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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

Curious, how much vacation do your peers at the company take each year? Rough guess is fine.

I ask because I've heard that "unlimited vacation" actually results in LESS vacation being taken because employees are afraid to be seen as the one abusing the system (even though taking 4+ week/year should be norm).

Somewhat related, I loathe the trend of grouping sick and vacation time into a single bucket (for those in the EU, in the US, if you're sick you have to burn leave, the concept of "you're sick, stay home" doesn't really exist).

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It's easy to not take enough vacation at companies w/ unlimited vacation. Anecdotally, most of my peers at companies w/ unlimited vacation take less vacation than traditionally counted vacation days.

I work at a place w/ unlimited vacation and take about 4-4.5 weeks per year. A big reason I actually get to take this much vacation is because our founders & senior leadership also take vacation. I could easily see a world where our sr leadership didn't take any time off and there was implicit pressure to not use vacation time.

I get 4 weeks guaranteed and I make sure to take them. In Germany I had 6 weeks. If “unlimited” translates to 4 and you feel lucky that you actually get that much then “unlimited” feels like a scam to guilt trip people into less vacation and not having to pay out any when people leave. I guess you also don’t accrue any for a longer trip if you take off less one year.

That 4-4.5 weeks is less than the minimum amount of time I'm allowed to take off (not sure if it's strictly required but HR would start chasing me). Assuming weekends are taken off by default, 4.5 weeks is about 23 days, which is quite far down this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

Looking at this table the best countries in terms of leave are muslim countries. Lots of public holidays.

4 weeks is the legal minimum where I live, so that doesn’t seem like a lot at all.

Also, the problem with unlimited vacation days is that you don’t get paid for unused days when you quit your job.

I suspect that's one of the driving factors at tech companies where many people hop between jobs every couple of years or so. The difference adds up for companies, especially if people don't take a lot of vacation anyway.

Personally, I've tended to stay at jobs for substantial periods of time although I've still gotten fairly nice vacation payouts on a couple of occasions. (Once and I think the statute of limitations is probably up on this one given the company doesn't exist--I got laid off in the dot-bomb era almost immediately after returning from a 3 week vacation I hadn't quite gotten around to entering yet.)

I have unlimited vacation and I clock in about 8-10 weeks a year. It isn't true vacation though, because I'm still on the hook to put out fires, and my teammates are accidental pyromaniacs.

That just sounds like you work remotely for 8-10 weeks.

I work remotely all the time, I tell my co-workers to leave me alone except in emergencies for 8-10. Sadly my coworkers are firestarters. I really need better coworkers...

I want to chime in because I've never actually witnessed horror stories about "unlimited vacation" that people talk about. I'm now at my 2nd job with "unlimited vacation". The general consensus, based on discussion with my peers, is that they take 4 - 5 weeks. This matches my own experience.

EDIT: Also to add, I have seen folks take more than that. Often these are senior people traveling to home countries that involve very long flights. They might take 6 - 8 a year.

> Curious, how much vacation do your peers at the company take each year? Rough guess is fine.

I worked at a place with unlimited vacation in the past, and took ~4 weeks per year. To be honest, if anything, my boss pushed me to take more.

In the end I really think it comes down to your boss.

I heard a funny story from a senior guy at one of the big Bay Area tech companies (that has "unlimited" vacation) a little while back. They apparently hired a new PR person who quit after about six months because she couldn't deal with the fact that the CEO took vacations and he really took vacations in the "I'm on vacation. Handle whatever it is without me." sort of sense. It was just so alien that it completely stressed her out.

was that the thing that really stressed her out? or was every decision second-guessed once he got back? "handle things while I'm away" isn't as easy as it sounds if you're not supported in the decisions you make.

No idea. I have no personal knowledge of the situation. However I have no trouble believing (based on personal experience) that a lot of people aren't comfortable making "executive decisions" on their own.

Yes, sometimes it's because they rightly fear potential consequences. But other times, they just don't want the responsibility.

Rough guess would be around the 6 week mark. It may not be on traditional holidays per se, but I took a day off to help my parents fit CCTV last week - those individual days start to add up too. The company will tell you to take some time off if you're not taking enough.

> in the US, if you're sick you have to burn leave, the concept of "you're sick, stay home" doesn't really exist

As always this depends where you work. There's reasons for removing "sick days", that aren't in the employees interest. I take 2-5 per year. For some people, if they have 10, they'd use 10. Kinda like how "unlimited vacation", can mean less vacation, as people don't want to be that guy, or hurt their career.

I worked at a company once with unlimited vacation but limited sick leave. Riddle me that.

Perhaps a cover-their-ass rule to fulfill legal requirement to offer a minimum number of hours/days of sick leave.

Some states require a minimum amount of sick days that accrue on the books.

Typically, vacation requires advance notice. Sick time is on-demand.

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