The biggest part of unlimited vacation is really the culture of your company. If your company is filled w/ workaholics who look down on taking time off, it won't work. I'm an engineer at HubSpot and we have an unlimited vacation policy and for my team, it works great. Everyone is great about taking time off, we are happy for people when they do, and everyone gets their work done and is responsible. Everyone trusts each other on the team and things work out fine.
More than the sheer # of days for vacation, having the flexibility to take a day off to hang with the kids or make a spontaneous trip to Iceland (happened for some coworkers) is pretty awesome.
I actually just went through my calendar and counted about 31 vacation days. I'm surprised I took so many but never did I feel like I was shorting my team in any way and felt any guilt for it. This includes a 10 day trip to Europe and basically all of Christmas -> NYE off.
Most seem very skeptical and cynical of unlimited vacation, but it's more about the culture than the policy itself.
Totally agree.
In our case, we have people who are workaholics, and our solution was to make them take at least 2 weeks/year and make sure that people are taking breaks when needed/wanted to spread the culture that while work is important, this is your life, enjoy it. Having outside of work hobbies is extremely important to a healthy you.
To be fair in most big tech companies people take all of Christmas->NYE off without reporting it as PTO. Unless your manager is literally nazi, marking it as WFH and sending a couple emails a day qualify as doing work.
More than the sheer # of days for vacation, having the flexibility to take a day off to hang with the kids or make a spontaneous trip to Iceland (happened for some coworkers) is pretty awesome.
I actually just went through my calendar and counted about 31 vacation days. I'm surprised I took so many but never did I feel like I was shorting my team in any way and felt any guilt for it. This includes a 10 day trip to Europe and basically all of Christmas -> NYE off.
Most seem very skeptical and cynical of unlimited vacation, but it's more about the culture than the policy itself.