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Comment by hodder | Hacker News Reader

I am just curious... Do these "take as much vacation as you want" policies work out well in practice? Or do the policies unintentionally create a competition to vacation less? Can anyone who works at a company with one of these policies share their perspective? How much is the approximate median vacation time taken?

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IANAA, but... Remember that these vacation policies also offer a very significant accounting benefit compared to PTO polices that let employees accrue & bank PTO. The accounting downside for these PTO policies is that many employees end up with huge PTO balances (lame for other reasons) that they build up in advance of leaving the company. Because the company must pay out in cash the whole PTO balance when the employee leaves, the company actually has to keep (often very significant amounts of) cash on hand in proportion to the collective banked PTO amounts. This is lame and it's avoided in "you get 0 but take as much as you want" scenarios.

> Because the company must pay out in cash the whole PTO balance when the employee leaves, the company actually has to keep (often very significant amounts of) cash on hand in proportion to the collective banked PTO amounts.

Depends on the state. Many states let the employer decide if they want to have a pay out policy or a "use it or lose it" policy.

Our unlimited vacation time comes with a (not enforced, but strongly recommended) mandatory minimum per quarter. Thus, we don't have everyone taking four weeks off in December, but I help remind the developers to take time to recharge. So far, just me going "you haven't taken a vacation in a while" is enough of a nudge to remind people to go.

What is the difference between minimum and maximum? What is the required number of pieces of flair?

Must wear lots of flair, especially when the VCs tour the office, looking important and trying to sound smart (but failing).

I've been under two unlimited policies and have taken reasonable time off in both. I take off exactly how much I want to take off, and its not really a concern that I'm under/over-utilizing my time off. I don't ask for anything unreasonable and in exchange I've had no problems taking as much time off as I want.

What do you consider reasonable, though? In the US, many consider 10 work days reasonable, but elsewhere, anything less than 6 weeks is barbaric.

My definition of reasonable is not about length, its about things like not asking for time off in the middle of an important deadline. Stuff like that.

Ours works great- we actually require a minimum of 2 weeks a year. I'll end this year having taken about 4- one long one and a bunch of smaller ones

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