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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if it's a real trend, but I do seem to be hearing more stories of companies worried about employees not taking enough vacation, whereas the traditional concern is the opposite. I'm not 100% sure of the motivation, either. Some could be what this suggests, that employees who take some time off are happier and more productive. Some could be trying to minimize actual burn-out (which is different from just lower productivity). Perhaps other reasons, though. One possibility is that if nobody in a group is taking time off, that may be a proxy for something else, possibly management problems (e.g. a particular group creating a culture of fear), so worth looking into as a kind of institutional debugging. And some could be recruiting, trying to project an image that not only do we give you N weeks of vacation on paper, but we really mean it and expect you to take it.

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Where I live you generally get 30 paid days off per year (10 national holidays, 20 discretionary).

Most large companies I've worked for require that you take one contiguous break of at least 2 weeks at some point during the year. Long enough that someone else will have to take over your day-to-day duties.

This is good for the employee (to have a proper holiday, and avoid the pressure of being the only one who can do something), and good for the company (it gives time for fraud and cover-ups to surface, and forces the spreading of information within the teams).

it gives time for fraud and cover-ups to surface

This is very interesting (and clever). Mind telling us more? :)

A friend of mine works for a large investment bank and this is the stated reason for their mandatory 2 week continuous holiday.

This is a common accounting control practice. Generally speaking, most accounting fraud is still manually performed and has to be done in person, and relies upon frequent tampering of normal accounting controls and procedures, often monthly, sometimes weekly and even in some cases daily. See the stories on PFGBest for an example.

The idea of enforced contiguous vacation time is that this kind of fraud is revealed when at least someone else has to step in and fill in for the time the fraudster is away. Even if someone doesn't backfill the position during the vacation time, surrounding processes and controls are supposed to pick up evidence of the fraud now that the tampering cannot be engaged.

Basically, no one with control over finance and accounting functions is supposed to be so indispensible that they can only take a few days here and there off. In fact, someone in those roles that makes a big deal out of being able to be away for long is usually a red flag for auditors.

Fascinating, did not know this. Thanks!

All the investment banks I have worked in have enforced this to greater or lesser degrees. i.e. always for the front office, and varies whether it applies to Technology or not.

If vacation time rolls over rather than disappearing at the end of the year, its advantageous to the employer for people to take it sooner rather than later for simple financial reasons. As you gain experience, time off costs them more, so they want you to take it when its as inexpensive as possible. I'd guess that if there is a trend, its one of more employers allowing time off to roll over to the next year.

Interesting thought. I'd also add bus factor to possible management problems. Often smooth project operation depends on few individuals (who may well seem to be ‘just’ developers), and mandatory time off for all employees may help obviate that.

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