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I'm curious to see what people here think of "unlimited vacation" days policy in companies like Netflix. The place where I work has the same policy. I'm inclin

I'm curious to see what people here think of "unlimited vacation" days policy in companies like Netflix. The place where I work has the same policy. I'm inclined to believe this "vacations are for the weak" idea tends to make employees fewer vacations than they would if they were, say allocated a fixed 15 PTO days.

saryant 13y ago
We have it at the startup I work for. I recently spent 3.5 weeks traveling around Japan and Seoul and I didn't take a computer. I think I responded to about six work emails the entire time.
geophile 13y ago
Yes, exactly. I was at a startup that wasn't going so well, and we had the standard three weeks per year. It was already socially awkward to take those three weeks. Then the policy was changed to "all the vacation you need". For the people already taking zero vacation, there was no change, of course. For the rest of us, it increased the pressure to do without.
byoung2 13y ago
I know someone who works at a startup with unlimited vacation, and for most employees there it apparently turns out to be about 3 weeks of actual vacations taken (he defined it as left your home city for at least 2 days). They do use more single days here and there than they would otherwise, and they don't have to lie about being sick to use sick days. If I started a company, I'd want to offer unlimited vacation.
bgentry 13y ago
I think it works very well for us at Heroku. I've been here 3 years, and people certainly take enough time off in general. Probably 3-5 weeks for most folks. If they don't take enough time off, their managers are supposed to get on them about it :) Case in point: our office has been closed for the holidays for the past couple weeks, and I haven't seen evidence of anybody doing any serious work on non-side projects (outside of the unavoidable on call responsibilities). Nobody had to use precious PTO for this or feel bad about traveling overseas to visit relatives. I'd say it's highly dependent on company culture, though. We were always encouraged by our founders and office managers to take plenty of time off, and they led by example in this way. If that wasn't the case, it might not be working out well for us. I've certainly heard of other companies where it leads to less vacation.
nairteashop 13y ago
We didn't track vacations at my last company, because we agreed with the Netflix principle of hiring the right employees and giving them a lot of freedom, including allowing them to take whatever vacation days they needed, whenever they needed it. There were worries initially by some about employees abusing this policy, but that has not happened once in the 6+ years we've been around. However as we've grown, I strongly suspect that the opposite is happening, i.e. employees are not taking as much vacation as (I feel) they should, perhaps due to the feelings of guilt mentioned in the article. This sucks because, unlike jobs where vacation days are tracked, we can't even compensate them for any unused days. So over time I've come to believe that unlimited vacations days is something that sounds good in theory but not so much in practice, especially as a company scales. I would instead recommend the traditional model of tracking vacation days, but with a very liberal number of days (vs. the typical measly 10 days a year or whatever).

saryant 13y ago

We have it at the startup I work for. I recently spent 3.5 weeks traveling around Japan and Seoul and I didn't take a computer. I think I responded to about six work emails the entire time.

geophile 13y ago

Yes, exactly. I was at a startup that wasn't going so well, and we had the standard three weeks per year. It was already socially awkward to take those three weeks. Then the policy was changed to "all the vacation you need". For the people already taking zero vacation, there was no change, of course. For the rest of us, it increased the pressure to do without.

byoung2 13y ago

I know someone who works at a startup with unlimited vacation, and for most employees there it apparently turns out to be about 3 weeks of actual vacations taken (he defined it as left your home city for at least 2 days). They do use more single days here and there than they would otherwise, and they don't have to lie about being sick to use sick days. If I started a company, I'd want to offer unlimited vacation.

bgentry 13y ago

I think it works very well for us at Heroku. I've been here 3 years, and people certainly take enough time off in general. Probably 3-5 weeks for most folks. If they don't take enough time off, their managers are supposed to get on them about it :) Case in point: our office has been closed for the holidays for the past couple weeks, and I haven't seen evidence of anybody doing any serious work on non-side projects (outside of the unavoidable on call responsibilities). Nobody had to use precious PTO for this or feel bad about traveling overseas to visit relatives. I'd say it's highly dependent on company culture, though. We were always encouraged by our founders and office managers to take plenty of time off, and they led by example in this way. If that wasn't the case, it might not be working out well for us. I've certainly heard of other companies where it leads to less vacation.

nairteashop 13y ago

We didn't track vacations at my last company, because we agreed with the Netflix principle of hiring the right employees and giving them a lot of freedom, including allowing them to take whatever vacation days they needed, whenever they needed it. There were worries initially by some about employees abusing this policy, but that has not happened once in the 6+ years we've been around. However as we've grown, I strongly suspect that the opposite is happening, i.e. employees are not taking as much vacation as (I feel) they should, perhaps due to the feelings of guilt mentioned in the article. This sucks because, unlike jobs where vacation days are tracked, we can't even compensate them for any unused days. So over time I've come to believe that unlimited vacations days is something that sounds good in theory but not so much in practice, especially as a company scales. I would instead recommend the traditional model of tracking vacation days, but with a very liberal number of days (vs. the typical measly 10 days a year or whatever).