional way to do it is to have an oncall rota. A rota is the positive affirmation that employee X will be here to support the team versus the negative one that well person X can’t not be here, because they’re the last one to take PTO.
- arealaccount 4y ago
  Could be argued that Slack going down temporarily would even boost productivity
civilized 4y ago
> unlimited vacation Hahaha. Unlimited vacation actually means vacation only when your manager feels like it - which could be less than you'd get under a fixed vacation allotment. Many such cases. When something sounds too good to be true, it is.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Right, but if the culture is no one works the last week of December the manager is probably going to allow it, at least this year.
  - Jach 4y ago
    The manager themself is likely going to take advantage of it too. Of course, there are enough Salesforce or former-Salesforce people in this thread stating how things actually are there (don't expect most people to be available most of December) that we don't need to speculate about how things could be or how abuse could still happen.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Do you get unlimited vacation though like Salesforce employees? When I worked there nobody worked those days anyway. Will this really have an impact on when people take time off?

joe_guy 4y ago

Can you elaborate on what unlimited vacation means?

pbw 4y ago
Some companies offer unlimited PTO. The catch is the culture often discourages people from taking more than a few weeks off. It's been shown if the company just offers N weeks people take more time off than if it were unlimited, which seems ironic. https://www.betterup.com/blog/unlimited-pto https://www.betterup.com/blog/unlimited-pto
- milkshakes 4y ago
  the catch is that this is a shady technique employers use to avoid having to pay out accrued pto
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    My company has unlimited vacation. I take time off regularly, and the CTO explicitly calls me out on it in all-hands meetings as someone to emulate. A coworker that typically holds the heavens up like Atlas felt like he's burning out, so he's about to take 3-6 months off to do yoga in Switzerland or something. Everyone's happy for him. It sucks for project schedules I'm sure, but it's better to take a break and come back fresh than burn out and leave. Another coworker just came back from a 3 month sabbatical, and her fresh mental state will be a great productivity boost. I just spent a week on a family vacation, then another week volunteering at a solar car race, and then another few days visiting family. I was looking forward to actually getting some focused work done this week, but now I'm out sick and only have the mental capacity to read HN and sleep. I suppose I feel about as productive as I usually do, since I can still respond to people on slack all day!
    - wutbrodo 4y ago
      Yup, this is my experience too. The maximalist complaints about unlimited PTO being a scam seem to be a mix of: a) sour grapes b) people being unwilling to admit that they prefer paternalism instead of being capable of making their own decisions about how to balance work and life (FWIW for me, making my own decision looks like "4-5 wks per year, not including a handful of ad-hoc 3-day weekends throughout the yr")
      - kevinmchugh 4y ago
        I think defined vacation plans: 1) give me a monetary benefit if my manager doesn't allow me to use my vacation 2) allow me to evaluate a job offer more concretely 3) allow me to negotiate confident that a change in manager won't wipe out my gains Are there other benefits or forms of comp where it's preferable not to agree on amounts beforehand?
        sgtnoodle 4y ago
        Not to imply you are, but it's certainly possible to over-analyze things. There are plenty of qualitative aspects to a workplace that will compound into financial gain. If you join a worthwhile project with a long term outlook and dedicated and supportive coworkers, then the expected value of any equity you earn will likely be higher than otherwise. My current company's leaders want everyone "doing their life's best work" and would genuinely feel bad if they were wasting everyone's time. That includes themselves, and with every year the company grows and gains more momentum. To an extent I've been very blessed in my career, and I've always been able to accept new jobs based on my fit with the project and the team. I've also had success negotiating compensation to serve my interests. I've never seriously factored in vacation days into any sort of comparisons. I've never found myself in an environment where my manager had any expectation of proscribing when I should take time off. On the contrary, every manager I've ever had has been wholely supportive whenever I've taken time off. I think a large part of that comes down to my attitude and work ethic. I've certainly become spoiled, though. Unless my situation changes drastically, I wouldn't consider working somewhere with less flexibility than I currently enjoy. I would work for less compensation if it was the right project, though.
- throwtheacctawy 4y ago
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Some companies offer unlimited PTO. The catch is ...that unlimited PTO can't be accrued, and is usually still subject to approval to use like regular limited PTO, which makes it an easy mechanism for arbitrary favoritism by managers without the fallback that if your PTO isn't approved you at least keep and accrue your balance which can be used later in your career or cashed out, and which the company then has an incentive to allow.you to use to clear the liability from their balance sheet.
- hoherd 4y ago
  Also there's no vacation accrual, so there's no payout when employees leave. Because of this I always recommend the folks on my team to be proactive about taking vacations and odd days off for personal time, and to keep the amount of vacation they've taken in mind. If they don't use that benefit, it's their loss. If they take advantage of it, I believe it's better for team and individual well-being.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  FWIW, people confidently disclaiming that this is always and necessarily how unlimited PTO works are wrong (which should be obvious....). I worked at a company that was extremely intense and deadline-driven and unlimited PTO was pretty great. In the almost 4 years I was there, I took an avg of 5 wks/yr, not counting the scattered 3-4 day weekends I took throughout the year. Hell, I think there was even a policy where managers would ping employees who took less than X days/yr (this happened to me during one of the lockdown years).
_jal 4y ago
Effectively, it means you have to ask current employees how much vacation you get. The theory is you can "take what you need" so long as you're getting your work done. In practice, company culture of course dictates what's considered reasonable, and as best I can tell it is highly variable between companies. At my "unlimited" place, it seems like 3 weeks is considered reasonable, especially if split up. But I know someone at another company who has had trouble getting more than a week for a couple years running.
newaccount2021 4y ago
gorgoiler 4y ago
If you are consistently meeting or exceeding the expectations of an engineer at your level, you can do ridiculous things like take 60 days off a year. I know I did back when I was in a FAANG sorority^W eng team! It also means if you are not meeting expectations, you’ll probably self-select to get zero time off. Engineering pays well because you are supposed to work magic. If you can’t produce the magic then the dark clouds gather quickly. The elite sports team analogy is a good one. Keep up an unlucky run of bad games and you’ll get benched then sacked. I don’t condone any of the above but this is the mindset of “unlimited PTO”. More so than that which I’m seeing others describe, here.
- paulcole 4y ago
  > Engineering pays well because you are supposed to work magic. I thought it was because you have to pay people a lot to spend time around engineers who say things like this.
  - burnished 4y ago
    I don't know how it would be possible to work in software and not experience at least a little awe.
    - paulcole 4y ago
      I'm a janitor not a miracle worker.
    - the_only_law 4y ago
      The awe disappeared once I started to get good enough at it and I saw the "magic" for what it is.
      - burnished 4y ago
        You're just in the valley, dig deeper and you'll find the awe again. Just the things required to make networking even work are practically magic. Just the existence of error correcting codes makes me feel that way, for an example.

zdragnar 4y ago

PTO is usually at the discretion of the managers; they're more inclined to decline requests for time off when enough people are already taking off (to avoid the situation of someone on the skeleton crew getting sick and not enough people are available to handle an emergency). It really depends on your customer's needs; slack going down for a day or two over the holidays is unfortunate but not the end of the world. Salesforce going down could, I imagine, easily cause massive financial losses. I'd like to think it should be easy enough to put people on emergency call rather than forcing them to put 8 hours of butts in seats for no reason, but apparently that's not how Salesforce wants to roll.

gorgoiler 4y ago
If you need bums in seats the professional way to do it is to have an oncall rota. A rota is the positive affirmation that employee X will be here to support the team versus the negative one that well person X can’t not be here, because they’re the last one to take PTO.
arealaccount 4y ago
Could be argued that Slack going down temporarily would even boost productivity

civilized 4y ago

> unlimited vacation Hahaha. Unlimited vacation actually means vacation only when your manager feels like it - which could be less than you'd get under a fixed vacation allotment. Many such cases. When something sounds too good to be true, it is.

colinmhayes 4y ago
Right, but if the culture is no one works the last week of December the manager is probably going to allow it, at least this year.
- Jach 4y ago
  The manager themself is likely going to take advantage of it too. Of course, there are enough Salesforce or former-Salesforce people in this thread stating how things actually are there (don't expect most people to be available most of December) that we don't need to speculate about how things could be or how abuse could still happen.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]