Comment by georgespencer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by georgespencer | Hacker News Reader

We have unlimited vacation at Rentify. Actually the policy is "take enough vacation to avoid burnout, we don't count the days". The expectation established when people join is that if work is being done, we don't care if you take a few extra days of vacation.

The policy exists because I was once declined an extra vacation day by a company I worked at which meant I had to take a flight costing an additional $150. The extra day they got out of me in the office was my least productive day of all time.

Vacation time is still approved by a line manager and is occasionally still declined. Generally people act in the company's best interests but sometimes we have to give context on why we can't allow a holiday.

The policy gets tricky when people leave the business, because we have to have a formula to explain to them what the calculation is for their remaining holiday pay. We try to be generous here and not simply take the UK statutory minimum (iirc 28 days). One person asked for ∞ accrued vacation days to be paid back to them which gave us a fun conversation about the difference between "infinite" and "unlimited".

"Generally people act in the company's best interests"

This is exactly the reason this policy is bad. People need to act in their own interest and take vacation they need, which may not be in the company's best interest.

Your language here is a huge red flag for this policy. This policy presumes, incorrectly, that what is good the employee is good for the company. While that is sometimes true, it is often not true.

The basic premise and expectation is that people should take only as much time off as they need to remain good little not burnt out workers. That is not something I agree with.

> This is exactly the reason this policy is bad. People need to act in their own interest and take vacation they need, which may not be in the company's best interest.

Heh, 'take enough vacation days to avoid burnout'. In other words, take as much time off as you need in order to keep working efficiently for us and so that we don't need to train someone new, but no more.

> People need to act in their own interest and take vacation they need, which may not be in the company's best interest.

It's almost always in the company's best interest for employees to be well rested and not burned out

> This policy presumes, incorrectly, that what is good for the employee is good for the company.

Because it is, in this instance.

> The basic premise and expectation is that people should take only as much time off as they need to remain good little not burnt out workers.

The premise is that people can take as much holiday as they like. Some people will take the minimum, and some people will take long periods.

While it may almost always be in the company's interest to have employees well rested, sometimes employees want to schedule vacation that can't be rescheduled at a particular time that may coincide with an important deadline.

In this situation, you run into some awkwardness that could screw over the employee.

This happens no matter what your PTO policy is.

Yes, it is "almost always in the company's best interest for employees to be well rested and not burned out."

However it is not almost always in the company's interest for employees to take 2 week recreational holidays when they are NOT burnt out. A normal vacation policy allows this, whereas a "no-burn-out" policy does not.

If you don't count the days, how do you make sure that people are taking/compensated for the statutory minimum - or do you mean "we count the days, but we don't say no just because your count is above a specific number"?

The latter -- but "we don't count the days" is catchier :)

That's also disingenuous.

That's still not a satisfying policy. It doesn't fix any of the potential problems in this article. "Enough to avoid burnout" and "as long as work is being done" aren't well-defined terms. If I work one day a month at Rentify, work will get done, and I'll avoid burnout, but I suspect I will be fired.

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