Not sure where you work but absolutely nowhere do managers tell devs what to do. They just have to accept whatever time they take off. At GE everyone I knew to

Not sure where you work but absolutely nowhere do managers tell devs what to do. They just have to accept whatever time they take off. At GE everyone I knew took a lot of time off--including myself. At least 30 days per year and some quite a bit more. If you took less it was because your group didn't have a budget hammered out and all work had stopped anyway. I knew a dev that built houses until we had funded projects. I didn't work any of December in addition to my ad-hoc vacations throughout the year. Life lived. In no way shape or form do I like earned PTO. That's the scam. I'm a highly paid consultant/partner/owner now and I have to fund my time off. Do not like it. I'm paying maximum taxes on all of my PTO. Tax position has a huge impact for high earners and getting boxed into a non-optimal rule/strategy is very costly. When I take time off I don't bill, and I have to pay out of savings AND I pay tax on the savings. Meh.